Author Archives: Cristen Hemingway Jaynes

UK Music Project Records ‘Sound of Carbon’ in Durham Coal Mine

Posted on by October 12, 2024

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.

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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.”

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112 CEOs and Senior Execs Call for Climate Action Ahead of COP29

Posted on by October 11, 2024

More than 100 senior executives and CEOs from the World Economic Forum’s Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders have shared an open letter addressed to global leaders ahead of the United Nations COP29 Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Among the 112 company heads were chairs and CEOs of IKEA, Volvo Cars and AstraZeneca, who pushed governments to promote the case for green investment by global businesses, the Financial Times said.

The open letter’s display of support for climate action by the alliance comes as disagreement has been creating division on corporate climate efforts by businesses.

The alliance represents 12 million employees and $4 trillion in revenues. From 2019 to 2022, aggregate emissions were reduced by 10 percent by alliance members, reported the World Economic Forum. During the same period, there was an 18 percent growth in revenue.

Many international corporations have started scaling back emissions goals, putting the blame on governments for not providing enough standards and financial support for green technology and energy.

“The developing world needs $5.8-5.9 trillion for climate finance, covering both mitigation and adaptation, by 2030. The New Collective Quantified Goal must be raised significantly to aid developing countries disproportionally affected by climate change,” the corporate heads wrote in the letter.

Jesper Brodin, chief executive of IKEA stores’ main operator Ingka Group, said the signatories to the letter want governments to set ambitious goals and “remove some of the obstacles for industries and companies to make the investments,” the Financial Times reported.

“We need more interaction, more support and more collaboration from policymakers around the world in order to both enable investments and speed up investments,” Brodin said.

In their letter, business leaders expressed support for carbon pricing, developing high-quality carbon markets and ending fossil fuel subsidies.

“The distance between the [businesses] who are on the train to the new economy, the smart economy, and the ones on the platform is increasing,” Brodin said. “It is not always easy, because it is very transformative…  [but] you have a very large group of companies representing every sector who are on the train and who are transforming or investing and are reaping the benefits of the new economy.”

The authors added that regulators and policymakers needed to remove obstacles stopping nations from meeting COP28 pledges to double energy efficiency and triple renewable energy by 2030, as well as provide more financial and regulatory support for new green technologies.

“We call on governments to upgrade their [Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)] and international collaboration to close the ambition gap: the Global Stocktake shows that NDCs only provide for ~5% emissions reductions by 2030, far short of the 43% needed. NDCs should offer clear transition plans that provide the transparency businesses need for investment, transforming them into national roadmaps for growth, competitiveness and the future green workforce,” the letter said.

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The company heads emphasized that business leaders must act alongside governments by committing both “strategically and financially” to achieving net zero.

“We urge our peers to demonstrate leadership and accountability in decarbonizing their operations and value chains by setting science-based targets, disclosing progress and developing climate transition plans, consistent with evolving frameworks and standards,” they said in the letter. “We stand ready to collaborate with governments and peers to build on COP28 momentum at COP29 and beyond. By working together and taking the actions outlined in this letter, we can drive more action on climate and avoid every fraction of a degree of warming.”

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‘We Are Reaching Points of No Return’: WWF Report Finds Wildlife Has Declined 73% in Half a Century

Posted on by October 10, 2024

According to the Living Planet 2024 report — compiled by WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) — Earth’s wildlife populations have plummeted by 73 percent on average in half a century.

The highest declines — 95 percent — were seen in the Caribbean and Latin America, the report said. A 76 percent decline was recorded in Africa, and a 60 percent decrease in Asia and the Pacific.

“Globally, we are reaching points of no return and irreversibly affecting the planet’s life-support systems. We are seeing the effects of deforestation and the transformation of natural ecosystems, intensive land use and climate change,” said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s minister of environment and sustainable development and president of the 2024 United Nations COP16 biodiversity summit, as The Guardian reported. 

Scientists said the steep average declines in species were due to much greater wildlife population decreases in North America and Europe before 1970, which are currently being replicated in other places.

In the report, the scientists said species loss could speed up along with increased global heating, precipitated by tipping points in the Arctic, the Amazon rainforest and marine ecosystems. This could lead to disastrous consequences for humans and the environment.

