Category: Sustainable World -Farm Environmental

‘A risk for the future’: How warming oceans are disrupting America’s seafood supply

Yahoo Finance

‘A risk for the future’: How warming oceans are disrupting America’s seafood supply

Yvette Killian, Producer Yahoo Finance         May 12, 2020

Recorded temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are increasing at an “alarming” rate, according to one scientist, and forcing fisherman to confront a seafood industry primed for disruption.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts recorded 2017 as the warmest year on record for water temperatures in the Northeast. Glen Gawarkiewicz, a senior scientist at the institution, said 2019 was equally “disturbing,” adding that over the past seven years, water temperatures off southern New England have increased by nine degrees Fahrenheit, faster than any region outside of the Arctic.

“The ocean is changing pretty rapidly,” Gawarkiewicz said. “Typically temperature variations might be two degrees Fahrenheit there, and fish are probably sensitive at about one degree Fahrenheit there. So it’s almost an order of magnitude more that you normally need to get some kind of change.”

With 2020 already shaping up to be one of the warmest years on record, there is growing concern about the sustainability of the fishing practices that have dominated this region for generations. Scientists say lobster, a mainstay in waters off of Cape Cod, are moving further north into deeper waters, while warm-water fish are moving in. The dramatic shifts are re-shaping the ecosystem here, potentially putting the traditional food-supply in jeopardy.

“Certainly many of the locally caught seafoods in New England are iconic,” Gawarkiewicz said. “I think it is a risk for the future there.”

SANDWICH, MA - JULY 17: A lobster is removed from a trap at the Sandwich Marina in Sandwich, MA on July 17, 2019. Melting arctic ice is pumping fresh water into the ocean around Greenland and weakening an ancient current that pulses cold water down the East Coast. With that cold water spigot turned down, a surge of warm water that travels north from the tropics is increasingly encroaching on the Gulf of Maine, the basin of the Atlantic whose southern boundary is marked by the Cape. For thousands of years, this frigid, 36,000-square-mile bathtub was home to countless cold-water creatures. But in recent years, it has been warming faster than 99 percent of the worlds oceans. Species that are able, including lobsters, are seeking more hospitable waters, touching off a great undersea migration. To the millions of us who visit Cape Cod once or twice a summer, the effects of climate change can seem subtle, if we see them at all: A breach in the dunes. A crack in the pavement. But once you know how to see what is shifting, changing and washing away, it is impossible to ignore. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)View photos. A lobster is removed from a trap at the Sandwich Marina in Sandwich, MA on July 17, 2019. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Fears about that risk of warming climates have only been magnified by the coronavirus outbreak. As lawmakers look to craft economic policy to lead countries out of this pandemic, researchers, as well as citizens concerned with the fallout from greenhouse-gas emissions, have urged governments to adapt sustainable solutions, to avoid exacerbating a public health crisis with a climate crisis. The sudden shutdown, caused by stay-at-home restrictions are expected to reduce CO2 emmissions by 8% this year, strengthening the case for collective, global action.

Diversification a necessity

For his part, Gawarkiewicz believes that the region needs to diversify economically — meaning expanding beyond traditional catches like American lobster and supplementing with other, non-traditional species, like the Jonah crab.

“Jonah Crabs used to almost be like trash. People would throw them away,” said Bobby Colbert, a longtime fisherman who, along with his brother Denny, operates a fleet of boats out of Sandwich, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and has been fishing the mid-Atlantic waters for 35 years.

The market for Jonah Crabs has spiked, growing from only about 1 million pounds being caught in 1990 to 19 million pounds last year, according to Aubrey Ellerston, a researcher with the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation.

“It’s a huge economy now on our East Coast,” she said, “and it supports hundreds of fishing families and allows lobstermen to diversify and reduce their dependence on lobstering.”

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MENEMSHA, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES - 2013/10/20: Shack, lobster traps and boats in fishing village. (Photo by John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)View photos. MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MENEMSHA, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES – 2013/10/20: Shack, lobster traps and boats in fishing village. (Photo by John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)

How temperatures affect lobster

Historically, lobster “landings” — the industry word for “catches” — have been primarily been in shallow waters closer to shore. But warming oceans are sending lobsters, and those who catch them, farther out.

“It’s been well documented that bottom water temperature really impacts American lobster. So it affects their growth, maturity, their egg extrusion and development. So many females are trying to seek cooler waters to protect egg development,” explained Ellerston.

According WHOI’s research, the rise in ocean temperatures is also bringing non-native species into the waters off New England. “One of the most dramatic examples recently was in January of 2017. There were juvenile black sea bass that were caught near Block Island, south off the coast of Rhode Island,” said Gawarkiewicz, adding, “that had never happened before.”

The changes in ocean temperatures and a drive for more data have created an unlikely alliance between fishers and scientists. Fishermen, once concerned about restrictions placed on them through government intervention, are now working alongside scientists in a mutually beneficial arrangement — to preserve the industry.

“Fishermen do talk about it a lot. And a lot of fishermen are like, ‘Yeah, they’re trying to get us. They’re going to close us down.’ Well that’s not the whole thing,” Colbert said. “We’re working at it together, how do we keep it around? I mean, we’re creating a food source so we want to protect that.”

