Mixed sentiments greeted Vice President Kamala Harris’s announcement at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai December 2 that the United States is pledging $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The fund was established to assist developing nations pay for mitigation and adaptation to the impacts of global warming, with the original goal being $100 billion a year by 2020. It has come nowhere near that.
GCF Executive Director Mafalda Duarte said in a statement: “This is a new era for the Green Climate Fund and the investments we need for a future we all deserve. Our record $12.8 billion replenishment means the world's most vulnerable communities and our partners, including the private sector, have an even stronger ally for ambitious climate action that mobilizes innovative partnerships, speeds up reforms to deliver finance quickly and efficiently, and supports transformation where it's needed most."
Sierra Club Managing Director Eva Hernandez told Climate Home News reporter Joe Lo that she was "encouraged," and the Natural Resources Defense Councl's Manish Bapna said it was "a promising signal of the USA's commitment to spur clean energy and promote resilience in vulnerable countries.” But ActionAid USA’s Kelly Stone said the pledge was a “far cry from what is needed.” And Alden Meyer, a prominent climate activist with an astonishing 32-year résumé, who is now at E3G, said of the pledge that the U.S. was "punching well below its weight."
Encouraging is definitely not how things look in Congress, where a major fight is a certainty. Republican Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart of Florida made clear that the pledge is dead on arrival on Capitol Hill, as reported by Emma Dumain at the environmental news service E&E Daily.
“I am appalled that the Biden administration will pledge billions more of taxpayer dollars, money that Congress has not even provided, to yet another bloated, mismanaged and ineffective slush fund that will do nothing to change the temperature of the planet,” said Díaz-Balart. He is the chair of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over international climate spending.
This is no idle threat. Back in 2014, President Barack Obama also pledged $3 billion to the GCF. But GOP foes in Congress and later President Donald Trump only allowed $1 billion of that pledge to be provided, saying ridiculously that the fund was costing the United States a “vast fortune.” President Joe Biden put another $1 billion into the fund in May.
Meyer said jokingly but accurately of Congress, "There's three things they don't like about the GCF—that it’s green, that it's for the climate, and that it's a fund. Other than that, they're fine with it."
For comparison, while the Green Climate Fund’s $12.8 billion in pledges is a “promising signal,” ExxonMobil’s profits alone for the first three quarters of 2023 totaled $28.4 billion. And, of course, no way will the current Congress pass a windfall profits tax anymore than it will do anything about cutting the U.S. share of the $7 trillion in worldwide government subsidies to the oil and gas industry. There’s always pallets of money to pad the wallets of the powers-that-be and always whining about even the most paltry assistance to the vulnerable and unprotected.
Even with phony George Santos gone, there are still 148 climate science deniers in Congress, plus a bunch of other members who claim to accept the science but don’t vote like it. They are intent on gutting efforts to prevent, mitigate, or adapt to climate changes, including assistance to nations who have contributed little to the atmospheric carbon burden, but face severe consequences from it.
Addressing the climate crisis requires worldwide attention. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are all linked to those changes now underway, those inevitably coming our way, and those that will come our way without serious action. Climate change doesn’t stop at national borders. Telling impoverished, vulnerable nations that it’s YOYO for them when it comes to climate change will come back to bite us all.
WEEKLY ECO-DIARY
GREEN BRIEF
Sara Miller Llana and Stephanie Hanes are staff writers at the Christian Science Monitor who, over the past year, have interviewed dozens of young people around the world. They write: “Originally, we sought them out because we were interested in a paradox: Today’s young people were born into an unprecedented era of children’s rights, a time when most of the world agrees that young people are entitled to things like a safe home, the ability to go to school, and the freedom from physical harm. Yet at the same time, this Climate Generation, as we are calling it, has come of age in an era of unprecedented challenge, and is confronting the overwhelming reality of a changing, heating, disrupted world.”
What did they find?
