| | The highs and lows of COP28 With COP28 in the rearview, it's time to assess just what progress has been made. This year's summit courted controversy before it even began, with critics questioning the location (early reporting suggested that oil producing powerhouse UAE planned to use its position to make oil deals) and the number of participants from the fossil fuel industry (more than 2,000, which according to Bloomberg, was " equivalent to being the third biggest country delegation"). Citing research presented at COP28, Bloomberg noted, "One thing is clear: Only truly radical transformations will prevent Earth from heating 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures." But attending countries were stuck on semantic arguments over whether to " phase out" fossil fuel use or "phase it down." (The science is clear: we need to phase out fossil fuels if we're to keep warming at or below the 1.5-degree threshold.) The deal the summit reached aims for carbon neutrality by 2050, and European Union climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra celebrated it as " the beginning of the end of fossil fuels." However, as the Washington Post notes, this "hardly means an immediate end to those sources of energy." Still, the COP28 agreement's call to transition away from fossil fuels is unprecedented. And the summit made headway with smaller deals that will help us get there. In the Progress Playbook, Nick Hedley points to two significant wins: First, 130 countries signed a pledge to triple the world's installed renewable energy capacity to at least 11,000 GW by 2030, and to double the rate of energy efficiency improvements to 4% a year until the end of the decade. . . . Second, wealthy nations made progress on operationalising a loss and damage fund, which is meant to assist developing countries hit by climate disasters. . . . That's a drop in the ocean of what's required as the impacts of climate change become more acute, but it's a step in the right direction. Renewable energy production is growing apace as prices equal or beat energy generated by fossil fuels—although worryingly, so is fossil fuel use. But, as Hedley makes clear, the loss and damage fund as proposed won't come close to addressing the damages wrought by climate change. (Per the Guardian : the "$700m pledged to loss and damage fund at Cop28 covers less than 0.2% needed.") Another promising step: everyone from governments to oil companies are aligned on reducing methane emissions. Of course, as Emily Pontecorvo wryly notes in Heatmap, this is the "lowest hanging fruit." And as previous COP conferences have made clear, all we have at the moment is pledges, and companies—and governments—are notoriously bad about keeping them. + From the Financial Times: "COP Must Lift the Omerta on Fossil Fuel Subsidies." + Scientific American warns, "Don't fall for Big Oil's carbon capture deceptions": "industrial carbon capture projects are far too small to matter," "they are far too expensive," and they "consume excessive amounts of energy." (And oil companies tout them to drag out the process of phasing out fossil fuels.) Even so, as Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich argue in the New York Times, carbon capture tech will likely play a (limited) role in curbing emissions . But pushing projects into development will probably require governments to do more than offer incentives, says Bloomberg. | | | | | "Betting on climate disaster" Adam Tooze has been covering the energy transition over at his Chartbook newsletter. In a recent post, he turned his attention to Big Oil , explaining, "How rapidly the run-down of fossil fuel use happens, will decide our climate future. It will also decide the future of incumbent oil, gas and coal industries." But according to Tooze, US-based Big Oil companies have yet to acquiesce to the upending of their industry—at least in a way that leaves them with a sustainable business model. It's worth reading in full, but here's the gist: There are telltale signs that the industry is beginning to reevaluate its future. Notably, the huge surge in revenues generated by the energy price hikes of the last two years has not been poured into new investment. It has been used to pay down debt and to pay out dividends. What this suggests is that the owners and managers of the fossil fuel complex are increasingly anticipating a constrained future. To keep their shareholders happy and their stock market valuations up, they are deleveraging and paying out larger dividends. Investment is flat, but what is not happening so far to any significant degree is a move by the existing oil and gas industry either to cut investment to long-run sustainable levels or to join the energy transition. We are in a situation of suspended animation, or suspended disbelief. . . . This then is a measure of the energy policy battlefield of the coming decades. The interest of the US oil and gas interests lies not in stopping the energy transition tout court, but to ensure that it is gradual enough to secure for them a substantial global market, which will valorize investments still being made to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. + More from Tooze on the transition to green energy: "Chartbook Carbon Notes 6: China’s Lead in the Energy Transition" and "Chartbook Carbon Notes 7 - The IEA’s Message to the Oil and Gas Industry: Wake Up!" + Henry Farrell interviews Brown University professor Mark Blyth in his Programmable Mutter newsletter: "The Green Transition Isn’t in the West’s Hands. That’s Good, as 'We’re Really Shit at It.'" + Here's Washington Post columnist Eduardo Porter on "how rich countries can help poor countries fight climate change": "The United