An article in Information Today talks about “reigning in” the risks of sustainable sourcing. Written by contributing reporter Samuel Greengard, the report says that building more eco-friendly and sustainable supply chains “is rapidly becoming a top priority for businesses. A clear strategy and the right technology that delivers visibility can reduce risks and improve results.”
That’s great but what has taken so long for businesses to realize this? The climate crisis is well upon us — it should have been a top priority many years ago. One of the great lessons, and confluences, of the pandemic and the climate crisis, is that supply chains of all types must change their thinking dramatically about how they do business.
Back to the article. Greengard writes:
“Product shortages and supply chain disruptions have emerged as a frustrating reality for organizations across a wide swath of industries. Due to a convergence of factors — including the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and a shortage of raw materials — procuring essential materials and components is increasingly difficult.
“Yet, things suddenly get a whole lot more complicated as soon as sustainable sourcing enters the picture. As businesses strive to meet aggressive climate goals and display results on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reports, the headaches and risks multiply. An inability to obtain materials, products and services can threaten basic operations.”
Supply chains and procurement are risky enterprises and adding green principles and sustainable sourcing to the mix adds even more risk. It’s the cost of doing business, so “reigning in risk” seems like the wrong approach. Actually, it can’t be done in a significant way because risk in the modern era is a pandora’s box.
“The end goal is to establish strategies, policies and processes that fully support sustainable sourcing.”
A nice and obvious thought but extremely difficult to implement as the climate crisis becomes more, well, critical. Better to do the right things, risks or no.
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Note: Things are changing job-wise for yours truly so watch this space for developments with this blog and other endeavors.
OXFAM cites six things about inequality and the climate crisis:
1. The biggest villain in this climate emergency is the fossil fuel industry, “but in the US, fossil fuel companies are receiving $15 billion annually in federal subsidies paid for by taxpayers.”
2. “The people who contribute the least to climate change are the ones who face the worst impacts.” An example: due to the effects of climate change an estimated 13 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia have been displaced in search of water and pasture, just in the first quarter of 2022, despite having done little to cause the climate crisis.
3. “Black and Indigenous people face the worst impacts of climate change, which causes heat waves, storms, and other disasters.”
4. “Climate change disproportionally impacts women—whether it’s walking further to collect water, being last to eat during droughts, or assuming most of the household care responsibilities in the wake of extreme weather.”
5. “The richest one percent of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the three billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity in the last 25 years.”
6. The US has many laws in place—such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act—that could be protecting communities from fossil fuel pollution and climate change; but unfortunately, politics and big polluters often get in the way.
These points point to what appears an unsolvable problem: there will never be a comprehensive and stable solution for all peoples and nations. How can there be?
In a few words, green business is improving, but not nearly fast or widespread enough.
The State of Green Business 2022, by Joel Makower and the editors and analysts at GreenBiz Group, is out and the prognosis remains highly uncertain.
As Makower says, “We find ourselves in uncharted and unfamiliar territory. Again. The worlds we collectively inhabit — corporate sustainability, sustainable finance, the circular economy, climate tech — are all reaching inflection points, growing and changing faster than many could have imagined. Along the way, they’re roiling industries, companies, jobs, and career paths — mostly for the better but also in a be-careful-what-you-wish-for kind of way.”
It sounds a bit like gobbledygook, but there it is. Simply put, there are too many balls in the air. As Makower notes, the Covid pandemic era now coincides with the rise of most aspects of sustainable business: companies’ commitments to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions; the increase of green bonds and sustainability-linked loans; the inexorable growth of renewable energy, alongside its declining price; the mainstreaming of electric vehicles; the rise of concern about biodiversity loss and its economic impact, and more.
Perhaps the past two years of pandemic life have focused organizational attention on how to deal with multiple crises and issues in business health and the environment. “Despite our self-imposed isolation, the klieg lights focused on companies’ environmental and social commitments and performance have grown increasingly brighter and hotter, in lockstep with the rise of concern about the scale, scope and pace of change. With the signs of a changing climate becoming ever more apparent — and costly — the business world is finally recognizing that sustainability is not merely a nice-to-do activity,” Makower says.
