Month: April 2020

Amsterdam is now using the ‘doughnut’ model of economics: What does that mean?

Fast Company discusses why Amsterdam is now using the ‘doughnut’ model of economics: What does that mean?. It’s a simple way to illustrate an economic system where the city doesn’t let anyone fall into poverty, while also living within a sustainable environmental footprint.

As Amsterdam plans for its post-coronavirus recovery, it’s also rethinking what economic success looks like. In doing so, it’s not looking at traditional financial metrics of how to determine when the city has recovered. Instead, the city will be the first in the world to officially adopt the “doughnut” model of economics.

The model, developed by U.K. economist Kate Raworth, is a simple way to illustrate a complex goal. The inner ring of the doughnut represents minimum standards of living, based on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. This entails the basic essentials everyone needs to thrive, from food and clean water to gender equality and adequate housing. According to the model, no one should fall into the hole in the center of the doughnut, which would mean they don’t have enough to afford basic needs. The outer ring of the doughnut represents the ecological limits of the planet, from biodiversity loss and air pollution to climate breakdown. Amsterdam wants to stay between the inner and outer rings.

 

Study: RUST BELT AND MIDWEST CITIES NEED TO PLAN ON MANY FRONTS FOR NEW ‘CLIMATE MIGRANTS’

Allegheny Front discusses how the rustbelt and midwest cities need to plan for climate migrants.

When Chris and Kelly Noyes stepped out of their house after Hurricane Isabelle, the first thing they noticed were the trees.

“Just the amount of trees that were down, it was overwhelming,” said Kelly, describing the damage in their neighborhood. “When we walked outside after the storm, it was like you didn’t even recognize where you were.”

“It was overwhelming in that the whole area was like that,” Chris added, thinking about how far the storm reached. “So you couldn’t like, drive out, ‘oh there’s a nice place’. [It was] just everywhere.”

More than 15 million people worldwide have been displaced by weather disasters every year in the last decade. In 2018, more than a million Americans were forced to leave their homes because of natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and wildfires, all of which are expected to get worse and more frequent due to climate change. In these situations, people often return to their homes.

But people are also being displaced because of more gradual climate change impacts, like sea level rise, which is predicted to displace nearly 13 million Americans by the end of the century, according to a University of Georgia study published in Nature Climate Change.

 

Study: Tropical deforestation releases deadly infections

Climate News Network discusses how tropical deforestation releases deadly infections. Brazil’s burning forests are bad news for the global climate. Now scientists say the trees harbour deadly infections too.

As forest destruction continues unabated in Brazil, scientists are alarmed that, as well as spurring climate change, it may unleash new and deadly infections on humankind.

There is growing awareness that large-scale tropical deforestation, as in the Amazon, not only brings disastrous consequences for the climate, but releases new diseases like Covid-19 by enabling infections to pass from wild animals to human beings.

As one well-known Amazon scientist, biologist Philip Fearnside, puts it: “Amazon deforestation facilitates transmission both of new diseases and of old ones like malaria.

“The connection between deforestation and infectious diseases is just one more impact of deforestation, added to impacts of losing both Amazonia’s biodiversity and the forest’s vital climate functions in avoiding global warming and in recycling water.”

He is one of the co-authors of a paper by a team led by Joel Henrique Ellwanger on the impacts of Amazon deforestation on infectious diseases and public health, which has just been published in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy.

Study: Why ‘Carbon-Cycle Feedbacks’ Could Drive Temperatures Even Higher

Yale Environment 360 discusses why ‘Carbon-Cycle Feedbacks’ could drive temperatures even higher. New research indicates that parts of the Amazon and other tropical forests are now emitting more CO2 than they absorb. Some scientists are concerned this development, which is not yet incorporated into climate models, could put the temperature goals set by the Paris Agreement out of reach.

It is not often you meet a scientist breathless with excitement about their new findings. But it happened to me last September at the National Institute for Space Research in the Brazilian research city of Sao Jose dos Campos. Atmospheric chemist Luciana Gatti was rushing to tell her colleagues the result of her latest analysis of carbon dioxide emissions from the Amazon rainforest, which she had completed that morning.

For a decade, her team had been sampling the air from sensors on aircraft flying over the world’s largest rainforest. Their collating of recent results showed that, perhaps for the first time in thousands of years, a large part of the Amazon had switched from absorbing CO2 from the air, damping down global warming, to being a “source” of the greenhouse gas and thus speeding up warming.

“We have hit a tipping point,” Gatti almost shouted, caught between elation at her discovery and anguish at the consequences.

One recent study in northern Canada found thawing had reached depths “already exceeding those projected to occur by 2090.”

Extreme weather disasters and wars displace millions

DW discusses how extreme weather disasters and wars displace millions. Forced from their homes by floods, storms and wars, millions of internally displaced people are now at risk of a pandemic.

Extreme weather displaced 24 million people within their countries in 2019, with conflict and other disasters driving a further 9.5 million from their homes, according to a report published Tuesday by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC).

