(The Conversation) – A deadly heat wave gripped large regions of Asia for weeks in spring 2024, sending temperatures in India’s capital region over 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 Celsius) in late May. Officials in Delhi warned residents that they could face power outages and water shortages.

Earlier in the month, campaigning politicians, news announcers and Indian voters waiting in long lines had passed out in the oppressive heat.

From as far north as Japan to as far south as the Philippines, the relentless heat wreaked havoc on everyday life. Students and teachers in Cambodia were sent home from school in early May, as their hand-held fans provided little protection against the stifling heat and humidity in their poorly ventilated classrooms. Farmers in Thailand saw their crops wither and mourned the loss of livestock that perished under the punishing sun. Hundreds of people died from the heat.

Most of the planet has suffered the dire effects of extreme heat in recent years. Phoenix hit 110 F (43.3 C) or higher for 31 straight days in summer 2023, and Europe saw unprecedented heat that killed hundreds and contributed to devastating wildfires in Greece.

Regardless of where or when a heat wave strikes, one pattern has been a constant: Older adults are the most likely to die from extreme heat, and the crisis is worsening.

We study climate change and population aging. Our research documents two global trends that together portend a dire future.

More older adults will be at risk of heat stress

First, temperatures are hotter than ever. The nine-year period from 2015 and 2023 had the highest average temperatures since global records began in 1880.

CBC: “Delhi records all-time record temperature of 52.9 C”

Second, the population is aging worldwide. By 2050, the number of people ages 60 and older will double to nearly 2.1 billion, making up 21% of the global population. That proportion is 13% today.

These combined forces mean that ever-rising numbers of vulnerable older adults will be exposed to intensifying heat.

To understand the risks ahead, we developed population projections for different age groups and combined them with climate change scenarios for the coming decades. Our analyses show that by 2050, more than 23% of the world population ages 69 and older will be living in regions where peak temperatures routinely surpass 99.5°F (37.5°C), compared with just 14% today.

That means that as many as 250 million additional older adults will be exposed to dangerously high temperatures.

Mapping the data shows that most of these older adults live in lower- and middle-income countries with insufficient services and limited access to electricity, cooling appliances and safe water.

In historically cooler regions in the Global North, including North America and Europe, rising temperatures will be the main force driving older adults’ heat exposure. In historically hotter regions in the Global South such as Asia, Africa and South America, population growth and increases in longevity mean that steeply rising numbers of older adults will be exposed to intensifying heat-related risks.

Policymakers, communities, families and older residents themselves need to understand these risks and be prepared because of older adults’ special vulnerabilities to heat.

Extreme heat is especially harmful to older adults

High temperatures are oppressive for everyone, but for older adults they can be deadly.

Extreme heat worsens common age-related health conditions such as heart, lung and kidney disease and can cause delirium. Older people don’t sweat as much as younger people, which makes it harder for their bodies to cool down when temperatures spike. These problems are intensified by common prescription medications, such as anticholinergics, which further reduce the capacity to sweat.

Spending time outdoors in hot humid weather can cause dehydration, a problem worsened by the side effects of prescription medications such as diuretics and beta-blockers. Dehydration can make older adults weak and dizzy, increasing their risk of falls and injury. These threats are even worse in regions lacking access to safe and affordable drinking water.

Poor air quality makes it difficult to breath, especially for those who already have lung problems such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.

For older adults with physical health problems, temperatures as low as 80 F (26.7 C) can pose significant danger. And when humidity is as high as 90%, even 78 F (25.6 C) can be hazardous to older adults.

Nighttime heat is especially harmful for older adults whose homes lack air conditioning or who can’t afford to run their air conditioners for long periods. The ideal temperature for older adults’ restful sleep is between 68 and 77 F (20 and 25 C), and sleep quality diminishes as temperatures rise. A night of restless sleep can make an older adult more depressed and confused during their waking hours. Medications also can lose their effectiveness if stored in places much warmer than 77 F (25 C).

Older adults also may suffer emotionally during stifling heat waves

Being stuck indoors when temperatures are unbearable can make older adults bored, depressed and isolated. People with cognitive impairments may underestimate the dangers of extreme heat or may not understand the heat advisories.

Those who have physical mobility limitations or lack access to transportation can’t easily travel to public cooling centers – if there is one nearby – or find relief in nearby “green and blue areas,” such as parks and lakes.

These threats are especially dire in low- and middle-income nations, where older adults are more likely to live in substandard housing and lack access to high-quality health care or ways to cool down in the heat. We talk about this as “systemic cooling poverty.”

What can be done?

Policymakers can work to cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels in vehicles, power plants and factories, which drive global warming, and develop effective plans to protect older people from heat risk. Older adults and their caregivers also can take steps to adapt.

But efforts to help need to be tailored to each region and population.

Wealthy municipalities can increase public investments in early warning systems and ride services to cooling centers and hospitals. They can use geographic information systems to identify neighborhoods with high concentrations of older adults and expand power grids to manage increasing demand for air conditioning.

In regions with substandard housing, limited access to clean water and few public supports such as cooling centers, much larger changes are necessary. Providing better health care, water and housing and reducing air pollution that can mitigate health problems during heat waves require significant changes and investments many countries struggle to afford.

The World Health Organization and Pan American Health Organization warn that this decade will be critical for preparing communities to handle rising heat and the risk to aging populations. Across all regions, researchers, practitioners and policymakers could save lives by heeding their call.

This article, originally published May 22, 2024, has been updated with extreme heat in Delhi.

