If there is one natural resource that all life on Earth depends on, it’s water.

In a new report, The Economics of Water: Valuing the Hydrological Cycle as a Global Common Good, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water warns that, unless water resources are urgently conserved and the destruction of ecosystems is stopped, more than half the world’s food production will be at risk of failing within the next quarter century.

“The world faces a growing water disaster. For the first time in human history, the hydrological cycle is out of balance, undermining an equitable and sustainable future for all,” the authors of the report’s executive summary wrote. “Decades of collective mismanagement and undervaluation of water around the world have damaged our freshwater and land ecosystems and allowed for the continuing contamination of water resources. We can no longer count on freshwater availability for our collective future.”

Water scarcity already impacts half the global population, according to the report, and the climate crisis will only make it worse, The Guardian reported.

By 2030, freshwater demand will exceed supply by 40 percent.

The amount of water necessary for people to have adequate nutrition, good health and hygiene has been greatly underestimated by experts and governments, the report said. Because the necessary volume of water — approximately 4,000 liters per day — can’t be found locally in most regions, people depend on trade to provide it.

Earth’s atmospheric rivers transport moisture around the planet, and some nations benefit more from “green water” — soil moisture needed for food production — than the “blue water” that is found in lakes and rivers.

“Our policies, and the science and economics that underpin them, have also overlooked a critical freshwater resource, the ‘green water’ in our soils and plant life, which ultimately circulates through the atmosphere and generates around half the rainfall we receive on land,” the executive summary said.

The vegetation from nearby land use generates from 40 to 60 percent of freshwater rainfall that then puts water back into Earth’s atmosphere through transpiration, generating clouds that move downwind.

“The Chinese economy depends on sustainable forest management in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the Baltic region,” said professor Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research’s director and co-chair of the commission, as reported by The Guardian. “You can make the same case for Brazil supplying fresh water to Argentina. This interconnectedness just shows that we have to place fresh water in the global economy as a global common good.”

Organized in the Netherlands in 2022, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water utilizes the work of leading economists and scientists in forming its review of the state and management of the planet’s hydrological systems.

For every degree Celsius of global temperature increase, seven percent more moisture is added to the atmosphere, which enhances the hydrological cycle.

“Most gravely, while itself a victim of climate change, the degradation of freshwater ecosystems including the loss of moisture in the soil has become a driver of climate change and biodiversity loss. The result is more frequent and increasingly severe droughts, floods, heatwaves, and wildfires, playing out across the globe,” the executive summary said. “Nearly 3 billion people and more than half of the world’s food production are now in areas where total water storage is projected to decline.”

Razing forests and draining wetlands also disrupts the globe’s water cycle, which is dependent upon water storage in soils and transpiration from trees.

“Water is victim number one of the [climate crisis], the environmental changes we see now aggregating at the global level, putting the entire stability of earth’s systems at risk,” Rockström told the Guardian. “[The climate crisis] manifests itself first and foremost in droughts and floods. When you think of heatwaves and fires, the really hard impacts are via moisture — in the case of fires, [global heating] first dries out landscapes so that they burn.”

The report said developing countries need to be given access to financing for safe water and sanitation, the overhaul of water systems and halting the destruction of biodiversity and ecosystems.

Co-chair of the commission Mariana Mazzucato, a University College London professor of economics, said public sector bank loans made to developing countries should be contingent on water reforms.

“These could be improving water conservation and the efficiency of water use, or direct investment for water-intensive industries,” Mazzucato said, as The Guardian reported. “[We must ensure] profits are reinvested in productive activity such as research and development around water issues.”

The report also found that water scarcity had a disproportionate impact on women and children.

“More than 1,000 children under five die every day from illnesses caused by unsafe water and sanitation. Women and girls spend 200 million hours each day collecting and hauling water,” the executive summary said.

The report emphasized that there was still hope if we take immediate action.

“We can fix this crisis if we act more collectively, and with greater urgency. Vitally too, restoring stability of the water cycle is critical not only in its own right, but to avoid failing on climate change and safeguarding all the earth’s ecosystems, as well as on each and every one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It will preserve food security, keep economies and job opportunities growing, and ensure a just and liveable future for everyone,” the authors said in the executive summary.