Colbert remains optimistic about the fishing industry, despite shifts in the supply chain brought on by warming ocean waters. He thinks fishers will adapt to changing conditions as good stewards of the sea — partly as a matter of necessity.

“I think the generation that we have fishing now is more concerned about the resources and protecting it, but also knowing it’s how we make a living,” he said. “It has be sustainable, because I mean, we want to pass something on to the next generation.”

Yvette Killian is a producer for Yahoo Finance’s On The Move.

Biggest Power Demand Plunge Since Great Depression Is Reshaping Markets

Bloomberg – Business

Biggest Power Demand Plunge Since Great Depression Is Reshaping Markets

Mark Chediak, Chris Martin and Rachel Morison       
Biggest Power Demand Plunge Since Great Depression Is Reshaping Markets
Biggest Power Demand Plunge Since Great Depression Is Reshaping Markets

 

(Bloomberg) — The global plunge in electricity demand will drag on long after nations lift stay-at-home orders, leading to the biggest annual drop since the Great Depression and fundamentally reshaping power markets.

As economies struggle to recover, worldwide electricity consumption will decline 5% in 2020, the most in more than eight decades, according to the International Energy Agency. In the U.S. last week, government analysts projected the nation’s biggest drop on record. And in Europe, analysts say a full recovery could take years.

The prolonged slowdown will increase economic pressure on older, uneconomic power plants — especially those that burn coal — and help speed the transition toward cleaner and cheaper wind and solar. It will also contribute to the biggest annual decline in greenhouse gasses from energy ever recorded.

“This unprecedented drop in demand is foreshadowing the grid of the future,” said Steve Cicala, an economics professor at the University of Chicago. The world is “getting an early look at what high penetrations of renewables will do.”

Lower demand is pitting generators against each other in a fight to produce the cheapest power possible. Wind and solar farms have an upper hand in many regions because they don’t need to buy fuel. Natural gas, which is trading near historic lows, remains competitive. Coal power, which is more expensive, is shouldering the majority of the cuts as generators scale back.

“Renewables will be the biggest beneficiaries,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute.As coal and oil use ebb, energy emissions are set to drop by a record 8% this year, according to the IEA.

While wind and solar are producing a larger share of power, they’re not unscathed. Power auctions are being suspended in France, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, sapping the need for additional clean-energy projects. For the first time in two decades, the number of new wind and solar farms globally is set to decline this year, the IEA said in a report Wednesday.Read More: U.S. Power Demand to be ‘Profoundly’ Hit as Lockdowns Spread

Some of the steepest drops in electricity consumption will be in Europe, where 2020 demand is forecast to fall 8%, according to the IEA.  In Germany, companies including RWE AG and Uniper SE are running coal generators less and relying more on gas plants. Electricite de France SA warned low demand will mean output from its nuclear reactors will fall by more than a fifth this year.

A similar dynamic is playing out in the U.S. retail power sales across the 50 states will sink 4.5% this year, the most since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began keeping records in 1949. Coal is on pace for the first time ever to produce less electricity nationwide than renewable energy.

In Asia, power consumption is forecast to rebound faster. Nations where industrial production accounts for a large chunk of the economy, such as China and India, also had some of the strictest lockdowns — a combination that hammered demand, according to BloombergNEF analyst Ali Asghar. While the IEA sees demand in China, the world’s top energy user, falling this year, official estimates put consumption in May already above last year’s levels and on course to grow as much as 3% in 2020.

Eventually, global demand for power will resume growing as nations turn more to electricity to power cars, heat homes and more, analysts said. But for now, the power sector faces a long, slow recovery.

“I don’t think we are going to turn everything on tomorrow,”  Melissa Lott, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “I don’t see how that happens.”

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

He opposed public lands and wildlife protections. Trump gave him a top environment job

The Guardian – Politics

He opposed public lands and wildlife protections. Trump gave him a top environment job

Jimmy Tobias                            
<span>Photograph: Matthew Brown/AP</span>
Photograph: Matthew Brown/AP

 

In July 2017, William Perry Pendley, a crusading conservative attorney, delivered a speech to a group of rightwing activists in North Carolina in which he was completely candid about his ideological commitments.

He accused “the media” of selling “their soul to the greens”. And after criticizing the Endangered Species Act, he made light of killing endangered species.

“This is why out west we say ‘shoot, shovel and shut up’ when it comes to the discovery of endangered species on your property,” he said, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by the Guardian. “And I have to say, as a lawyer, that’s not legal advice,” he added, as some in his audience quietly snickered at the reference to the illegal extermination, and the burial, of endangered animals.

It has been almost three years since he gave those remarks, and Pendley is now the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, a powerful agency that oversees more than 240m acres of federal land belonging to the American people, manages mineral resources and is required to comply with environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act.

Pendley has helped turn BLM into what one high-level employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, called “a ghost ship” in which “suspicion”, “fear” and “low morale” abound, despite the best efforts of career civil servants to support each other.

As Pendley and his superiors at the interior department press ahead with an effort to move BLM’s headquarters from Washington DC to Grand Junction, Colorado, the agency has hemorrhaged staff members and lost critical institutional memory, which many critics believe was the true purpose of the relocation effort all along.

“A skeleton crew is left” at BLM headquarters, said the employee. “So few people were able to move west that a lot of people retired early and a lot of people took other jobs, so my ballpark estimate is there is only about 20% of permanent employees left” at headquarters. As a result, the agency is failing to fulfill its most basic duties, like responding to public records requests and conducting oversight of state and regional operations, the staffer added.