Deborah Carr, A&S Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Innovation in Social Science, Boston University; Enrica De Cian, Professor of Environmental Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; Giacomo Falchetta, Research Scholar in Energy, Climate and Environment, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Ian Sue Wing, Professor of Earth and Environment, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Everyone talks about ending fossil fuel production, but almost no one is doing anything about it. Here are some exceptions.

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. This quip by the American essayist Charles Dudley Warner applies to fossil fuels as well. Everyone talks about ending fossil fuel production, but almost no one is doing anything about it.

Take the example of the Biden administration. It has launched the most ambitious effort by the United States to leave fossil fuels behind and enter the new era of renewable energy. And yet, in 2023, the United States produced more crude oil than ever before: 12.9 million barrels per day compared to the previous record from 2019 of 12.3 million barrels a day.

Or take the example of Brazil, where the progressive politician Lula da Silva won back the presidency in 2022. His predecessor was a big fan of drilling for fossil fuels. Lula has made it clear that he will take a very different approach. For instance, he wants Brazil to join the club of oil-producing countries in order to lead it into a clean-energy future. And yet, in 2023, Brazil’s production of oil increased by 13 percent and gas by over 8 percent, both new records.

Given all this Green rhetoric and crude (oil) action, it’s hard to find examples around the world where people are actually doing something to end fossil fuel production.

One of those places is Ecuador, which held a referendum last August about keeping oil under the ground of a certain plot of land in the Yasuní national park. “Yasuní is the most important park in Ecuador,” observes Esperanza Martínez, of Acción Ecológica in Ecuador. “It has been recognized as the most biodiverse region in the world, and it’s also home to many indigenous peoples.”

Thanks to the work of several collectives, Ecuadorans voted 54 to 37 percent in the August referendum to stop all operations to explore for and extract oil from Block 43—also known as ITT—within the park. Since the referendum, however, an election brought in a new president who has threatened to ignore the results of the referendum in order to raise funds to address the country’s security crisis.

Another example of effective action, this time at the international level, comes from the organizers of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), an effort to roll back fossil fuels at the global level, reports. Currently, 12 countries have endorsed the initiative, including a number of small island states but also, most recently, Colombia.

“Colombia is the first continental country to sign, with more than a century of petroleum extraction,” one of those organizers, Andrés Gómez O, one of the FFNPT organizers, points out. “So, this is a very important game-changer in the battle.”

One of the backers of the this Treaty, the one with the largest economy, is the U.S. state of California, which has been a leader in the United States in terms of expanding the renewable energy sector. There is so much energy generated by solar panels on sunny days in California that sometimes the net cost of that electricity drops below zero.

But as Raphael Hoetmer of Amazon Watch points out, California is also the largest importer of oil from the Amazon. In 2020, the United States imported nearly 70 percent of the oil produced by Amazonian countries, mostly Ecuador but a small amount from Colombia and Peru as well. And California is the state that’s importing by far the largest amount of this oil. So, shutting down the production of fossil fuels in Ecuador and elsewhere also requires addressing the largest consumers of those resources.

These three Latin American experts on the challenge of ending the international addiction to fossil fuels presented their findings at an April 2024 seminar sponsored by the Ecosocial and Intercultural Pact of the South and Global Just Transition. They not only discussed the appalling state of affairs in the world of energy and environment but also explained how some people are actually doing something about it.

The Example of Yasuní

“Rigged,” Digital, Dream/ Dreamworld v. 3, PS Express, By Juan Cole, 2024.

The effort to preserve the biodiversity of Yasuní in the Ecuadoran Amazon and keep out the oil companies has been going on for more than a decade. In 2007, then-president Rafael Correa floated a plan for international investors to essentially pay Ecuador to keep its oil in the ground. When the international community didn’t pony up the $3.5 billion, Correa abandoned his plan and pledged to move forward with drilling.

That’s when Esperanza Martínez and others began to organize the first referendum to keep that oil in the ground. They collected 850,000 signatures, 25 percent more than was necessary to trigger a vote. But the National Electoral Council threw out the petition, arguing that 60 percent of the signatures were fakes.

“We spent ten years fighting in tribunals and legal proceedings,” Martínez relates. “And what the National Electoral Council did was a fraud. We could prove that it was a fraud.”

The August 2023 referendum was a dramatic vindication for the Yasunídos. “Five million Ecuadorans said that it was right to leave the crude oil underground,” she continues. “This was a campaign that had never been seen before in the country to stop oil companies from extracting oil from the ground and preventing the negative impacts on the health and environment. We won!”

In the same referendum, voters also decided to stop mining activities in the “El Chocó” biosphere reserve in the capital city of Quito. The campaign, “Quito sin mineria,” opposed mining projects in the Metropolitan District of Quito and the Chocó Andino region, which comprises 124,000 hectares.

But the referenda on Yasuní and El Chocó were not the only elections that took place on that day in Ecuador. Voters also went to the polls to vote for a new president. In a later second round, businessman Daniel Noboa won. Noboa had supported the Yasuní referendum, pointing out that a ban on extraction actually made economic sense since it would cost $59 a barrel to extract the oil, which would sell for only $58 a barrel on the international market. After his election, he said that he would respect the results.

But then, in January 2024, he reversed himself, calling instead for a year moratorium on the ruling. Ecuador, Noboa argued, needed the money to address its worsening security situation: a surge in narcotrafficking, a skyrocketing murder rate, and a descent into gang warfare.