“We are dangerously close to tipping points for nature loss and climate change. But we know nature can recover, given the opportunity, and that we still have the chance to act,” said Matthew Gould, chief executive of ZSL, as reported by The Guardian.

Mike Barrett, chief scientific adviser for WWF, warned that the Amazon rainforest could be close to an irreversible tipping point, after which the enormous carbon sink would collapse, until “we’re just left with scrub,” PA Media/Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.

The Amazon has been destroyed by extreme drought, deforestation and wildfires. The largest rainforest in the world, it houses 10 percent of all species on Earth. The collapse of the planet’s climate regulator would impact livelihoods and food security worldwide.

“What we’re seeing there at the moment are certainly the warning signs that we may be approaching this tipping point across the entirety of the Amazon and that would have catastrophic consequences,” Barrett said. “It would impact agriculture across the world, and it would make it impossible to avoid runaway climate change as huge amounts of carbon are released and the ability to absorb it is lost.”

The data for the WWF report contains nearly 35,000 population trends from almost 5,500 birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians all over the world, reported The Guardian.

The report’s release comes days before the UN’s COP16 Biodiversity Conference, which begins on October 21 and meets through November 1 in Cali, Colombia. It will be the first time countries will come together since an agreement was reached on an international set of goals to stop the global decline of biodiversity.

“We must listen to science and take action to avoid collapse,” Muhamad said. “The world is witnessing the mass bleaching of coral reefs, the loss of tropical forests, the collapse of polar ice caps and serious changes to the water cycle, the foundation of life on our planet.”

As agriculture expands throughout the world, land use changes are the most significant driver of declining wildlife populations.

“The data that we’ve got shows that the loss was driven by a fragmentation of natural habitats. What we are seeing through the figures is an indicator of a more profound change that is going on in our natural ecosystems … they are losing their resilience to external shocks and change. We are now superimposing climate change on these already degraded habitats,” Barrett said. “I have been involved in writing these reports for 10 years and, in writing this one, it was difficult. I was shocked.”

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Elephants Remember the Scents of Human Caregivers After Many Years, Study Finds

Posted on by October 9, 2024

The saying goes that an elephant never forgets, and there is evidence that they remember waterholes they have visited and other elephants they have met after a long time.

But does this exceptional long-term memory extend to humans and members of other species?

“There are exciting stories of Asian elephants that suggest this,” said Martin Kränzlin, lead author of a new study, in a press release from Kiel University. “For example, it has been reported that elephants threw stones at a former owner they didn’t like when they met again many years later. However, these are only anecdotal reports.”

The study, “Do African Savanna Elephants (Loxodonta africana) Show Interspecific Social Long-Term Memory for Their Zoo Keepers?” has provided the first concrete evidence that elephants are able to recognize their keeper’s scent, even after a long separation.

Published in the journal Zoo Biology, the research was carried out at Lower Saxony’s Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen, Germany. Bibi and Panya, two female elephants, had moved to the wildlife park from the Berlin Zoo 13 years earlier.

“We contacted the former zookeepers in Berlin, a total of three men,” recalled Kränzlin, who works at the Wilhelma Zoological-Botanical Garden. “For our experiment, they wore a T-shirt for eight hours, which we later used as a scent stimulus. We also recorded a short spoken sentence from them and took portrait photos of them.”

For the experiment, two racks were placed side by side outside the elephants’ enclosure. On one rack, the researchers displayed a life-size portrait print of a former keeper or one of the T-shirts they had worn. On the other was placed the corresponding stimulus of someone unknown to the elephants.

From their enclosure, the elephants could see both racks, but weren’t able to touch them with their trunks. They regularly attempted to reach them, however, to examine the items more closely.

“We filmed the behavior of each elephant we tested,” Kränzlin said in the press release. “We then used the videos to analyze how often and for how long the animal extended its trunk towards the racks.”

The researchers hypothesized that a familiar stimulus would arouse greater interest, indicated by Panya and Bibi attempting to reach those stimuli more often and for a longer amount of time.