But the bottom line is that while the pace of change has increased, it’s far from what’s needed to address the challenges ahead.
Here are some points to consider from the report:
– This is an exciting and perilous time for companies, their stakeholders, and the world in general. The impacts of a changing climate are clear as storms, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and other weather phenomena become more frequent and extreme.
– It’s not just the climate crisis. The increasing loss of biodiversity, and all of the economic activity it enables, is a major growing concern.
– In addition, the increasing economic inequality in the world seems an insoluble problem. Unconscionable numbers of people still lack adequate food, shelter, water, electricity and sanitation, while those with financial means are, as a rule, doing better and better.
– The rise of “net-zero” commitments by companies and countries was one of the major themes of 2021, along with the pushback from activists, regulators and investors that many of these claims weren’t backed by credible action or plans. “It’s not necessarily that companies aren’t serious about reaching these goals, say critics. It’s that they’re not serious about the speed at which they need to reach them.”
– The finance component of sustainable business is proving to be powerful.The world’s largest financial institutions are committing trillions of dollars to fund the transition to a net-zero world, though many of them also continue to back fossil fuel companies and projects. Still, the trajectory away from coal, oil and natural gas is clear — though, once again, the pace of change may be way too slow.
“All of this together — the perils and the promise — suggest that business — and, indeed, humankind — is undergoing an epochal transition. Those who view tomorrow’s world as a continuation of today’s are increasingly having those assumptions challenged. As we face these existential threats, there is an opportunity to renew and regenerate the structures upon which we rely for our health, wealth and security. Nearly everything, it seems, must be reinvented if we are to prosper into the future, indefinitely and for all.”
in many ways, none of them good from a population and climate perspective.
Earthshine eg. image 1 by Ben Laken via Flickr CC
Let’s skip a discourse on the current quality of general human intelligence because that seems too easy and depressing, even though human stupidity and inaction in the face of overwhelming evidence has created the climate crisis.
Now there is evidence the Earth is dimming due to climate change. According to a report in EarthSky, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) last month said that Earth’s warming oceans are causing fewer bright clouds to reflect sunlight back into space. So we are not shining so brightly in the universe, and more heat is reaching the Earth’s surface. This additional heat will, presumably, lead to even warmer oceans, according to the article. “This result is contrary to what many scientists had hoped. They’d hoped a warmer Earth might lead to more bright clouds and higher albedo (greater reflectivity), and more heat reflected away.” That outcome would have helped to moderate warming and balance the climate system, but the AGU result shows the opposite is true. The new Earth-albedo study was published in the peer-reviewed AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Earthshine is what happens when sunlight bounces from Earth onto the night landscape of the moon. It’s that dim glow you sometimes see on the darkened portion of a crescent moon. The Big Bear Solar Observatory in Southern California gathered the earthshine data from 1998 to 2017. The scientists said the Earth is now reflecting about half a watt less light per square meter than it was 20 years ago. Most of the drop has occurred in the last three years of earthshine data.
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Meanwhile on the “let’s do something” climate crisis front, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its first new climate rule last month, slashing the use of powerful greenhouse gases widely used in home refrigerators and air conditioners and often found to be leaking from U.S. supermarket freezers.
The final rule establishes a comprehensive program to cap and phase down the production and consumption of climate-damaging hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the United States, the EPA said on 23 September. “HFCs are potent greenhouse gases commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, as well as foams and many other applications. A global phasedown of HFCs is expected to avoid up to 0.5 °C of global warming by 2100. This final rule will phase down the U.S. production and consumption of HFCs by 85% over the next 15 years, as mandated by the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act that was enacted in December 2020.”
Sometimes we have to take it slowly, but this is not the time. The IPCC report is not a gentle meditation.
Climate change by quote catalog
The Sixth Assessment Report of the .Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released earlier this month underscores and update what the IPCC has stated for many year.
