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Zero Carbon

With Chris Hatch
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October 6th 2023
Feature story

Gobsmackingly bananas

Before we get started, I’d really like to ask for your input. Climate change is so difficult to grapple with — and this week’s news feels particularly dire. So, please weigh in on what you’d like to hear more about, or less. I’m particularly struggling with the impulse to put a hopeful gloss on our climate predicament. I’ve got two kids and even though both are now young adults, I often wish they weren’t hearing what I think needs saying. Any feedback you have is welcome, and you can write to [email protected].

It’s a burning question for me at the moment — I don’t like bearing bad news, but this week was pretty unnerving and it’s not getting anywhere near the attention it deserves.

After a summer off the charts, the numbers are rolling in for September and they’re even worse. Much worse. September was roughly 1.8 C hotter than pre-industrial temperatures. It absolutely exploded past anything we’ve ever seen — the global leap in temperature of 0.5 degrees above any previous September is itself an astonishing record.

Scientists are running out of superlatives. “Surprising. Astounding. Staggering. Unnerving. Bewildering. Flabbergasting. Disquieting. Gobsmacking. Shocking. Mind-boggling.”

That was Ed Hawkins’ attempt to sum things up. If you don’t recognize Hawkins by name, you probably know his most famous creation — the climate stripes that have appeared everywhere from the Olympics in Brazil to the White Cliffs of Dover.

“No one has ever seen climate monitoring like this,” said Samantha Burgess from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service when the organization published its data. “We have broken records by an extraordinary amount.”

Others were even more expressive.

“September was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist, absolutely gobsmackingly bananas,” said Zeke Hausfather, who laid out the data so we can see how clearly one of these lines (2023) is so not like the others.

And, if you find it easier to visualize in a bar chart, here’s Copernicus with all the Septembers since 1940 and September 2023 in a league of its own.

Globally averaged surface air temperature anomalies relative to 1991–2020 for each September from 1940 to 2023. Data source: ERA5. Credit: Copernicus Climate Change Service/ECMWF

If some of this is news to you, you’re not alone. I have yet to run into any normal people who have any idea what’s been happening. The big media outlets haven’t entirely ignored the leap in temperatures in July and August or the surge in September, but you’ll have to scroll a good way down most new sites — past the latest Ozempic trials, Hockey Canada’s dressing room rules, the PM’s holiday tab, and on and on before running across an isolated report, if you find any at all.

My local radio news did touch on the situation for a few moments following the weather forecast. It felt like the world cracked open, brightened with a ray of sanity. Until the host pivoted “to something a bit lighter — some ‘fun facts’” (and suddenly, I was transported into a scene from Don’t Look Up).

If you’ve read this far, you probably know the even bigger issue isn’t about the surge itself but what these seemingly small temperature increments mean for people, other living beings, and what they indicate for the speed and trajectory we’re on.

“This is not a fancy weather statistic,” explained climate scientist Friederike Otto from Imperial College London. “It’s a death sentence for people and ecosystems. It destroys assets, infrastructure, harvest.”

No matter how far you scroll, you won’t find those impacts investigated or explained thoroughly at all. Without an energized and informed public, it’s no wonder the political class pays so little attention. As far as I know, only one parliamentarian has brought any attention to the sudden spike. (Easy guess: Elizabeth May.)

In some alternate timeline, world leaders are shocked by their briefings, mobilizing funds and science to figure out what’s going on and whether we need to mobilize the public behind new emergency measures. Because even the experts can’t really tell if we’re heading into a step-change in climate breakdown.

“I’m still struggling to comprehend how a single year can jump so much compared to previous years,” said Mika Rantanen, a climate researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

The most common explanation is that the cooling effect of an unusual three-year La Niña had masked the full greenhouse impacts of fossil fuel burning and now we’re switching to an El Niño. But that seems at best a partial explanation. For starters, an El Niño would really kick in during the northern winter months still to come.