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The research team found that the pair of pachyderms did just that, but only if the stimulus was a previously worn T-shirt with the scent of a familiar keeper. The differences between the recordings of spoken sentences and the portrait photos were not statistically significant, which wasn’t surprising, since proboscideans — elephants and close relatives — have blurred vision, but an outstanding sense of smell.

“Our results are a clear indication that elephants can at least remember the scent of their former keepers, even decades later,” said Professor Christine Böhmer, leader of the study and a Kiel University professor of zoology and functional morphology of vertebrates, in the press release. “Nevertheless, further studies with a larger number of individuals are needed to confirm the results.”

The results point to the importance of the captive elephant-caregiver relationship.

“The results are also interesting for keeping elephants in zoos,” the press release said. “Because if the pachyderms really do remember their keepers for so long, then this suggests that they are pretty important to the animals. A stable relationship with their human caregivers can therefore potentially have a very positive effect on the well-being of zoo elephants.”

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Renewables Will Generate Almost Half of Global Electricity by 2030, Falling Short of UN Target to Triple Capacity: IEA Report

Posted on by October 9, 2024

With solar leading the way, renewables are on track to generate nearly 50 percent of global electricity this decade. But green energy is still predicted to fall short of the United Nations target of tripling capacity, according to Renewables 2024: Analysis and forecast to 2030, a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

More than 5,500 gigawatts (GW) of global renewable capacity is set to be added between now and 2030, which is nearly three times the growth from 2017 to 2023, the report said.

“Renewables are moving faster than national governments can set targets for,” said Fatih Birol, IEA’s executive director, as Reuters reported. “This is mainly driven not just by efforts to lower emissions or boost energy security: it’s increasingly because renewables today offer the cheapest option to add new power plants in almost all countries around the world.”

Based on today’s governmental policy settings and current market trends, of the world’s renewable capacity installed between 2024 and 2030, almost 60 percent will come from China, a press release from IEA said.

That would mean nearly half the total global renewable power capacity would be in China by 2030, up from a third in 2010.

“Due to supportive policies and favourable economics, the world’s renewable power capacity is expected to surge over the rest of this decade, with global additions on course to roughly equal the current power capacity of China, the European Union, India and the United States combined,” the press release said.

This decade, solar PV is projected to account for 80 percent of worldwide renewable capacity growth. This is due to the construction of large solar plants and an increase in installations of rooftop solar by households and companies.

The expansion of wind is forecast to double between now and the end of the decade, compared with the period 2017 to 2023.

In nearly every country in the world, solar PV and wind are the least expensive options for adding new electricity generation.

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Because of these trends, almost 70 countries that together make up 80 percent of renewable capacity around the world are set to meet or exceed their current renewable goals for 2030.

“The growth is not fully in line with the goal set by nearly 200 governments at the COP28 climate change conference in December 2023 to triple the world’s renewable capacity this decade – the report forecasts global capacity will reach 2.7 times its 2022 level by 2030,” the press release said. “But IEA analysis indicates that fully meeting the tripling target is entirely possible if governments take near-term opportunities for action.”

In order to meet that goal, bold plans would need to be outlined for the next Nationally Determined Contributions set under the Paris Agreement, which are due in 2025. It would also require international cooperation to bring down the high costs of financing for developing and emerging economies, which are leading to restrained growth of renewables in regions with high potential like Southeast Asia and Africa.

To be able to meet international climate goals, the rollout of renewables would need to be sped up, and the adoption of sustainable hydrogen, biofuels, biogases and e-fuels accelerated as well.

The manufacturing capacity of solar PV is predicted to triple in the United States and India by 2030, which will help global diversification. Solar panels produced in the U.S. cost three times more than those made in China, and twice as much as solar panels made in India.

The report said policymakers should consider ways to balance the additional benefits and costs of local manufacturing, while taking into account priorities like energy security and job creation.

“This report shows that the growth of renewables, especially solar, will transform electricity systems across the globe this decade. Between now and 2030, the world is on course to add more than 5 500 gigawatts of renewable power capacity,” Birol said in the press release. “By 2030, we expect renewables to be meeting half of global electricity demand.”