From the gleaming financial capital of Frankfurt to the sea-breeze coasts of Barbados, from the big skies of Montana to the waterlogged streets of Bangladesh, from the sunny countryside of Portugal to the windblown ice of the Arctic, a breathtaking transformation is underway.
Climate change is shaping a mindset revolution. [...]
In our travels, we met [young] innovators and regenerators, activists and adapters, conservationists and challengers. All of them, in their own ways, are pushing back against the silos in which we’ve understood our world in industry, environment, or geography. They are seizing on a crisis moment to tackle the inequalities and injustices that have long saddled their nations—crafting a new ethos about consumption, “progress,” and what it means to have a good life.
Among those they interviewed was Jakapita Kandanga, a 26-year-old Namibian climate activist. Like other people around the world, Kandanga has felt the impact of climate changes. When the rains stopped in rural Namibia, her father could no longer sell his cattle, and the family could no longer afford to send her to school. Kandanga told the reporters she doesn’t want anyone else to experience this. So on Saturdays, she teaches children in a settlement outside the Namibian capital of Windhoek about what climate change is. “I just want that everybody has equal resources to survive the climate crisis,” she says.
According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 60% of young Americans—Generation Z and millennials—told pollsters they are “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change. But around the world, that percentage is much higher. In a global survey conducted by Plan International, 98% of youth ages 15 to 24 said they are worried about climate change. But they aren’t just worrying. They are making generational shifts in everything from what they eat to where they work.
For instance, 20% of those aged 18 to 24 in Britain don’t eat meat—mainly because of their climate concerns. In Europe, there is a growing move toward “climate quitting,” with many youth choosing to avoid working for automobile or energy companies to make their work lives better match their environmental values.
But this is about more than personal choices, as important as those can be. Many of these young activists are well aware of the climate impact the Global North has on the Global South, both historically and right now. In the United States, for example, the per capita carbon footprint was 14.4 metric tons in 2022 compared with Germany’s 7.72 tons and Bangladesh’s 1.36 tons, according to Climate Watch.
An 18-year-old Frankfurt resident, Daphne Hübsch, said “I think about my responsibility for this because of my consumption—that people suffer because of my life standards in Europe.” Spreading that attitude among the broader population—young and old—will be no easy task. Around the world, prosperity is all too often viewed through the lens of over-consumption. That “mindset revolution” has its work cut out for it.
The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication have released their annual survey on the thinking of Americans regarding climate. Here’s a brief sampling of what they found.
- Given a choice, 57% of registered voters would prefer to vote for a candidate for public office who supports action on global warming. Only 16% say they’d prefer to vote for a candidate who opposes action, and 26% say it doesn't matter either way. This includes 95% of liberal Democrats, 86% of moderate/conservativeDemocrats, and 46% of liberal/moderate Republicans, but only 13% of conservative Republicans.
- 56% of registered voters think global warming should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress.
- 42% of registered voters think people like them, working together, can affect what the federal government does about global warming, and 40% think they can affect what corporations do about global warming.
- 36% of registered voters have heard either “a lot” or “some” about the IRA. After reading a short description of the IRA, 71% of registered voters support it. But fewer than half of registered voters think the IRA will help future generations of people (46%), the health of Americans (45%), low-income communities and communities of color (40%), the economy and jobs in the U.S. (38%), their family (33%), or them personally (30%).
- 60% of registered voters think the U.S. should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what other countries do.
- Majorities of registered voters support providing financial aid and technical support to developing countries to limit their greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., mitigation; 60%) and to help them prepare for the impacts of global warming (i.e., adaptation; 57%).
RESOURCES
WTF is the “Global Stocktake”? We explain the ‘heart’ of COP28.
Reduce Packaging Waste This Holiday Season. Nine ways to cut back on all that holiday waste. Not mentioned is No. 10: Buy less.
Think Global, Act Local. From the Trust for Public Land, some replicable stories about local climate action.
