Planet Week: Big companies make big climate pledges
Welcome to Planet Week, where we highlight the last week of environmental news and what it means for our planet.
Welcome to Planet Week, where we highlight the last week of environmental news and what it means for our planet.
Too often, we highlight all the bad stuff happening to our planet, so let’s start with some good news. New data found that renewables have priced coal out of the market in Europe. In the United States, Congress passed the Great American Outdoors Act, which would spend $9.5 billion in park repairs over the next five years. And amid a recession, a new report found that plugging abandoned oil wells can create 120,000 jobs.
Okay, that was fun. Now back to reality. In case you missed it, here’s what else happened around the planet:
Monday, July 20
Rich Americans emit more carbon
In the least surprising news of last week, rich people are bad for the environment. A comprehensive study published Monday found that wealthy Americans emit 25% more greenhouse gases at home than poorer Americans.
“[The numbers] show that (with) people who are wealthier generally, there’s a tendency for their houses to be bigger and their greenhouse gas emissions tend to be higher,” study lead author Benjamin Goldstein, a researcher at the University of Michigan, told the Associated Press. “There seems to be a small group of people that are inflicting most of the damage to be honest.”
Personal choices — like investing in solar panels or limiting power consumption — can help, but to really make a difference, we need structural change, notes the study.
Bad news (polar) bears
A new report published in Nature Climate Change set an extinction-timeline for polar bears. In a business-as-usual emissions scenario, 18 of 19 polar bear subpopulations will likely disappear by 2100. With “moderate emissions mitigation,” we could prolong the bears’ survival and lose only a few populations.
“The trajectory we’re on now is not a good one, but if society gets its act together, we have time to save polar bears,” Steven Amtstrup, chief scientist of Polar Bears International, told BBC. “And if we do, we will benefit the rest of life on Earth, including ourselves.”
Does it feel like you’ve been hearing about polar bear extinction for nearly twenty years? We wrote about how this polar bear study differs from the other ones.
Tuesday, July 21
Big companies, big promises
On Tuesday, Apple rolled out an ambitious climate plan: to have carbon-neutral supply chains by 2030, reports Reuters. With the announcement, Apple joins Amazon (carbon-neutral by 2040) and Microsoft (carbon negative by 2030) as the latest tech giant to roll out an ambitious climate pledge this year.
Also on Tuesday, Microsoft re-upped the ante on its January announcement to go “carbon negative” — laying out some specifics on that plan, which included its participation in a new coalition, Transform to Net Zero, which includes partners like Nike, Starbucks, and Unilever.
So, what do all these climate pledges mean? Check out our recent article.
Something’s rotten in Ohio
In a story that sounds more like a Hollywood script than reality, the FBI is investigating Ohio’s speaker of the house, Larry Householder, for taking bribes to pass maybe the country’s worst energy policy.
Last summer, politicians hastily forced H.B. 6 through Ohio’s legislature (Vox outlines just how horseshit of a law it is), without a referendum. The bill, passed in July 2019, uses taxpayer money to bailout four of utility company FirstEnergy’s failing power plants (two coal and two nuclear), while disincentivizing future investments in renewable energy (like we said, horseshit).
It turns out Householder, and four others under investigation, had reason for speeding up the process: They were getting millions of dollars of kickbacks directly from FirstEnergy. Now, Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, is calling for a repeal, though, for the record, he still thinks the initial policy is good. Get your popcorn ready, and read some great analysis from Vox.
Wednesday, July 22
Sierra Club reckons with racist past
Sierra Club, the oldest conservation organization in the U.S., joined a growing number of green groups reckoning with their racially exclusive histories. John Muir, co-founder of the Sierra Club, is America’s most influential conservationist but has a troubling past: He held troubling friendships with white supremacists, often used racial slurs when recounting his adventures, and excluded minorities from the early environmental movement.
“As defenders of Black life pull down Confederate monuments across the country, we must also take this moment to reexamine our past and our substantial role in perpetuating white supremacy,” wrote Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune in a statement on Wednesday. “As the most iconic figure in Sierra Club history, Muir’s words and actions carry an especially heavy weight. They continue to hurt and alienate Indigenous people and people of color who come into contact with the Sierra Club.”
Read the full story by The Washington Post.
Climate change projections narrowed
If carbon emissions double — which we’re on pace to do within the next 50 years or so — the Earth’s global average temperature will likely increase between 4.1 and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit (2.3 and 4.5 degrees Celsius), according to a new study released Wednesday.
This narrows the previous projections, and gives us a 95% chance of reaching temperatures greater than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) relative to preindustrial levels — the mark set by the Paris Agreement to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Read more at The Washington Post.
Thursday, July 23
Where will everyone go?
As the world heats up, liveable areas shrink and people are forced to move from their homes. To better understand this climate migration, The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica, with funding from the Pulitzer Center, modeled how people move across borders in a warming world.
Focusing on Central America, they look at different factors — development, border control, culture, politics, climate — and how each influences migration. According to the investigation, climate change will “almost certainly” cause the greatest wave of global migration in history.
“For a long time, the climate alarm has been sounded in terms of its economic toll, but now it can increasingly be counted in people harmed,” they write. Read the feature in ProPublica.
Planet Weekend
Hurricane Hanna hits Texas
On Saturday, Hurricane Hanna made landfall in Southeastern Texas, making it the first Category 1 hurricane to hit the area since Harvey devastated its coast in 2017. To make matters worse, Texas is one of the country’s largest hot spots for COVID-19.
Now, local officials and emergency response crews turn from one disaster to another. But the pandemic makes everything harder, as emergency shelters and distribution centers try to adhere to social distancing. The New York Times has the story.
Bonus: Sports are back
After almost six months, American sports are finally back. And one of the big stories of the hiatus is the name change in the U.S. capital: The Washington Redskins (for now, just the “Washington Football Team”) is finally tackling the problematic Native American imagery its name carries. And one floated name change could benefit the environment.
“The Red Wolves” is not only a fan favorite, according to a Washington Post poll, it’s also a favorite among scientists, who hope the name would bring renewed attention to a species on the brink of extinction.
“It would mean a lot of the country would suddenly hear something about the story of this animal, and that’s what the red wolf needs,” Ron Sutherland, a chief scientist at the nonprofit Wildlands Network, told the Washington Post.
See you next week,
Brandon and Sam