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BP Scraps Target of Reducing Oil Production by 2030

Posted on by October 8, 2024

Oil major BP has scrapped its goal of reducing oil and gas production by the end of the decade, angering environmental groups who say the company is prioritizing profits over the planet.

According to three sources who have knowledge on the matter, BP CEO Murray Auchincloss scaled back the company’s energy transition plans in order to regain investor confidence, reported Reuters.

“As Murray said at the start of the year in our fourth-quarter results, the direction is the same but we are going to deliver as a simpler, more focused and higher-value company,” a spokesperson for BP said, as The Times reported.

In 2020, BP unveiled an ambitious strategy to reduce its production by 40 percent, while quickly ramping up renewables by 2030, reported Reuters. In February of 2023, the London-based company pared back the reduction goal to 25 percent, as investors concentrated on near-term profits instead of the energy transition.

In 2022, the oil giant recorded record profits of $28 billion, The Guardian reported.

“It’s clear that Auchincloss is hell-bent on prioritising company profits and shareholder wealth above all else as extreme floods and wildfires rack up billions of dollars in damages, destroying homes and lives all over the world,” said Philip Evans, senior climate campaigner of Greenpeace UK, as reported by The Guardian.

Agathe Masson, Reclaim Finance’s stewardship campaigner, said BP was prioritizing its own output over taking action to help fight the climate crisis.

“BP might be happy to see the planet burn in the name of profits, but investors must take a longer view and reject this climate-wrecking strategy,” Masson said.

Last year, the oil company invested $2.5 billion in renewables, hydrogen, biofuels and EV charging. It has six gigawatts of UK offshore wind investments, as well as government backing for a $5.2 billion carbon capture project.

In June, BP froze all its new offshore wind projects in the face of investors who were dissatisfied with its green energy targets.

BP is currently looking at new investments in the Gulf of Mexico and the Middle East to ramp up its output of oil and gas, according to the sources, as Reuters reported.

Auchincloss became CEO at the start of the year, but has not been able to stop the falling shareholder price of the company, leading investors to question BP’s ability to turn a profit under its current strategy.

The company has kept its goal of net zero by 2050.

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While Auchincloss will not present the updated plan to investors until February, the sources said BP has already abandoned the 2030 production goal in practice.

“Most oil and gas majors have consistently failed to invest enough into transition technologies, setting targets and making claims that have often been abandoned or debunked,” said James Alexander, UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association’s chief executive, as reported by The Guardian. “The transition will not wait for them. The gap they have left is already being filled by renewables companies.”

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Hurricane Milton Barrels Toward Florida’s West Coast as Powerful Category 5

Posted on by October 8, 2024

Residents of the battered Gulf Coast of Florida hurried to clear debris from Hurricane Helene as Hurricane Milton increased to Category 5 Tuesday afternoon and was projected to make landfall on Wednesday.

As of Tuesday, most of Florida’s west coast was under hurricane or tropical storm warnings as Milton churned off Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula with winds of 156 miles per hour. Both Milton and Helene gained strength from exceptionally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Milton is expected to maintain major hurricane strength while it moves across the Gulf of Mexico and approaches the west coast of Florida. Stronger vertical shear is expected to set in about 24 hours, but even if this causes some weakening, it will not be enough to keep Milton from being an extremely dangerous hurricane when it reaches shore,” the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Tuesday. “Milton’s wind field is expected to expand as it approaches Florida. In fact, the official forecast shows the hurricane and tropical-storm-force winds roughly doubling in size by the time it makes landfall. Therefore, damaging winds, life-threatening storm surge, and heavy rainfall will extend well outside the forecast cone.”

Hurricane Milton was predicted to make landfall in the Tampa Bay area — home to 3.3 million residents — Wednesday night. The area has not experienced a direct hit from a major hurricane since 1921.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told residents evacuating didn’t have to mean a long trip.

“You do not have to get on the interstate and go far away,” DeSantis said at a news conference, as The Associated Press reported. “You can evacuate tens of miles. You do not have to evacuate hundreds of miles away. You do have options.”

Not everyone felt the need to evacuate, however.

“I think we’ll just hang, you know — tough it out,” said Apollo Beach resident Martin Oakes. “We got shutters up. The house is all ready. So this is sort of the last piece of the puzzle.”

