News of Concern

Let’s start with the latest science which, fittingly for the holidays, comes from the Earth’s pole – albeit the Southern one.

A highly-regarded international research team announced this month that a cracking Antarctic ice shelf could disintegrate within 3-5 years, starting a chain reaction that would drop a glacier the size of Florida into the Southern Ocean and elevate sea levels as many as two to 10 feet. The increase will happen slowly, beginning in the next decade and accelerating over centuries, but it is a visible reminder we are setting something into motion that we can’t pull back and will change the contours of our coastlines forever.

What would 10 feet of sea level rise mean for the U.S.? Previous surveys have calculated that it would swamp more than 28 thousand square miles of land that is home to over 12 million Americans, including large parts of New York, New Orleans, Miami, Boston, and dozens of other major cities.

Rising sea levels, even at smaller levels, will create a very different world for our children and grandchildren. Climate Central’s ‘Picturing Our Future’ interactive graphics show projected sea level rise in iconic places like the Lincoln Memorial and the Sydney Opera House, demonstrating the likely outcomes if we stay on our current emissions trajectory to a 3℃ increase (5.4℉) by the end of this century or pivot to meet international goals of limiting the rise to 1.5℃ (2.7℉). The differences are stark, underscoring how every degree of increase matters.

The devastation would ripple far beyond the sunken acreage. For the first time, the annual report of the Financial Stability Oversight Council warned that climate change is an ’emerging threat’ to the U.S. financial system [paywall]. It spells out how the growing frequencies of fires, floods, and hurricanes will cascade through the entire economy, threatening the welfare of us all. And The Wall Street Journal became just the latest business-focused entity to warn of trillions of dollarsof stranded assets [paywall] due to rising tides of all kinds – elevated sea levels, to be sure, but also growing demands from investors, insurers, consumers, employees, and regulators for urgent action (see more below).

The drip, drip, drip of melting ice and bad news goes on. Another new study projects that mountainous U.S. states may be nearly snowless for multi-year stretches [paywall] after mid-century if warming doesn’t slow. The resulting loss of snowpack will profoundly disrupt the water supply of much of the American West. Despite all this – and despite all the net-zero pledges we told you about last month – the coal industry is set to experience record highs in 2022, according to the authoritative International Energy Agency. Coal, of course, is one of the dirtiest and most carbon intensive fossil fuels in our energy portfolio.

And, at the risk of overplaying the holiday theme, we’re dropping that coal right into the Christmas stockings of the younger generation – in more ways than one. Yet another new study concludes that children born today are statistically likely to experience seven times more extreme weather events [paywall] than their grandparents.

News of Hope

First, let’s pause to applaud the return of the United States to a leadership role [paywall] on climate. After years of backtracking, Washington is now committing significant financial resources and real diplomatic muscle to get out in front of global warming.

Of note, a delegation of Republicans was active at the climate summit this year. Led by Reps. John Curtis (R-UT) and Garret Graves (R-LA), the group sought to demonstrate conservative leadership to the global community and address Republican and independent voters who favor climate action.

The turnaround began reaping benefits immediately. Most dramatically, the U.S. and China announced a surprise agreement in Glasgow to boost their climate cooperation. The joint pledge by the world’s top two greenhouse gas polluters to take ‘concrete actions’ on emissions was hailed as a highpoint of the two-week conference.

There were other governmental commitments to cheer, as well. 110 nations signed on to a global methane pledge, promising to cut methane emissions by 30% by the end of this decade. (Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 84 times more potent than carbon.) Also by 2030, another 130 countries agreed to end or reverse deforestation.

But the real game changer may well have come from the corporate sector [paywall]. A proof point is the mobilization of $130 trillion in private capital, announced at Glasgow, to accelerate the global transition to a zero emissions economy. Those are the collective assets of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero, a coalition of 450 financial institutions from 45 countries, and they come close to matching the estimated $150 trillion price tag for decarbonizing the world.

Two other Glasgow “game changers” were the announcement of the new International Sustainability Standards Board, which will publish mandatory climate reporting standards by the end of 2022 and provide investors with greater transparency and encourage higher levels of investment, and the long-awaited adoption of rules for a new global carbon market. Some six years in the making, the initiative establishes a framework for how companies and countries can trade carbon emission credits across borders.