The Yasunídos argue that even this perilous situation should not affect the results of the referendum. “In Ecuador, nature is the subject of rights,” Martínez says, referring to the fact that Ecuador was the first country in the world in 2008 to include the rights of nature in its constitution. “The discussion is no longer if this part of the park should be closed or not, but how and when.”

Looking at the Amazon

The Amazon rainforest is a powerful symbol of biodiversity all around the world, even for people who can’t identify the countries through which the Amazon river flows.

“It’s the world’s largest tropical rainforest,” reports Raphael Hoetmer of Amazon Watch in Peru. “It houses up to 30 percent of the world species and contains one-fifth of the world’s fresh water. It is home to 410 indigenous nationalities, 82 of them living in isolation by choice, all of them helping in global climate regulation.”

But the Amazon region also contains an abundance of natural resources: timber, gold, and fossil fuels. “Any just transition requires ending the extraction of oil—and not only oil—from the Amazon,” Hoetmer continues. “It also requires ending the system that is behind this extraction.”

The degradation of the Amazon rainforest is reaching a tipping point. The estimate is that when deforestation reaches 20-25 percent of the biome, the area can’t recover. Hoetmer reports that deforestation is now approaching 26 percent.

Fossil fuel extraction is contributing to that deforestation is several ways. Millions of hectares are currently slated for oil and gas extraction. The drilling itself requires deforestation, but so do the new roads established to reach those sites. Those roads in turn open the region up to other forms of exploitation such as logging and agribusiness.

Then there are the oil spills that contaminate vast stretches of land. Several major pipeline breaks have dumped oil into the Ecuadorian Amazon, and the Ecuadorian environmental ministry estimates that there have been over a thousand “environmental liabilities” and over 3,000 sites “sources of contamination.” Between 1971 and 2000, Occidental Petroleum dumped 9 billion gallons of untreated waste containing heavy metals into Peru’s rivers and streams, leading to a lawsuit against the company by indigenous Peruvians that resulted in an out-of-court settlement. Colombia’s oil industry has been involved in over 2,000 episodes of environmental contamination between 2015 and 2022.

Shutting down oil and gas production in the Amazon requires looking beyond the producers to the investors and the consumers. California, since it absorbs nearly half of all Amazon oil exports, is a major potential target. On the financing side, Amazon Watch’s End Amazon Crude campaign is working to stop new financial flows into, for instance, Petroperú, the country’s state-run oil company. Campaigners are targeting major banking institutions in the Global North, including JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America. Community-led protests have taken place in the United States, Chile, and Germany. By raising the costs of investment into Amazonian extraction, campaigners are pushing lenders to remove Amazonian oil from their portfolios.

Another strategy is strengthening territorial sovereignty in indigenous lands. “One of the processes that gives us hope is this proposed proposal to reconstruct the Amazon based on strengthening the self-governance of Amazonian people,” Hoetmer notes. “The notion of Autonomous Territorial Governments started with the Wampis peoples but has now expanded to over 10 indigenous nations. The Autonomous Territorial Governments defend their territories  against illegal mining as well as land invasions and fossil fuel extraction, demand and build intercultural education, and negotiate public services with the Peruvian state.”

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

Frontline communities particularly those from the Global South are paying the highest price of fossil fuel exploitation and climate change, yet they are the least responsible. All over the world and for decades, frontline struggles have shown leadership in resisting the plundering of their territories. Today, for many communities around the world—and for some whole countries—continued fossil fuel extraction and climate change represent an existential crisis.

In response to this crisis, an early proposal came from officials and civil society leaders in the Pacific for a moratorium and binding international mechanisms specifically dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels in the Pacific. In 2015, in the Suva Declaration on Climate Change issued from the Pacific Islands Development Forum Third Annual Summit held in Suva, Fiji, decision-makers called for: “a new global dialogue on the implementation of an international moratorium on the development and expansion of fossil fuel extracting industries, particularly the construction of new coal mines, as an urgent step towards decarbonising the global economy.”

In 2016, following a summit in the Solomon Islands, 14 Pacific Island nations discussed the world’s first treaty that would ban new coal mining and embrace the 1.5C goal set at the Paris climate talks.

Initiated by island countries most at risk from rising waters, the movement for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty has now been endorsed by a dozen countries and more than 2,000 civil society organizations as well as a number of cities and states like California and more than 100 Nobel laureates.

“Our treaty is based on other treaties that have talked about nuclear weapons, mines, and gasses like the Montreal Protocol on phasing out ozone-depleting substances,” relates Andrés Gómez O.

“What’s clear is that we don’t have time for business as usual,” the FFNPT organizers argue. “The International Energy Agency determined that there needs to be a decline of fossil fuel use from four-fifths of the world’s energy supply today to one-fifth by 2050. The fossil fuels that remain will be embedded in some products such as plastics and in processes where emissions are scarce.”Critical to this process is action by richer countries. “Countries that are better off economically can support other countries to step away from the fossil fuel system,” Gómez continues.

A key strategy, he adds, would be “the Yasunization of territories.” He explains that “this means, first, making this park a utopia for the country. Then we localize this approach in different provinces in Ecuador where we say, okay, in this province we have our own Yasuní.” This local approach has had some precedents. The Ecuadoran city of Cuenca, for instance, held a referendum in 2021 banning future mining project.

The treaty appeals not only to the environmental movement. By connecting the struggle to the experiences of local communities—the violence associated with extraction, the cancer cases, the oil spills—“we are not just interested in convincing the already existing movements,” he says, “We also have to move the whole society.”