Another local resident, Ralph Douglas of Ruskin, said one reason for staying was concern about running out of gas or being blocked by debris on the way back.

The state has been working to clear wreckage from Hurricane Helene to keep debris from flying through the air and injuring anyone. DeSantis said more than 300 dump trucks have removed 1,200 loads and are working around the clock.

Milton had been downgraded to a Category 4 Tuesday morning, but NHC forecasters warned it remained “an extremely serious threat to Florida,” reported The Associated Press, and late Tuesday afternoon the NHC warned that the storm had again gained strength.

Forecasters said storm surge in Tampa Bay could reach up to 15 feet. DeSantis said over 30 shelters run by counties were open for evacuees.

As Hurricane Milton crosses central Florida, the monster storm is expected to produce up to 18 inches of rainfall, the NHC said.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden, speaking from the White House, warned Floridians that evacuating was a “matter of life and death,” as BBC News reported. “Evacuate now, now, now,” he told residents, promising that the U.S. government would help Florida “before, during and after” the hurricane.

Deanne Criswell, Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, said people needed to take the advice of their local officials and “get out of harm’s way,” reported The Associated Press.

“People don’t need to move far. They just need to move inland.”

Jaime Hernandez, Hollywood, Florida’s emergency management director, said people should make a plan, stay informed and have an emergency kit on hand.

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Food, water and other supplies should also be bought in advance, with a gallon of water per person per day for a week, Hernandez said.

“It is worth emphasizing that this is a very serious situation and residents in Florida should closely follow orders from their local emergency management officials. Evacuations and other preparations should be completed today. Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” the NHC cautioned on Tuesday.

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Community Groups, Neighbors and Volunteers Mobilize in Aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina

Posted on by October 7, 2024

Since Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26, at least 227 people have died, with many still missing and thousands displaced.

Homes and businesses in western North Carolina were destroyed, and some are still living without power, internet and safe drinking water.

Aid sent by governments and larger nonprofits can sometimes take a while to reach those who need it right away. To help fill in the gaps, those in Asheville and the surrounding mountain communities have been organizing and helping each other.

Local volunteers — including some on mules and in helicopters — have been helping get water, food and other supplies to stranded residents, while rescuing others, Reuters reported.

Many of the roads going to and from the remote mountain communities were made impassable due to flooding and mudslides during the storm and remain so a week and a half later. High winds and rain, coupled with downed limbs and trees, caused telecommunications equipment to be damaged or destroyed, leaving residents cut off from the outside world.

With relief efforts by local, state and federal officials made more complicated by the magnitude of the devastation and destruction of roads and communications, area residents have stepped in to help their neighbors.

“It’s been pretty intense,” said real estate agent Ben Miller, as reported by Reuters. “This seemed like it couldn’t happen here.”

Miller, a father of two who lives in the Winston-Salem area, drove supplies — including 27,000 bottles of water — to Marion, near Asheville, over the weekend.

Miller also delivered resources to the remote town of Spruce Pine, where his family has roots.

“I know how hard some of those areas are to get to when it’s 60 degrees outside and totally dry. So as this thing started to unfold, I could really envision that there were a lot of places they were going to have trouble getting to,” Miller said.

Asheville-based Pansy Collective — one of several mutual-aid relief organizations that mobilized across the Carolinas and Florida since Helene’s destructive impact — first checked on everyone to ensure they were alright, then helped those who needed to evacuate, The Guardian reported.

Once they were out of the Blue Ridge Mountains, they drove to Durham — more than 200 miles away — for supplies to bring back to Asheville.

Garrett Blaize, Appalachian Community Fund’s executive director, said even people who had lost their property and homes were organizing relief efforts.

“In Appalachia, we have a really strong network of both formal and informal mutual-aid groups,” Blaize said. “We saw many of those groups activated immediately after the first impacts of the storm, as well as the kind of more organic and informal mutual aid: church groups, volunteer associations, neighbors. That all happened really quickly.”

Founders of nonprofit BeLoved Asheville, Amy Cantrell and Ponkho Bermejo, normally focus on helping with local issues like feeding the hungry and building affordable housing, but since Helene, they have been helping community members survive and recover.