Environmental and government watchdog groups are now responding with a lawsuit that calls into question the legitimacy of Pendley’s position. Last week a pair of environmental nonprofits sued the interior department, alleging that by repeatedly tapping Pendley as the BLM’s acting director, rather than officially nominating him for the position, the interior secretary has skirted the Senate confirmation process usually required for high-level executive branch appointments, and has violated federal law.

“The illegitimate Pendley appointment is particularly troublesome because he has forcibly moved the BLM Headquarters from Washington DC, to remote western Colorado,” said Peter Jenkins, a senior counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, one of the groups that sued. “In doing so he uprooted the lives of scores of seasoned BLM staff and disrupted this already strained agency.”

An interior department spokesperson defended Pendley’s record.

<span class="element-image__caption">The Trump administration rolled back key provisions of the Endangered Species Act, a law credited with saving the gray wolf, bald eagle and grizzly bear.</span> <span class="element-image__credit">Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images</span>The Trump administration rolled back key provisions of the Endangered Species Act, a law credited with saving the gray wolf, bald eagle and grizzly bear. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images

 

“Mr Pendley brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the department and is committed to carrying out the administration’s priorities and achieving the BLM’s … mission for the betterment of the American people,” said Conner Swanson, the spokesperson. “Mr Pendley has provided a steady hand in facilitating important matters, from the BLM headquarters move west to its response to Covid-19.” Swanson has said that the lawsuit against Pendley is “baseless”.

Pendley, a tall man with a handlebar mustache and a penchant for cowboy boots, has remarked in the past that his “personal opinions are irrelevant” to his job at BLM.

“I have a new job now. I’m a zealous advocate for my client. My client is the American people and my bosses are the president of the United States and [interior] secretary [David] Bernhardt,” Pendley said during an appearance at the conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Fort Collins, Colorado, last year. “What I thought, what I wrote, what I did in the past is irrelevant. I have orders, I have laws to obey, and I intend to do that.”

Pendley has long opposed public lands and wildlife protections. After serving in the Reagan administration in the 1980s, he became the president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), a conservative litigation organization funded by conservative and industry groups including the Charles Koch Foundation and Exxon Mobil, according to research from the watchdog groups Documented and Accountable.US.

Under Pendley’s leadership, the firm was a persistent foe of federal land agencies, getting involved in dozens of cases on behalf of industry groups and private landowners to challenge environmental protections implemented by the interior department.

Pendley became something of a fixture among the anti-government set, writing numerous books extolling rebellion against public lands and the federal government. He has expressed sympathy in the past for the Bundy family, whose militant agitation against federal land ownership included the armed takeover of the Malheur national wildlife refuge in 2016.

He has compared climate change to unicorns because “neither exist”. And in a 2016 National Review article, he laid out a case that argued for the near-total abolition of federal public lands across the nation.

Given his long history of legal advocacy on behalf of extractive industries, Pendley brought with him a 17-page recusal list of past clients, employers and investments when he took control of the BLM in 2019. The list included groups such as the American Exploration & Mining Association and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. It has been nearly impossible for the public to know whether Pendley has abided by his recusal list, however, because the BLM has failed to release his detailed official calendar to the public.

Though Pendley has long been a committed conservative, he has not always had kind words for Donald Trump. In a 2016 op-ed in the Daily Caller, for instance, he said then-candidate Trump “is not fit to pull off Reagan’s boots”.

Apart from Pendley’s role in moving BLM’s headquarters to Colorado, the agency under his leadership has also repeatedly proposed land management plans that heavily promote the energy industry. In March, for instance, conservationists in Montana came out aggressively against a BLM resource management plan that they believe is far too friendly to corporate oil and gas interests, according to the Billings Gazette.

In a statement issued earlier this year, Representative Raúl Grijalva, the chairman of the House natural resources committee, expressed his concerns over Pendley.

“Anyone who wants our land management agencies to be functional in the future needs to recognize the seriousness of what Secretary Bernhardt, acting director Pendley, and their subordinates are doing.”

Unsuitable for ‘human life to flourish’: Up to 3 Billion will live in extreme heat by 2070, study warns

USA Today

Unsuitable for ‘human life to flourish’: Up to 3 Billion will live in extreme heat by 2070, study warns

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY                   May 4, 2020

 

If global warming continues unchecked, the heat that’s coming later this century in some parts of the world will bring “nearly unlivable” conditions for up to 3 billion people, a study released Monday said.

The authors predict that by 2070,  much of the world’s population is likely to live in climate conditions that are “warmer than conditions deemed suitable for human life to flourish.”

The study warned that unless greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed, average annual temperatures will rise beyond the climate “niche” in which humans have thrived for 6,000 years.

That “niche” is equivalent to average yearly temperatures of roughly 52 to 59 Fahrenheit. The researchers found that people, despite all forms of innovations and migrations, have mostly lived in these climate conditions for several thousand years.

“We show that in a business-as-usual climate change scenario, the geographical position of this temperature niche is projected to shift more over the coming 50 years than it has moved (in the past 6,000 years),” the study warned.

