Sunny climate, stormy climate | Edition #6
Welcome to the sixth edition of Sunny climate, Stormy climate - your weekly dose of climate news
Hello and welcome to the sixth edition of Sunny climate, Stormy climate! Here, every week I bring to you 5 stories about the climate
3 stormy ones - concerning stories that are a source of alarm
2 sunny ones - green shoots that tell you that all is not yet lost
So let’s look at what we have this week!
Stormy news
“Less snow than ever” on the Mt. Everest - says British mountaineer who has scaled the peak 17 times
What is happening?
A British mountaineer named Kenton Cool, who has scaled Mount Everest 17 times, has reported a decline in the amount of snow at the summit. Cool says that the mountain exhibits much less snow than it used to, and he attributes this to climate crisis or environmental changes.
"A general trend of the mountain is to be more rocky and less snow ... But it changes year on year." Cool said he had never seen the types of rock falls he saw on the Lhotse Face, along the route to the Everest summit, before. "That shows how dry the mountain is now ... I think that is because of the lack of precipitation, a lack of snowfall. It could be global warming or any environmental change of some sort," he said.
Climate scientists say the earth’s temperature has increased by an average of 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, but warming across the Himalayas has been greater than the global averages and could be a major driver of the reducing snow cover.
CEO of Verra, the worlds largest carbon offset firm quits after claims offsets are useless
What are we talking about?
Verra is a the worlds largest carbon offset firm. A joint investigation by the guardian and the German weekly Die Zeit revealed that offsets worth millions of dollars approved by Verra are actually worthless.
Verra has approved carbon offsets for major corporations including Disney, Shell and Gucci. A lot of the credits were based on stopping the destruction of rainforests that were not actually threatened, according to independent studies.
What are carbon offsets?
A carbon offset is a reduction or removal of emissions of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for emissions made elsewhere
A carbon offset credit is a financial instrument certified by governments of independent bodies used to represent a reduction in emission reduction that can be bought or sold
Why is this bad?
Corporations buy carbon offset credits and use them as positive credit to cancel out the GHG emissions they cause. They use this to claim that they have hit or are going towards meeting the ‘Net zero’ emissions goal. So, if the carbon offset credits are worthless, corporations give the illusion of being carbon neutral when they are really not!
Example: Gucci had claimed in 2019 it was carbon neutral , but has reportedly removed its "entirely carbon neutral" messaging from the company website a few days ago after the investigation into Verra
Indonesia is getting a new capital ‘cause Jakarta is sinking
This sea wall in Jakarta is meant to mitigate the city's severe flooding; Source: BBC news What is happening?
Jakarta is Indonesia’s capital and one of the most populous cities in the world with 30 mn people
It has been sinking at ~6 cm/ yr making it one of the fastest sinking cities in the world. If this continues, it could be completely submerged by 2050.
As a result, the Indonesian government is moving Indonesia’s capital to the island of Borneo. The new city Nusantara is set to replace Jakarta as Indonesia's political centre by summer 2024.
Why is this happening?
Inherent geography - Jakarta sits on a low, flat alluvial plain through which 13 rivers flow, all of which are prone to flooding during Monsoon season.
Manmade issues - This has been made worse by man-made issues. Less than half the city’s population has access to piped water, and the illegal extraction of groundwater – both by businesses and the public – has caused subsidence, with some parts of northern Jakarta sinking four metres in the past twenty years.
Rising sea levels - This has been further made worse by the rising Java sea due to global warming.
Sunny news
France banning flights for short distances
What is happening?
France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions.
Specifically, it prohibits public internal flights between French destinations when a train journey of under 2 hours and 30 minutes is available.
The law basically rules out air travel between Paris and nearby cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux
How does this help?
The World Wildlife Fund describes the environmental footprint of aviation as “one of the fastest-growing sources of the greenhouse gas emissions driving global climate change.” Planes emits significantly more CO2 per passenger than trains (see chart above)
Hence any step that can help reduce aviation and replace it with relatively less polluting alternatives will help reduce GHG emissions
EU Deforestation regulation: Ban on trade of goods that can be linked to deforestation
What are we talking about?
EUDR - EU Deforestation Regulation was passed in December 2022 and will restrict trade (both import and export in EU) of any products that can be linked back to deforestation post 31st Dec 2020.
The law has initially included 7 commodities within the scope of the EU regulation: soy, cattle (beef), palm oil, wood, cocoa, coffee and rubber.
How will this help?
The law hopes to promote the consumption of deforestation-free products
It thus intends to reduce deforestation and EU impact on global forests and assist in the fight against global biodiversity loss
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