Cantrell said she witnessed friends and neighbors in the small mountain town of Swannanoa get swept away by the storm’s floodwaters.

“We saw a lot of deaths, so much loss of the life,” Cantrell told PEOPLE. “We saw people in the river clinging to the trees and they couldn’t hang on. Whole houses were floating down the river. We saw trailers engulfed in water with people still in them.”

As winter approaches the mountain community, many are still without permanent housing in the aftermath of Helene.

“As winter looms, we are securing warm and safe housing for the displaced,” BeLoved Asheville wrote on its website. “Many individuals and families face homelessness as the cold weather approaches. While national resources become available for those who need shelter, there are many gaps in coverage, especially in underrepresented populations. We are allocating funds for hotels and short-term rentals as we work on more permanent solutions.”

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Tai Little, an organizer with Charlotte-based SEAC Village — part of a national network of other organizations, collectives, nonprofits and individuals — said it’s important for people who want to help to donate to mutual-aid funds and those helping in the local area.

“When you donate to those larger agencies, it takes a long time for that aid to get to the people,” Little said, as reported by The Guardian. “But when you give directly to mutual-aid efforts that are on the ground, that aid gets to people immediately. We’ve been able to send three truckloads full of items just based off of these small donations.”

The number of people still unaccounted for in the aftermath of Helene is unknown, but has decreased since communications have slowly been restored.

“Because of the region’s history, there is a unique tendency to look after our neighbors,” Blaize said, as The Guardian reported. “We come from an area of the country that has oftentimes been defined by scarcity. I think we have a lot of embedded cultural values around taking care of each other that really just make it sort of organic that during times of crisis or times of emergency, that is our go-to response.”

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Global River Flows Fell to Record Lows in 2023, WMO Report Says

Posted on by October 7, 2024

Last year was the driest for rivers globally in 33 years, according to the State of Global Water Resources 2023 report coordinated by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

The world’s river flows fell to record lows in 2023, as extreme heat endangered crucial water supplies in a time of increasing demand, a WMO press release said.

“Water is becoming the most telling indicator of our time of climate‘s distress and yet, as a global society, we are not taking action to protect these reserves,” Celeste Saulo, WMO secretary-general, told reporters at a press briefing in Geneva, as Reuters reported.

For the past five years in a row, river flows all over the globe have recorded below-normal conditions, the press release said. A similar pattern has been observed with reservoir inflows, which means reduced water supplies for communities, ecosystems and agriculture.

The report said glaciers have suffered the greatest mass ice loss ever recorded over the past 50 years. All of the regions on Earth with glaciers reported loss of ice in 2023.

“This severe loss is mainly due to extreme melting in western North America and the European Alps, where Switzerland’s glaciers have lost about 10% of their remaining volume over the past two years,” WMO said.

Overall, the world’s glaciers experienced 600 gigatons of water loss from an extreme melt year, reported Reuters. This was the worst in five decades of observations, according to preliminary data from September 2022 to August 2023, the press release said.

“When the glacier is gone in a few more decades. It will be very dramatic,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO director of hydrology, as Reuters reported.

Last year was the hottest since records began. Higher temperatures led to widespread dry conditions and prolonged droughts.

There were also a notable number of floods around the world. These extreme hydrological occurrences were influenced by the planet transitioning from La Niña to El Niño mid-year, as well as by human-caused climate change.

“Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change. We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies. Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action,” Saulo said in the press release.

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Currently, 3.6 billion people are facing inadequate water access for a minimum of one month each year, with the number projected to increase to over five billion by mid-century, UN Water said. The planet is not on track to meet its Sustainable Development Goal on water and sanitation.

“As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions,” Saulo said.

The number of stations measuring river discharge used in the report went up from 273 in 14 different countries to 713 in 33 countries, compared with the previous year. Groundwater data collection also expanded to 35,459 wells in 40 nations, in comparison with 8,246 in 10 countries a year earlier. Despite these increases in observational data sharing, South America, Africa and Asia remained underrepresented, underscoring the necessity of better monitoring and data sharing, especially in the Global South.

