Sunny climate stormy climate | Weekly digest #70
France bans fast fashion, deadly heat wave grips the US midwest and a new report shows that big banks continue to fund the oil and gas industry
Hello folks!
Welcome to another edition of your regular climate news digest, where I bring one sunny story that gives hope and two stormy ones that are a cause for alarm. Hope you like them!
🌞 Sunny news 🌞
1. France has passed a bill to regulate ultra fast fashion
What are we talking about?
The Upper house of the French parliament recently approved a bill that regulates fast fashion. Key features of the bill are:
An environmental surcharges on fast fashion items - Beginning in 2025, each item sold by ultra-fast fashion brands will incur a €5 tax increasing to €10 (roughly US$11.60) by 2030.
A complete ban on advertising ultra-fast fashion including social media platforms and influencer marketing.
Penalties for ultra fast fashion and fast fashion companies if they don’t meet certain environmental criteria (e.g. disclosing key environmental information alongside product pricing)
Why does this matter?
Fast fashion refers to cheap and low quality apparel that is mass produced very quickly. Stores get new clothes every week, so there’s always something new to buy. It has resulted in a trend where people buy a large number of clothes and throw them away after a few or sometimes just a single use
Today, fast fashion is led by global giants like H&M, Uniqlo, and SHEIN — and in India, brands like Zudio, Myntra, Ajio, and Reliance Trends follow the same model.
They have a massive environmental cost
Cost of producing more - Every garment we produce needs energy water, material and results in carbon emissions during production. The more we produce, the more emissions we create. The world now produces 80 bn new garments a year — a 400% spike from just two decades ago. In fact, fashion now accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions — nearly as much as the entire European Union. And the biggest contributor to this is fast fashion.
Microplastics since fast fashion often uses cheap materials like polyester or nylon that release microplastics in every wash.
And finally, there’s the massive amount of textile waste. A lot of these garments end up as waste. Today, much of the world’s unwanted fashion is shipped off to underdeveloped countries, especially in Africa and Southeast Asia where it ends up in landfills, where it’s often burned in the open, releasing toxic fumes and endangering the lives of people who work or live nearby or ends up clogging waterways.
The move by the French parliament is a great step in the direction of reducing fast fashion.
Sources for further reading
🌩️ Stormy news 🌩️
2. Heatwave grips the US midwest - subways turn to Sauna, hundreds fall ill, and several June heat records broken
What are we talking about?
The US midwest is experiencing a brutal heatwave. The areas impacted include the Plains, Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Northeast, where temperatures are expected to hit at least 15 degrees above normal. With humidity, it could feel as hot as 110 degrees F, especially in the mid-Atlantic.
More than 150 people fell ill at an outdoor school graduation ceremony in New Jersey on Monday, according to US media, as the city's mayor declared a state of emergency.
In New York City, subway platforms were transformed into saunas as temperatures in some areas soared to record levels for June, accompanied by high levels of humidity.
Passengers wait for the train on a subway platform during a heat wave on June 24. - Olga Fedorova/AP In Washington, DC, a K-Pop concert ended early due to a slew of heat-related health incidents
Boston reached 102 degrees, setting a new June high temperature record. Tuesday is now tied for the third-hottest day on record for the city – any other days that have been as hot or hotter all occurred in July or August.
Why does this matter?
Heat extremes like these have clear ties to long term global warming, as their likelihood and severity increases significantly as global average temperature rises.
The level of heat we are experiencing now is not just uncomfortable but dangerous and at times fatal, as we can see in the examples of impact mentioned above.
Heat is often called a silent killer and is in fact the deadliest form of extreme weather in the US.
Sources for further reading
3. World’s largest banks still fund fossil fuels; Given $869bn to fossil fuel firms in 2024.
What are we talking about?
In April 2021, many global banks proudly signed the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), a net-zero initiative. The pledge was simple: align their financing activities with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels. What it should have meant was banks stop funding new oil and gas projects altogether and reduce support for existing ones over time.
However, what has happened is not quite what was the expected. Between 2021 and 2024, the world’s 65 biggest banks including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and even SBI (State Bank of India), poured a whopping $3.3 trillion into companies still knee deep in the fossil fuel business. And in the past year alone, that figure has jumped by over 20% to $869 billion.
In fact, JPMorgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have walked out of the NZBA. That has nudged four of Canada’s top lenders to follow suit, and now European banks are starting to consider leaving too.
Closer home, Indian banks have invested nearly $29 billion into the coal sector since 2016. The State Bank of India (SBI) leads the pack among public banks, alongside private lenders like Axis Bank and ICICI Bank
Why does this matter?
Financing is critical for any business to grow or even stay afloat. Especially for the oil and gas industry that has heavy capital requirements. Most oil fields or refineries will need billions of dollars in investment to set up.
Hence, restricting financing for such projects is a logical way to force these companies to pivot to cleaner, renewable businesses instead of expanding their fossil fuel operations.
Banks turning back on their NZBA pledges or watering down their commitments and continuing to fund new oil and gas projects is thus a big setback for this movement.
Sources for further reading
You can read previous editions of the newsletter -
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #69
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #68
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #67
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