Floods and storms — particularly cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes — displaced 10 million and 13 million people respectively, with wildfires, droughts, landslides and temperature extremes contributing to another 900,000 displacements. About one million people fled volcanoes and earthquakes.

The figures are a reminder that displacement uproots millions of lives each year and that “too little is done to find solutions,” the report’s authors wrote. Some who flee or are evacuated later return to their homes, but the total number of displaced people has grown over years to its highest-ever level. About 51 million live displaced — many in crowded camps with poor sanitation.

Now they have a pandemic to deal with.

Germany’s Angela Merkel calls for ‘climate-friendly’ coronavirus response

DW discusses Germany’s Angela Merkel calling for ‘climate-friendly’ coronavirus response. Chancellor Angela Merkel has reaffirmed Germany’s commitment to climate protection, despite the enormous social and economic challenges posed by COVID-19. Berlin is still behind the European Green Deal, she said.

The world must “keep a close eye on climate protection” as it faces the economic fallout of the pandemic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday, speaking remotely for the Petersberg Climate Dialogue.

“We need a financial market that provides cheap capital for climate-friendly investments,” said Merkel, during an address for the annual event usually held in Berlin.

Merkel also called for climate action to be included as part of economic reconstruction plans following the pandemic, including investments in future-oriented technologies such as renewable energy.

 

Report: Australia could get 90% of electricity from renewables by 2040 with no price increase

The Guardian discusses how Australia could get 90% of electricity from renewables by 2040 with no price increase. Analysis suggests current federal policies will lead to a price rise after 2030 but a more ambitious target would keep bills lower.

Australia could get 90% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2040 without an increase in power prices, according to an analysis by the energy and carbon consultancy RepuTex.

Under current government policies, the country is on track to have 75% of its electricity generated by renewables within 20 years, but the analysis suggests a weak federal policy framework would lead to wholesale prices rising for a period after 2030.

RepuTex’s latest outlook for the national energy market finds investment driven by state policies, including renewable energy targets in Victoria and Queensland, will help keep wholesale electricity prices down throughout the 2020s.

RepuTex examined two scenarios, one that forecasts wholesale electricity prices under current government policies, and another that forecasts prices under the Australian Energy Market Operator’s more ambitious “step change” scenario that uses a carbon budget in line with the Paris agreement. It has made a summary of its report and methodology, but not the full report, available on its website.

After snowpack hits near-historic low, Yukon Energy looks to diversify hydro-heavy grid

The Narwhal discusses how, after snowpack hits near-historic low, Yukon Energy looks to diversify hydro-heavy grid.

The territory says unpredictable weather is prompting efforts to not only increase efficiency but to also modernize the grid with wind, solar, biomass and potentially even geothermal energy sources.

Some discomforts of the Yukon winter don’t last long — a car that just won’t start, a parka that’s frozen stiff. Others, however, carry over to following years.

The 2018-19 winter in Yukon was dry and frigid. Snowpack hit a near-historic low as a result, leading to low water levels in the reservoirs that drive the territory’s hydro electricity plants.

Because the territory’s grid is heavily reliant on hydro, Yukon Energy has been forced to use more diesel fuel this year.

Now, with climate change expected to make weather patterns even more volatile, the utility said it’s making moves to diversify the grid.

‘It’s not like milk, you can’t dump it’: As oil storage runs out in Canada, desperation sets in

Calgary Herald discusses how, as oil storage runs out in Canada, desperation sets in.

The scenario that many oil executives feared is starting to play out: Storage space is filling up and there’s nowhere to put their oil.

“It’s not like milk, you can’t dump it into the fields,” said Elias Foscolos, a Calgary-based analyst with Industrial Alliance Securities Inc. “There’s people looking at doing anything possible… somebody’s probably calling up every single independent closed service station and saying, ‘Hey is there a storage tank there? We’ll pay you.”

How a Warming Climate Could Affect the Spread of Diseases Similar to COVID-19

Scientific American discusses how a Warming Climate Could Affect the Spread of Diseases Similar to COVID-19. A hotter planet could change the relationship among infectious agents, their hosts and the human body’s defense mechanisms.

Scientists have long known that the rise in average global temperatures is expanding the geographical presence of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, because the animals that transmit them are adapting to more widespread areas. The link between respiratory illnesses, including influenza and COVID-19, and a warming planet is less clear. But some scientists are concerned that climate change could alter the relationship between our body’s defenses and such pathogens. These modifications could include the adaptation of microbes to a warming world, changes in how viruses and bacteria interact with their animal hosts, and a weakened human immune response.

The immune system is our natural defense against harmful substances. When a respiratory pathogen—such as the new SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19—enters the body through the airways, it damages cells by taking over their machinery and making more copies of itself. The injured cells release signaling proteins called cytokines that communicate with other parts of the body to activate an immune response against the foreign invaders.