He concludes succinctly: “We are not just about saying no—to fossil fuels, to extractivism. We are about saying a very big yes: to life!”

Via Foreign Policy in Focus

Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences.

While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how abrupt and severe would the climate changes be?

Twenty years after the movie’s release, we know a lot more about the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation. Instruments deployed in the ocean starting in 2004 show that the Atlantic Ocean circulation has observably slowed over the past two decades, possibly to its weakest state in almost a millennium. Studies also suggest that the circulation has reached a dangerous tipping point in the past that sent it into a precipitous, unstoppable decline, and that it could hit that tipping point again as the planet warms and glaciers and ice sheets melt.

In a new study using the latest generation of Earth’s climate models, we simulated the flow of fresh water until the ocean circulation reached that tipping point.

The results showed that the circulation could fully shut down within a century of hitting the tipping point, and that it’s headed in that direction. If that happened, average temperatures would drop by several degrees in North America, parts of Asia and Europe, and people would see severe and cascading consequences around the world.

We also discovered a physics-based early warning signal that can alert the world when the Atlantic Ocean circulation is nearing its tipping point.

The ocean’s conveyor belt

Ocean currents are driven by winds, tides and water density differences.

In the Atlantic Ocean circulation, the relatively warm and salty surface water near the equator flows toward Greenland. During its journey it crosses the Caribbean Sea, loops up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows along the U.S. East Coast before crossing the Atlantic.

This current, also known as the Gulf Stream, brings heat to Europe. As it flows northward and cools, the water mass becomes heavier. By the time it reaches Greenland, it starts to sink and flow southward. The sinking of water near Greenland pulls water from elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and the cycle repeats, like a conveyor belt.

Too much fresh water from melting glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet can dilute the saltiness of the water, preventing it from sinking, and weaken this ocean conveyor belt. A weaker conveyor belt transports less heat northward and also enables less heavy water to reach Greenland, which further weakens the conveyor belt’s strength. Once it reaches the tipping point, it shuts down quickly.

What happens to the climate at the tipping point?

The existence of a tipping point was first noticed in an overly simplified model of the Atlantic Ocean circulation in the early 1960s. Today’s more detailed climate models indicate a continued slowing of the conveyor belt’s strength under climate change. However, an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation appeared to be absent in these climate models.

Ted-Ed Video: “How do ocean currents work? – Jennifer Verduin”

This is where our study comes in. We performed an experiment with a detailed climate model to find the tipping point for an abrupt shutdown by slowly increasing the input of fresh water.

We found that once it reaches the tipping point, the conveyor belt shuts down within 100 years. The heat transport toward the north is strongly reduced, leading to abrupt climate shifts.

The result: Dangerous cold in the North

Regions that are influenced by the Gulf Stream receive substantially less heat when the circulation stops. This cools the North American and European continents by a few degrees.

The European climate is much more influenced by the Gulf Stream than other regions. In our experiment, that meant parts of the continent changed at more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) per decade – far faster than today’s global warming of about 0.36 F (0.2 C) per decade. We found that parts of Norway would experience temperature drops of more than 36 F (20 C). On the other hand, regions in the Southern Hemisphere would warm by a few degrees.

These temperature changes develop over about 100 years. That might seem like a long time, but on typical climate time scales, it is abrupt.

The conveyor belt shutting down would also affect sea level and precipitation patterns, which can push other ecosystems closer to their tipping points. For example, the Amazon rainforest is vulnerable to declining precipitation. If its forest ecosystem turned to grassland, the transition would release carbon to the atmosphere and result in the loss of a valuable carbon sink, further accelerating climate change.

The Atlantic circulation has slowed significantly in the distant past. During glacial periods when ice sheets that covered large parts of the planet were melting, the influx of fresh water slowed the Atlantic circulation, triggering huge climate fluctuations.

So, when will we see this tipping point?

The big question – when will the Atlantic circulation reach a tipping point – remains unanswered. Observations don’t go back far enough to provide a clear result. While a recent study suggested that the conveyor belt is rapidly approaching its tipping point, possibly within a few years, these statistical analyses made several assumptions that give rise to uncertainty.

Instead, we were able to develop a physics-based and observable early warning signal involving the salinity transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic Ocean. Once a threshold is reached, the tipping point is likely to follow in one to four decades.

The climate impacts from our study underline the severity of such an abrupt conveyor belt collapse. The temperature, sea level and precipitation changes will severely affect society, and the climate shifts are unstoppable on human time scales.

It might seem counterintuitive to worry about extreme cold as the planet warms, but if the main Atlantic Ocean circulation shuts down from too much meltwater pouring in, that’s the risk ahead.

This article was updated on Feb. 11, 2024, to fix a typo: The experiment found temperatures in parts of Europe changed by more than 5 F per decade.

René van Westen, Postdoctoral Researcher in Climate Physics, Utrecht University; Henk A. Dijkstra, Professor of Physics, Utrecht University, and Michael Kliphuis, Climate Model Specialist, Utrecht University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In 2022, the burning of fossil fuels provided 82% of the world’s energy. In 2000, it was 87%. Even as renewables have undergone tremendous growth, they’ve been offset by increased demand for energy.

That’s why the United Nations earlier this month released a global stocktake – an assessment on how the world is going in weaning itself off these energy-dense but dangerously polluting fuels. Short answer: progress, but nowhere near enough, soon enough.