Seven food and agriculture innovations needed to protect the climate and feed a rapidly growing world.
Breaking Down Toxic PFAS.
HALF A DOZEN THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
There’s less meat at this year’s climate talks. But there’s plenty of bull by Kenny Torrella at Vox. As attendees break for meals between meetings, negotiations, and panel discussions, they may notice one striking difference between COP28 and past UN climate conferences: There won’t be much meat on the menu. After a months-long effort by the youth-led Food@COP coalition, the United Arab Emirates environment minister, Mariam Almheiri, announced last month that two-thirds of the food served at the event will be plant-based. “We know that our food systems are intrinsically linked to the fate of our natural world, and so we have made the progressive decision to ensure that we explore how the catering provided across the event can be responsible and climate conscious,” Almheiri said in a press release. Almheiri was alluding to a fact often overlooked in climate discussions: One-third of global greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to food, with meat and dairy accounting for the lion’s share of it but providing just 18% of the world’s calories. Meat and dairy production are also leading causes of other environmental ills, including deforestation, biodiversity loss, pandemic risk, and water pollution. Dairy production alone emits more greenhouse gases than global aviation. Plant-based foods typically have a much smaller carbon footprint, and require far less land and water.
Related: • Big Meat Unveils Battle Plans for COP28 • Mapped: Big Ag’s Routes to Influence at COP28.
The Caribou Are What Make Us Neets’ąįį Gwich’in by Raeann Garnett at Sierra. (Adapted from an oral statement at an October public hearing organized by Bureau of Land Management to consider drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.) My name is Raeann Garnett. I am 27 years old, and I am the First Tribal Chief of Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government. I am very proud, blessed, and grateful to be Chief of our Tribe. It’s a huge honor. Venetie and Arctic Village are my home. I love our people, and I love our land. We may not be rich with money, but we are rich in culture. Our culture is the land: caribou, moose, birds, and fish. We have recently finished our hunting season—the primary time when we can get the resources we need to exist throughout the year, both culturally and practically. However, the future of the Arctic Refuge and our existence is at risk. Currently, the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service are meeting with Tribes regarding, among other topics, the oil and gas leasing project in the Arctic Refuge. Our people have relied on the land of the refuge for millennia. For us, it is truly the sacred place where life begins. For generations, during the fall months we gather together and wait to harvest caribou for the upcoming winter. Our village is located along the migration route of the caribou for this purpose. If oil and gas drilling projects move forward on the refuge, there is no telling how much our community and our culture will suffer. Hunters must wait hours and sometimes days to bring back meat that is needed to feed our families through our harsh winters. But we are happy to do so because it is what we have known for generations. It is part of what makes us Neets’ąįį Gwich’in. Caribou are our main source of food. A disruption to their migration route will make an already difficult situation even worse.=
Tripling Renewables Is Difficult But Completely Doable by Oscar Boyd, Akshat Rathi, and Christine Driscoll at Bloomberg Green. If all goes to plan, COP28 will end with an agreement to triple renewables globally by 2030. Currently, the world has about 3.6 terawatts of renewables installed, built over decades. To triple that, another 7 terawatts will need to be added in the next seven years. That’s a lot of solar and wind—but if achieved it would cut emissions by more than 9 billion tons in 2030, says BloombergNEF solar analyst Jenny Chase, equivalent to a quarter of global CO2 emissions last year. While the deal being negotiated at COP28 in Dubai is global, individual country targets will vary, according to BloombergNEF. Brazil, for example, already gets 85% of its electricity from renewable sources and does not need to triple that, while regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia—and especially India—would need to more than triple their renewables to meet the target.
