Australia’s election signals stronger climate action
Plus, deadly floods in India and Bangladesh.
Welcome to Planet Days, a five-minute roundup of the latest climate news and what it means for our Planet. If this was forwarded to you, smash that subscribe button:
Last week, floods again hit South Africa, Finland committed to carbon negativity by 2040, and NOAA predicted another busy hurricane season.
In case you missed it, here’s what else happened around the Planet.
Monday, May 23
On Monday, Anthony Albanese was sworn in as Australia’s new prime minister, signaling hope for climate action down under. Albanese ousted conservative Scott Morrison, whose lax stance on climate became increasingly unpopular in a country devastated by drought, bushfires, and floods.
"We have an opportunity now to end the climate wars in Australia,” Albanese told the BBC. "Australian businesses know that good action on climate change is good for jobs and good for our economy, and I want to join the global effort."
The Labor Party’s platform calls for speeding the transition to renewable energy, with the aim to slash emissions by 43% by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050 — in line with similar large democracies. Albanese, however, has also avoided calling for phaseouts of fossil fuels or coal mining, acknowledging Australia’s position as a huge exporter of coal and gas.
Climate change made Indian heat wave 30x more likely
Climate change played a huge part in India’s recent heatwave, which has killed at least 90 people and affected over a billion. According to a new study, this heatwave was made at least 30x more likely by human-caused climate change.
Though a similar study we covered last week said such an event was made 100x more likely by climate change, that study looked at the chances of the record Indian heatwave of 2010 recurring. This new study specifically looked at the factors that led to the 2022 heatwave.
The researchers said that as climate change increases heat and humidity in Asia, we could “approach the limits to what adaptation could give us.” CarbonBrief has more.
Deadly floods ravage India and Bangladesh
First its record heat — now, its devastating floods. In recent weeks, heavy rains ravaged parts of India and Bangladesh, killing at more than 60 people, displacing millions, and leaving many without food or water.
As low-lying coastal nations, India and Bangladesh are vulnerable to extreme rainfall and landslides. But scientists say climate change is making it worse. Climate change warms the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, making such flooding stronger, more frequent, and more unpredictable. The New York Times has more.
Sleepless nights
But climate impacts also show up in subtler ways. A new study finds that climate change is stealing our sleep, with people falling asleep later and waking up earlier as nighttime temperatures increase.
Researchers looked at over 47,000 people in 68 different countries. They found that when nighttime temperatures exceeded 77 degrees Fahrenheit, people were 3.5% more likely to get less than seven hours of sleep, when compared to 41 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Put another way, warming temperatures already erode 45 hours of sleep/year per person — roughly 10 or 11 additional nights of poor sleep every year. Grist has more.
Target methane
To keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, we can’t just focus on cutting the heavy-hitting CO2. We must also curb lesser-known pollutants like nitrous oxide, as well as the potent greenhouse gas methane, new research suggests.
The paper found the importance of “non-carbon dioxide pollutants” had been “underappreciated by scientists and policymakers alike and largely neglected in efforts to combat climate change.”
“These non-CO2 targeted measures, when combined with decarbonization, can provide net cooling by 2030, reduce the rate of warming from 2030 to 2050 by about 50%, roughly half of which comes from methane, significantly larger than decarbonization alone over this timeframe,” Gabrielle Dreyfus, lead author of the paper, told The Guardian.
The cost of climate inaction
Climate change won’t only cost you a good night’s sleep. It’ll also cost you money. A new study found unchecked warming could cost the world an estimated $178 trillion in the next 50 years.
On the other hand, the global economy would see an expansion of $43 trillion if countries held global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius for the next half-century (we’re currently on pace for at least 3 degrees of warming). Read the full story from Axios.
Wednesday, May 25
Big Oil investors reject climate proposals
Despite a shakeup by activist investors last year, Big Oil is still Big Oil. Last week, investors of two of the largest oil and gas companies rejected climate proposals, reports The Washington Post.
The proposals, which were rejected at ExxonMobil’s and Chevron’s annual meetings, targeted scope 3 emissions, or emissions from burning its products — in this case, fuel. The decisions come several weeks after investors in BP, ConocoPhillips, and Equino rejected similar climate proposals at shareholder meetings.
The moves show that such climate action may be harder in 2022, as fossil fuel firms rake in record profits, than it was in 2021, when those same companies were struggling.
Bonus
Drones stop mining
Alex Lucitante and Alexandra Narváez, two indigenous activists from Ecuador, have won an international environmental prize for their work using drones and camera traps to document mining on their land. Lucitante and Narváez — both members of the Cofán community — have protected approximately 79,000 acres from gold mining since 2017.
"We know this territory, we have walked through it, we know the sacred sites, the places to go hunting, where animals come to eat. It's full of life and it's everything to us," Naváez told The BBC. "A Cofán without territory is not Cofán."
Have a great week,
Brandon and Sam