Climate change: 2020 expected to be Earth’s warmest year on record, scientists say

These brutally hot climate conditions are currently experienced by just 0.8% of the global land surface, mostly in the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert, but by 2070 the conditions could spread to 19% of the Earth’s land area.
These brutally hot climate conditions are currently experienced by just 0.8% of the global land surface, mostly in the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert, but by 2070 the conditions could spread to 19% of the Earth’s land area.

 

The future scenario used in the paper is one in which atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are high. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas releases “greenhouse” gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane into Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. The emissions have caused the planet’s temperatures to rise to levels that cannot be explained by natural factors, scientists report.

Temperatures over the next few decades are projected to increase rapidly as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions.

Without climate mitigation or migration, by 2070 a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to average annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today, the study said. These brutally hot climate conditions are currently experienced by just 0.8% of the global land surface, mostly in the hottest parts of the Sahara Desert, but by 2070 the conditions could spread to 19% of the Earth’s land area.

This includes large portions of northern Africa, the Middle East, northern South America, South Asia, and parts of Australia.

“Large areas of the planet would heat to barely survivable levels and they wouldn’t cool down again,” said study co-author Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “Not only would this have devastating direct effects, it leaves societies less able to cope with future crises like new pandemics. The only thing that can stop this happening is a rapid cut in carbon emissions.”

More: Will an ‘unprecedented decline’ in carbon emissions help limit climate change?

Arctic warming: Arctic will see ice-free summers by 2050 as globe warms, study says

Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could halve the number of people exposed to such hot conditions. “The good news is that these impacts can be greatly reduced if humanity succeeds in curbing global warming,” said study co-author Tim Lenton, a climate specialist from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

“Our computations show that each degree warming (Celsius) above present levels corresponds to roughly 1 billion people falling outside of the climate niche,” Lenton said. “It is important that we can now express the benefits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in something more human than just monetary terms.”

The study, which was prepared by an international research team of archaeologists, ecologists and climate scientists, was published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In our current climate, the most extreme heat is restricted to the small black areas in the Sahara Desert region. But by 2070, that area will expand to the shaded areas across portions of Africa, Asia, Australia and South America, according to the study.

Pandemic: Less air pollution means thousands fewer die

AFP – World

Pandemic: Less air pollution means thousands fewer die

Marlowe Hood, AFP                                  

 

Paris (AFP) – There will be 11,000 fewer deaths in European countries under coronavirus lockdown due to a sharp drop in fossil fuel pollution during April, according to research released Thursday.

Measures to halt the spread of coronavirus have slowed the region’s economies to a crawl, with coal-generated power falling by nearly 40 percent, and oil consumption by a third.

“This will result in 11,000 avoided deaths from air pollution,” said lead author Lauri Myllyvirta, senior analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

Globally, oil use has declined by about the same amount, with drops in coal consumption varying by region.

An unintended boon of shuttered factories and empty roads has been more breathable air.

Levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and small particle pollution known as PM2.5 — both toxic by-products burning coal, oil and gas — fell 37 and 10 percent, respectively, according to the findings.

“The impacts are the same or bigger in many other parts of the world,” Myllyvirta told AFP. “So we are looking at an even larger number of avoided deaths.”

In China, for example, NO2 and PM2.5 levels declined by a 25 and 40 percent during the most stringent period of lockdown, with an even sharper fall in Hubei Province, where the global pandemic began.

Air pollution shortens lives worldwide by nearly three years on average, and causes 8.8 million premature deaths annually, according to a study last month.

The World Health Organization (WHO) calculates 4.2 million deaths, but has underestimated the impact on cardiovascular disease, recent research has shown.

Worst-hit is Asia, where average lifespan is cut 4.1 years in China, 3.9 years in India, and 3.8 years in Pakistan.

In Europe, life expectancy is shortened by eight months.

“Our analysis highlights tremendous benefits for public health and quality of life that could be achieved by rapidly reducing fossil fuels in a sustained and sustainable way,” Myllyvirta said.

– Pollution and COVID-19 –

The happenstance evidence that less air pollution saves lives should guide governments deciding on how to reboot their economies, noted Maria Neira, the WHO’s director for Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.

“When we eventually take off our face masks, we want to keep breathing clean air,” she said, commenting on the findings.

“If we truly care about the health of our communities, countries and global commons, we must find ways of powering the planet with out relying on fossil fuels.”

Compared to other causes of premature death, air pollution worldwide kills 19 times more people each year than malaria, nine times more than HIV/AIDS, and three times more than alcohol.

Another study comparing more than 3,000 US counties, meanwhile, found that PM 2.5 pollution is directly linked with higher COVID-19 death rates.

One extra micron per cubic metre corresponded to a 15 percent jump in COVID-19 mortality, researchers at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health reported earlier this month.

The results “suggest that long-term exposure to air pollution increases vulnerability to experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outcomes,” they wrote.

PM 2.5 particles penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing cardiovascular respiratory problems.

In 2013, the WHO classified it as a cancer-causing agent.

In India’s Uttar Pradesh — home to 200 million — small particle pollution by itself slashes life expectancy by 8.5 years, while in China’s Hebei Province (population 74 million) the shortfall is nearly six years, according to the Air Quality Life Index, developed by researchers at the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago.

All but two percent of China’s cities exceeded WHO guidelines for PM2.5 levels, while 53 percent exceeded less stringent national safety limits.

