Planet Week: Climate change causes a third of heat deaths
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.
Last week, climate activists gained a third seat on Exxon’s board, Big Tech teamed up on climate action, and Tropical Storm Choi-Wan brought floods and mudslides to the Philippines.
In case you missed it, here’s what else happened around the Planet:
Monday, May 31
Hackers go after Big Meat
On Monday, hackers successfully attacked the world’s largest meat processing company, JBS, shuttering all industrial plants in the United States and disrupting regional supply of beef products.
The attack, carried out by the Russian-speaking group REvil, targeted JBS’s servers supporting operations in both North America and Australia. And while the company was operating at “close to full capacity” by Wednesday, NPR reports the threat is far from over. Big Meat beware.
Climate change causes a third of heat deaths
Just in time for a scorching summer in the Northern Hemisphere: New research attributes over a third of all heat-related deaths between 1991 and 2018 to our warming planet.
Similar studies have focused on individual cities during intense heat waves, but researchers compiled data from 732 locations and 43 countries to offer the most sweeping assessment to date. And the findings are startling: 37% of all heat-related deaths in the areas studied were linked to human activity.
“It’s a kind of call to action to prevent or try to attenuate potential effects which, of course, will be much higher in the future as long as global warming goes on,” Antonio Gasparrini, senior study author, told The Guardian. “The main message is … you don’t have to wait until 2050 to see increases in heat-related deaths.”
Burning ship filled with chemicals starts sinking
Even more bad news. Two weeks ago, Sri Lanka saw what could be its “worst environmental disaster” when a cargo ship full of chemicals and plastics caught fire and began to sink just 10 miles from its coast.
The ship was carrying 25 tons of nitric acid and 350 tons of fuel oil at the time. While officials have said the oil has not spilled yet, locals are feeling the impacts — 86 tons of plastic have washed up on their beaches. VICE has the story.
Tuesday, June 1
Biden suspends oil and gas leases in Alaska
In his last days in office, Donald Trump opened Alaska for business, selling leases to drill for oil and gas across the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Now, Biden may be reversing those sales. On Tuesday, the Interior Department suspended the leases, citing “multiple legal deficiencies” in the environmental review process.
The move comes just a week after Biden defended another drilling project in Alaska, showing how the administration hopes to balance competing interests between environmentalists and Big Oil. No matter, the latest suspension is a win for the Planet that reflects a promising industry trend.
“Trump’s desire to push through this lease sale in January was essentially an empty, meaningless, political gesture,” Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst, told The Washington Post. “And Biden’s decision is in its own way equally symbolic: There is simply no appetite in the industry to drill there.”
The unlikely culprits of methane emissions
When you think of big emitters, you probably picture a handful of Big Oil companies (like those that were the subject of last week’s newsletter). But a new study upends that assumption, finding that small, privately owned drillers make up a huge chunk of greenhouse gases in the U.S.
According to the analysis, five of the top 10 methane emitters in the country are lesser-known firms. And since these companies are unknown, they fly under the radar, dodging the attacks that big boys like BP and Exxon face every day.
But Big Oil is also tied up in this mess. Many of these high-polluting wells are bought directly by oil and gas giants. So when these giants take these emissions off their books, the emissions don’t go away — they’re just emitted by a smaller company. The New York Times dives deeper.
Single fire kills 10% of Planet’s giant sequoias
We’ve written about how California’s record droughts are making way for record wildfires. And those fires can leave a devastating footprint. A draft report, shared with the Visalia Times Delta, finds that a single wildfire last year may have destroyed 10 to 14% of the world’s giant sequoias.
The Castle Fire — which burned 175,000 acres across the Sequoia National Park from August to December 2020 — may have downed 7,500 and 10,000 of these towering redwoods. The likely irreversible damage is yet another reality of a warmer world.
“One-hundred years of fire suppression, combined with climate change-driven hotter droughts, have changed how fires burn in the southern Sierra and that change has been very bad for sequoia,” Cristy Brigham, the study’s lead author, told the paper.
Wednesday, June 2
Climate change chokes lakes
But it’s not just trees that are taking the brunt of climate impacts — lakes are hurting, too. A new study published in Nature finds that rising temperatures are suffocating freshwater lakes across the U.S. and Europe.
According to analysis of over 400 lakes, oxygen dipped 19% in deep waters and 5% at the surface — that’s three to nine times faster than in the Planet’s oceans. In some cases oxygen actually increased, but that was likely due to algae blooms caused by agricultural runoff, as well as warmer temperatures. In both cases, ecosystems suffer. E&E News has more.
Bonus
Justice for tigers
After 20 years on the run, Sharankhola police in Bangladesh have finally tracked down and arrested a man responsible for the deaths of at least 70 tigers in the Sundarban forest.
The royal Bengal tigers he hunted are listed as endangered, with a population decreasing from around 3,000 individuals in 2015. Dhaka Tribune has the details.
Have a great week,
Brandon and Sam