The 42-page “Summary for Policymakers” — the full report is more than 3400 densely-written pages — is more of the same, only more so.
Here are some of the summary’s findings:
On the “current state” of the climate: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.” Each of the last four decades” has been successively warmer than any decade that preceded it since 1850. Global surface temperature in the first two decades of the 21st century (2001-2020) was 0.99 [0.84- 1.10] °C higher than 1850-1900.”
“The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.”
“Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since AR5 (the fifth Assessment Report).”
“Improved knowledge of climate processes, paleoclimate evidence and the response of the climate system to increasing radiative forcing gives a best estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3°C with a narrower range compared to AR5.”
On “possible climate futures”:
“Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”
“Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.”
“Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle,including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events.”
“Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.”
“With further global warming, every region is projected to increasingly experience concurrent and multiple changes in climatic impact-drivers. Changes in several climatic impact-drivers would be more widespread at 2°C compared to 1.5°C global warming and even more widespread and/or pronounced for higher warming levels.”
Even in scenarios with lower GHG emissions, it will take 20 years or more to detect “discernible differences” in global surface temperature trends. In short, this crisis is virtually “irreversible.” Tough stuff indeed. And it seems hopeless.
We want to see with wisdom and clarity what is going on with our planet and accept the facts in front of us. The time to act is now
2014 XL Dissent by Stephen Melkisethian via Flickr CC
The often on again-off again Keystone XL Pipeline project has been touchstone of environment activism for about 13 years, but now it appears it is off for good.
Last week, TC Energy, the Canadian company behind the pipeline, said that it had decided along with the government of Alberta to end the multibillion-dollar project. XL was the focus of frequent delays, construction permit battles, and changing government policies. It was the bane of environmentalists because of its scope and because tar sands are among the filthiest, most polluting form of fossil fuel. If completed, the 1,200-mile pipeline would have carried 830,000 gallons of oil from the vast tar sands mines in Alberta to refineries on the US Gulf Coast.
A Sierra Club article on the pipeline termination said: “The whole operation would have added more than 181 million tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere each year. Oil from the tar sands is some of the dirtiest on the planet, producing 20 percent more CO2 than conventional crude. Along the way, the Keystone XL Pipeline would have passed through Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska, where it would have threatened farmland, drinking water, and wildlife habitat.”
Keystone is gone but the writing is on the wall for other pending projects, so stay tuned.
Congress and the Biden Administration are taking the first steps to reduce emissions of two dangerous greenhouse gases: methane, which is emitted during natural gas extraction and by leaks from oil and gas wells, and hydrofluorocarbons, which are used in refrigeration and air-conditioning systems.
Both of these planet-warming gases are many times more potent than carbon dioxide, even though they don’t stay in the atmosphere as long. Scientists say dealing with them is critical to slowing the pace of global warming.
The Senate, using a rarely invoked law to reverse a Trump administration rollback on methane, essentially reinstated an Obama-era regulation imposing controls on leaks of methane from oil and gas wells. And the Environmental Protection Agency moved to implement new curbs on the production and importation of HFCs, which Congress approved late last year.
“By taking fast action on these short-lived climate pollutants, of which HFCs are the most potent, we can buy ourselves some time and actually help avoid climate tipping points,” said Kristen N. Taddonio, a senior climate and energy adviser for the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.
The 52-42 Senate vote reinstates the Oil and Natural Gas New Source Performance Standards, a handful of Obama-era regulations on methane emissions that were rolled back by former President Donald Trump in August 2020. The measure drew support from every Senate Democrat, as well as Republican Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), who has opposed GOP efforts to deregulate methane emissions in the past; Lindsey Graham (R-SC); and Rob Portman (R-OH). The rule is expected to be taken up and passed by the House of Representatives in this month.
The standards alone won’t be sufficient to meet the president’s pledge to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2030 — a goal meant to help keep global warming this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but it represents an important step toward meeting that commitment, because methane is seen as a major driver of climate change.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the Senate’s move “one of the most important votes, not only that this Congress has cast but has been cast in the last decade, in terms of our fight against global warming.”
