India’s heatwave heats up
Plus, one country goes carbon negative.
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, wildfires raged in New Mexico, the Biden administration announced a new environmental justice office, and U.S. officials delayed releases of Lake Powell’s water.
In case you missed it, here’s what else happened around the Planet.
Monday, May 2
India’s heatwave heats up
Over the last several months, temperatures have slowly been climbing across India and Pakistan. April’s maximum temperatures in central India averaged a record-breaking 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and pockets of India and Pakistan saw highs of 120 degrees.
The heatwave, which has affected 1.2 billion people, is wreaking havoc on crops and triggering daily power outages in India. Meanwhile, at least 25 people have died from heat stroke across India since late March. The government is now pushing states to prepare heat action plans to avoid heat- and fire-related deaths.
Though April heatwaves are not uncommon in the region, this year has been particularly brutal, something that can be attributed to climate change. The Guardian covers the heatwave.
What this Supreme Court means for climate
On Monday, the Supreme Court signaled it may overturn the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, according to a draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and published by POLITICO.
If the draft remains unchanged, the federal government would no longer view abortion as a constitutional right, instead allowing states to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion. Aside from leading to multiple statewide abortion bans, the decision could also have sweeping consequences for climate litigation.
The decision would show the court’s willingness to reverse long-standing decisions — like Massachusetts v. EPA, which affirmed the federal government can regulate greenhouse gases — to achieve conservative wins, no matter how political it looks. It could also limit environmentalists' ability to bring climate cases to trial. E&E News breaks it down.
Tuesday, May 3
Big Oil’s big profits
Big Oil keeps raking in the cash. Partially driven by rising oil prices after Russia invaded Ukraine, nearly every major oil and gas company overshot their expected first-quarter profits:
Exxon and Chevron announced first-quarter profits of $5.5 billion and 6.7 billion respectively.
BP brought in a first-quarter profit of $6.2 billion — even though the company took a $25.5 billion hit after it pulled out of a large Russian oil project.
Shell joined in on the fun, with a whopping first-quarter profit of $9.1 billion, even after writing down $3.9 billion from exiting Russia.
With the boost in profits and windfall taxes unlikely, companies will send billions back to shareholders and maybe even invest more in low-carbon projects (though don’t hold your breath on the latter). The Wall Street Journal has more.
Wednesday, May 4
E.U. proposes Russian oil ban
About a month after axing Russian coal, the European Union continued to cut itself off of Russia energy, this time proposing a ban on Russian oil. The move is a big one, as Russia provides about a quarter of all E.U. oil.
The proposal, which needs unanimous approval from all 27 E.U. countries, gives the bloc six months to wean off of Russian oil — with the exception of Hungary and Slovakia, who will get an extra year.
So, what’s next? Should the E.U. successfully get this proposal through, cutting off Russian gas is an obvious but extremely difficult next step: Europe relies on Russia for 40% of its gas. The Associated Press reports from Brussels.
Not that 420
New data suggests atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 420 parts per million (ppm) in April, the highest levels for any calendar month since records began in 1958.
The annual peak typically comes in May, just before the Northern Hemisphere’s summer season, when plants soak up a lot of the gas. But we’ve already beat all our records — and there’s nothing mellow about it.
“The world effectively has made no serious progress compared to what is required," Pieter Tans, who tracks greenhouse gases for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, told Axios.
Less meat, more trees
Replacing just 20% of global animal meat consumption with meat grown from fungus could halve deforestation in the next three decades, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.
Previous studies suggested this “microbial protein” — made from fungi, bacteria, and other microorganisms — has the same protein quality as beef but requires an average 90% less land and water and produces 80% less greenhouse gas emissions. But this is the first study to assess how such meat alternatives could physically affect the world. Read more from The Guardian.
We suck at recycling
We’re really bad at corporations’ favorite greenwashing activity, recycling. A new study finds that the U.S. only recycled 5–6% of its plastics in 2021 — down from the already-low benchmark of 8.7% in 2018.
The organizations behind the study, The Last Beach Cleanup and Beyond Plastics, blame plastics and products industries for waging “a decades-long misinformation campaign to perpetuate the myth that plastic is recyclable.”
To buck this trend, we should think less about recycling plastic and more about getting rid of it, through single-use plastics bans, water-refill stations, and reusable container programs. Grist has the story.
Bonus
Tasmania goes carbon negative
But just because we’re bad at things doesn’t mean everyone is. By reducing logging and improving forest management, Tasmania has joined a small number of countries that are now taking more emissions out of the atmosphere than they’re producing.
“The mitigation benefit is about 22 million tons of carbon dioxide a year,” David Lindenmayer, a professor from the Australian National University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “This is one of the first times on the planet that anybody has ever done this kind of reversal.”
Have a great week,
Brandon and Sam