If we consult history, we find that energy transitions are not new. To farm fields and build cities, we’ve gone from relying on human or animal muscle to wind and water to power sailboats and mill grain. Then we began switching to the energy dense hydrocarbons, coal, gas and oil. But this can’t last. We were first warned in 1859 that when burned, these fuels add to the Earth’s warming blanket of greenhouse gases and threatening our liveable climate.

It’s time for another energy transition. We’ve done it before. The problem is time – and resistance from the old energy regime, fossil fuel companies. Energy historian Vaclav Smil calculates past energy transitions have taken 50–75 years to ripple through societies. And we no longer have that kind of time, as climate change accelerates. This year is likely the hottest in 120,000 years.

So can we learn anything from past energy transitions? As it happens, we can.

Energy shifts happen in fits and starts

Until around 1880, the world ran on wood, charcoal, crop residue, manure, water and wind. In fact, some countries relied on wood and charcoal throughout the 20th century – even as others were shifting from coal to oil.

The English had used coal for domestic heating from the time of the Romans because it burned longer and had nearly double the energy intensity of wood.

So what drove the shift? Deforestation was a part. The reliance on wood worked while there were trees. In the pre-industrial era, cities of 500,000 or more needed huge areas of forests around them.

In some locales wood seemed boundless, free and expendable. The costs to biodiversity would become apparent only later.

England was once carpeted in forest. Endemic deforestation drove the change to coal in the 16th and 17th centuries. Most English coal pits opened between 1540 and 1640.

When the English figured out how to use coal to make steam and push a piston, it made even more possible – pumping water from deepening mining pits, the invention of locomotives, and transporting produce, including the feed needed by working animals.

Yet for all this, coal had only reached 5% of the global market by 1840.

In North America, coal didn’t overtake wood until as late as 1884 – even as crude oil became more important.

Why did America first start exploiting oil reserves? In part to replace expensive oil from the heads of sperm whales. Before hydrocarbon oil was widely available, whaling was depended upon for lubricants and some lighting. In 1846, the US had 700 whaling vessels scouring the oceans for this source of oil.

Crude oil was struck first in Pennsylvania in 1859. To extract it required drilling down 21 metres. The drill was powered by a steam engine – which may have been fired by wood.

Steam and muscle

The 19th century energy transition took decades. It wasn’t a revolution so much as a steady shift. By the end of that century, global energy supply had doubled and half of it was from coal.

When they were first invented in 1712, steam engines converted just 2% of coal into useful energy. Almost 150 years later they were still highly inefficient at just 15%. (Petrol-powered cars still waste about 66% of the energy in their fuel).

Even so, steam sped up early proto-industries such as textiles, print production and traditional manufacturing.

But the engines did not free us from the yoke. In fact, early coal mining actually increased demand for human labour. Boys as young as six worked at lighter tasks. Conditions were generally horrific. Alongside human muscle was animal strength. Coal was often raised from pits by draft horses.

In 1850s New England, steam was three times more expensive than water flows powering textile mills. Vaclav Smil has shown industrial waterwheels and turbines “competed successfully with steam engines for decades”. The energy of flowing water was free. Digging up coal was labor-intensive.

Why did steam win? Human ecologist Andreas Malm argues what really drove the shift to steam-powered mills was capital. Locating steam engines in urban centres made it easier to concentrate and control workers, as well as overcoming worker walk-outs and machine breaking.

The question of who does the work is often overlooked. When energy historians refer vaguely to human muscle, we should ask: whose muscles? Was the work done by slaves or forced labourers?

Even in the current energy transition there can be gross disparities between employer and worker. As heat intensifies, some employers are giving ice vests to their migrant workers so they can keep working. That’s reminiscent of coal shovelers in the furnace-like stokeholes of steam ships being immersed in ice-baths on collapse, as historian On Barak has shown.

What does this mean for us?

As Vaclav Smil points out, “every transition to a new energy supply has to be powered by the intensive deployment of existing energies and prime movers”. In fact, Smil argues the idea of the “industrial revolution” is misleading. It was not sudden. Rather, it was “gradual, often uneven”.

History may seem like it unfolds neatly. But it doesn’t at all. In earlier transitions, we see overlaps. Hesitation. Sometimes, more intense use of earlier energy sources. They start as highly localised shifts, depending on available resources, before new technologies spreads along trade routes. Ultimately market forces have driven – or hindered – adoption.

Time is short. But on the plus side, there are market forces now driving the shift to clean energy. Once solar panels and wind turbines are built, sunlight and wind are free. It is the resistance of the old guard – fossil fuel corporations – that is holding us back.

Liz Conor, ARC Future Fellow, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Reuters says 3 officials told it that there was also a proposal to cut carbon dioxide pollution by 60% by 2035, but that it was shot down by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and India. These are among the four dirtiest countries in the world with regard to carbon pollution, and two of them, Russia and Saudi Arabia, depend on hydrocarbons for much of their gross domestic product.

General goals such as cutting back on coal are useless without specifics.

China, the world’s largest user of coal, says it won’t even stop building new coal plants until 2030 and it isn’t trying to become carbon neutral until 2060. Some 55% of all the coal consumed in the world is consumed by China. The only good thing you can say is that coal use has somewhat leveled off since 2010, as gigawatts of solar and wind were added to the Chinese grid:

H/t Statista.

India’s coal use was up 4% in 2022 over 2021, and its use tripled from 1998 to 2022. That’s not really what you would call, like, cutting back. But if coal use grew more slowly in 2022 than some previous years, that would be enough to let India say it was cutting back.

So the summit statement is meaningless.

