Planet Week: Exxon’s rough week
Welcome to Planet Week, where we highlight the last week of environmental news and what it means for our planet.
Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day! And welcome to Planet Week, where we highlight the last week of environmental news and what it means for our planet.
Last week, China’s carbon pledge got a $5 trillion price tag. Data showed that last month was the hottest September on record. And Nobel Laureate Mario Molina, who helped discover the hole in the ozone layer, died at 77.
In case you missed it, here’s what else happened around the planet:
Monday, October 5
Exxon planned to keep omitting
As the rest of the world made climate pledges, ExxonMobil was planning to increase emissions 17% by 2025, according to leaked documents reviewed by Bloomberg.
The documents chart Exxon’s production growth before the COVID-19 pandemic, showing that the largest oil producer in the United States planned to release 143 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2025–21 million tons more than numbers from 2017.
Exxon called the report “false and misleading” and that its production plans have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, the company hasn’t said it was canceling these future projects, meaning the projects could still be on the books.
Tuesday, October 6
JP Morgan aligns with Paris Agreement
On Tuesday, JP Morgan Chase announced it was aligning its financial commitments to the goals of the Paris Agreement, pledging to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
To do this, the largest bank in the U.S. plans to support companies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and invest more in clean energy and green technologies. The bank also will launch a Center for Carbon Transition to help clients cut their carbon footprints.
Overall, though, the plan is pretty vague — and the elephant in the room, of course, is all the bank’s heavy-carbon clients, which includes ExxonMobil. Given that JP Morgan Chase is the world’s biggest single funder of fossil fuels, that elephant is too big to ignore. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
Wednesday, October 7
Wind and solar company tops Exxon for most valuable
Aaaaand back to ExxonMobil. On Wednesday, the wind and solar company NextEra added to Exxon’s rough week, dethroning the fossil-fuel giant as the most valuable energy company in the U.S. When markets closed, NextEra was $900 million more valuable than ExxonMobil and $2 billion more valuable than Chevron, reports CBS News.
Big Oil has been hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, but this news is years in the making — Exxon’s value has been sliding over the last decade, while renewable energy technologies are getting cheaper and more popular.
E.U. votes to cut 60% of emissions by 2030
The European Parliament voted to up its climate goals last week: Countries could now be legally required to cut emissions 60% by 2030, rather than the current target of 40%.
However, members of the E.U. are split over how ambitious the targets should be, and it’s unlikely they’ll come to an agreement by the end of the year. Experts say anything less than a 55% cut by 2030 would knock the E.U. off course of carbon neutrality by 2050. Reuters has the story.
VP debate covers climate
Americans won’t forget the fly that sat on U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s head for two minutes. But that wasn’t the only surprise of the night — climate change made another unlikely appearance on a debate stage, and it was just as depressing as last time.
Pence made several false or misleading claims about science and Biden’s climate plan, while Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) reinforced Democrats’ unwillingness to ban fracking in the hopes of winning Pennsylvania (despite most registered voters opposing it). Environmentalists wanted more, according to E&E News.
“Kamala was good in the Presidential [primary] debates on climate — always on offense,” Evan Weber of the Sunrise Movement wrote on Twitter. “I don’t know what happened tonight. She can do much better, & I hope she will going forward…”
Friday, October 9
World Food Programme awarded Nobel Peace Prize
The U.N.’s World Food Programme won the Nobel Peace Prize for its ongoing work to solve acute and chronic food insecurity, reports The New York Times.
Before COVID-19, approximately 825 million people faced a lack of food due to poverty, climate change, and conflict. The number of people facing acute food insecurity could double in the pandemic.
“In the face of the pandemic, the World Food Program has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, when she announced the prize. “With this year’s award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to turn the eyes of the world towards the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger.”
Planet Weekend
Hurricane Delta makes landfall
Delta became the record-setting 10th-named storm to strike the U.S. this year. On Friday evening, the storm made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane, bringing with it 100 mph winds, record storm surges, and over a foot of rain — a destruction that left 600,000 Louisiana residents without power Saturday morning.
To make matters worse, Delta struck a part of Louisiana still reeling from Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 hurricane that hit the region in late August. Delta shares another concerning characteristic with Laura: Its rapid intensification. Before hitting Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and losing steam, Delta grew from an unnamed tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in only 36 hours.
“It’s more likely that a storm will rapidly intensify now than it did in the 1980s,” Jim Kossin, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate and hurricane scientist, told AP. “A lot of that has to do with human-caused climate change.”
Track the latest updates by The Washington Post.
Bonus
The tasmanian devil is back
Tasmanian devils haven’t lived on Australia’s mainland for 3,000 years… until now. Thanks to conservation and reintroduction efforts, 26 of these endangered marsupials have returned, and scientists hope they’ll protect ecosystems from invasive species.
“Once we move and bleed out from sanctuary-type management into natural landscape, the concept is that we have a natural predator roaming the landscape,” Tim Faulkner, the president of Aussie Ark (which organized the project), told The Guardian. “Tasmanian devils represent a very unique natural control measure for our feral pests and in the absence of mainland predators they bring balance back to the ecosystem.”
Have a great week,
Brandon and Sam