Weekly Injest Newsletter: Eighteenth Edition
Each week I curate a newsletter for all my listeners that are comprised of articles that are of interest to the topics I talk about the podcast. This newsletter also brings national and international news about sustainability and climate change that may often get overlooked, forgotten about, or is unheard of to the community I serve.
Paris Climate Agreement
The Hunter power plant in Utah generates electricity by burning coal. Coal combustion releases enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The Utah plant is scheduled to keep operating until 2042. George Frey/AFP via Getty Images
U.S. Officially Leaving Paris Climate Agreement
NPR: Rebecca Hersher
The United States will formally leave the Paris Agreement on Wednesday, November 4th, no matter who wins the election. Of the nearly 200 nations that signed the agreement, the U.S. is the only one to walk away from its promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
President Trump originally announced his intention to withdraw from the landmark agreement in 2017 and formally notified the United Nations last year. A mandatory yearlong waiting period ends on Wednesday, a coincidence that nonetheless highlights the Trump administration's commitment to derailing efforts that address climate change.
The U.S. has emitted more cumulative carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other country since the industrial era began in the mid-1800s. Current U.S. emissions are falling but far too slowly to avoid catastrophic warming. That's in part because the Trump administration rolled back carbon pollution limits from power plants, cars, trucks and fossil fuel operations. American emissions rose slightly in the first two years of his administration. In 2020, the pandemic throttled the economy and led to a short-term dip.
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE - NOVEMBER 07: President-elect Joe Biden addresses the nation in Wilmington, Delaware. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Biden's America To Rejoin The Paris Climate Accords - Will It Help The Environment?
Forbes: Daniel Markind
Among the numerous Executive Orders that President-Elect Biden has indicated he will issue during his opening few days as President is an Order that will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords. This pleases the environmental community but raises one big question – will rejoining be good for the world environment?
While often referred to, few actually understand the Paris Climate Accords, which were reached in 2016. Under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which deals with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance, the Accords were approved by all 196 countries that negotiated them. 189 of those countries became parties to them (Turkey and Iran being the most significant countries that did not), and only the United States has withdrawn, which it did formally just last week.
The long term goal of the Accords is to limit the increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius above that in pre-industrial times. By doing so, it is thought we can reduce the risks of global climate change.
Joe Biden speaks out about climate change and wildfires affecting the US in September. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP
Joe Biden could bring Paris climate goals 'within striking distance'
The Guardian: Fiona Harvey
Biden’s presidency could help reduce global heating by about 0.1C if plans fulfilled, say experts
The election of Joe Biden as president of the US could reduce global heating by about 0.1C, bringing the goals of the Paris agreement “within striking distance”, if his plans are fulfilled, according to a detailed analysis.
Biden’s policy of a target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and plans for a $1.7tn investment in a green recovery from the Covid crisis, would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalents. Calculations by the Climate Action Tracker show that this reduction would be enough to avoid a temperature rise of about 0.1C by 2100.
However, Biden is likely to face stiff opposition to many of his proposals, from the Republican party nationally and at state level, while his room for manoeuvre will be limited by the Democrats’ showing in the Senate. If legal challenges to his plans are brought, they will be decided by a heavily conservative supreme court.
Climate Change and 2020 US General Election
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Climate change had mixed showing in 2020 elections
Axios: Amy Harder
Climate change got more attention this election cycle than ever, but the (political) science is mixed on whether it helped or hurt candidates who ran on it.
Driving the news: Joe Biden campaigned on the topic more than any other presidential nominee, which climate activists say is a victory. But his wins in battleground states may have come in spite of it, not because of it, political observers say.
What they’re saying: “The more climate change was on the agenda, the more it drove up votes in blue states, but it worked against Democrats in purple states, in battleground states,” said a former Obama administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity given tense intra-party divisions.
“The fear that a lot of House members have is that going forward, Republicans will use this issue in trying to take back the House in 2022.”
Where it stands: Biden was officially elected the president-elect on Saturday, and the Senate is probably staying in GOP hands, though Georgia’s two runoff races in January could tip the scales. Democrats kept control of the House but lost seats.
“That is not a governing alignment designed to address climate change,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
A worker with the Pebble Mine project test drills in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska in 2007. (AP Photo/Al Grillo,File)
The Energy 202: Here's what Biden can get done on climate change even without the Senate
The Washington Post: Dino Grandoni with Alexandra Ellerbeck
President-elect Joe Biden won the White House after making climate change a major plank of his campaign. Soon it will be time for him to see what he can actually get done once he is in office.
Many of the most ambitious parts of his sweeping $2 trillion plan for tackling climate change face an enormous uphill battle in Congress. His massive investment plan only stands a chance if his party wins two Senate runoff races in Georgia in January. If that happens, Democrats would have control of both chambers since the incoming vice president, Kamala D. Harris, would be able to break the 50-50 Senate tie.