As for tripling renewables, that is a low bar for some of these countries. Saudi Arabia appears only to have about 2 gigawatts of renewable energy, though its goal was 25 gigs by 2023. It has done almost nothing compared to a poor country like Morocco, which now gets some 40% of its electricity from renewables. So having 6 gigawatts of renewables by 2030 would be relatively easy for the Kingdom to accomplish, though it isn’t clear that they will do even that.

Russia likewise has almost no renewable energy and only hopes that wind and solar make up 10% of its grid by 2040. So it is easy for Moscow to pledge to do more, since it has done so little, as with Riyadh.

In contrast, China seems on track to produce 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2025, a year and a half from now, and it will likely reach this milestone 5 years early, since that was the original goal for 2030. Already this year, renewable sources of energy are supplying 50.9% of the country’s electricity, i.e. more than half. It clearly doesn’t need to build any new coal plants at all, but seems dedicated to drawing out coal use as long as possible. It has been suggested to me that President Xi Jinping is afraid of the workers in the coal industry — some 3 million of them.

India is another coal disaster, with some 66 percent of its electricity now being generated that way. It could cut back to “only” 65% and still meet the terms of the vague summit communique. Still, India has increased its non-fossil fuel power capacity by 400% in the past 8 years (counting big hydro and nuclear) and in some recent years (not this one) they have provided over 40% of the country’s electricity. I suppose it isn’t impossible that India could triple its non-fossil fuel power by a factor of 3 in the rest of this decade, given what it did the past 8 years. I mean, if India has a lot of anything, it is sunshine and wind.

So this is why the G20 shouldn’t be a thing. What could be more arbitrary than for countries to claim global influence based merely on their gross domestic product? It should be the United Nations taking these decisions, not the countries in thrall to or identical with Big Oil and Big Coal.

The reduction in fossil fuel use was primarily owing to the abandonment of coal, which plummeted by almost a quarter (-23%) compared to the same period in the previous year. In May, 2023, the 27 nations of the European Union used coal to generate only 10% of their electricity, a record low unparalleled in recent years.

The use of fossil gas was also down, by 13%.

In some countries, the retrenchment from coal and gas was even more dramatic, with a 20% reduction in 11 EU countries, and in five the fall was by 30% year over year — those were Portugal, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland

One of the reasons for less resort to coal and fossil gas to generate electricity was that over-all demand for electricity in the 27-nation bloc fell 5% compared to the previous year. That fall idled coal plants in particular. There was less demand because people were conserving energy, especially last winter, when the Russian war on Ukraine had driven up energy prices substantially, so people cut back to avoid sky-high bills. There were also government directives for people to be more frugal with electricity use during the crisis.

Although many analysts had predicted that the Ukraine War’s impact on high energy prices would cause a spike in the use of coal and gas, no such spike materialized. People didn’t fire up coal plants to meet the challenge. Rather, they cut back their electricity use on the one hand and put up a lot of solar and wind plants on the other.

For instance, solar electricity generation in the first six months of this year increased by 13% compared to the same period in 2022.

Wind generation increased by 5%.

Some countries did especially well with renewables, with record amounts of power from these sources being generated in the first half of this year. Greece and Romania for the first time ever obtained over half of their electricity from renewables. Denmark and Portugal came in at 75% renewables-based electricity.

The Ember team remarks that these signs point to substantial progress in decarbonizing Europe’s grid. This progress needs to be accelerated substantially, however, if the world is to keep global heating to 1.5 degrees C. (2.7 degrees F.) above the pre-industrial norm. Climate scientists fear that if we heat up the earth more than that, there is a danger that some climate systems will go chaotic, with dire implications for civilization. For instance, imagine a string of really destructive hurricanes hitting the same areas over and over again, leveling everything. How would those areas come back from such a repeated pummeling. Puerto Rico has had trouble coming back from just two such hurricanes, but what if it had been five or six?

So everyone should hurry up and install as many solar panels and wind turbines as we possibly can as soon as we possibly can. As the European statistics show, these energy sources are anyway cheaper than coal or gas, even if the health and climate impact of the latter is not taken into account.

The WMO quotes United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who pointed out that already in July we have seen the three hottest days on record, and the highest ocean temperatures ever recorded for this time of year.

The extreme heat is caused by human beings burning coal, fossil gas and gasoline, on top of which we have an El Nino phenomenon this year. Although some of the extremes we are seeing may not be as bad next year when the El Nino declines, the underlying heating of the planet will continue to intensify rapidly as long as we massively pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and methane.

The extreme heat has contributed to nearly 1,000 active forest fires in Canada, about 600 of which are considered to be out of control. Four times more acreage is on fire this year than is usual, consuming 3 percent of Canada’s territory.

Likewise, Greece experienced a heat wave made 50 times more likely by human-caused climate change, which in turn led to the outbreak of wildfires on the island of Rhodes, necessitating the evacuation of 17,000 tourists as the fires marched toward tourist hotels. Fires also broke out near the capital, Athens. Humans’ heat-trapping gases have raised the average temperature of the earth 1.2 degrees C. since the Industrial Revolution, raising the chances of such catastrophes astronomically.

On July 6, the mean surface temperature of the earth reached 17.08°C) (62.744°F).

Every single day in July after the 3rd has been hotter than the previous record set on August 13, 2016, of 16.80°C (62.24°F). WMO provides this chart:

Figure S1. Ranking of the top 30 warmest days in the ERA5 dataset based on globally averaged surface air temperature.