Related: • COP28: Nearly 120 Nations Agree to Triple World’s Renewables Output • World Appears on Track to Triple Renewable Power by 2030
Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community moves forward with first solar canal project in the U.S. by Shondiin Silversmith at the Arizona Mirror. The Gila River Indian Community and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed an agreement in early November, kicking off construction on the first phase of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project Renewal Energy Pilot Project, which is expected to be completed in 2025. “This new technology fits and supports our culture and tradition as we look forward to being sustainable in the future in a very real way,” Lewis said. The project may break new ground for the tribe, but he said it furthers their role as stewards of their water. Lewis said they’re looking at this in terms of a Blue-Green Tribal Agricultural Economy, in which blue represents conserving water and green symbolizes renewable energy. The GRIC has over 150 miles of canal that could ultimately be covered with solar panels, and this project could be a game changer for creating energy. David Deyoung, the director of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project, said there are two ways this project can conserve water: reducing the evaporative water losses and minimizing water use for power generation. The combination, he said, will each year save about 200 acre-feet of water, more than 62 million gallons.
Nearly half of the world’s flowering plants face the threat of extinction, study says by Joseph Howlett at Mongabay. A less colorful world looms on our horizon. Almost half of the world’s flowers are in danger of extinction, according to a recent preprint posted on biorxiv.org. A group of scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in Richmond, U.K., built a model that uses artificial intelligence to guess whether a plant species is threatened. Their goal was to promote more plants to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which tracks the extinction risks for plants and animals and is an important channel for conservation funding. “We’re trying to raise the profile because we feel plants often get missed in the conversation about more furry and fluffy things,” said botanist Steven Bachman, the study’s lead author. Bachman’s team hopes to expand representation of the oft-overlooked kingdom on the influential list.
New Zealand’s quest to save its rotund, flightless parrots by Rina Diane Caballar at Knowable magazine. New Zealand was once a land of flightless birds like the extinct moa — no terrestrial mammalian predators in sight. That changed in the 13th century, when Māori voyagers brought rats and dogs, and again in the 19th century, when European settlers brought more rats, cats and mustelids like weasels, stoats and ferrets. These predators have played a major role in putting at risk some 300 native species on New Zealand’s two main islands and smaller offshore islands, taking an especially heavy toll on flightless birds like kākāpō. Now listed as critically endangered, the kākāpō teetered on the edge of extinction in the mid-1900s due to hunting, predators and land clearance. From the 1970s, conservation efforts focused on managing the remaining kākāpō on the country’s offshore islands, where predators are systematically eradicated. Due to those ongoing efforts, which include breeding programs, veterinary treatment and supplementary food, parrot numbers have grown from fewer than 60 in 1995 to more than 200 today. That success, plus lack of space in offshore islands, led New Zealand’s Department of Conservation and Ngāi Tahu, the Māori tribe whose people serve as traditional guardians of the kākāpō, to find a new habitat for the parrots. Starting in July 2023, relocations began to the 8,400-acre Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, a predator-free haven enclosed by one of the world’s longest pest-proof fences.
ECO-Twxxt
ECOPINION
COP28 Is Where People Go to Make Promises They Don’t Intend to Keep by Kate Aronoff at The New Republic. Just a few days into COP28—the U.N. climate talks happening now in Dubai—world leaders have made a dizzying number of pledges. Some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies have pledged to curb methane emissions and eliminate emissions from their operations. Sixty-three countries have vowed to limit emissions from cooling systems, like refrigeration and air conditioning. Twenty-two countries have promised to triple nuclear energy capacity. The U.S. has said it will deliver $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, a U.N. pot to finance mitigation projects. You probably shouldn’t take any of these too seriously. Such pledges are designed to make it look like this year’s climate talks are off to a roaring start, despite headlines suggesting COP28 is more like a retreat for fossil fuel executives. In reality, unenforceable pledges have relatively little bearing on what negotiators are there to do—and paint a much more optimistic picture than the one being discussed in negotiating rooms.