And it’s not even clear how strong an El Niño is brewing. Australia is extremely vulnerable to El Niño drought during the southern summer and pays very close attention — its Bureau of Meteorology was unconvinced and only declared an El Niño underway on Sept. 19.

El Niño seems like part of the explanation, but it’s not much consolation for the longer term anyway since it doesn’t create heat, it simply moves heat around, between ocean and atmosphere.

Another candidate is the “Faustian bargain” that James Hansen has been warning about for years. Hansen argues the world has been successfully cutting pollution like sulphur aerosols from smokestacks and high-sulfate shipping fuels. It’s nasty stuff, and all living things are healthier without it. But that old-school-style air pollution was paradoxically shielding us from the full effects of our carbon pollution — hence, the “Faustian bargain.”

Hansen and co-authors have estimated aerosol reduction was going to double the rate of global warming over the coming 20 years. The size of that estimate is disputed by other climate scientists, but the underlying mechanism isn’t. Still, the timing doesn’t entirely jibe with the sudden surge — marine fuels got cleaner as of 2020 and the general improvement in aerosol pollution has been gradual.

But we’d be fools not to take Hansen seriously. It was his testimony to the U.S. Senate as a NASA scientist that launched the era of climate change as a public “issue” in 1988 and his predictions have been accurate. More recently, Hansen and colleagues have been warning that the rate of heating is accelerating and is being underestimated by consensus-based scientific assessments like the IPCC that aren’t looking clearly at an acceleration in Earth’s “energy imbalance” — the amount coming in from the sun versus the amount reflected away.

“We are headed into new climate territory, not seen in the past million years,” Hansen and co-authors wrote in July.

We could go on to look at other signs indicating new territory. Global sea ice is almost as anomalously low as temperatures are high, for example. But let’s pause here and allow me to ask you to weigh in. The whole point is for these newsletters to be useful to you. So let me know: Too much bummer? Too much hopium? Too long, too short? What would you like to hear more about, or less?

And, before we get into The Roundup, I’ll leave you with a personal commentary by climate journalist Barbara Moran since it really resonated: Many scientists don’t want to tell the truth about climate change. Here’s why.

“Something weird happened” after this year’s IPCC report, writes Moran.

“Most climate scientists (and journalists) didn’t change how they publicly spoke about 1.5 C. Scientists kept saying things like: ‘We need to act now to stay below 1.5’ or ‘it’s getting harder, but still technically possible…’

“I think that 1.5 C has moved from ‘ambitious goal’ to ‘magical thinking.’ And the scientists are telling themselves a story to stave off despair… This is paternalism. (Or maybe maternalism?) Scientists are telling us a story to protect us from despair…

“Climate scientists (and journalists) are underestimating people. If you treat people like children who can’t handle the truth, they will behave like children. Like teenagers, actually, wasting time like it’s in endless supply. Yes, there are plenty of people who prefer denial. But I bet just as many want the truth, painful as it is. We deserve a shot at rising to the occasion.”

The roundup

You’ve probably heard the most encouraging news in Canadian politics for a good while: Manitobans elected Wab Kinew as their new premier and rejected a truly despicable campaign by the Conservatives. Kinew has been a longtime climate champion, but environment and climate change barely figured in the campaign. The most tangible promise was to partner with Indigenous communities and the feds on the “30by30” goal for nature protection.

Otherwise, there were some vague promises about EV charging stations and rebates. Matteo Cimellaro reports that Indigenous climate advocates are gearing up: “Pressure will be needed to keep the NDP honest and accountable.”

Cimellaro also teamed up with Pippa Norman to investigate why First Nations had to step in during wildfires and take over emergency alerting and evacuation procedures: When ashes rain down and you respond as best you can.

“Chief Martel isn’t the only First Nations leader who stopped relying on Canada’s national alerting system and turned to alternative methods of communication in the midst of a crisis this summer.”

‘Praise God’

Pope Francis “shamed and challenged” world leaders while openly confronting climate denial and delay. The Pope issued an update to his 2015 encyclical, this one titled Laudate Deum: “‘Praise God' is the title of this letter. For when human beings claim to take God’s place, they become their own worst enemies,” he wrote.

