Studies prove cause of heatwaves

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♻️ This week’s sustainability news

Human-induced climate change causing heatwaves

What’s happening: Last month, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and Morocco faced extreme heat. This caused at least 23 deaths, many wildfires, and disrupted daily life. After starting with rain, the Paris Olympics were also affected by a heatwave warning for most of France, with temperatures in Paris and its surrounding areas expecting to climb to 35°C or higher. World Weather Attribution has released attribution studies on heatwaves affecting the Mediterranean and Europe. They have proved that the very high temperatures in July would have virtually never happened without human activities like burning fossil fuels. The extreme July heat, which happens once every 10 years, would have been 3°C cooler if there was no climate change.

Why it’s happening: The heat around the Mediterranean was following very high temperatures in Eastern Europe at the start of July. The heatwave happened after 13 months of very high temperatures globally, with each of those months being the hottest ever recorded. June 2024 was also the 12th month in a row where global temperatures were 1.5°C higher than before the industrial era.

Why it’s important: If the world doesn't quickly stop using fossil fuels, these events will get hotter, happen more often, and last longer. Research indicates that top Olympic athletes who aren't used to high temperatures might perform worse and face more heat-related issues like cramps and exhaustion during the Paris Olympics and future Games. It's good to see that more action plans are being put in place to prevent heat-related deaths around the world. But we need to speed up these efforts because more people are at risk due to climate change, an ageing population, and growing cities. Cities are especially at risk, so urban planning should include ways to cool them down, like adding more parks and water areas.

🤔 Another perspective: UN Secretary-General says the world must turbocharge the fossil fuel phaseout

Kamala Harris wins key climate group endorsements

What’s happening: On Wednesday, a progressive coalition of climate and environmental groups highlighted the danger of the Republican presidential ticket and showed their support for Kamala Harris. The coalition is made up of six groups - 350 Action, Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, Food and Water Action, and Friends of the Earth Action.

Why it’s happening: The coalition cited Harris' record as vice president, a US senator from California, and previous work in California. Even though he was expected to be the Democratic nominee for months, none of these groups had supported President Joe Biden before he quit the race. According to one of the group’s staff members, they worked with Harris on creating the Environmental Justice for All Act and believe she has “a stronger track record” than Biden.

So what is Harris’ track record?

As vice president, Harris pushed for $20 billion to be given to the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to help communities affected by climate change. She also often talked about the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) at events, highlighting its support for clean energy jobs, like installing energy-efficient lights and replacing gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. Harris was the highest-ranking US official at the international climate talks at COP28 in Dubai last year. She announced there that the US would double its energy efficiency and triple its renewable energy capacity by 2030. She also pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund to help developing countries deal with climate issues.

As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris proposed a $10 trillion plan to fight climate change. She aimed for the US to be carbon-neutral by 2045 and wanted all electricity to be carbon-neutral by 2030. Her plan also included having half of all new cars be zero-emission by 2030 and all new cars by 2035. However, this plan was more of a campaign wish list and she has recently cast some of her previous positions aside, such as no longer committing to the banning of fracking.

As district attorney, Harris set up a special team to tackle environmental crimes that hurt San Francisco's poorest people. She took legal action against several companies, including U-Haul, for breaking hazardous waste laws. Harris claimed her team was the first of its kind in the country. However, an investigation showed that the team only filed a few lawsuits and none were against the city's biggest polluters. As the attorney general of California, Harris got an $86 million settlement from Volkswagen for cheating on emissions tests and investigated Exxon Mobil for not being honest about climate change. She also sued Phillips 66 and Conoco Phillips for breaking environmental rules at gas stations, leading to an $11.5 million settlement. Additionally, she investigated an oil company for a 2015 spill in Santa Barbara, which resulted in the company being found guilty of nine criminal charges.

Why it’s important: As outlined in our last issue, President Biden successfully passed many important policies into law, even though the Democrats had a very small majority in the Senate. His biggest success was signing the IRA. But he will leave office without getting all of his climate plans approved, and the US is still expected to miss his goal of cutting emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030.

Until her campaign releases a climate platform, we can’t know for sure what Kamala Harris will try to implement if she becomes president. On the one hand, Republicans are attacking her as ‘a radical liberal’. On the other, she also needs to appeal to the progressive wing of the Democratic party and likeminded independent voters. It will therefore be a challenging assignment to communicate a platform which does enough for the environment and battling climate change without opening the door to scare campaigns.

Meanwhile the alternative in former president Donald Trump has promised to reverse many of Biden's policies if he becomes president again, including parts of the IRA. Many of his main advisors and former team members also helped to create the Project 2025 plan which proposes getting rid of most of the country's climate and environmental protections.

📖 Read the full articles: What would a Harris presidency mean for the climate? and Kamala Harris’s environmental and climate record, in her own words

🌐 Travel to Chiapas, Mexico

The 25 best things to do in our ultimate guide

One of Mexico’s most underrated states: Discover natural wonders, local customs, ancient Maya ruins, and plant-based food options in our new article!

😇 People doing great things

Powering cargo ships by wind

Could cut fuel consumption by as much as 50%: With their big sails on tall masts, merchant ships from hundreds of years ago started the age of commercial shipping. They carried all sorts of goods to different ports around the world. The first cargo ships were later replaced by diesel-powered ones. However, these new ships release greenhouse gases that are bad for the environment. A researcher at the University of Miami College of Engineering wants to make today's large cargo ships more environmentally friendly. His plan is to use an old method of moving ships: wind power. GeCheng Zha, a professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Aerodynamics and Computational Fluid Dynamics Lab, is creating large cylinders for cargo ships. These cylinders will help move the ships by taking in air, compressing it, and pushing it out in another direction. The cylinders are very tall but can be lowered so that ships can go under bridges and enter or leave ports easily.

The shipping industry causes about three percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, the International Maritime Organization, a UN agency that oversees maritime transport, updated its plan. This new plan says that the global shipping industry must reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by around 2050. Zha's advanced cylinders are part of a new trend in the shipping industry to use wind power to make cargo ships more eco-friendly. This includes technologies like spinning rotors that turn wind into movement using the Magnus force, and non-rotating wings with vents and fans for propulsion. Some ships are already using these technologies. Currently, about 30 out of 60,000 cargo ships worldwide use wind power with rigid sails made from materials like aluminium, fibewglass, and carbon fibre, which need very little engine power. The International Windship Association in London predicts that nearly 11,000 ships will use wind power by the end of this decade.

⭐️ Weekly inspiration

Trees proven to absorb methane on a global scale

Absorbed by tree bark: Methane has contributed to about a third of global warming since pre-industrial times, so forests are even more valuable in addition to their ability to store the other major greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO₂).

$1 billion deal for power cable between Australian states

With Italy’s Prysmian: To arrive in 2030, it will allow Tasmania to import excess solar and wind power from Victoria and store it in its hydro storage plants, then ship it back to the mainland during extended periods of low wind power.

Oregon County to hold fossil fuel companies responsible

Not ‘an act of God’: After recording its highest-ever temperatures in 2021 that killed 69 people, the county is suing the biggest fossil fuel companies for the emissions driving the climate warming that caused the heat dome conditions.

Number of plastic bags down 80% on UK beaches

Over the last decade: Reduction has been due to mandatory fees between 5p and 25p for using single-use plastic bags, a result of laws introduced in 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Air pollution deaths in children aged under 5 down 53%

Since 2000: Report finds that the disease burden for household air pollution has decreased, driven largely by reductions in exposure in China and South Asia, with deaths from household air pollution dropping 36%.

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