When melting glaciers was a good thing
Welcome to Callaway Climate Insights from NY Climate Week at The Independent Climate 100 event.
Today’s edition of Callaway Climate Insights is free for all our readers. We really want to bring you the best and latest in climate finance from around the world. So, we’re having a SUBSCRIPTION SALE during Climate Week. Get 40% off all new annual subscriptions, but only until Monday.
NEW YORK (Callaway Climate Insights) — We celebrated publication of The Independent’s Climate 100 List this week - hosted at the title’s 34th Street office in New York with almost two dozen of the honorees and were treated to a rousing speech from former British Prime Minister Theresa May about a different angle to the climate threat.
For decades, The Independent has investigated global environmental issues, and most recently reporting from its U.S. operation under senior climate correspondent, Louise Boyle.
But on this day, it was a single slide presented by one of the earlier speakers that stole the show.
May spoke about the real threat that a massive climate migration will not only lead to the displacement of hundreds of millions but that those people will be further vulnerable to exploitation by human traffickers and modern slavery, and indeed already are.
More than 100 million people have already been displaced by climate change and a further 143 million will be on the move by 2050, according to the World Bank. May called it the greatest human suffering event of our time and has started a global commission to stop modern slavery.
Despite those staggering numbers, we were left more gobsmacked, as they say, by a slide in an earlier presentation by author John Vaillant, who wrote the best seller “Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World.”
The slide was an advertisement from the 1950s by the Humble Oil Co., a predecessor to Exxon, and it was a photo of a giant glacier. The copy said “Each day Humble provides enough energy to melt seven million tons of glacier.”
As if that were a good thing.
Immediately the famous ad about seven out of 10 doctors recommending Marlboro cigarettes for a healthier smoke came to mind. But this one was even more insidious, as the oil company was actually bragging about what it could do to the environment.
Seventy years later, we know better enough to care about the glaciers. But we’re still making the oil. And nothing was said or done at NY Climate Week this week to change that. See you back in California.
Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.
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What Latin America’s growing ‘pink tide’ means for climate change, U.S elections
. . . . One of Latin America’s periodic bouts of populism has generated a shift in the past year toward more leftist governments that will no doubt impact how the region fights climate change and how it works with the next U.S. president, writes Michael Molinski. With Brazil’s wildfires and its hosting next year of the COP30 climate summit, attention at this week’s UN meeting in New York is focused on what the political shift means for fighting global warming, handling immigration and trade policies. The new left leadership for one, is signaling a more serious attempt at mitigating climate change, Molinski writes.
Thursday’s subscriber insights
Climate gets nod at UN but little else
. . . . Global leaders at the UN General Assembly this week gave courteous nods to fighting global warming, but despite hundreds of climate advocate events all around them, mostly bypassed the issue as fears about the Middle East and Ukraine soared.
Indeed, the treatment of New York Climate Week by the visiting leaders was a bizarre microcosm of how they treat the broader issue of climate change itself. Even as the impact of global warming rages all around them, including Hurricane Helene only a few states away in Florida, they always tend to find more pressing priorities.
That’s not downplaying the potential war between Israel and Hezbollah, or President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s new plan to win in Ukraine. But the nature of conflicts is that they are almost always more timely than the slow but certain movement of global warming.
President Joe Biden’s speech was more about his legacy than anything else and the UK’s Keir Starmer only referenced clean energy production. It was left to Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to sound the alarm on global warming. Of course, wildfires are burning his country as we speak, so the crisis is more timely for him than the others.
As climate week winds down, leaders jet off in their carbon-spewing planes, and New York gets back to business, the climate world will now look to COP29 in November for hints of progress. But almost certainly we will be back here next year with an even worse climate crisis, but also other more pressing priorities.
World News Day is Saturday
. . . . World News Day is a global initiative to draw public attention to the role that journalists play in providing trustworthy news and information that serves citizens and democracy. World News Day takes place annually on Sept. 28. World News Day is presented by the World Editors Forum, The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) and Daily Maverick’s Project Kontinuum.
First, Choose Truth: Read more from World News Day contributors: Kathy English, chair of the Canadian Journalism Foundation, writes in First, Choose Truth, about what seeking truth means for journalists, and journalism. She calls for a commitment to seeking and reporting the truth, emphasizing the vital role that quality journalism plays in informing and empowering the public. Read the full op-ed here.
Editor’s picks: Remember, your vote counts
Fat bear contest: Get ready to vote in the other big election
Yes, it’s that time of year again. We’re writing about fabulous, fat bears and the exciting Fat Bear Week competition. Why, you ask? Because it is a celebration of environmental success. According to Explore.org, “Fat bears exemplify the richness of Katmai National Park and Bristol Bay, Alaska, a wild region that is home to more brown bears than people and the largest, healthiest runs of sockeye salmon left on the planet.” Moreover, we should care about the health of brown bears, which are at risk of the effects of climate change. They face changes in temperature, and in vegetation and prey, as well as greater risk from increased human-bear interactions, and they are a critical part of the ecosystem. So we encourage you to vote during Fat Bear Week, a March Madness-style bracket tournament celebrating the success of the bears at Brooks River in Katmai National Park. This year’s competition runs from Wednesday, Oct. 2 to Tuesday, Oct. 8. The public gets a chance to vote for the chunkiest champion. Find out more and vote at Explore.org’s Fat Bear Week site, or follow Katmai National Park on X (formerly known as Twitter). And you bet we’ll report on 2024’s chunky champion.
Latest findings: New research, studies and projects
Calculating the need for adaptation investments
Has the sensitivity of economic, health, and livelihood outcomes to climate extremes declined over the past half century, consistent with adaptation? So ask the authors of Are We Adapting to Climate Change?, a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. From the abstract: Understanding whether such adaptation is already occurring is central to anticipating future climate damages, to calibrating the level of ambition needed for emissions mitigation efforts, and to understanding additional investments in adaptation that could be required to avoid additional damages. … To avoid ongoing and future damages from warming, our results suggest a need to identify promising adaptation strategies and understand how they can be scaled. Authors: Marshall Burke, Stanford University Department of Earth System Science and the FSE; et al.
More of the latest research:
The Need for Impact Transparency and Standardization in Sustainability Measurement
Do More Informed Citizens Make Better Climate Policy Decisions?
Words to live by . . . .
“The amount of subsidies fossil fuel companies received in one year was $7 trillion. That would have paid for three years of developing countries’ needs to pay for climate change investment needs.” — Laurence Breton, managing director of the European Climate Foundation, speaking at a Climate Week panel.
God is getting our attention. Let's listen to Him.