The UN says PM2.5 density should not top 25 microgrammes per cubic metre (25 mcg/m3) of air in any 24-hour period. China has set the bar at 35 mcg/m3.

The new analysis from CREA matches weather conditions and changes in emissions to data on the damages to health linked to exposure to air pollution.

Renewables Are the Only Winners in Historic Decline in Energy Demand

Bloomberg – Business

Renewables Are the Only Winners in Historic Decline in Energy Demand

Akshat Rathi, Bloomberg                
Renewables Are the Only Winners in Historic Decline in Energy Demand

(Bloomberg) — The coronavirus lockdown will cause the biggest drop in energy demand in history, with only renewables managing to increase output through the crisis.

As people around the world consume less oil, gas and coal, electricity generated from the wind and sun will keep flowing, resulting in an unprecedented 8% decline in global carbon dioxide emissions this year, according to a report from the International Energy Agency.

“The energy industry that emerges from this crisis will be significantly different from the one that came before,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said in a statement released from the organization’s headquarters in Paris on Thursday.

The pandemic has infected at least 3 million people worldwide and killed more than 200,000 people as of April 29. With no drug to treat Covid-19 and a vaccine not expected until at least the end of the year, reducing the interactions between infected people is the only effective way to control the spread.

Those measures, however, have severe impact on economic growth and energy demand. Each month of lockdown on the scale of what’s in place this month reduces annual energy demand by 1.5%, IEA estimates.

The institution that advises nations on energy policy says that demand is likely to fall 6% in 2020, which is seven times the scale of the drop suffered in the 2008 financial crisis. In absolute terms, it’s like losing the energy demand of India. Rich countries will show a steeper decline, with the U.S. falling 9% and the European Union losing 11%.

While all sources of energy — oil, coal, natural gas, and even nuclear — will see a decline, renewable energy is likely to be the bright spot. And though emissions will fall drastically, the IEA expects a sharp rebound without government policies pushing for a green recovery. Here are the key highlights from IEA’s report:

Oil Glut

Global oil demand is poised to slump by 9 million barrels a day, or about 9%, to the lowest level since 2012. By the end of March, road transport activity was down about 50% around the world, while air travel in some European countries had plunged more than 90%. As lockdowns continue, April will see the deepest decline, with fuel consumption slumping almost a third to the lowest since 1995.

With demand in freefall, even prodigious efforts being undertaken by the OPEC cartel and its allies to stabilize markets won’t be enough to shield the global oil industry from chaos, the agency warned. Some producing regions will suffer a “disorderly production shutdown,” it said.

Coal Trend

Global coal demand is heading for its biggest fall since World War II — about 8% — as the case for burning the dirtiest fossil fuel is further undermined by the pandemic. The fuel’s share in the electricity mix has fallen in India, China, Europe, and parts of the U.S. These four regions have large and varied electricity markets, and yet uniformly coal becomes the biggest victim when demand falls.

Burning coal for power in several European countries has become unprofitable and socially untenable — crowded out by cheap gas and the proliferation of renewable energy as well as powerful environmental movements. The pandemic has only served to hasten its demise.

Gas Hit

Natural gas consumption was falling in the first quarter even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit Europe, mainly due to a mild winter in the northern hemisphere. The lockdowns accelerate that decline, with global demand expected to decrease by 5% this year — the first annual drop in consumption since 2009 and a huge shock to an industry that has grown accustomed to continued growth.

Much of this decline will come from power generation as the increasing shift toward renewable energy and low overall power demand is squeezing out the role of natural gas in production. Europe is expected to see a drop of 7%, whereas North America’s decline is likely to be less severe, propped up by ultra-low prices.

Renewables Brighten

Even as overall demand has decreased, renewables in many countries get first priority to feed electricity into the grid. That means producers of solar, wind and hydro power can sell all of the power they produce even as fossil-fuel generators turn down or shut off completely to prevent a system overload. Solar and wind farms have also benefited from windier and sunnier conditions than normal in some places.

In 2019, along with nuclear, low-carbon sources overtook coal for the first time ever. With the boost renewables get this year, the lead is set to extend, leaving low-carbon sources responsible for 40% of global electricity generation.

It hasn’t been all positive for the sector. Like much of the global economy, the coronavirus has disrupted the supply chains for wind and solar farms. About 11% of the world’s wind turbines were shut this week because of the virus, according to Bloomberg NEF. Work to build new wind farms has also been disrupted by restrictions on workers and regulatory processes being delayed. That could lead to a slowdown in new renewable energy projects coming online this year.

Emissions Fall

With fossil-fuel use taking such a big hit, it’s no surprise that emissions will fall. An 8% decline is larger than most early estimates, and bigger than what the most ambitious scenario to keep global warming under check demands. Yet, that decline probably is not enough to hold off further increases in the earth’s temperature or the stock of greenhouse gases that have built up in the atmosphere, the IEA said.

The more ambitious target set under the Paris climate agreement — keeping temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius — will require halving annual global emissions by 2030 and hitting net-zero emissions sometime around the middle of the century. Without deep structural changes, emissions are expected to rise again when economies recover.

“Governments can learn from that experience by putting clean energy technologies — renewables, efficiency, batteries, hydrogen and carbon capture — at the heart of their plans for economic recovery,” Birol said. “Investing in those areas can create jobs, make economies more competitive and steer the world towards a more resilient and cleaner energy future.”

