October/November 2023

Dear Friends,

We hope you value our Curated Climate News reports. This thoughtful compilation is just one of the educational tools we provide to help people across the political spectrum understand how climate change impacts us all, from our personal health, wealth, and safety to global economy and stability. You can help us continue this crucial work with a donation to C-Change Conversations on Giving Tuesday (November 28). We are all in this together.

If there’s one leading role that we Americans definitely don’t want globally, it is this: new data shows that temperatures are heating up significantly faster in the United States than Earth as a whole. Sixty percent faster. That’s just one of the bracing findings in a comprehensive report card released this month by the U.S. government on our performance in the face of human-induced climate change.

Here’s another: it took 100 years for sea levels on American coasts to rise 11 inches – we’ll see the same rise again in about 25. There are worlds of pain encapsulated in such statistics, including depleted and contaminated water supplies, disrupted food systems, devastated homes, destroyed infrastructure, scorched or flooded ecosystems, and, of course, a human toll of suffering and excess deaths.

But the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a Congressionally-mandated, collaborative report by more than 800 scientists from 14 federal agencies, is also replete with wins for the United States. For example, the cost of wind energy has dropped 70% and the cost of solar has dropped 90% over the past 10 years. Prices for lithium batteries for electric vehicles have come down 85%. And annual greenhouse gas emissions peaked in 2007 and have tumbled 12% between 2005 and 2019. Here you can find key messages and a trove of fascinating graphics.

So what’s the report’s big picture? We see a two-screen cineplex featuring parallel futuristic movies. Through one door, Americans will encounter dystopias like the ones premiered this past summer in back-to-back, real-life catastrophes: more hemisphere-choking firestorms, more suffocating heat waves, more communities drowning in flash floods. More billion-dollar price tags for emergency services and cleanup.

The other theater door opens onto a less-apocalyptic feature, one where the cast of brainy and street-smart heroes pool their ingenuity and their available resources to save the day at the 11th hour.

Because the reality is, this country has the resources we need – right now – to write a happier ending. We have the necessary solar, wind, and nuclear equipment, and the blueprints showing how to deploy them. We have the brainiacs and entrepreneurs prototyping next-gen products.

The challenge, says the report, is we must roll out these available solutions 2-10 times faster each year than we’ve done historically. And we need to deploy more ways to mitigate carbon buildup in the atmosphere.

The lights and cameras are in place. It’s time for unprecedented action. It’s showtime.

Sincerely,
The C-Change Conversations Team

Notable Quote

“We’ve got climate solutions that can be made in America and are being made in America that we’re deploying brick by brick and block by block. That gives us hope.”   _ Ali Zaidi, White House National Climate Adviser

News of Hope

It really bears repeating: we still can avert the worst effects of climate change – we still can meet the agreed goal of restricting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

An authoritative survey reviewing data from 78 countries shows that global emissions for the electricity sector plateaued in the first half of 2023 thanks to more wind and solar. Double-digit emission drops were seen in the EU and Japan while some 50 countries hit new solar-generation records. Global emissions would have dipped into negative territory, the report surmises, if drought hadn’t brought down water levels and hampered the production of carbon-free hydroelectricity.

The more clean electricity available to power our homes and vehicles, the less carbon-rich fossil fuels we’ll need to drive the economy. That promise, however, depends on a massive expansion of America’s electrical grid. That’s why the Department of Energy’s seemingly unglamorous decision to pour billions into grid upgrades was greeted with such excitement last month. The investment amounts to the largest-ever infusion of cash and will be distributed across 44 states. Word on the street is that more money is in the pipeline for this crucial infrastructure.   

We’re also excited by the nation’s swelling enthusiasm for nuclear energy in its newest incarnation. There are now a dozen companies working on small modular reactors that can be produced in assembly line fashion and delivered nearly ready-made, as opposed to standard-size facilities that take decades to design, locate, and build. New forms of nuclear could be an important part of a future energy mix because it is carbon – free and can be turned on when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. These new smaller reactors promise more than lower price tags and shorter delivery times – they are expected to minimize safety risks, as well.

And the longstanding dream of sucking carbon directly out of the atmosphere took a step or two closer to reality this month with the opening of the first commercial plant in the U.S. that will do just that. Hundreds of similar startups are in the works and the DOE awarded more than a billion dollars earlier this year to help several get up and running and start reducing costs.