The stakes could not be higher. As Biden’s term soon begins, the world faces ever more dangerous and irreversible levels of warming because of the continued buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from not just the United States but countries around the world.
Source: The Columbus Dispatch
Columbus voters approve green-energy aggregation plan
The Columbus Dispatch: Bill Bush
In final, unofficial precinct returns Tuesday Columbus voters were overwhelmingly in favor of Issue 1, an "opt-out" green-energy electricity aggregation plan that promises to supply 100% of the city's power needs with renewable energy by 2023.
"Columbus is going to be leading the way throughout the country on smart, clean-energy strategies," Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said Tuesday evening.
With over 340,000 votes in, from a combination of early votes and the counts from all election-day precinct voting, the unofficial results show Issue 1 winning overwhelmingly, 76% to 24%.
"It's good for the environment, it's good for jobs, it's good for the rate payers," said City Councilman Rob Dorans, who ushered the plan through council. "Voters have recognized the unique opportunity on all those fronts."
The Bobcat Fire, as seen from a kitchen window in Monrovia, California, Sept. 10, 2020
Climate change will loom large over the next presidential term
Texas Climate News: Robert Henson
Even more climate-related disasters may pile up in the early 2020s, experts say, and several new scientific assessments are being readied for prime time to update the picture of what lies ahead.
As we saw in earlier installments of this series, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have starkly different takes on what to do about human-produced climate change over the next four years. One thing is clear: Whichever one gets the nod in the Nov. 3 election will face a daunting landscape of impacts and an increasingly compressed time frame for action. Much of what we can expect over the next four years in both weather impacts and climate research is already evident, both globally and regionally.
Two types of climate-linked disaster have surged to the forefront of public consciousness during the Trump administration: fires and floods. Californians were pummeled by a string of catastrophic fires starting in 2017, including the state’s largest, deadliest, and most destructive blazes in modern records. Disastrous fires also struck Oregon and Washingtonin the summer of 2020, and Colorado’s three largest wildfires on record raged from late summer well into autumn 2020.
The common thread in these events is intense windstorms blowing through heat-dessicated landscapes. The climate of the West is famously drought-prone, and occasional windstorms are familiar, but the relentless rise of regional temperatures – proceeding even faster than nationwide warming in recent decades – has made the atmosphere in a given drought even “thirstier.” Record-hot readings during the naturally arid California summer can now lead to record-dry trees, shrubs, and grasses by late summer and autumn, even in some years that had ample winter moisture, such as 2016-17.
Climate Change and Human Behavior
Source: Jonathan Foley
Building a More Inclusive Climate Community
Medium: Dr. Jonathan Foley
For far too long, the voices of climate science, policy, and activism have been too monolithic and privileged — and too white, straight, and male. We must change that, and the climate community needs to redouble its efforts in this area. Here I’d like to share some steps I’ll be taking and holding myself accountable to, and invite others to do the same.
I grew up as a middle-class, well-educated, straight, white male in America during the late 20th century. As a result, I have benefitted from an enormous amount of privilege.
While I have worked very hard for decades, and have faced plenty of obstacles, I have never had to swim against the powerful currents of racism, sexism, or homophobia to get where I wanted to go. I was usually swimming with the current, and that made things easier for me, and for many other white men in the climate community.
Thanks to this long-standing pattern of privilege, there are more straight, white men in positions of authority and visibility than random chance would dictate. For example, all things being equal, there should be roughly the same number of men and women working in climate science. But there aren’t, because things have not been equal. Not by a long shot.
Activists and students holding signs march on the streets of downtown Toronto during a climate change rally on Black Friday, Nov. 29, 2019. Photo Ramona Diaconescu / Shutterstock.com
Voters Of Faith Largely Support Action on Climate Change, New Survey Shows
Sojourners: Lexi McMenamin
Addressing climate change is a faith-based obligation to “protect God’s creation,” say 81 percent of American religious voters surveyed in a poll released this morning from Climate Nexus and Yale and George Mason’s respective programs on climate change communications.
According to the poll, which surveyed voters who identified as evangelical and mainline Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and religiously unaffiliated, voters of faith largely believe in climate change, are worried about it, and support providing federal funding to communities vulnerable to extreme weather in potential COVID-19 recovery funding.
“People are dying today from the impact of our neglect of God's creation,” said Dan Misleh, founding executive director of Catholic Climate Covenant.
Broadly, those polled support policies and candidates that work to address climate change, and “a majority of voters across faith groups” say that instituting policy on climate change should be a priority for Congress and the president in 2021. Over half of those polled support federal funding to promote renewable energy and associated jobs.