For Too Many Kids, Getting Outside Is Easier Said Than Done by Ben Jealous at Sierra magazine. According to analysis of 2017 demographic data by Conservation Science Partners, people of color were three times more likely than white people to live in an area that is considered nature deprived, with people who identified as Black or African American being the group most likely to live in one of these areas. Sixty-eight percent of people who identified as Black or African American lived in a nature deprived area. Seventy percent of low-income people did. And a whopping 76 percent of low-income people of color lived in a nature deprived area. Lack of nature access is not only an issue of one’s physical proximity to a park or green space. People of color, especially Black people, have an unfortunate history in this country of segregation and exclusion from public lands and natural places. We’ve been met with threats and violence while in nature. And for too long we were even excluded from the conservation movement fighting to protect natural lands. The consequences of this are still felt today. What does this nature gap and nature deficit mean for our kids? Years of studies have shown that children who spend less time outdoors are more likely to deal with physical health problems, ranging from childhood obesity to vitamin D deficiency, as well as reduced motor skills development and higher rates of emotional illnesses like anxiety and depression. [...] That’s why I’m glad that this week marks a broad, rejuvenated push for Congress to pass the bipartisan Outside For All Act, which would increase access to nature and opportunities for outdoor recreation in urban and low-income communities.
Too much stuff: Can we solve our addiction to consumerism? by Chip Colwell at The Guardian. Alarmed by the rising tide of waste we are all creating, my family and I decided to try to make do with much less. But while individual behavior is important, real change will require action on a far bigger scale. Mass consumption has brought numerous benefits: jobs and financial wealth, physical safety and security. New ways of connecting, talking and thinking. Easy travel to nearly anywhere in the world. Lights that keep the dark nights at bay. Music constantly available.But the costs have also been staggering. Economic inequality and wars over non-renewable resources have killed untold numbers. The steep increase in products in recent decades has accelerated pollutant emissions, deforestation and climate breakdown. It has depleted water supplies and contributed to the rapid extinction of animals. There are vast “garbage patches” floating across the world’s oceans, with infinite bits of microplastics working their way into food webs. Even if we accept the positives of mass consumption to date, we must acknowledge that the situation is unsustainable. And yet, we can’t seem to stop ourselves.
We need to reframe our thinking about what’s wild by Ruxandra Guidi at High Country News. For years now, researchers like Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, have acknowledged that animals are conscious beings, capable of complex feelings like empathy and emotion. Yet that awareness hasn’t been enough to change our behavior toward them. Then again, it sadly—and obviously—hasn’t kept us from hurting our fellow human beings, either. We haven’t changed, even though we now know that our impact—not just on wild animals but on the ecosystems that they, and we, depend on—won’t be easily reversed. Let’s take the Arizona Mexican wolf pup reintroduction effort that I heard about in the news: Back in the 1970s, the species was on the edge of extinction—the last sighting of a Mexican wolf in the wild happened in 1970. Then, 25 years ago, a federal reintroduction program was launched in New Mexico and Arizona; today, almost 250 Mexican wolves are believed to be in the wild, although every year, humans illegally kill one out of 10. Think about it: For the past 25 years, scientists have been working diligently to restore the native wolf population, and yet are unable to neutralize its greatest threat. The wolf recovery effort is necessary, but it’s extremely difficult because we humans keep getting in the way. We hold the key to the animals’ future: Whether they survive or go extinct largely depends on us.