The post World’s Water Resources Must Be Urgently Conserved to Avoid Collapse of Global Food Production, Report Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

The International Energy Agency (IEA)’s latest World Energy Outlook (WEO) describes the global energy system in 2030 as one in which clean energy technologies play an ever-increasing role.

The report says the future of global energy will include nearly 10 times more electric cars worldwide, solar generating more electricity, low-emissions energy sources supplying more than half of global electricity by 2030 and three times more investment in new offshore wind than in gas– and coal-fired power plants.

“In previous World Energy Outlooks, the IEA made it clear that the future of the global energy system is electric – and now it is visible to everyone,” said Fatih Birol, IEA’s executive director, in a news release from IEA. “In energy history, we’ve witnessed the Age of Coal and the Age of Oil – and we’re now moving at speed into the Age of Electricity, which will define the global energy system going forward and increasingly be based on clean sources of electricity.”

Global demand for electricity is rising faster than expected, making it more difficult for countries to reduce their carbon emissions.

“With higher energy use, even fast renewables growth doesn’t translate to fast falls in carbon-dioxide emissions,” said Dave Jones, energy think tank Ember’s global insight director, as The New York Times reported.

The latest edition of the WEO looks at how advancing clean energy transitions, emerging technologies, changing market trends, evolving geopolitical uncertainties and increasing climate crisis impacts are changing the meaning of secure energy systems, the press release said.

The new report highlights that current geopolitical fragmentation and tensions are creating significant risks for energy security and global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“The report underlines the inextricable links between risks of energy security and climate change. In many areas of the world, extreme weather events, intensified by decades of high emissions, are already posing profound challenges for the secure and reliable operation of energy systems, including increasingly severe heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms,” IEA emphasized.

The report found that, based on current policy settings, low-emissions energy sources are poised to provide more than half of global electricity before 2030, with demand for oil, gas and coal still predicted to peak by the end of the decade.

“In the second half of this decade, the prospect of more ample – or even surplus – supplies of oil and natural gas, depending on how geopolitical tensions evolve, would move us into a very different energy world from the one we have experienced in recent years during the global energy crisis,” Birol said in the press release. “It implies downward pressure on prices, providing some relief for consumers that have been hit hard by price spikes. The breathing space from fuel price pressures can provide policymakers with room to focus on stepping up investments in clean energy transitions and removing inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. This means government policies and consumer choices will have huge consequences for the future of the energy sector and for tackling climate change.”

The world’s energy system will become even more electrified in the face of soaring demand. In the last decade, electricity use has increased at two times the rate of overall energy demand, with two-thirds of the increase coming from China.

In its report, the IEA made it clear that, in order for clean energy to keep growing at pace, much more investment in energy systems — particularly energy storage and electricity grids — will be needed.

“Today, for every dollar spent on renewable power, 60 cents are spent on grids and storage, highlighting how essential supporting infrastructure is not keeping pace with clean energy transitions. Secure decarbonisation of the electricity sector requires investment in grids and storage to increase even more quickly than clean generation, and the investment ratio to rebalance to 1:1. Many power systems are currently vulnerable to an increase in extreme weather events, putting a premium on efforts to bolster their resilience and digital security,” the press release said.

The report said that, although global carbon emissions are on track for an imminent peak, the absence of a steep decline afterward means we are on course for a 2.4 degrees Celsius rise in the global average temperature by 2100 — well above the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius set by the Paris Agreement.

“The report makes clear: there is a narrow but achievable pathway to 1.5°C, but governments must put clear fossil fuel transition plans in place now,” said Tracy Carty, global climate politics expert with Greenpeace International, in a press release from Greenpeace. “The action we take in the next two years will shape how much climate-driven destruction we can avoid over the next two decades, and far beyond. Implementing the COP28 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, embedded in clear Nationally Determined Contributions in alignment with 1.5°C, will be crucial to ensure any progress.”

The post World Is Moving From Coal and Oil to ‘Age of Electricity’ but Not Fast Enough: New IEA Report appeared first on EcoWatch.

China’s CRRC Corporation Limited (CRRC) has developed the “most powerful” floating offshore wind turbine in the world, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The turbine was produced in Yancheng city in Jiangsu Province and has a 20-megawatt (MW) generating capacity.

The massive turbine has the ability to generate 62 million kilowatt hours of power annually, enough for roughly 37,000 households, the Spanish Wind Energy Association said. This will reduce carbon emissions by 62,000 tons and save 25,000 tons of coal.

