Did you know?
There is a whole genre of literature that focuses on climate-related fiction, sci-fi, and dystopian/utopian writing.
Climate-fiction (or Cli-fi) has been gaining traction in the past couple of years with a major climate publication launching a yearly short story competition Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors.
Contestants were asked to envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress and create intersectional worlds in which no community is left behind.
Follow this link to read some of the winning stories.
Politics & Environment
Biden OK’s Public Oil and Gas Drilling
Experts argue that Biden has a higher per month average of approved onshore oil and gas drilling permits than Trump did in any of the first three years of his presidency.
The report by Public Citizen, a liberal advocacy group, illustrates that President Biden has been slow to reverse Trump's fossil-fuel-friendly agenda, despite his campaign promise to push for “no more drilling on federal lands" because of climate change.
To say that environmentalists have been disappointed is an understatement, "The president has basically only tried to tackle one side of the climate problem," said Jamie Henn, an organizer with the Build Back Fossil Free coalition. "He's talked a lot about building clean energy, but he hasn't done anything to stop fossil fuels. And you need to tackle both sides if we're going to address this crisis."
During his first week in office, Biden issued an executive order to pause all new lease sales on public lands and waters while it reviewed how to adjust the program. But Western oil drillers and 14 Republican-led states sued over the order. And in June, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction to block the leasing pause.
The Biden administration is appealing that court decision. In the meantime, Interior Department has offered leases to oil and gas companies on more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration also plans to hold onshore lease sales in February.
Daily ED: United States
Golf courses may not be here to stay. They need an enormous amount of water, fertilizer, and upkeep. Climate change might make it worse with daytime flooding, drought, and storms, so officials are trying to revamp the sport with sustainable cover alternatives.
A new report by an environmental advocacy organization discovered that The National Hockey League and Chemours have formed a partnership to promote the chemical company’s synthetic Opteon refrigerants as “environmentally sustainable,” despite them being far worse for the climate than ammonia, the most widely used ice-rink refrigerant.
In an ambitious, first-in-the-nation effort to combat climate change, Ithaca, New York, has pledged to decarbonize all 6,000 of its buildings, including homes, businesses, schools, and churches, before the end of the decade, promising to become America’s first fully electric city.
Environment & Justice
Looking for a Climate Change “Safe Haven”?
Well, you can look no further because the mounting pile of evidence and research points towards the Midwestern region of the United States as a potential safe haven from climate change.
While there are a lot of articles discussing what places would better be avoided due to relentless storms, wildfires, and coastal erosion, journalists rarely advice on where to go. The World Bank, for example, estimates that more than 140 million people could become internally displaced by the climate crisis in the coming decades — and their assessment only includes a few regions of the world.
Jesse Keenan, a social scientist at Tulane University has identified the Great Lakes region and the American Rust Belt as a potential climate-safe haven.
Why? The abundance of resources, low cost of living, and most importantly water. Midwestern states like Minnesota and Michigan have also invested in new public infrastructure and have been on their way to becoming the new “cool and hipster scene” due to their blue-leaning regions.
However, the Midwest still has a lot to improve on to keep that status. Climate change is going to make the state wetter and more prone to flooding, so the preventatives have to be built before the worst case scenario hits.
Daily ED: International
Swiss scientists joined Guillermo Fernandez in his hunger strike to make the Swiss Federal Assembly call for a science briefing. In a letter to the parliament, they agreed that the request is reasonable in the context of the escalating climate crisis.
The campaign to make ecocide an international crime took center stage in the Hague on Tuesday as Bangladesh, Samoa and Vanuatu advocated criminalizing environmental destruction during a virtual forum at the annual meeting of the International Criminal Court’s 123 member nations.
South Sudan is drowning with many of the main roads completely submerged and people are pushing their way through the heavy silt-laden water due to climate change and the largest flood in history.
Climate & Science
Desertification in Brazil
Much of Brazil’s vast northeast is, the world’s most densely populated drylands, with roughly 53 million people, in effect, turning into a desert — a process called desertification that is worsening across the planet.
The region is known for droughts and poverty, inspiring novels about destitute field workers forced to abandon the land, as well as a genre of music, Baião, in which accordion-backed lyrics tell of the difficult life here
Climate change is one culprit. But local residents, faced with harsh economic realities, have also made short-term decisions to get by — like clearing trees for livestock and extracting clay for the region’s tile industry — that have carried long-term consequences.
That has made it one of the major threats to civilization’s ability to feed itself. President Jair Bolsonaro has taken no significant measures to reverse the process. Instead, he has pulled back environmental regulations, while empowering miners and ranchers and overseen a sharp rise in deforestation in the country. That helps feed the cycles of extreme weather. Government data released last month showed Amazon deforestation is at its worst in 15 years.
Desertification is a natural disaster playing out in slow motion in areas that are home to half a billion people, from northern China and North Africa to remote Russia and the American Southwest.
The process does not generally lead to rolling sand dunes that evoke the Sahara. Instead, higher temperatures and less rain combine with deforestation and overfarming to leave the soil parched, lifeless, and nearly devoid of nutrients, unable to support crops or even grass to feed livestock.
Sustainability
Is “Sustainable Fuel” Environmentally Friendly?
United Airlines deployed what the company called a “game-changing flight” last week. In a global first, a United Boeing 737 carrying more than 100 passengers flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C. on a tank of pure “sustainable aviation fuel,” or SAF. However, it might not be as eco-friendly as its most traditional counterpart.
SAF resembles conventional jet fuel and emits carbon dioxide when it’s burned in a plane’s engine. It’s considered sustainable because it’s refined from material that already exists in the environment, like used cooking fats and plant oils, rather than from fossil fuels that have stored carbon in the earth’s crust for millions of years. However, neither United nor World Energy, the company that produced the SAF for the flight, has revealed any details about the life-cycle emissions of the fuel used for Wednesday’s flight, but the companies advertise that SAF has the potential to reduce emissions by up to 80% compared to conventional jet fuel.
Major manufacturers like Airbus are also looking at fueling planes with clean hydrogen, which doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases when it’s burned. Battery technology has not advanced enough to power big planes over long distances yet, but using battery-powered planes for short distances is starting to take off. The shipping company DHL recently announced it was ordering a fleet of 12 battery-powered planes that are expected to be able to carry about 2,600 pounds of cargo over roughly 500 miles on one charge.