Open Letter: The World Needs A Transformational Outcome, Not More Voluntary Pledges. The excerpted letter below was presented Dec. 1 to COP28 presiding officer Sultan al-Jaber by more than 300 civic organizations: “The COP28 Presidency has an opportunity to secure a transformational negotiated outcome, if it secures a robust negotiated energy package, including an unambiguous agreement to end all new oil and gas expansion, a clear call to equitably and rapidly phase out all fossil fuels, and a commitment to triple deployment of nature-positive and community-beneficial renewable energy and double energy efficiency. However, instead of focusing on this historic opportunity, the COP28 Presidency appears to have been encouraging fossil fuel companies to make yet another set of hollow voluntary pledges, with no accountability mechanism or guarantee the companies will follow through. Releasing another in the long succession of voluntary industry commitments that end up being breached will not make COP28 a success. Voluntary efforts are insufficient, and are a distraction from the task at hand. [...] COP28 must adopt a comprehensive energy transformation package with legal force – including a full, fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout, renewable energy and energy efficiency targets, real protections for people and nature, and massively scaled up public funding on fair terms. This is a chance for the COP28 Presidency to show true leadership.” A list of signatories is available at the link
Uncounted Emissions: The Hidden Cost of Fossil Fuel Exports by Bill McKibben at Yale Environment 360. Oil, gas, and coal exports are not counted when countries tally their greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement. This allows wealthy nations to report progress on emissions reduction goals, while shipping their fossil fuels—and the pollution they produce— overseas. If the liquefied natural gas (LNG) buildout continues as planned, for instance, by 2030 U.S. LNG exports will be responsible for more greenhouse gases than every house, car, and factory in the European Union. The emissions, under the U.N. accounting system, will show up on the scorecards of the EU and the dozens of mostly Asian nations that will buy the gas. But if you could see them in the atmosphere, they would be red, white, and blue. Exactly the same thing is true of a handful of other nations—in fact, some are even more grotesque in their hypocrisy, if not their impact. Norway has, arguably, done as good a job as any country on earth on moving past oil and gas; almost every new car in the country runs on electricity. But it’s planning one of the dozen biggest expansions in national oil and gas production, almost all of it for export. Canada and Australia fall into the same basket. Indeed, a remarkable new report from Oil Change International (OCI) found that those four countries (the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Norway), along with the U.K., account for just over half of the planned expansion in oil and gas between now and mid-century. In most cases the project licenses have already been granted, and unless officials intervene, the damage (enough carbon and methane to take us past the Paris climate targets) is locked in.
If the U.S. wants more 15-minute cities, it should start in the suburbs by Michael J. Coren at The Washington Post. Cities are in a hurry. Many are declaring themselves 15-minute metros, promising access to housing, shopping, schools and jobs within a 15-minute-or-so walk, bike or transit ride. And who wouldn’t want to live nearly next door to life’s pleasures and necessities? Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo campaigned on the premise. Sydney has proclaimed itself a 20-minute metro (Melbourne is aiming for a more modest 30 minutes). In the United States, cities including Ann Arbor, Mich., and Cleveland are embracing the concept, while Portland’s Complete Neighborhoods and Eugene’s “20-minute living” are putting their own spin on the idea in Oregon. But the 15-minute city — as it is often understood — has inspired fierce pushback. In its journey from urban planning circles to the public arena, some have falsely claimed it will imprison people within a 15-minute radius of their homes (it’s about convenience and freedom, advocates argue, not isolation). Some urban planners object to the idea. They say that not everyone’s workplace can be within a 15 minute walk, shrinking a metropolitan area’s job market. Amid smoldering housing and climate crises, the 15-minute-city concept offers a way out of both, reducing our dependence on cars to go about our daily lives and freeing us to spend our time as we choose. To realize this, we need to look to an unlikely place: the first suburbs.
GREEN LINKS
Twin research indicates that a vegan diet improves cardiovascular health • Don’t be fooled: CCS is no solution to oil and gas emissions • Study Warns Human Health Still 'At the Mercy' of Fossil Fuels • New U.S. solar capacity additions have edged past natural gas in 2023 • New EIA analysis reveals that gaps in the Global Methane Pledge are threatening its success • Big Oil influence at UN talks thwarts progress towards reaching an effective Global Plastics Treaty • Pollution is Displacing Black Midwesterners. White Homeowners are Profiting • New calf brings new hope, and new concerns, for embattled Sumatran rhinos • Republicans bash Biden methane rule • California’s rooftop solar policy is killing its rooftop solar industry