Francis endorsed African bishops’ description of climate change as “a tragic and striking example of structural sin,” called out the “irresponsible lifestyle” of the developed world and pointedly named the United States, where per capita emissions are twice as high as China and seven times the average in developing countries (Canada’s are higher still but escaped mention).

Green labour

The Canadian Labour Congress launched a new campaign to shape and support federal sustainable jobs legislation. “It’s workers who will make the shift to a sustainable economy possible by creating sustainable energy, upgrading our buildings, bridges, and roads and developing low-carbon transportation,” said Bea Bruske, president of the CLC.

The CLC campaign video profiles Chris Flett, who has worked his entire career in the oilsands. Many workers are “very hooked to oil and gas,” Flett says. “But now they're starting to see a new wave, they're starting to see that there are other options that are available to them, and they are beneficial jobs.”

Nova Scotia reopens the door to offshore oil and gas

“After a period of dormancy in oil and gas activity off the coast of Nova Scotia, a company has been given the first approval needed to explore for fossil fuels off the province’s coast,” reports Cloe Logan. Inceptio Limited won a bid to explore on the Scotian Shelf, about 300 kilometres southeast of Halifax.

Imperial Oil knew oilsands tailings were leaking for years

“Documents filed by Imperial Oil Ltd. show the company and Alberta's energy regulator knew the Kearl oilsands mine was seeping tailings into groundwater years before a pool of contaminated fluid was reported on the surface.”

“The Alberta Utilities Commission and the Alberta government had no problem instituting a moratorium on renewable energy projects, but they won’t take simple regulatory measures in the face of a known human and environmental health problem,” said Mikisew Cree First Nation Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro.

‘Energy privilege’

Renewable energy projects “are more likely to be opposed by wealthy, white communities,” found Leah Stokes, lead author of a new study looking at opposition in Canada and the U.S.

“Fossil fuel plants are predominantly located in poorer communities and communities of colour,” Stokes explained. “These plants create pollution. We need to replace fossil fuel power plants with clean energy, like wind and solar. When wealthier, whiter communities oppose wind energy projects in their backyards, they extend the lifetime of fossil fuel projects. This is an injustice.”

Wind power inspires the North

Nunavut, like most of the North, uses fossil fuels (mainly diesel) for power generation and heat but one community aims to cut it by half with a wind project now moving forward.

Sanikiluaq’s acting mayor Emily Kattuk said the community is “very excited to see how clean energy will benefit our community. Taking care of the environment, working together, sharing resources — these are all Inuit societal values.”

And in other good case studies:

  • Sudbury’s newest affordable housing development is ready for seniors to move in. "What does net zero mean? It is super insulated. It's got 14-inch thick walls full of insulation. It's got triple pane windows. This is an all-electric building. This building will be here in 2051 when Canada is going to be decarbonized," architect Sheena Sharpe told Sudbury.com.
  • Montreal’s building a new soccer dome in Saint-Léonard using geothermal heating and cooling to replace the current gas system.
  • Heat pumps are hot in Nordic countries: Norway now has 60 heat pumps per 100 households. “Cumulatively, the heat pumps sold over the past 30 years contributed to a -72 per cent drop in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from heating in Finland, -83 per cent in Norway and -95 per cent in Sweden.”
  • Prince Edward Island is “in aggression mode” to catch up: “It would be a fair guess to say about half of Island homes have moved away from heating oil to heat pumps — up from 10 per cent in just six years,” reports CBC News.

Meanwhile, back in Europe, both Germany and Portugal have passed the half-way mark for electricity generated from renewables. In Germany, the share of renewables rose to 52 per cent between January and September. Portugal has closed its last coal plant and estimates 54 per cent of electricity from renewables, with some authorities estimating 60 per cent. Both countries are aiming for renewables to make up 80 per cent of the electricity grid by 2030.