It has a semi-submersible mooring system and floating platform with intelligent sensing and control technologies, enabling it to extend to deeper waters.

“Floating offshore wind turbines are a key technological trend shaping the future of wind energy development,” said Wang Dian, CRRC Qi Hang New Energy Technology Company’s deputy general manager, as Xinhua reported.

In the United States last year, the average newly installed wind turbine had a capacity of 3.4 MW.

“Higher capacity turbines mean that fewer turbines are needed to generate the same amount of energy across a wind plant — ultimately leading to lower costs,” the U.S. Department of Energy said.

China’s new independently developed wind turbine has a wind wheel with a 853-foot diameter and a swept area of 571,563.6 square feet, reported Xinhua. That’s approximately the size of seven average soccer fields.

The colossal new turbine includes customizable options that can be applied to differing water depths, providing more flexibility for deep-sea wind power operations.

In the past two decades, China has far outpaced other countries to become the leader in installed renewable energy capacity.

Last year, the country saw its renewable energy capacity surpass thermal power for the first time. Renewables now make up more than half of China’s installed energy generation capacity, Xinhua said.

In 2022, China’s solar capacity installations were approximately equal to the rest of the planet’s combined, Yale E360 reported. Then it doubled its additional solar in 2023.

“Today, China has more than 80 percent of the world’s solar manufacturing capacity. The extraordinary scale of China’s renewables sector output has driven down prices worldwide, and this is a key factor in reducing the cost barrier to renewable systems for poorer countries,” Yale E360 said.

China still has a big fossil fuel problem to tackle, however, if it wants to meet its goal of reaching peak carbon emissions by the end of the decade and becoming carbon neutral by 2060 — targets President Xi Jinping set in 2020 at the United National General Assembly.

“Renewables now account for half of China’s installed capacity, but there has also been a surge in permits for new coal-fired power plants, and China still generates about 70 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels. This means actual renewable energy use is lagging behind installed capacity,” Yale E360 noted.

The post World’s Biggest Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Developed in China appeared first on EcoWatch.

Earth’s land-based carbon sinks — forests, wetlands, grasslands and soil — are essential for absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide, regulating the planet’s temperature and mitigating climate change.

A preliminary report shows that last year — the hottest ever recorded — almost no net carbon was absorbed by land. This means the world’s terrestrial carbon sinks temporarily collapsed, reported The Guardian.

“We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land – terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability,” said Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research director, at a New York Climate Week event last month, as The Guardian reported. “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end.”

The terrestrial breakdown of carbon absorption last year could be provisional and due to the excessive drought and wildfires caused by global heating putting pressure on carbon sinks.

Humans produced a record 41.2 billion tons of carbon pollution in 2023. Without the planet’s carbon sinks performing their essential ecosystem services at a normal rate, reaching net zero will not be possible.

A fast-paced collapse of terrestrial carbon sinks has not been taken into account in most climate models.

“This stressed planet has been silently helping us and allowing us to shove our debt under the carpet thanks to biodiversity,” Rockström said. “We are lulled into a comfort zone – we cannot really see the crisis.”

The Congo basin is the one major tropical rainforest in the world that is still a strong carbon sink, removing more than is released back into the atmosphere.

Soil is second only to oceans as Earth’s largest active carbon store, but its collective emissions are predicted to increase by up to 40 percent by 2100 if they keep up at their current rate. The climate crisis is causing soils to become drier and microbes to break them down more quickly.

Oceans remain the biggest carbon sink on Earth — absorbing 90 percent of fossil fuel warming in recent decades — which has led to a fast rise in sea surface temperatures. Studies have found indications that this pressure has weakened the ocean as a carbon sink.

Researchers say carbon flow through the ocean and land is still in great part a mystery, as opposed to actual human emissions, which have become increasingly easy to measure.

“Overall, models agreed that both the land sink and the ocean sink are going to decrease in the future as a result of climate change. But there’s a question of how quickly that will happen. The models tend to show this happening rather slowly over the next 100 years or so,” says professor Andrew Watson, head of the marine and atmospheric science group at Exeter University, as reported by The Guardian. “This might happen a lot quicker. Climate scientists [are] worried about climate change not because of the things that are in the models but the knowledge that the models are missing certain things.”

