politics – Climate Justice Now

What Now? Reflecting on 2020

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future, Racial Justice December 19, 2020December 19, 20202020, business, future, pandemic, politics, social justice, sustainability

There are a few weeks left of 2020. They might take a few days, or perhaps another few months, to pass—time didn’t move quite logically this year. It seems like a lot of people just want to fast forward through to get to 2021, a year still full with the hope that the vaccine will bring everything back to normal. I’d like to make a counterproposal: what if instead of wishing away what was for most people a bizarre year, we stop for a moment and look back at it? And what if instead of wishing for a return to the normal, we embrace the good that comes of change?

2020 was the year of COVID, of race protests, of isolation, one of the most dramatic U.S. elections in living memory. It was the year of the unprecedented. The borders closed between European countries for the first time since the establishment of the European Union. The border between the U.S. and Europe closed for the first time ever—and seems to be staying that way. Everything we accepted as normal, the good and the bad, tore away to reveal a messy, imperfect world. It’s a dark planet, but even from space it glitters with the lights of all our cities, grids connecting billions of people’s lives and stories. Perhaps in this year’s darkness the lights shone even brighter, because there was so much good in 2020, too.

This year, global conflict became unavoidably personal for everyone. This article phrases it perfectly, “In some ways, the pandemic has been a dress rehearsal for the climate crisis. Human beings throughout the world have been called upon to embrace science, change their lifestyles and make sacrifices for the common good.” This year was about awareness—maybe that’s why Americans’ concern about the climate crisis rose from 44% to an all-time high of 60% this year. Perhaps they realized that it’s no coincidence emissions dropped 9% at the same time that travel and consumption slowed—the biggest yearly drop on record. Though emissions are expected to increase again next year, they still won’t be higher than any year since 1990. Yet another reason this year’s timeline feels off: in some ways we’ve been time traveling. In San Francisco, traffic levels across the Golden Gate Bridge fell to levels similar to the 1950s, resulting in coyotes wandering across. The drop in noise from our usually bustling cities caused a change in bird song: “While it might have seemed to human ears that bird song got louder, the sparrows actually sang more quietly,” explains Dr. Elizabeth Derryberry of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

We also moved forward in time, making huge and exciting progress toward the future of global energy, renewables. During shutdowns, with reduced demand for power, grid operators relied more on cheaper renewable energy sources, and almost 10% of electricity generation in most parts of the world were sourced from renewable energy sources. Denmark, already a leader in wind energy, just announced that it will stop providing licenses for oil exploration in the North Sea, preventing the extraction of about 150 million barrels of oil by 2050. The plan, which Climate and Energy Minister Dan Jorgensen announced as a historic step toward a fossil-free future that will “resonate around the world,” was created as an economic response to the pandemic.

So with the present as an exciting conglomeration of the future and past, all de-familiarized by the fact that we’re still living through it, I ask…now what? What does the future need to look like, across government, business, and society, to create a clean and just world? In the United States, leaders would do well to learn from Nordic countries, China and India, and Sub-Saharan Africa. President-elect Biden’s outline of some of his climate goals, including rejoining the Paris Agreement, is cause for hope, but the support of the judiciary, in addition to the executive and lawmakers, is necessary. Globally, a total of 1,587 cases of climate litigation have been brought between 1986 and mid-2020: 1,213 cases in the U.S. and 374 cases in 36 other countries and eight regional or international jurisdictions. These numbers are increasing rapidly, and according to this LSE study, “These cases play an important supporting role in ensuring the national implementation of international emissions-reduction commitments, the alignment of national laws with the Paris Agreement, and the enforcement of laws and policies relating to climate resilience.” This year, in the U.S., a federal judge ruled that the highly controversial Dakota Access Pipeline be shut down because federal officials failed to adequately analyze the project’s environmental impact. Also this year, in Portugal, six young people filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, demanding accountability from 33 top-emitting countries for the climate crisis and that funds for economic restoration from the pandemic are spent in a way that ensures a rapid transition to renewable energy. While individual executive leadership is important, the role of other branches of government, and of international organizations, cannot be dismissed.

Change on a government level is infamously slow—passing progressive plans through multiple levels of bureaucracy and special interests can hardly be the only way to enact change, though it’s undoubtedly an important one. Businesses also have a role to play in ensuring a rapid transition to sustainability. From simplifying global supply chains to replacing physical structures with digital platforms, businesses occupy a unique position that enables not just rapid reaction to shifting norms but also the ability to spearhead change. One hundred companies are responsible for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions, and massive corporations must be accountable for their impact on the planet. In this area, there is good news. Walmart has cut 230 million metric tons of greenhouse gases out of its supply chain in the past three years, Uniliver vowed to replace the petrochemicals found in its detergents and household cleaners with renewable or recycled alternatives, Apple committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2030, and Lyft said 100% of its trips will be in electric vehicles within the decade. In the realm of startups and investors, a changing mindset is even more evident. Green startups are more common than ever, reimagining everything from how nitrogen fertilizer is created for global agriculture to how to simultaneously reduce food waste and hunger.