Carbon Visuals: One day’s carbon dioxide emissions from the UN Secretariat Building via Flickr
According to a recent article by two climate experts in the online publication, The Conversation, there are more reasons for optimism on climate change than we’ve seen for decades. The authors, Gabi Mocatta, Lecturer in Communication, Deakin University, and Research Fellow in Climate Change Communication, Climate Futures Program, University of Tasmania, and Rebecca Harris
Senior Lecturer in Climatology, Director, Climate Futures Program, University of Tasmania, say two big reasons help explain the optimism:
1. The science on climate change “is now more detailed than ever. Although much of it is devastating, it’s also resoundingly clear
2. “It’s now also unequivocal that people want action”
Above all, the article maintains we need to act fast. “The 2020s really are our final chance: our “Earthshot” moment to start to repair the planet after decades of inaction.”
Wind Turbine by Rachel Schowalter, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center via Flickr
Climate change is deadly serious; but it strikes me the word change is too soft a term because the change occurring is not anything like changing your clothes or your diet or your drapes. Rather it’s a climate crisis.
Climate crisis is a better way to think about what is happening to the planet, and after four years of dreadful neglect, denial and inaction from the previous administration, the Biden administration is taking the crisis seriously. And it is taking action.
The White House last week unveiled a goal to expand the nation’s nascent offshore wind energy industry in the coming decade by opening new areas to development, accelerating permits, and boosting public financing for projects.
Then there is Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which includes $85 billion for mass-transit systems, another $80 billion for Amtrak to expand service and make needed repairs, and $100 billion to upgrade the nation’s electrical grid. The infrastructure plan also would allocate $174 billion to spur the transition to electric vehicles, $35 billion for research in emissions-reducing and climate-resilience technologies, and $10 billion to create a New Deal-style Civilian Climate Corps.
The plan will lead to “transformational progress in our effort to tackle climate change,” Biden said, speaking at a carpenters’ training facility outside Pittsburgh.
A Reuters report provided more detail on the offshore wind power plan: “The blueprint for offshore wind power generation comes after the Biden administration’s suspension of new oil and gas leasing auctions on federal lands and waters, widely seen as a first step to fulfilling the president’s campaign promise of a permanent ban on new federal drilling to counter global warming.
The United States, with just two small offshore wind facilities, has lagged European nations in developing the renewable energy technology.
“We’re ready to rock and roll,” National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said at a virtual press conference to announce the administration’s moves.
According to the report, the plan sets a target to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, which the administration said would be enough to power 10 million homes and cut 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.
One of the first steps will be to open a new offshore wind energy development zone in the New York Bight, an area off the densely populated coast between Long Island, New York and New Jersey, with a lease auction there later this year.
The industry will employ 44,000 workers directly by 2030 and support 33,000 additional support jobs. Many of those jobs will be created at new factories that will produce the blades, towers and other components for massive offshore wind turbines and at shipyards where the specialized ships needed to install them will be constructed. The administration predicted the nation would see port upgrade investments related to offshore wind of more than $500 million.
The administration said it will also aim to speed up project permits, including environmental reviews, and provide $3 billion in public financing for offshore wind projects through the Department of Energy.
The United States’ two small offshore wind farms include the 30-megawatt Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island and a two-turbine pilot project off the coast of Virginia. There are more than 20 GW of proposed projects in various stages of development.
Europe, by contrast, has more than 20 GW of capacity already and plans to expand that more than ten-fold by 2050. Many of the companies developing U.S. projects are European, including Norway’s Equinor, Denmark’s Orsted, and a joint venture between Avangrid, the U.S. arm of Spain’s Iberdrola, and Denmark’s Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.
Disruptions in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors will increase as supply and consumption are affected by lockdown, according to the report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Fish supply, consumption and trade revenues for 2020 will all likely decline due to containment restrictions, the report noted, while global aquaculture production is expected to fall by about 1.3 percent, the first fall recorded by the sector in several years.