States and other rich nations must commit to allow their poorer peers to raise their own money to pay for the technologies they need to accomplish the energy transition." + George Monbiot in the Guardian: "Here's a Question Cop28 Won't Address: Why Are Billionaires Blocking Action to Save the Planet?" | | | | | A "gold" rush for the materials powering green energy Although the transition to green energy will eventually kill demand for fossil fuels, it will require huge amounts of other materials like lithium, manganese, cobalt, nickel, and copper—and these will likely be mined, in some cases using technologies perfected by the fossil fuel industry. Industry is taking notice, and the new "gold" rush may have unpredictable geopolitical ramifications. Take California's Salton Sea. Once a booming resort town, it’s now known for its toxic soil. But as the Los Angeles Times' Sammy Roth details, "For all the lake's problems, it's a clean energy mecca. For decades, companies have tapped into the hot water deep beneath the Salton Sea's southern end to generate geothermal electricity, a climate-friendly power source available 24 hours a day." And now companies are racing to tap into the region's sizable lithium deposits, which as Roth notes, could make it "an even more central player in efforts to stem the climate crisis"—while also weaning the US from lithium imported from Australia, Chile, Argentina, and China. (According to Inside Climate News, Salton Sea locals are "cautiously optimistic.") Meanwhile, China has been looking to the deep sea. The country currently has "exclusive rights to excavate 92,000 square miles of international seabed—about the size of the United Kingdom—or 17 percent of the total area currently licensed by the ISA." And as Lily Kuo explains in the Washington Post , "The sea is believed to hold several times what land does of these rare metals," potentially extending China's already extensive lead in producing clean energy technologies. And then there's politics. Kuo reports that China's deep-sea mining ambitions are also "about overturning the traditional international order dominated by the West" (just as the country is aggressively expanding its presence in international waters). Maybe space mining will be a better option? And why aren't we mining the materials we've already thrown away? + From the New York Times: "It Could Be a Vast Source of Clean Energy, Buried Deep Underground." + More from the Washington Post: "On Frontier of New 'Gold Rush,' Quest for Coveted EV Metals Yields Misery." | | | | | "Water is a human right" Climate change is disrupting communities' relationships with water, causing both extreme droughts and devastating floods. Industry is also upsetting these relationships. As Cherise Morris points out in Truthout, " Water is a human right," but across the globe, companies are tapping this much needed water to the detriment of local communities. Here's just one recent example, reported on in Bloomberg. In Senegal, an investment company based in a ninth-floor Regus co-working space on Park Avenue in New York, is growing 300 hectares (740 acres) of emerald-green alfalfa east of Saint-Louis inside a desert nature preserve called the Ndiael. The farm draws its water from nearby Lake Guiers, which is fed by a canal from the river. The only freshwater reserve in Senegal, the lake supplies half the water for Dakar, Senegal's capital. The water isn't nearly enough. As water becomes more scarce, expect companies to increasingly attempt to outsource water-intensive production to locales offering lower prices at the expense of their inhabitants (except for the lucky few profiting off these deals, perhaps illegally). Such self-interested profiteering while externalizing immense social harms ought to be illegal! Or taxed at such a high level as to make it unprofitable. (We underuse the tax system as a way of limiting corporate abuses, IMO.) + From ProPublica: "The Future of the Colorado River Hinges on One Young Negotiator." + From Scientific American: "Depleted Groundwater Could Be Refilled by Borrowing a Trick from Solar Power." + From Nature: "Grand Plan to Drought-Proof India Could Reduce Rainfall." (While not the main point of the article, this is just the kind of complex problem that AI might be able to eventually help us with.) + More from Bloomberg: "Aboriginal People Are Locked Out of Australia's Water Market." | | | | | On rematriation and sustainability The shift to sustainability requires new ways of thinking about the environment—or maybe reconsidering old knowledge that has been unfairly discounted. From prescribed burns to wildlife management, "traditional tribal practices have often proved the most sustainable way to manage natural resources," Bina Venkataraman argues in a Washington Post article focused on the "rematriation" of lands to the Penobscot Nation in Maine. As Venkataraman emphasizes: Conservation has always been about people, even when the people were not visible. Environmental movements might have better protected nature if they had long sought to conserve cultures and communities along with land. Earning the trust now of people who have inherited wisdom for living in balance with nature will give conservation a fighting chance on a warming planet. It might also offer a reprieve from focusing on the dire future to reach for solutions that lie deep in the past. + Maps can help develop a "deeper recognition of histories that have too long been hidden." It's in this spirit that journalist Andy Revkin recently made "a Thanksgiving pitch for coexistence and for Google Maps to add a native lands layer." | | | | | | —Tim O’Reilly and Peyton Joyce | | | |
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