The first puny 9 little tabs are from 2016 and 2022, previous heat record-setters. All the rest are from this July, and since they only go up to the 23rd it is likely that when the chart is updated early next week, July 2023 will have crowded out all the other dates.

The mean temperature of the ocean surface has also rivaled the hottest temperature ever recorded for much of the month. Some of the heat in the Atlantic comes from fewer particles blowing over it from the Sahara than usual, and since the wind-borne sand and dust reflect sunlight, they usually cool the ocean a bit. In their absence, and given the El Nino effect from the South Pacific, temperatures have been high.

The water off Key Largo, Florida, hit 101.19 °F. last Monday, a record-breaker and just about the recommended temperature for a hot tub. Coral reefs, which play an important role in the undersea ecology, affording shelter to fish from predators and places to lay eggs, have been bleaching out, indicating that they are dying from the heat. Some have just dropped dead all of a sudden, rather than bleaching and then slowly dying.

If you prefer dry heat, Phoenix, AZ, has had thirty straight days of temperatures over 110 degrees F. This run breaks a record from 1974. Saturday saw the 6th day in a row with highs of at least 115 degrees F.

The dangers of this kind of heat, which will become more and more common in coming years, include heat stroke, which will kill ever more people.

Scientists have discovered that if we cease spewing carbon pollution, the rise in temperatures will cease immediately. In order to avoid a chaotic climate, we must reach zero carbon by 2050. We only have 27 years to completely redo the world’s electricity production and delivery systems, completely redo transportation, and completely redo urban building and rural agriculture. At least now more people understand the dangers of global boiling, though we need real urgency to make our politicians act. Only governments can respond to this crisis at the necessary scale. Still, we individuals can contribute, as Australians have shown by putting up solar panels on their roofs. And GM has just announced that it will keep the Bolt, the most affordable EV in the US market, in production.

In Turkey, when forests are not on fire, they are being destroyed by greedy men in suits

Protests to save Akbelen forest continue despite the violence

Written byArzu Geybullayeva

( Globalvoices.org) – Since 2019, the local residents of İkizköy village in Turkey’s southwestern province of Muğla have been trying to prevent deforestation in the Akbelen forest, which is situated near their village. But in Turkey, the preservation of green spaces has never been a priority for the ruling Justice and Development Party, which has no sound environmental policy.

The crackdown in 2013 against a group of environmentalists trying to prevent the destruction of Gezi Park was a defining moment for the ruling government, marking the AKP’s anti-environmental turn. Since then, scores of protests have erupted across Turkey, often staged and organized by local residents trying to protect the remaining green spaces and prevent the expansion of power plants. But with a ruling government that lacks any green vision, prioritizes the economy at the expense of the environment, and allows greedy companies to fill in their coffers at the expense of regular citizens, it is a struggle that is here to stay. The deforestation in the Akbelen forest that began on July 24 is a brazen example of this. Meanwhile, the companies behind the forest destruction have refused to comply with a court order that suspended the project in the first place.

Business interests

Out of 35 coal-fired power plants, there are three power plants operating in Muğla — Yatağan (in operation since 1982), Yeniköy (in operation since 1986), and Kemerköy (in operation since 1993). All three were privatized in 2014. Yeniköy and Kemerköy were purchased by YK Energy, a joint company set up by Limak Holding and İÇTAŞ Enerji. Both Limak and İÇTAŞ are known for their ties to the ruling government.

Since taking over plant management, the companies have done little to address the devastating health and environmental implications of the plants. Local residents have documented these effects extensively in local and international reports. These implications also did not stop the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources from launching a new regulation in March 2022 that open the natural olive groves in the area to development, and green-lights mining activities for the power plants.

The same month, the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization, and Climate Change made amendments, for a fourth time, to a regulation governing protected natural areas (national parks, nature parks, environmentally protected zones, and wetlands), opening these areas for mining and construction. These decisions were announced amid an ongoing court case filed by the local residents of İkizköy village. Dismissive of the protests by the local residents, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry handed over some 740 decares (740,000 square meters) of forest land to YK Energy to mine for lignite in April 2021.

Screenshot from a documentary film about the struggle of the local people to prevent destruction of the Akbelen forest.

According to reporting by a local online news platform Bianet, the companies moved into the forest area on July 24, having obtained the necessary permissions to open 740 decares of land for cutting. The companies claim the lignite underneath the forest area will fuel the power plants of Yeniköy and Kemerköy, which use coal to generate just one percent of the consumed electricity in the country.

The protesters are now calling on the relevant authorities to scratch that permission. In a statement signed by 16 environmental non-governmental organizations, the signatories said, “Deforestation should not be allowed for the continuity of thermal power plants, which cause premature deaths and are one of the main causes of the climate crisis. Fighting the climate crisis is possible by working with nature, not against it. We cannot sacrifice forests, which account for more than half of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions we have caused in the last 10 years, for the sake of coal power plants that threaten natural areas, climate, and the lives of all living things.”

Consequences of environmental degradation

In recent years, Turkey has been hit by a series of natural disasters and environmental crises such as drought, wildfires, floods, and mudslides, and as recently as February 2023, a devastating earthquake. As summer heat reaches new highs, reports of forest fires hitting Turkey have been making the headlines. Experts say while climate change or excessive weather conditions may have had a role to play, these disasters and crises were also an outcome of poor planning and incorrect decisions made at the government level.

