The New Climate. New(s)letter #9
Fossil fools, metal potatoes, BP’s BS, feeling the heat, and feeling for beavers.
Admittedly when writing a monthly newsletter it can be hard not to be swayed by the latest exciting article you’ve published, and forget those poor unfortunate articles published at the start of the month. And this past month is no exception. (Albeit, keener followers might notice that I’m a little late with this one anyway.)
But it’s always pleasing when two articles land at the same time, on the same topic, but with complimentary — not repetitious — takes. And such was the case when both Ben Shread-Hewitt and Sílvia PM, PhD 🍂submitted last week on the topic of fossil fuel finance. Ben wasn’t messing around in How To Choke Fossil Fuel Finance for Good. Starving the fossil fuel industry of money may seem like a delicious dream, albeit one that won’t come true. But Ben offered some tangible examples of financial activists pressuring investors and insurance providers and leading to oil projects facing mounting costs and delays.
If you think that sounds good, if anything Sílvia PM, PhD 🍂🏳️🌈went a step further, arguing that Banning New Fossil Fuel Projects Is The Way To Go. The International Energy Agency (IEA) states in clearly its 2023 report that no new fossil fuel extraction projects are necessary to transition to net zero emissions by 2050. So it’s time our politicians got that message, and delivered on it.
The past month has also been an exciting one for — and of — new writers. Venus Lee submitted three articles this month, and taught me (and the 23 commenters to date) something new about deep sea precious metals. Did you know that “Potato-sized clumps of metal known as polymetallic nodules line an area of the Pacific Ocean seafloor called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone”? No, me neither! (And if you said yes, well done — 10 carbon credits to you). These metalic spuds contain four essential battery metals: cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese. But harvesting them could have dramatic climate consequences, not least to the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon — ultimately defeating the point of the exercise. As is so often the case, there is no clear right or wrong answer here — more research is needed.
New writer Khadra too got in touch with a story about carbon footprints. Fearing a basic explainer piece (I get sent, and reject, a lot of those), when I clicked on it I got something entirely different. Who Cares About Your Carbon Footprint? Well, BP for a start. It’s a fascinating case study in how corporate PR hoodwinked the world. (Please do give Khadra a follow — she’s going to be an important new voice in this space, I think).
Meanwhile, the world keeps heating up. You may have seen the news that Delhi set a new temperature record this month, approaching 50°C for the first time. Writing from Eastern India, Ritu reported that “I had to stop writing this article at one point because the heat was unbearable, even inside the house.” Delhi’s official temperature, first reported as 52.3°C, was revised down to 49.1°C — yet that was still 0.7°C above New Delhi’s previous high of 48.4°C set in May 1998. For one of the world’s most populous cities to approach 50°C — above which the human body can no longer cool itself — is deadly.
Extreme heat also leads to wildfires. It was good to see the return of Peter Knapp this month — writer of 2023's most read The New Climate story — as he announced his plans to produce a documentary this summer following Europe’s wildfire season. Titled There’s a Fire, Peter “will spend three months travelling around Europe to ask people directly affected by wildfires… [about] access to food, community, and housing, as well as their mental health and attitudes towards activism.” You can still help to fund this film via the crowdfunder.
But while out-of-control or illegally ignited wildfires pose a serious risk to human health and biodiversity alike, there is an important role for controlled burning and learning from indigenous techniques, writes Sara Relli.
Outside of TNC, I recently came across another ingenious — and ancient — way of halting the spread of wildfires this month, in an article from Scientific American. Sometimes an image really does tell a thousand words, and here an oasis of water and greenery stands out against a desert of scorched earth and blackened dead trees:
This complex of beaver dams at Dixon Creek, Oregon, was found to be an effective firebreak to the 2021 Bootleg Fire. The Klamath Tribes recently received $20,000 from the Oregon Conservation and Recreation Fund to initiate a beaver dam a project. Scientific American concluded, “it’s a step toward a riparian landscape that more closely resembles the one that existed before the fur trade… one that evolved alongside wildfire, and was resilient to it.”
For me, this pushes on a long-opened door. I spent much of the month of May giving talks at literature festivals as my book The Last Drop: Solving the World’s Water Crisis came out in international paperback. And central to every talk, no matter if giving the 10 minute or the 60 minute version, was the humble beaver. Beavers regenerate and restore rivers and wetlands for us. Beaver reintroduction trials have found that they naturally reduce floods downstream by up to 60%, while storing the same amount (60%) of extra water on the surface and in the aquifers below for summer, alleviating droughts. They are the ultimate nature-based solution — and ones that give us hope, an oasis in a desert of bad news stories. In fact, maybe I should just write an article about them…
Until next time,
Tim Smedley, Editor, The New Climate.