More than simply building back better, we need to build back equal, creating social change that reduces inequality as we focus on green growth. What a just transition entails varies by country, depending on the place’s particular culture, norms, and historical legacies, so there is no one solution to be prescribed in order to ensure equality and effective reform everywhere. But there is one commonality, one overarching goal we must keep in mind as the world pulls itself out of this chaotic year, and this unsustainable epoch of human history: what comes next is entirely up to us. The actions that governments, businesses, and individuals take now will affect everyone for generations to come. There is only one global climate future—the one whose foundations are being built by the decisions we make today.

Featured image from La Croix

A Clear Solution

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 16, 2020October 16, 2020climate change, economy, politics, rebuilding, renewables, solutions project

In my last blog, I discussed the importance of keeping environmental sustainability goals in mind when rebuilding the economy as we weather and eventually emerge from this global health crisis. I think it’s crucial to note that not only is it important to rebuild sustainably, but it is also entirely feasible, and actually the strongest option economically. I think the public has this general conception of there being a need to wait for some kind of miracle solution that scientists need to labor over for many more years to come, before the transition to renewables can occur. This is far from the case. Research on solutions to climate change is well supported, the technology needed to transition already exists, and the only thing still lacking is the public’s understanding of the facts of climate change, so that policies will finally support what scientists have long known. The time for the public to come to this realization is now, as we look beyond this year of chaos and horror into a still-undetermined future.

In 2011, Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson co-founded The Solutions Project, an advocacy group with the goal of promoting a policy shift to support 100% renewable energy by 2050. The project’s comprehensive research details how switching to renewables actually leads to a huge cost decrease for top-emitting countries like the United States. As the world’s top emitter of carbon per capita, the health and energy security of the country are at stake if the U.S. doesn’t speed up its transition. If the current energy norms continue, the estimated aggregate private and social costs are $2.1 and $5.9 trillion per year, respectively, whereas those of wind-water-solar energy are both $0.77 trillion per year.

Social cost refers to the full cost to society of adding one additional ton of CO2 to the atmosphere, and is used to understand both current and future climate damages, and to set policies like a carbon tax. 63,000 deaths caused by air pollution-related illnesses in the U.S. could be prevented by 2050 if we switch to 100% renewable energy. The switch would also create two million net long-term, full-time U.S. jobs. As a whole, a complete U.S. transition would reduce yearly aggregate energy costs, health-care costs and mortality, climate damage, and would create jobs—all vital aims after a year that has seen the U.S. plunge into recession, the unemployment rate soar, and the healthcare system become more burdened than ever as a result of the pandemic.

Graphic by A.K. von Krauland and M.Z. Jacobson

The early implementation of renewables will translate to enormous savings in money not lost to rescues after major hurricanes (which are caused increasingly by climate change), infrastructural damage, and abandoned property. The transition would also make the U.S. less dependent on foreign sources of energy, which could be hugely beneficial politically. Fear of attacks on the energy grid would be greatly diminished by the flexibility that renewables provide, making energy infrastructure a matter of national security. In short, if the use of fossil fuels is not rapidly diminished, rising demand for increasingly scare fossil energy will lead to economic, social, and political instability, enhancing international conflict.

Power providers can often build wind and solar farms more quickly than larger‐capacity conventional generating plants. This can enable them to meet incremental demand growth with less economic risk. The employment of renewable energy systems diversifies the fuel mix of utility companies, thereby reducing the danger of fuel shortages, fuel cost hikes, and power interruptions, while meeting demand for reduced greenhouse gas emissions. This translates to a higher energy resilience due to the nature of distributed renewable energy, which is far more difficult to disrupt than a centralized power plant.

Beyond the indisputable facts and figures, I believe so strongly in switching to renewable energy sources because I’ve witnessed the effects of climate change firsthand, where I grew up in Miami, and where the water levels are rising rapidly. I remember tense drives home from school after hours of thunderstorms, when half a dozen cars stalled on the street because the flooding from the rain reached their tailpipes. We had to navigate our car through water that was in some places several feet high. Driving to South Beach on weekends, we complained of the endless construction—as soon as one project to raise the barriers between the canals and the street concluded, the next began to raise them even higher. Still, despite the increase in devastating hurricanes that tear through my hometown almost yearly, another result of climate change, we watch as skyscrapers continue to be built along the few remaining undeveloped stretches of beach. It would be a laughable exercise in denial if it weren’t so sad to think that I have no idea if the city will be recognizable just a few decades from now. Here too, the cost is not just personal, but also financial. A new study shows that if action isn’t taken, the damage to South Florida will surpass $38 billion by 2070. Prioritizing raising and floodproofing streets and buildings, and armoring the coast, over the continued short-sighted investment in real estate could in the not-so-long term save billions of dollars and create countless jobs.

As a whole in my hometown, the rest of the U.S., and the world, transitioning to renewable energy has proven social and economic benefits. We already know what to do, and how to do it, and why it’s important. The miracle solution we’ve been waiting for is this— the realization that we can still fix this, now.

Featured Image from Physics World

Written by Francesca von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.