We’ve told you about our hopes for green hydrogen – a clean, but relatively expensive fuel, created with the help of renewable energy. Now say hello to “natural” or “white hydrogen.” This elusive form of hydrogen comes out of the earth essentially ready to use. Hydrogen does not produce carbon emissions when it is burned and can be used to fuel industries such as aviation, shipping, and steel production. Until recently, scientists thought the Earth’s natural supplies of white hydrogen were severely limited in quantity and location. But a new discovery deep underground in northeastern France has sparked expectations that similar geological formations could make accessible millions, if not billions, of tons of the fuel.

We frequently hear that imperfect science and technology are no longer the main obstacles to climate solutions. Often the bigger challenges are politics or NIMBYism. That’s why we’re so glad to see successful initiatives at the local and state levels, like the five bills passed this month by Michigan’s state legislature, including one that calls for the state’s two biggest utilities to generate 100% of their energy from renewable sources by 2040 – a big jump from today when nearly two-thirds of Michigan’s electricity comes from fossil fuels.

And while we’re talking politics, we are watching with keen interest as the U.S. and China shake hands on an agreement to cooperate in mitigating emissions by increasing renewable energy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. This is of major importance on the eve of the upcoming COP28 discussions in Dubai, and we are on the edge of our seats to see how this plot twist will affect the proceedings.

News of Concern

Unfortunately, that other movie about a less-livable future is still playing to sell-out crowds. Despite pledges from 151 nations to reach net-zero emissions by 2030, a new UN report says many governments are laying plans that will undercut that collective goal. Altogether, individual countries are projected to produce more than twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than the limit consistent with a 1.5°C global warming cap.

The list of bad actors with good intentions features some of the world’s largest economies, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, India, and the United States. Canada, for one, is on track to increase its oil output 25% by mid-century, despite writing its net-zero commitment into law. And while President Biden ran on the slogan of “no more drilling on public lands,” the administration has recently approved the extraction of 600 million barrels of oil from federal land in Alaska.

It’s happening at the state level, too. Texas voters, for example, overwhelmingly approved a referendum to create a $10 billion energy fund to build new, gas-fired power plants while explicitly precluding spending on battery storage and ignoring renewables. The referendum reignited the debate over the role of clean energy in Texas, with its legislative author expressly stating that one goal was to “balance out the ever-increasing penetration of ‘interruptibles’ and renewables on the Texas grid.” In other words, he argues Texas has to prop up fossil fuels to keep them competitive against solar and wind. Ironically, renewables are actually more reliable in temperature extremes, and burning fossil fuels will make those extremes more likely and frequent in the future. Climate change also negatively impacts water availability – critically important for fossil fuels and hydropower. So, in many ways, by amping up reliance on fossil fuels, Texas is making its power grid less safe in the long run instead of more so.

All of this in the same year that we officially experienced the hottest summer on record, one that fueled droughts, floods, wildfires, and other extreme weather that caused a record 23 billion dollars of damage in the U.S. alone. And it delivered a milestone of truly existential dimensions: a growing number of places already known for their summer heat and humidity are now facing temperatures above the limits of human survivability for longer periods of time.

Not only are places becoming unlivable, they’re becoming uninsurable. As annual insurance premiums move above $100,000 in some upscale Florida zip codes, for example, residents are feeling compelled to flee their homes or self-insure. Even before the floodwaters rise. It’s a telling indicator of the actual price of climate risk near our shores.

Given all of this information, and all of our direct experiences, have we united around this problem yet? Sadly, no. A recent Gallup Poll shows that humanity’s role in climate change was the issue that generated the second-largest increase in partisan disagreement over the past two decades and remains so today. (The first was whether the federal government had too much power.)

We need to rewrite that script. Because whether you prefer a horror flick, sci-fi fantasy, family drama, or slapstick comedy, in the end we all want a happy ending.

Notable Video

There’s a lot of fascinating information – both hopeful and concerning – to unpack in the Fifth National Climate Assessment. This CBS News report gives a good overview to get you started. 

Notable Graph

To wrap this feature with a feel-good ending, the Fifth National Climate Assessment shows that we really do have the clean-tech tools we need to write that “save the day” script. This graphic illustrates how the increasing capacities of onshore wind, solar photovoltaics, and electric vehicle batteries correlate with the decreasing costs of these renewable energy sources. Roll film.