Hannah Ritchie’s first e-book, Not The Finish Of The World: How We Can Be the First Era to Construct a Sustainable Planet, was introduced in March 2022 with a special title: The First Era. Anybody who has adopted developments in local weather activism will recognise the sooner title as a mild riposte to the perceived apocalypticism of teams like The Final Era, a motion Thomas Schnee mentioned in Voxeurop and Alternate options Economiques in final January 2023. Ritchie, a Scottish information scientist and head of analysis at Our World in Information, argues that the information helps an optimistic outlook for local weather motion. The Guardian has printed an extended extract from Ritchie’s e-book, in addition to an interview.
Within the interview performed by Killian Fox, Ritchie explains her dissatisfaction with the “doomsday predictions” of some well-meaning local weather scientists and activists. “We have to get throughout a way of urgency, as a result of there’s a lot at stake,” Ritchie acknowledges. “However there’s typically this message coming by that there’s nothing we will do about it: it’s too late, we’re doomed, so simply get pleasure from life. That’s a really damaging message – as a result of it’s not true, and there’s no method that it drives motion. The opposite factor about doomsday predictions is that they’re a dream for local weather deniers, who weaponise poor forecasts and say: ‘Look, you’ll be able to’t belief the scientists, they’ve bought this improper earlier than, why ought to we hearken to them now?’”
Within the extract from her e-book, Ritchie describes her path from pessimism to optimism. Curiously sufficient, Ritchie’s initially gloomy perspective was fueled by the gradual improve within the availability of reporting. “My obsession for environmental sciences was rising in tandem with the uptick within the frequency of reporting. The extra decided I grew to become to remain knowledgeable, the faster the tales got here at me, typically accompanied by streams of recorded movies.” This can be a course of that’s acquainted throughout the social and political spectrum: with out entry to the suitable information, it’s all too straightforward to confuse a rise within the reporting of some phenomenon with elevated prevalence of that phenomenon.
As is so typically the case, Ritchie’s perspective “flipped” when she examined the information. The creator mentions the Local weather Motion Tracker, which tracks the local weather insurance policies, targets and pledges of each nation, as a selected inspiration. Whereas Ritchie admits that present insurance policies will result in a “horrible” 2.5 °C to 2.9 °C warming, if every nation implements and fulfills their up to date and legally-binding local weather pledges, this estimate will drop to 2.1 °C by 2100.
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Ritchie additionally highlights an financial cause for optimism: the growing affordability of renewable power sources. “In only a decade between 2009 and 2019, photo voltaic photovoltaic and wind power went from essentially the most to the least costly supply. The worth of electrical energy from photo voltaic has declined by 89%, and the value of onshore wind has declined by 70%. They’re now cheaper than coal. […] [Leaders no longer have to make the difficult choice between climate action and providing energy for their people. The low-carbon choice has suddenly become the economic one. It’s staggering how quickly this change has happened.”
While Ritchie’s optimism is salutary, there is no reason to be complacent. Céline Schoen in Alter Échos reports on the rightward drift of the European Parliament’s largest political group, the European People’s Party (EPP), particularly when it comes to climate policy. Schoen begins her report with the closely fought July 12 vote on the nature restoration law, which will require member states to restore a fifth of their natural ecosystems on land and sea. The EPP had joined forces with the political groups to their right, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID), to oppose the law, on the disputed grounds that it would harm farmers and food security.
While climate scepticism and even denial is to be expected from the parliament’s smaller political groups, the EPP’s flirtation with it is especially troubling, given their size.
On the same topic
Antoine de Ravignan | Alternatives Economiques | 2 January | FR
In France, 2024 marks the beginning of Emmanuel Macron government’s plan to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by one third by 2030. The plan, as Antoine de Ravignan explains, entails reducing emissions over the next seven years by the same amount as the reduction over the last thirty years, and to maintain that rate of reduction. No small undertaking.
Among (many) other goals, 15% of cars will be 100% electric by 2030, compared to 1% in 2022. The network of cycling lanes will increase from 57,000 to 150,000 kilometers. The share of primary residences heated with oil will drop from 9.5 to 3.6%,
and organic farms will double from 11 to 21% of total agricultural land.
The journalist talks with analysts about the prospects of the plan, and finds that not everything adds up: challenges in deploying wind and solar installations, doubts about increasing nuclear power production, and the underinvestment in renewable heat, biomethane, and second-generation biofuels, are some of the issues that could cause the plan to miss its optimistic target.
Ella McSweeney | The Irish Times | 16 December | EN
Freshwater pearl mussels are considered a bellwether for the local environment, indicating the state of the river water quality. The life-cycle of these creatures requires clean, well-oxygenated waters in healthy, free-flowing rivers. However, factors such as land drainage, agricultural intensification, siltation, water pollution, and changes in upland bog ecosystems have led to a 90 percent decline in mussel numbers across Europe since the 1980s. “In Ireland,” Ella McSweeney writes, “they are now in free-fall.”
Despite the legal protection of these mussels under Irish and European law, conservation efforts face challenges. Plans drafted in 2009 for Special Areas of Conservation remain unsigned, and a 2020 review of the species’ overall status in Ireland, with recommendations for immediate action, is yet to be published. McSweeney also highlights the country’s loss in a June 2023 case at the European Union’s Court of Justice, for failing to implement laws on protected habitats. If the government fails to demonstrate plans to remedy the situation, the country will face daily fines.
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