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Environment and Politics
Biden Says Climate Change Poses More Risk Than Nuclear War
President Joe Biden said the sole threat to humanity’s existence is climate change, and that not even nuclear conflict poses a similar danger.
“The only existential threat humanity faces, even things more frightening than a nuclear war, is global warming,” Biden said Sunday during a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The president added “we’re going to be in real trouble” if, in the next decade or two, warming goes above the 1.5C temperature increase that scientists consider a tipping point for increasing the chances of extreme weather events per Bloomberg.
Biden spoke following the Group of 20 summit in India, where leaders agreed to a series of climate actions, including a pledge to triple renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade.
The president’s attention this year has been consumed at times by weather and climate disasters, including deadly wildfires in Maui. The US has suffered more than a dozen billion-dollar severe weather events this year, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.
Environment and Sustainability
Dozens of Schools Around the Country Closed Due to Heat
Due to aging infrastructure and lack of air conditioning, dozens of schools in Pennsylvania had to be shortened their school days, amid unprecedented heat waves. Other schools in New Jersey, New England, mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Texas have abbreviated their schedules and cancelled school, per Bloomberg.
That is in the world’s richest country, where many towns can vote to install AC or update infrastructures. In countries like India, Pakistan, and Philippines, where AC accessibility is much lower than in the US, have also cancelled classes this year. Iran shut down public life entirely for two days in August, as the air was forecast to reach 122F.
The most recent State of Our Schools update, a report released every five years, found the US is under-investing in school infrastructure by $85 billion a year, nearly double the 2016 figure. More than 40% of schools need new or updated heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. In August, Downers Grove, a village near Chicago, delayed the start of its school year by two days because 11 of its 13 schools lack AC.
As temperatures continue to rise with fossil-fuel emissions, the urgency is becoming more acute. The Center for Climate Integrity estimates that 13,700 public schools in the US that didn’t need cooling in 1970 will either have or need it by 2025. Ten states, including Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio, each face more than $1 billion in costs to cool schools. The analysis found that schools typically install cooling systems when the number of days hotter than 80F reaches 32 a year. Since 1970, the number of schools estimated to pass that threshold has risen by 40%.
There are signs of progress. A state bill in California would order up a master plan for climate-safe schools. In Arlington, Massachusetts, one high school earned poor marks from a New England oversight organization — then the district embarked on a plan to rebuild it.
School districts are also a major issuer in the municipal bond market, tapping investors to raise funds for new construction and renovations. So far this year, public school districts have sold about $44.8 billion worth of debt for both new projects and refinancing, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Almost half of that debt has come from Texas-based districts where a booming population has underscored the need for more schools.
Environment and Water
Many of the aquifers that supply 90% of the nation’s water systems, and which have transformed vast stretches of America into some of the world’s most bountiful farmland, are being severely depleted. These declines are threatening irreversible harm to the American economy and society as a whole.
The New York Times conducted a months-long examination of groundwater depletion, interviewing more than 100 experts, traveling the country and creating a comprehensive database using millions of readings from monitoring sites.
The investigation reveals how America’s life-giving resource is being exhausted in much of the country, and in many cases it won’t come back. Huge industrial farms and sprawling cities are draining aquifers that could take centuries or millenniums to replenish themselves if they recover at all.
Groundwater loss is hurting cities and communities around United States. Water that is essential in farming states like Kansas, where aquifers cannot support irrigation of millions of acres of cornfields. New York, Arizona, Utah, California, and Texas, groundwater is being pumped at rates that it is buckling roads, creating cracks and fissures in foundations.
“There is no way to get that back,” Don Cline, the associate director for water resources at the United States Geological Survey, said of disappearing groundwater. “There’s almost no way to convey how important it is.”
Read the full report here.
Climate Tidbits
Hurricane Lee rapidly intensified at a historic pace into a Category 5 storm Thursday night, adding to a spate of extremely intense hurricanes this year and in recent decades which experts say is a symptom of the climate crisis.
Spanish climate activists sprayed red paint across a superyacht owned by billionaire Walmart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie in Barcelona on Friday, the second time the yacht has been the target of protests in the past two months.
Read about America’s fire watchers: high-altitude recluses whose job relies on spotting wildfires.