Environment – Page 14 – Things Are Good

Australia Taking Action on Climate Change

Australia (like Canada) has a well-deserved reputation of being a laggard on climate issues and being one of the worst polluters on the planet. The recent Australian election results will likely change that. Australians have been suffering the effects of climate change in the form of increased flooding and devastating fires.

The new coalition government has ambitions to reduce the damage the country does to the planet while ensuring that the people in the country reap the benefits of a green economy. Let’s hope Australia‘s efforts push other commonwealth countries to increase their environmental efforts.

“It’s a very clear illustration of the concern that Australians have and their desire for climate action,” says Amanda McKenzie, CEO of the Climate Council, a nonprofit organization dedicated to climate change communication. The hope is that the new Labor government will quickly improve Australia’s poor track record on carbon emissions.

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“There is no more important time to be talking about energy and climate change in Australia than right now, and what we’re inheriting is a decade-long failure to tackle these issues of climate, energy, and security,” says Madeline Taylor, deputy director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Innovation and Transformation at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Kelp Could be the Carbon Capture King

The simple kelp plant could help us suck carbon out of the air in large quantities, and if so then we need more kelp – and fast! Kelp is a seaweed that naturally grows up to two feet per day, which puts it on a similar growth rate to algae which is similar and we’ve looked at before as a carbon sink. Kelp is so good at using carbon that a startup is currently creating a kelp factory that functions as an industrial carbon-removal service.

The company produces groupings of kelp that float on water and absorb carbon, when they get heavy enough the groupings fall to the ocean floor. It’s an imperfect idea and still being tested, but we must remember that climate change will be addressed by thousands of little solutions and not one grand gesture.

At its core, carbon removal is “a mass-transfer problem,” Marty Odlin, Running Tide’s CEO, told me. The key issue is how to move the hundreds of gigatons of carbon emitted by fossil fuels from the “fast cycle,” where carbon flits from fossil fuels to the air to plant matter, back to the “slow cycle,” where they remain locked away in geological storage for millennia. “How do you move that?” Odlin said. “What’s the most efficient way possible to accomplish that mass transfer?” The question is really, really important. The United Nations recently said that carbon removal is “essential” to remedying climate change, but so far, we don’t have the technology to do it cheaply and at scale.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions of American Diet Almost Halved

A simple diet change reduced diet-related greenhouse gas emissions of American adults between 2003 and 2018. The carobon footprint of their diets fell from 4 kilograms of CO2 equivalent to 2.45 kg CO2e over the 15 year study period. All it took was a slight reduction in meat consumption.

As an individual one of the biggest things you can do in the face of climate change is to change your diet. It’s easy and saves you money!

The main reason for this decline emerged clearly in the data: over this same period, daily beef consumption plummeted by an average 40% per person, which accounted for nearly half of the diet-related dip in emissions. But it wasn’t just beef: the data showed a slow shift away from all animal-based foods, including dairy, eggs, chicken, and pork—all of which US citizens gradually consumed less of in 2018 than 2003.

This overall shift away from meat occurred slowly but steadily: on average, the food-related carbon footprint of US consumers declined by 127 grams each year of the study period.

Financial Times Made a Climate Change Game

When you think about climate change coverage in the Financial Times you may assume that they’re writing about how to profit from it; however, the tides have risen. The market-focused publication recently published a short and sweet game that explores how we can avoid climate catastrophe. Through a series of key decisions players need to figure out how to protect the environment and the wealth of the elite. Ultimately, players need to get the global economy to net zero by 2050. Can you do it?

This game was created by the Financial Times. It is based on real science and reporting — however, it is a game, not a perfect simulation of the future.

The emissions modelling was developed in 2022 by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The scenarios used in the IEA’s “Net Zero by 2050” report were recalculated to track the temperature outcomes for specific pathways used in the game.

These climate outcomes were calculated using the IEA’s World Energy Model (WEM) and Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP) model coupled with the MAGICC v7+ climate model.

MAGICC stands for Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change and is used by scientists and integrated assessment models.

Play it now.

Thanks to Geoff!

EU Says No to Forever Chemicals

The dangers of microplastics and “forever chemicals” are well known and now legislators in the European Union are acting to protect their people from these primarily petroleum-based creations. New restrictions on what chemicals can be used and sold a in the EU will add to their already strong protections.

The EU is set to add to and reformat their legislation around chemical use in consumer products to better protect people. One of the goals is to prevent companies trying to bypass the consumer protections by creating new chemical compounds which are more dangerous than the original. Increased standards in the EU tend to help people in other parts of the world because companies are forced to change their ways in such a large market.

The plan focuses on entire classes of chemical substances for the first time as a rule, including all flame retardants, bisphenols, PVC plastics, toxic chemicals in single-use nappies and PFAS, which are also known as “forever chemicals” because of the time they take to naturally degrade.

All of these will be put on a “rolling list” of substances to be considered for restriction by the European Chemicals Agency. The list will be regularly reviewed and updated, before a significant revision to the EU’s cornerstone Reach regulation for chemicals slated for 2027.