“And yet, far too little is known about the true state of the world’s freshwater resources. We cannot manage what we do not measure. This report seeks to contribute to improved monitoring, data-sharing, cross-border collaboration and assessments,” Saulo said in the press release. “This is urgently needed.”

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‘Landmark Victory’: California’s Newsom Signs 3 Bills Protecting Communities From Oil and Gas

Posted on by October 3, 2024

The signing of three new bills into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom allows local communities to limit oil drilling while helping the state address pollution from “idle wells.”

The laws will help protect the environment and public health, while empowering communities to set better protections around fossil fuel activities in their neighborhoods, a press release from the governor’s office said.

“The health of our communities always comes first. These new laws allow local leaders to limit dangerous oil and gas activities near homes, schools, and other areas as they see fit for their communities, and give the state more tools to make sure that idle and low-producing wells get plugged sooner. This builds off of our all-of-the-above efforts to protect communities from pollution and hold Big Oil accountable,” Newsom said in the press release.

The new laws give more authority to local governments to restrict oil and gas activities and shut down wells that aren’t being used, but haven’t been properly closed and sealed, reported the Associated Press.

“It’s been a long journey that we’ve been on over the course of many, many years,” Newsom said alongside local officials and advocates at a neighborhood park near Inglewood Oil Field. “But tremendous progress is being made.”

One of the trio of laws — AB 3233 — empowers smaller governments by giving them authority over where and how oil and gas operations are run. It also allows them to override rulings by the current highest authority, the State Oil and Gas Supervisor, to enforce bans on drilling sites, CBS News reported.

“By providing local jurisdictions with the power to make these decisions, California is taking a major step toward protecting vulnerable communities from the health impacts of industrial operations. The bill overrides recent court decisions that blocked ordinances limiting oil drilling adopted by the voters of Monterey County and the Los Angeles City Council,” the press release said.

Another of the new laws — AB 1866 — imposes more stringent regulations on idle wells, which sometimes leak, leading to contamination of surrounding areas.

“This is a landmark victory for taxpayers and communities most affected by the harmful health impacts of neighborhood oil drilling,” said Gregg Hart, an assembly member from Santa Barbara, in the press release. “I am proud of this decisive action we are taking today to hold the oil industry responsible for plugging over 40,000 idle oil wells across California. I want to thank Governor Newsom for recognizing the urgency of solving the idle oil well crisis in the state.”

The third law — AB 2716 — is a set of new rules targeting Inglewood Oil Field, the state’s largest urban oil field, which has come under scrutiny by health officials for polluting nearby areas, reported CBS News.

Environmental advocacy groups like the Center for Biological Diversity hailed AB 3233 as a much-needed measure to regulate fossil fuel emissions and other pollutants, while the California Department of Finance said it could face considerable litigation and be costly to enforce. Oil and gas companies like the Western States Petroleum Association criticized the bill.

“The signing of AB 3233 is [a] vital win for communities across the Central Coast, and all of California,” said Dawn Addis, Democratic assembly member from Morro Bay, in the press release. “Putting this bill into law affirms our right to clean air and water, free of oil and gas pollution.”

Newsom has referred to the oil industry as the “polluted heart of this climate crisis,” as he aims to pass a proposal to reduce the spiking of gas prices for consumers, as the Associated Press reported.

Among other measures, Newsom’s administration has passed rules to phase out fossil-fuel powered cars, trucks, trains and lawnmowers. California has set a target of being carbon neutral by 2045.

Under one of the new regulations, the state is required to fine companies $10,000 per month if they operate low-producing oil wells near Inglewood Oil Field. The money raised from the measure will be put into an account funding local projects like creating affordable housing and parks. The law requires that companies close and seal all of the site’s wells by the last day of 2030.

“The Inglewood Oil Field is the largest urban oil field in our State,” said author of the bill Isaac Bryan, a Democratic assembly member representing Inglewood, in the press release. “Its production in recent years has been marginal, but for decades the negative health impacts surrounding it have cost the nearby community with their life expectancy. Today, with Governor Newsom’s signature, we will finally shut it down and establish the state’s first repair fund for the frontline communities who have been organizing for years to be seen, heard, and protected.”

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