“The pandemic has caused widespread upheaval in fisheries and aquaculture as production has been disrupted, supply chains have been interrupted and consumer spending restricted by various lockdowns,” said FAO Deputy Director-General, Maria Helena Semedo. “Containment measures have provoked far-reaching changes, many of which are likely to persist in the long term.”
The FAO report indicated that in aquaculture there is growing evidence that unsold production will result in increasing levels of live fish stocks, creating higher costs for feeding as well as a greater number of fish mortalities. Sectors with longer production cycles, such as salmon, cannot adjust rapidly to the demand shifts.
Global catches from wild fisheries are also expected to have declined slightly in 2020, as, overall, there has been a reduced fishing effort due to COVID‑19-related restrictions on fishing vessel crews and poor market conditions.
As a result of Covid-19, consumer preferences have shifted. While demand for fresh fish has waned, consumer demand for packaged and frozen products has grown as households look to stock up on non-perishable food.
Aggregate prices for 2020, as measured by the Fish Price Index are down year-on-year for most traded species. Restaurant and hotel closures in many countries have also led to a fall in demand for fresh fish products.
The climate crisis is also impacting the food, fish, forest and water sectors
– In other news from FAO, two projects, one focusing on agroforestry in sub-Saharan Africa and the other on water management in the Near East, have received $80 million, paving the way to improve the livelihoods of more than 250 000 smallholders.
The Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) approved the funds for initiatives in the Republic of Congo and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Both are the first GCF-funded projects in those countries, underscoring FAO’s focus on expanding the use of global tools to advance climate action in food and agriculture. FAO’s GCF portfolio has now risen to $878 million, supporting 15 projects.
– Opening the high-level ceremony to mark the International Day of Forests, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, described forest restoration as a path to global recovery and well-being.
“Healthy forests mean healthy people. Forests provide us with fresh air, nutritious foods, clean water and space for recreation, and also for civilization to continue,” the Director-General said.
More than 1 billion people depend on forest foods and 2.4 billion people use fuelwood or charcoal to cook their daily meals, noted the Director General. “Forests are also green pharmacies. In developing countries, up to 80 percent of all medicinal drugs are plant-based.”
Yet, despite their importance, the area of forests continues to shrink. FAO’s most recent Global Forest Resources Assessment says that each year, the world loses more than 10 million hectares of forest – an area about twice the size of Costa Rica. “We can change this. We have the knowledge and the tools,” said the Director-General.
With four billion people projected to be living in drylands by 2050,the publication outlines the transformational change required to ensure the sustainability of food production systems under climate change and after COVID-19, which includes giving a greater voice to marginalized dryland populations.
– Acute hunger is set to soar in over 20 countries in the coming months without urgent and scaled-up assistance, warn the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) in a new report issued on 23 March.
Yemen, South Sudan and northern Nigeria top the list and face catastrophic levels of acute hunger, with families in pockets of South Sudan and Yemen already in the grip of or at risk of starvation and death according to the Hunger Hotspots report.
Although the majority of the affected countries are in Africa, acute hunger is due to rise steeply in most world regions – from Afghanistan in Asia, Syria and Lebanon in the Middle East, to Haiti in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Already, over 34 million people are grappling with emergency levels of acute hunger (IPC4) – meaning they are one step away from starvation – across the world.
“The magnitude of suffering is alarming. It is incumbent upon all of us to act now and to act fast to save lives, safeguard livelihoods and prevent the worst situation,” said Qu.
“In many regions, the planting season has just started or is about to start. We must run against the clock and not let this opportunity to protect, stabilize and even possibly increase local food production slip away,” urged Qu.
“We are seeing a catastrophe unfold before our very eyes. Famine – driven by conflict, and fuelled by climate shocks and the COVID-19 hunger pandemic – is knocking on the door for millions of families,” said WFP Executive Director David Beasley.
“We urgently need three things to stop millions from dying of starvation: the fighting has to stop, we must be allowed access to vulnerable communities to provide life-saving help, and above all we need donors to step up with the US$ 5.5 billion we are asking for this year,” he added.
wrdforwrd 