Unearthed today: Beyond climate anxiety
Morning!
There is a tendency when it comes to the environment to adopt a slightly strange and unscientific approach to the news. There’s climate change, the big thing, the Next Big Threat, and things that we can do to prevent that. News which crosses boundaries, doesn’t fit within the neat borders of “environmental reporting”, and then, well, then there’s environmental news which is, y’know, not quite the same.
Only, as we’ve found lately, nature doesn’t quite work like that. It’s not so good at silos.
We’re writing about… Food standards after Brexit
Which is why we continue to write about the standards under which animals are farmed. Large-scale, chemical and drug enabled, industrial farming impacts on bio-diversity, on our ability to prevent future pandemics and also on emissions.
Today we report that the UK government’s food standards agency is readying itself for a “strong push” from other countries for the UK to allow chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef into the UK, documents show, despite repeated ministerial assurances that this will not happen.
In response, ministers have been considering options which could allow the UK to change the rules to allow in the controversial products with little parliamentary scrutiny, according to experts who have seen the documents.
Erik Millstone, professor of science policy at Sussex University, told Unearthed: “Statutory instruments give ministers the power to change food safety rules without parliament being able to debate or amend those policy changes.”
His concerns have been echoed by the National Farmers’ Union. A spokesperson said: “Ministers have been clear that the bans on hormone-fed beef and chemical washes in poultry production will remain in place from January next year. However, it is also clear that these restrictions can be removed easily through secondary legislation, without Parliament debating or voting on the consequences of doing so.
I’m reading about… what’s happening to the world’s energy
I mean, it’s dry, but it’s the annual report from the analysts at the International Energy Agency (IEA) this morning, so needs must.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has caused more disruption to the energy sector than any other event in recent history, leaving impacts that will be felt for years to come,” the Paris-based body said in its long-term outlook surprising nobody.
They think it could take between 3 and 5 years for consumption to return to pre-crisis levels with the impacts felt for decades to come. What this means in practice is probably an earlier than anticipated peaking in fossil fuel use.
“We think the era of global oil demand growth will come to an end in the next 10 years,” Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, told the Financial Times. The energy body had previously said oil demand would level out in the mid-2030s.
Solar, meanwhile, is set to grow rapidly with renewables accounting for 80% of growth in global electricity generation under current conditions.
“I see solar becoming the new king of the world’s electricity markets,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said. “Based on today’s policy settings, it is on track to set new records for deployment every year after 2022.”
Allow yourself a smile, but don’t get too excited. Despite weaker energy demand that is expected to lead to a drop in carbon dioxide emissions, this was still “far from sufficient” to meet the Paris climate goals of limiting temperature rises to well below 2C, the IEA added.
And ecosystem collapse
“When you say that you are urgently looking for climate solutions, yet continue to build a world economy based on extraction and pollution, we know you are lying because we are the closest to the land, and the first to hear her cries,” writes Nemonte Nenquimo cofounder of the Indigenous-led nonprofit organisation Ceibo Alliance in The Guardian.
In that vein, the same paper goes on to report that one-fifth of the world’s countries are at risk of their ecosystems collapsing because of the destruction of wildlife and their habitats, according to an analysis by the insurance firm Swiss Re. Seriously. By an insurance firm.
“If the ecosystem service decline goes on [in countries at risk], you would see then scarcities unfolding even more strongly, up to tipping points,” said Oliver Schelske, lead author of the research.
The report comes as world leaders repeatedly fail spectacularly to tackle the dramatic and extremely rapid destruction of global biodiversity which – frankly – threatens to make climate change look like a relatively manageable and solvable issue.
Why should an insurance firm care? Because they need to know whether to insure the things that may not function once ecosystems start to break. “The services include provision of clean water and air, food, timber, pollination, fertile soil, erosion control, and coastal protection, as well as a measure of habitat intactness.”
All of which brings us to Funghi. Recent science has acknowledged them as key to most natural processes – but very few of them are protected, a new report from Kew notes, and those that are are often at risk.
“Large swathes of the fungal kingdom are intimately associated with plants and so are killed off by the same activities, such as deforestation. Fungi are subject to additional disruptions, from ploughing to the overuse of fungicides and fertilisers. Of the grand total of six medicinal fungi that have had their conservation status assessed by the IUCN, one is listed as vulnerable due to overharvesting. Another species, found to have powerful activity against a range of viruses including herpes and flu, is listed as endangered, threatened with extinction by the destruction of the forests it inhabits.”
Three things you need to know
Florida Sees Signals of a Climate-Driven Housing Crisis: Home sales in areas most vulnerable to sea-level rise began falling around 2013, researchers found. Now, prices are following a similar downward path.
France to rein in export guarantees for oil and gas industry: France will stop providing state export guarantees to projects involving dirty forms of oil such as shale from next year, followed by all types of oil from 2025 and gas from 2035, the finance ministry said on Monday.
UK moves towards post-Brexit carbon charging: Amidst calls for the UK to join the EU’s Green Deal and Biden in proposing a carbon border tax of some kind.