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

A Farmers Point of View to the Covid Crisis.

COVID-19 INCREASES ILLINOIS FARM LOSSES TO POINT THAT FARMS MAY BE LOST

By Brad Weisenstein, Editor        April 24, 2020

Farmers have always proven resilient and ultimately will survive the virus and anything state government lobs at them.

Empty meat cases and grocery store shelves are the first hint most people get that the coronavirus is impacting farmers. Those who guess the laws of supply and demand are in farmers’ favor would be wrong.

COVID-19 is closing processing plants that can’t stop their workers from getting ill. Supply chains cannot switch overnight from getting milk into small cartons for schoolchildren to putting it in plastic jugs for the supermarket. Pork and beef destined for restaurant plates can’t be easily diverted into deli cases.

Nearly all commodity prices are in negative territory from a year ago, with corn down about 20%, cattle more than 30%, milk down more than one-third and hogs at nearly half what they were.

“I’m in the tractor now and just planted 11 acres while we were talking,” Illinois state Rep. Charlie Meier, R-Okawville, said this week. “If I only lose $100 an acre on this corn, it will be a miracle.”

Not planting isn’t an option, because he already locked into seed, fertilizer and chemical contracts before the pandemic. He raises grain and livestock on land farmed by his family for more than 100 years. His grandma in 1905 drove a team of mules to haul the logs for his house and barn.

He also expects to lose money on his cattle. He can usually sell quarters or halves of beef to families and have them processed within a few weeks, but now the soonest processing appointment is nine weeks away and that’s another nine weeks of feed.

But his real sympathy is with the dairy farmers. He never played sports, because there was milking to do for the first 43 years of his life.

“On a dairy farm everything is booked around the cows: weddings, funerals, parties. The cows are part of your family, like a pet. And you treat them that well because that’s your livelihood,” Meier said.

But from his childhood when his and every farm had dairy cattle, to 1985 when there were still nearly 4,000 dairy farms in Illinois, to now with fewer than 800 left and dropping fast, things can only get bleaker as a result of the virus. He said dairy farmers saw years of low milk prices, then had a few months in which they made money before the coronavirus hit, then prices dropped and his neighbors were again losing money.

“Farming is one of the most dangerous professions and has one of the highest suicide rates,” Meier said. “You’re going to see a lot of bankruptcies, just like with small business owners. You have a lot of these folks who inherited what their parents built through tough times for 80 years, and they are proud and can’t lose the family legacy. You’ll see many more bankruptcies if this thing goes into July. And suicides.”

COVID-19 relief through the federal CARES Act includes $16 billion in payments to farmers and $3 billion in commodity purchases for food aid programs. Meier has his doubts that the money will make it past food processors and into the hands of farmers, especially with markets being depressed. He saw the same dynamic with the small business loans, which he said saw 12,000 bars and restaurants applying in Illinois with 700 getting funds – and only one of those in the legislative district he represents.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker just extended the state lockdown until May 30. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said it could be well into June.

Meier said Illinois’ economy can’t wait that long. He said a regional approach is needed, meaning what’s happening in cities that are virus hot spots should not dictate what’s happening in rural communities. He noted there are a lot of smart business leaders available to help decide what can open safely, when and how.

But hiking the minimum wage in July and then potentially adding billions in extra progressive state income taxes on Illinois’ more than 100,000 small businesses will make the economic pain even worse.

Illinois Farm Bureau President Richard Guebert opposes the progressive tax for the harm it can do to the state’s 72,000 farms, arguing the only “fair tax” is one that treats everyone the same instead of imposing arbitrary government standards. Meier said the double punch of wage and tax hikes will turn Southern Illinois into a desert of bankrupt farms and shuttered storefronts.

“How are they supposed to pay bills if they are closed and then July 1 pay the higher minimum wage and by-the-way here’s a progressive tax hike. I don’t know where the money’s supposed to come from,” he said.

Farmers have always proven resilient and ultimately will survive the virus and anything state government lobs at them. There just may be fewer of them, with the results visible at a supermarket near you.

Huge amounts of methane leaking from U.S. oil fields, study shows

CBS News – Business

Huge amounts of methane leaking from U.S. oil fields, study shows

Jeff Berardelli, CBS News                        

Oil and gas operations in the Permian Basin, the largest oil-producing area in the United States, are spewing more than twice the amount of methane emissions into the atmosphere than previously thought — enough wasted energy to power 7 million households in Texas for a year. That’s the result of a new study by researchers at Harvard University and the Environmental Defense Fund.

The Permian Basin stretches across a 250-mile by 250-mile area of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and accounts for over a third of the crude oil 10% of the natural gas in the U.S.

The study, published this week in the journal Science Advances, also found that the rate of leakage of methane gas makes up 3.7% of all the gas extracted in the basin, which is about 60% higher than the national average leakage rate. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and since the Permian Basin is so large, this excess waste is a significant contribution to our already warming climate.

“These are the highest emissions ever measured from a major U.S. oil and gas basin,” said study co-author Dr. Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

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Environmental Defense Fund

To map the methane emissions, the team employed a space-borne sensor on a European Space Agency satellite called the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) from May 2018 to March 2019.

Since 2005, the rapid increase in oil and natural gas production in the United States has been driven primarily by hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) and horizontal drilling.