Scientists have said that many Earth systems models include some of global heating’s effects on the planet — such as the slowing of ocean currents and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest — but other more recent events have yet to be incorporated.

“None of these models have factored in losses like extreme factors which have been observed, such as the wildfires in Canada last year that amounted to six months of US fossil emissions. Two years before, we wrote a paper that found that Siberia also lost the same amount of carbon,” said Philippe Ciais, one of the new paper’s authors and a French Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences researcher, as The Guardian reported. “Another process which is absent from the climate models is the basic fact that trees die from drought. This is observed and none of the models have drought-induced mortality in their representation of the land sink. The fact that the models are lacking these factors probably makes them too optimistic.”

The planet’s ability to absorb carbon weakening even moderately would make much steeper reductions in greenhouse gas emissions necessary to get to net zero.

“We shouldn’t rely on natural forests to do the job. We really, really have to tackle the big issue: fossil fuel emissions across all sectors,” said Exeter University professor Pierre Friedlingstein, who oversees the yearly calculations of the Global Carbon Budget, as reported by The Guardian. “We can’t just assume that we have forests and the forest will remove some CO2, because it’s not going to work in the long term.”

The post Earth’s Land and Trees Absorbed Almost No Net Carbon in 2023 appeared first on EcoWatch.

Sometimes, sound tells a story. And what it says can be used to educate and improve environmental well-being.

The “croaks, purrs, and grunts” of a thriving coral reef and the “underground rave concert of bubbles and clicks” of healthy soil have both been recorded by scientists to boost ecosystem health.

Now, in a new piece premiering at the Durham Book Festival in England, the “cavernous” effects of a coal mine and the “sound of carbon” are being presented alongside music played by colliery bands and interviews with former coal miners and their families, reported The Guardian.

“It was odd, but really fun,” said Adam Cooper, director of Threads in the Ground — a self-described “climate hope organization” — who helped record the sound of the empty coal mine. “To put it in one word, I’d say it sounds cavernous. But it also has its own complexities and depth to it.”

The recording was made in a Beamish Museum mine shaft. It involved projecting various sound waves into the cave-like space and recording the reverberations.

“You subtract the original waveform from what comes back so you’re left with the sound of the space,” Cooper explained. “But you need to blast out lots of different kinds of sounds to get the full effect.”

The sounds used to produce the reverb included jazz drumming and white noise.

“It was a weird experience because you are standing there listening to the drip and the dredgey sounds of the mine and then you have a jazz standard blasting out,” Cooper said.

Durham Miners’ Association commissioned the recording — titled Ancestral Reverb — which is premiering at the book festival this weekend.

Cooper said interviewing the retired miners was humbling.

“There is a complexity because the stories are different depending on who you talk to,” Cooper said. “For some it is danger and the terribleness of the work and the lifestyle. Other people just tell stories about the lads they worked with – the solidarity and the pranks.”

The unique work combines the mine shaft recordings with music by a brass band made up of members of the Durham Miners’ Association, along with historic colliery pit band recordings from 1903.

The composition was put together by musician and producer DJ Bert Verso.

A spoken word piece by poet Jacob Polley accompanies the music.

Plans are in the works for an exhibition of the project and a vinyl record release embedded with coal dust.

Cooper said the timing of the project — in the same year as the last coal-fired power plant in the United Kingdom, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, closed, as well as the start of new energy policies by the incoming Labour government — seemed significant.

“It feels like a flux moment, an inception moment. We’re marking that with this unique music that is drawing on more than a century of history,” Cooper said, as The Guardian reported. “We are reinventing what it means to be human in this new climate reality. That’s why this piece is important, it’s giving people permission to exert their creativity in climate thinking and climate change work.”

A copy of the vinyl record will be donated to the British Library for future generations to be able to hear the sound of carbon.

“You and I, our generation… the changes we set in motion by 2030 will shape the future that all humans inherit and inhabit,” Cooper said. “There is an argument that we are the most powerful generation of humans that will ever exist, which is this incredible privilege and power that we hold. I genuinely believe future generations will look back on us and call us carbon reformers.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by T h r e a d s I n T h e G r o u n d (@threadsintheground)

The post UK Music Project Records ‘Sound of Carbon’ in Durham Coal Mine appeared first on EcoWatch.