Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #21
In this edition, we talk about Stockholm's plans to ban fuel cars from 2025, the UN report talking about the 6 risk tipping points the world faces, Mumbai's poor air quality and Storm Otis in Mexico.
This is now a fortnightly digest. In every edition, I will bring to you 5 stories about the changing climate and its impact on us!
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
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Sunny news
Stockholm becomes the first European capital to announce a complete ban on petrol and diesel cars in the city center from 2025
Stockholm has announced plans to ban petrol and diesel cars from its centre, in an effort to slash air pollution and reduce noise.
This ban will be applicable in 20 blocks of Stockholm’s inner city area, spanning its finance and main shopping districts
How does this compare to steps taken by other cities?
A number of cities have introduced – or are introducing – schemes to tackle air pollution but Stockholm’s goes further than most.
Paris, Athens and Madrid have only banned diesel cars
London has a charging scheme that covers the most polluting combustion engines.
The scheme has been driven by Sweden’s Green party, that is part of a coalition of leftwing and environmentally focused parties that holds power in Stockholm’s municipal government.
Sources to read further:
‘Transition to clean energy is unstoppable! A pathway to limiting global warming to 1.5 deg is difficult but still remains open’ says IEA report
The International Energy Agency (IEA), in a report released last week said the global transition to clean energy was impressive and predicted that renewables would provide half of the world’s electricity by 2050!
Few highlights :
In 2020, one in 25 cars sold was electric. Just three years later this number has risen to one in five.
More than 500 gigawatts (GW) of renewables generation capacity are set to be added in 2023 – a new record.
More than USD 1 billion a day is being spent on solar deployment. Manufacturing capacity for key components of a clean energy system, including solar PV modules and EV batteries, is expanding fast.
This momentum is why the IEA recently concluded, in its updated Net Zero Roadmap, that a pathway to limiting global warming to 1.5 °C is very difficult – but remains open.
"The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it's unstoppable. It's not a question of 'if', it's just a matter of 'how soon' - and the sooner the better for all of us," said International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol.
Source to read further:
Stormy news
New UN report says world is experiencing 6 risk tipping points that will lead to increasing and immediate risks across the world.
The United Nations University EHS this week released the 2023 Interconnected Disaster Risks report
What are risk tipping points?
Risk tipping points are conditions beyond which our systems will fundamentally change. A risk tipping point is reached when the systems that we rely on for our lives and societies cannot buffer risks and stop functioning like we expect it to.
The 6 risk tipping points the report talks about
Accelerating extinctions - Species extinction is happening at a rate that is almost 100x of any other time in history. Many of these species are highly interconnected, and could trigger a “co-extinction” — the extinction of dependent species — setting off a chain reaction of extinctions that could end in the ecosystem’s collapse.
Groundwater depletion - 21 out of 37 of the world’s major aquifers are being depleted faster than they can be replenished. This will have major implications on global food security with farmers being unable to irrigate their crops if the water levels in these aquifers fall below a certain depth.
Mountain glacier melting - the risk tipping point is called “peak water” — it is when a glacier produces the maximum volume of water run-off due to melting. After this point, freshwater availability will steadily decline. Peak water has already passed or is expected to occur within the next 10 years for many of the small glaciers in Central Europe, western Canada or South America.
Space debris - We have created a lot space debris in the last few decades. We have launched objects into space without worrying about how this debris is managed. If the debris starts colliding into each other, it can set off a chain reaction.
Unbearable heat - Between 2010 to 2019, 500,000 deaths annually have been attributed to extreme heat. Extreme heat will not only have impacts on health, but also result in loss of livelihoods, loss of productivity, biodiversity loss and human migration.
An uninsurable future - With increasing incidence of extreme climatic events, the cost of insurance may be driven up so much that insurance becomes unaffordable leaving people unprotected against losses and damages. In Australia, for example, approximately 520,940 homes are predicted to be uninsurable by 2030, primarily due to increasing flood risk.
What does the report say about India?
Specifically in India, it says that the groundwater depletion in North India may have already passed the tipping point and several areas in the Indo Gangetic basin can be expected to experience critically low groundwater availability by 2025.
Sources to read further:
Bombay joins Delhi in the ‘Cities with unbreathable air’ club
Mumbai seeing very poor air quality days for the last 2 weeks Mumbai AQI levels had been really bad for the last couple of weeks crossing 200 on multiple days. It was the worst in Andheri area where AQI has reached levels of 300+.
It got highlighted in the week of 20th October with PM 10 levels inMumbai showing as worse than Delhi, which is the city typically in news for poor air quality.
This has mostly been attributed to construction activities, with other factors being road dust and its displacement; open burning of solid waste and garbage; usage of unclean fuels in restaurants, dhabas, bakeries and roadside eateries; and a range of industries that include those using Ready Mix Concrete (RMC) plants and casting yard plants.
BMC has announced a slew of measures including guidelines for construction sites, inspection of plants etc. but no concrete report/ analysis has been seen yet on what exactly caused the spike in pollution now.
Source to read further:
Mexico experiences one its most powerful storm ever; Resort town Acapulco completely destroyed.
Resort town Acapulco, destroyed by category 5 storm Otis Mexico witnessed its deadliest storm in history, Otis last week.
Otis has so far resulted in 27 dead in the resort town of Acapulco. Besides, the storm flooded streets, ripped roofs off homes and hotels, submerged cars and cut communications, road and air access, leaving a trail of wreckage across Acapulco, a city of nearly 900,000.
Otis intensified very quickly into a category 5 storm, not giving people enough time to evacuate. The intensity of the storm and the speed with which it intensified is being attributed to the hot ocean waters. The sea surface temperatures have been at a record high in 2023 - resulting in more number of storms of much higher intensities than previously seen.
The World Meteorological Organization described the hurricane as “one of the most rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones on record”.
Still wondering if this is really because of climate change? - Read this excellent thread by Prof. Katherine Hayhoe explaining why.
Sources for further reading:
