Biden’s Climate Summit and the Civilian Climate Corps
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Hello readers,
We’re excited to bring you the latest edition of The Current Climate newsletter!
In case you’re new to the publication, our goal with this monthly newsletter is to not only highlight the amazing work of our writers, but also to bring you important climate- and environment-related current events from around the world that you may have missed.
We hope that this newsletter serves as an additional tool to ensure the climate crisis remains at the forefront of our minds, rather than an afterthought.
Top Stories from Climate Conscious
Each month, we highlight some of the top stories from the publication based on the number of views/reads, curation, trends, and relevance to current events.
One of our editors, Danny, interviewed Sarah Goody about her journey to becoming a prominent climate activist and founding Climate NOW, a youth-led organization educating young people about the climate crisis and how they can take action.
As a primer to the interview he writes, “Sarah Goody is a 16-year-old activist who couldn’t believe humanity could actively destroy the planet while barely batting an eyelash. So as you’ll see below, Sarah took it upon herself to get involved. She strikes and speaks at schools and rallies, doing what she can to put climate change at the forefront of the public discourse and fight for our future.”
Check out the full interview here: An Interview With 16-Year-Old Climate Activist And 2020 Princess Diana Award Winner Sarah Goody
Debi Smith writes, “Shockingly, it is estimated that 1/3 of all the food produced on the planet never makes it into a mouth. Much of this loss in developing countries happens due to harvest, processing, and storage issues. In higher-income countries, much of the loss occurs at the consumer level.”
Debi examines her own foodprint and what else she is wasting in addition to her own resources whenever her food goes uneaten. She covers the relation between food waste, climate change, and food insecurity. She also discusses the entire Food Recovery Hierarchy created by the USDA and US EPA and how you can incorporate these food waste reduction strategies into your daily life.
Check out the story here: Eating Our Food to Save the World
Matthew Gannon writes, “Patagonia is an amazing example of a company that does not resort to greenwashing because it doesn’t need to […] True, purpose-driven businesses should look at Patagonia as a blueprint on ensuring every action ties back to the core mission.”
His viral article contrasts the genuine efforts of the clothing company, Patagonia, to preserve and restore the environment against other companies who engage in greenwashing to make their companies seem “greener” than they really are. Patagonia’s values, mission statement, and actions to reduce its overall carbon footprint and waste generation are what we should expect from every company. Let’s hope that companies like Patagonia can serve as a role model for others to follow.
Check out the story here: The Patagonia Effect
Current Climate News
Here’s what’s happening in our world today:
Biden’s Climate Summit Sets Up a Bigger Test of American Power (The New York Times)
President Biden hosted a two-day climate summit with 40 nations that represent 80% of global emissions on the same week as Earth Day. It is the administration’s attempt to reengage with the rest of the world on addressing the climate crisis after four years of the U.S. moving in the opposite direction by fast-tracking fossil fuel projects, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and a whole host of other actions taken by former President Trump.
The new President has his work cut out for himself though. Despite making a commitment for the U.S. to halve its emissions by 2030, many nations are wary of whether the U.S. will actually follow through with such a pledge considering the political gridlock in Congress (making any climate legislation difficult to pass) and the inconsistent approach taken on climate change by past Presidents in recent years.
The U.S. must not only prove it can deliver on its climate pledge, but also show it is willing to help developing countries that will need substantial aid to decarbonize. The Biden administration was hoping more countries would make new, more aggressive climate pledges during the summit but that largely did not happen, particularly with some of the largest emitters like China. It appears the country’s influence is not what it once was and the frayed relationship with China may make climate negotiations more challenging.
Let’s hope negotiations in Glasgow in November go better.
Barcelona installs Spain’s first solar energy pavement (The Guardian)
In the city’s attempt to become carbon neutral by 2050, the Barcelona city council installed Spain’s first photovoltaic pavement in a small park in the Glòries area. The 50 sq meters of solar panels will produce around 7,560 kWh per year, enough to power three households. The city plans to evaluate the solar panels in six months and determine if it’s possible to scale up around the city.
Spain’s solar power mainly comes from large farms away from cities, but there is a push to increase solar power capacity closer to more densely populated areas. Fernando Prieto, the executive director of the independent think tank Sustainability Observatory, wants to focus on installing rooftop solar panels and wants to decrease the large solar farms that take up agricultural land.
In addition to solar power, the Spanish government has a plan to “invest €1.5bn of EU Covid-recovery funds in the production of ‘green’ hydrogen, using renewable energy to break up water molecules and release the hydrogen.”
A New Program Like FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps Could Help the Nation Fight Climate Change and Transition to Renewable Energy (Inside Climate News)
An idea floated by the Biden administration that is now making its way into congressional legislation is to revive the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) originally created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) as part of his New Deal program in 1933 — but with a twist. The Civilian Climate Corps, as it is being called, would put millions of Americans who may currently be out of a job due to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic back to work rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and addressing the climate crisis through both climate mitigation (e.g., clean energy installation) and climate adaptation (e.g., reducing wildfire risk) projects.
Although such an initiative would require more government spending, it may still have a chance of at least having some bipartisanship support since a few Republican politicians have supported conservation corps projects in the past. A big difference between the old CCC and the newly proposed one is that diversity, equity, and inclusion would be foundational to employment since the old CCC only allowed young white men to join. If the old CCC workers were able to construct “125,000 miles of roads and trails, 318,000 dams, 47,000 bridges and 3,500 fire towers” along with “plant[ing] billions of trees, develop[ing] 800 state and local parks and restor[ing] more than 20 million acres of habitat and rangeland,” imagine what a new CCC directed towards combating the climate crisis could do?
Publication Growth
In April, we added 200 followers bringing our total to nearly 4,000! Thank you to all of our new followers who joined recently and, as always, thank you to those who have followed us since the beginning.
We also added 47 new writers this month! A big welcome to all of our new writers! We want to thank you as well for providing your thoughts, knowledge, and ideas regarding the climate crisis and other environmental issues, and we look forward to reading your stories.
Editors in Need
We’re still looking for more editors to join our team! We could use some extra help to ensure submitted stories are reviewed and published in a timely manner as well as helping to advertise Climate Conscious stories across our social media profiles.
That someone could be you!
If you’re interested, please fill out our short application form below to be considered, which also includes more details about the role:
Climate Conscious Editor Application
If you’re selected, we’ll email you about next steps.
Thank you for reading, and we’ll see you next month!
Sincerely,
Sean Youra, Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Danny Schleien, Editor
Sandy Barrett, Editor
Cameron Catanzano, Editor
Sarah Woodams, Editor
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