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Methane plume in California detected by a NASA satellite. NASA

While some see the leaked methane gas as a big waste of natural resources, others are focused on the danger posed by methane. Methane is an extremely powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gas, much more potent than its more well-known counterpart, carbon dioxide (CO2).

There is 225 times less methane in the atmosphere than there is CO2, but because of its powerful heat-trapping qualities, methane is contributing about 25% of the current rate of global warming.

Since the Industrial Revolution, global methane concentrations have doubled due mostly to human activities like livestock farming, decay from landfills, and from burning fossil fuels.

“I am very concerned about increasing methane emissions,” said Dr. Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist and expert on methane from Cornell University, who was not involved with the study. “Methane is 120 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, compared mass-to-mass for the time both gases are in the atmosphere,” he explains.

According to Hamburg, the methane gas escaping the Permian Basin is so excessive that it has tripled the typical heating impact it would have otherwise had through burning the gas. Evidence of this massive leakage undercuts the case made by proponents of natural gas who tout its cleaner-burning qualities over that of its normally dirtier-burning cousin, coal.

“The most up-to-date thinking is that for comparing coal and natural gas to generate electricity, gas is worse than coal if the methane emission rate is greater than 2.7%,” said Howarth. However, this research found the Permian Basin’s emission rate is higher than that — 3.7% of the gross gas extracted. Therefore, the leakage in the Permian Basin is so high it makes gas and oil emissions more intensive than even coal.

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The Permian Basin, stretching across West Texas and southeast New Mexico, provides more than a third of U.S. crude oil. Environmental Defense Fund

“After staying level for the first decade of the 21st century, methane emissions have been rising quickly over the past decade,” said Howarth, “My research indicates that shale gas development in the U.S. is responsible for at least one-third of the total increase in these emissions globally.”

The Harvard/EDF paper attributes the high methane leakage rate to extensive venting and flaring, resulting from insufficient infrastructure to process and transport natural gas.

On the other hand, the paper concludes, the higher-than-average leakage rate in the Permian Basin implies an opportunity to reduce methane emissions through better design, more effective management, regulation and infrastructure development.

But over the past few years, regulations on fossil fuels have gone in the opposite direction. “Trump’s EPA has proposed to substantially weaken or even eliminate regulations, adopted during the Obama administration, to control methane emissions from oil and gas facilities,” said Romany Webb, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.

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Environmental Defense Fund

Webb says the Texas Railroad Commission — the state’s oil and gas regulator — has its own rules controlling venting and flaring. Venting and flaring is permitted up to 10 days after completion of well drilling; after that operators can apply for an exemption from the commission. “Recently, the number of exemptions granted by the commission has increased dramatically, leading to concerns that it is simply acting as a rubber stamp,” said Webb.

“To detect emissions takes sophisticated approaches and highly trained personnel,” Howarth said. “To date, the best any government has done is to come up with regulations that rely on industry self-reporting. I find that rather useless.”

If the world has any hope of meeting the target for reducing emissions outlined in the Paris climate agreement, reducing CO2 cannot accomplish this alone — the climate responds far more quickly to methane, explains Howarth. To keep the level of warming below the international goal of 2 degrees Celsius and prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, controlling methane leakage is essential. Without it, humanity is bound to fall short.

This Earth Day, we must stop the fossil fuel money pipeline

The Guardian – World

This Earth Day, we must stop the fossil fuel money pipeline

Bill McKibben, The Guardian         April 20, 2020
<span>Photograph: AP</span>
Photograph: AP

 

1970 was a simpler time. (February was a simpler time too, but for a moment let’s think outside the pandemic bubble.)

Simpler because our environmental troubles could be easily seen. The air above our cities was filthy, and the water in our lakes and streams was gross. There was nothing subtle about it. In New York City, the environmental lawyer Albert Butzel described a permanently yellow horizon: “I not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills.” Or consider the testimony of a city medical examiner: “The person who spent his life in the Adirondacks has nice pink lungs. The city dweller’s are black as coal.” You’ve probably heard of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, but here’s how the former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller described the Hudson south of Albany: “One great septic tank that has been rendered nearly useless for water supply, for swimming, or to support the rich fish life that once abounded there.” Everything that people say about the air and water in China and India right now was said of America’s cities then.

It’s no wonder that people mobilized: 20 million Americans took to the streets for the first Earth Day in 1970 – 10% of America’s population at the time, perhaps the single greatest day of political protest in the country’s history. And it worked. Worked politically because Congress quickly passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and scientifically because those laws had the desired effect. In essence, they stuck enough filters on smokestacks, car exhausts and factory effluent pipes that, before long, the air and water were unmistakably cleaner. The nascent Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a series of photos that showed just how filthy things were. Even for those of us who were alive then, it’s hard to imagine that we tolerated this.

But we should believe it, because now we face even greater challenges that we’re doing next to nothing about. And one reason is you can’t see them.

The carbon dioxide molecule is invisible; at today’s levels you can’t see it or smell it, and it doesn’t do anything to you. Carbon with one oxygen molecule? That’s what kills you in a closed garage if you leave the car running. But two oxygen molecules? All that does is trap heat in the atmosphere. Melt ice caps. Raise seas. Change weather patterns. But slowly enough that most of the time, we don’t quite see it.