According to the Climate Transparency Turkey report, Turkey continues to generate more than 30 percent of its electricity through coal. The report also adds, “Despite the decrease in coal-powered generation in 2021–2022, Turkey has no intention to phase out coal and has approximately 20.4 GW of new coal capacity in the pipeline, placing it sixth globally. In June 2022, the first block of the China-financed 1.3 GW coal power plant opened in Hunutlu. While the coal capacity pipeline decreased by 63 percent in comparison to 2020, to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius or achieve Turkey’s goal of net zero emissions by 2053, no new coal power plants should be built.”

Turkey only ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set a goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celcius, in October 2021, five years after signing the agreement. At the time, Turkey also announced its goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2053.

According to Climate Action Tracker, the country’s efforts to reach the Paris Accord’s goals are “critically insufficient.” And ratifying the Paris Agreement was not done with pure intentions. The decision came shortly after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received guarantees of financial support from France, Germany, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, according to reports by Politico and Reuters. Previously, Ankara said the reason it had not signed the agreement was because of unfair classification. Turkey was ranked as an Annex I group country — a “developed” or “industrialized” country — which prevented it from seeking funding, unlike nations ranked as “developing.”

Back at the Akbelen forests, pleas for help from residents and demands to stop the destruction of the forest continued into their fourth day. One resident speaking to a Turkish newspaper Evrensel, pleaded, “If this place goes, everywhere will burn, Turkey will burn. Let’s not cut down our pines and forests.” Another resident said, “I came here from a village that was destroyed for coal before, and now they are kicking me out from here too. Aren’t we the people of this country? Soldiers are preventing us. Help us.” Reports and footage of local police using force, pepper spray, tear gas, and water canons have been circulating online, elevating the gravity of the situation in the area:

There is both slaughter and cruelty in Akbelen. The gendarmerie once again tear gassed the people of Ikizköy, who were trying to enter #AkbelenOrmanı together with the deputies from the Green Left Party and CHP. Three people were detained under torture.

YK Energy, set up by LİMAK and İÇTAŞ, started cutting in Akbelen Forest to supply coal for the thermal power plant. The gendarmerie intervened harshly against those who wanted to prevent the slaughter that had been going on for a few days.

Journalists covering the events were also targeted:

I got pepper sprayed directly into my eyes, as gendarmerie prevented me from filming.

At least two reporters were fined, while several residents were reportedly detained. There have also been reports of local police preventing people from accessing the area and setting up barricades.

Written byArzu Geybullayeva

Via Globalvoices.org

Depending on how cold the winters are, the IEA expects renewable sources of energy to outstrip coal in 2024, and forever thereafter. It calls this change “structural.” That is, it isn’t a blip or something that could easily be reversed. We are entering a world where people will routinely get more electricity from wind, solar, water and battery than from dirty coal. While Asia is still somewhat wedded to coal and China is even still building new coal-fired power plants, this slight increase in use will be more than offset by the rapidly dwindling numbers of coal-fired plants in the US and Europe. So IEA expects coal use to decline over the next couple of years, and that renewables will go on growing from strength to strength.

China and India account for 80% of all planned coal plants, and as renewables fall in price and the true cost of coal in the form of global boiling becomes ever more apparent, both may scale back coal projects. In fact, India is considering halting all new coal plant planning except for those facilities already committed to. Right now, coal accounts for about a third of global power generation, but it is on a steep path to decline.

Global electricity demand growth is muted in 2023, but may take off again next year. IEA expects all extra electricity demand to be met by renewables this year and next.

And next year, for the very first time fully 33% of global power will be generated by renewables. And coal generation will fall below that benchmark, heading toward zero by 2050 (if we know what is good for us).

The world has made incredible progress on the renewables front in the past decade, as this IEA chart demonstrates:

IEA, Renewable electricity generation by technology, 2010-2025, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/renewable-electricity-generation-by-technology-2010-2025, IEA. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Carbon dioxide pollution from burning coal and fossil gas are expected to fall this year and next. If this expectation is met, it could signal that our CO2 emissions are leveling off in preparation for declining. If you look at the period 2019-2024, the report says, fossil fuel use will have fallen in 4 out of the 6 years. The authors expect coal and gas will just go on declining from here on in, even in years when demand for electricity increases. The extra demand will be met by renewables.

There are some paradoxes in the current situation to which they attend.

Because of extensive use by Australians of roof-top solar along with utility-scale solar, the price of electricity fell below zero 20% of the time in 2022, compared to 1% of the time in the Netherlands and Germany. For the price to fall below zero means that there is not enough storage capacity to smooth out the ups and downs of production, and states need to up their megabattery game substantially.

Another problem is that global heating is causing people to run air conditioners more. But if they run their ACs off coal and fossil gas, they are putting more heat-trapping CO2 into the atmosphere, which will heat up the earth more, so that they’ll have to turn up the AC more, and on and on in a vicious cycle. Obviously, everybody should be running their AC off renewable electricity, and probably this ideal can only be attained with government investment. Still, individuals can pitch in. In most parts of the US, e.g., if a homeowner is going to be in their house for 10 years or more, they will save money by putting up rooftop solar panels. If they drive an EV and fuel it from the panels that will speed the pay-back time even more. The panels can pay for themselves in as little as 6 years.

Finally, global heating causes drought as well as faster evaporation from bodies of water, so one of the three biggest sources of renewable power, hydro, is actually in danger of declining. Globally, hydropower has dropped from 38% to 36% since 1990. Governments should plan on continued decreases in hydropower, ensuring that it is replaced by wind and solar, not by fossil fuels.