And it’s a more complex moment for another reason. You can filter carbon monoxide easily. It’s a trace gas, a tiny percentage of what comes from a power plant. But carbon dioxide is the exact opposite. It’s most of what comes pouring out when you burn coal or gas or oil. There’s no catalytic converter for CO2, which means you have to take down the fossil fuel industry.

That in turn means you have to take on not just the oil companies but also the banks, asset managers and insurance companies that invest in them (and may even own them, in the wake of the current economic crash). You have to take on, that is, the heart of global capital.

And so we are. Stop the Money Pipeline, a coalition of environmental and climate justice groups running from the small and specialized to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, formed last fall to try to tackle the biggest money on earth. Banks like Chase – the planet’s largest by market capitalization – which has funneled a quarter – trillion dollars to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement of 2015. Insurers like Liberty Mutual, still insuring tar sands projects even as pipeline builders endanger Native communities by trying to build the Keystone XL during a pandemic.

This campaign sounds quixotic, but it seemed to be getting traction until the coronavirus pandemic hit. In January, BlackRock announced that it was going to put climate at the heart of its investment analyses. Liberty Mutual, under similar pressure from activists, began to edge away from coal. And Chase – well, Earth Day would have seen activists engaging in civil disobedience in several thousand bank lobbies across America, sort of like the protest in January that helped launch the campaign (and sent me, among others, off in handcuffs). But we called that off; there’s no way we were going to risk carrying the microbe into jails, where the people already locked inside have little chance of social distancing.

Still, the pandemic may be causing as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as our campaign hoped to. With the demand for oil cratering, it’s clear that these companies have no future. The divestment campaign that, over a decade, has enlisted $14 tn in endowments and portfolios in the climate fight has a new head of steam.

Our job – a more complex one than faced our Earth Day predecessors 50 years ago – is to force the spring. We need to speed the transition to the solar panels and wind turbines that engineers have worked so mightily to improve and are now the cheapest way to generate power. The only thing standing in the way is the political power of the fossil fuel companies, on clear display as Donald Trump does everything in his power to preserve their dominance. That’s hard to overcome. Hard but simple. Just as in 1970, it demands unrelenting pressure from citizens. That pressure is coming. Indigenous nations, frontline communities, faith groups, climate scientists and savvy investors are joining together, and their voices are getting louder. Seven million of us were in the streets last September. That’s not 20 million, but it’s on the way.

We can’t be on the streets right now. So we’ll do what we can on the boulevards of the Internet. Join us for Earth Day Live, three days of digital activism beginning 22 April. We’re in a race, and we’re gaining fast.

  • Bill McKibben is an author and Schumann distinguished scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College, Vermont. His most recent book is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
  • This story originally appeared in The Nation and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story

Michael Moore’s ‘Planet of the Humans’ asks: what if green energy cannot save the planet?

Reuters – Science

Michael Moore’s ‘Planet of the Humans’ asks: what if green energy cannot save the planet?

By Jill Serjeant, Reuters              

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – As environmentalists celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day this week, a new documentary poses a sobering question.

What if wind farms, solar panels and other green energy projects are not enough to save the planet and humanity simply cannot sustain life as we know it?

“Planet of the Humans,” executive produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore and written and directed by Jeff Gibbs, asks hard questions about what it sees as the failure of well-meaning efforts to halt climate change.

“It seems like we have been losing the battle,” Moore told Reuters. “We are in deep, deep trouble.”

“Planet of the Humans,” which will be released on YouTube https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE on Tuesday free of charge to the public, argues that the mainstream environmental movement has sold out to corporate interests and that solar and wind energy components and electric cars rely too heavily on deforestation and electricity generated from coal and natural gas to produce them.

“What we have been calling green, renewable energy and industrial civilization are one and the same thing – desperate measures not to save the planet but to save our way of life,” Gibbs says in the film.

A better approach, Gibbs suggests, would be people having fewer children. “Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide,” he says.

The multi-year film project includes interviews with scientists, industrialists and environmental activists, visits to wind farms, solar installations and biomass plants, and an in-depth look at the companies that collaborate and invest in green energy initiatives.

Moore said that he, like many people, thought electric cars were a good idea, “but I didn’t really think about where is the electricity coming from?”

“I assumed solar panels would last for ever. I didn’t know what went into the making of them,” Moore added, referring to raw materials, including quartz, and the fossil fuels needed to manufacture the panels.

Moore and Gibbs acknowledge the film is bleak in parts but said they hope it will stimulate discussion. Both men will take part in a live Q&A on Wednesday at 10 pm ET (0200 GMT Thursday) on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“The film doesn’t have all the answers but it challenges us to think differently,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs and Moore said the mass shutdowns and plummeting air travel that have been one impact from the coronavirus have shown how swiftly the planet could benefit from a change.

The economic standstill could cause carbon dioxide emissions to fall this year by the largest amount since World War Two, the chair of the Global Carbon Project said earlier this month.

“The fact that within days animals are coming back and the skies are blue tells us that we don’t have to build a million square miles of solar panels or buy a zillion electric cars. If we just slow down and stop we can make a tremendous difference instantly,” said Gibbs.

“I think this is a good chance, this 50th (Earth Day)anniversary, to think through who we are, what we’ve become as an environmental movement, and where we should be going next,” he said.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)