“We have betrayed the Greta Thunberg generation”

The weekly round-up on the climate crisis and data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

“My generation betrayed Greta Thunberg's.”The words are of Pete Betts, “a legend of climate diplomacy and of the United Nations Climate Conferences”, as Simon Sharpe, a former British civil servant, defined him in his recent book Five Times Faster. 

Whereas Betts was the UK Government's International Director for Climate and Energy for ten years, lead negotiator at COPs for the European Union and for the United Kingdom at the United Nations on climate, and has managed international climate finance for a worth approximately 3.5 billion euros, his words are more than a bitter personal observation, they are a political message that calls the international community into question.They almost sound like an admission of the collective failure of a generation of political leaders, journalists and social partners, incapable of grasping the crucial importance of climate change and the urgency of the actions to be taken.

“I never met Greta, but I think she did a great job bringing climate change to the attention of politicians when it was in danger of being overlooked,” Betts continues.“I agree that my generation has failed young people.I do not believe that this is due to individual negotiators, although I do not shirk responsibility.I suppose I had more opportunities to make a difference than others.But collectively we betrayed them, that's true."

In a long chat with climate change expert journalist Pilita Clark on Financial Times, Betts he said what he has learned in his experience as a climate diplomat serving the United Kingdom and the European Union, showing all his disbelief and frustration at the inaction of our society regarding the climate crisis and at the ignorance of some ministers and political leaders.Climate change, at best, is not recognized as a real problem, too often it is not considered a priority and is considered expendable on the altar of energy security and the maintenance of models of economic, energy and industrial development that are now unsustainable.

COPs are poorly understood. “It is incredibly frustrating to see how little understood the UN leadership is.NGOs and media have not understood how they have changed since the 2015 Paris Agreement.The decisions that really matter are made months before the start of a COP.That's when most countries announce emissions reduction commitments, as required by the Paris Agreement.

When we signed the agreement, we thought that civil society and others would carefully review climate commitments ahead of the COP, so as to push states to set ambitious goals and to modify them if they were deemed insufficient.We were wrong.First, commitments sometimes don't arrive early enough.Furthermore, no one criticizes commitments unless they are made by developed countries.

A greater spotlight should be placed on the failure of states like China, whose emissions are higher than those of the entire developed world, to seriously strengthen their commitments.It should be highlighted more when countries like Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil weaken their commitments.Instead, at COPs much more attention is paid to things like what is said about fossil fuels in formulating a final decision for which no single country can be held accountable.”

The 1.5°C target is hanging by a thread. “The collective inability of states to agree on sufficient emissions reductions between now and 2030 is extremely significant, and China is the most important element.This is not about pointing fingers at Beijing.Developed countries outside Europe, notably the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, have failed to act for decades when they could have done so at very low cost.But this is the central reality of the situation we find ourselves in and it means that global temperatures could rise slightly above the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement unless urgent action is taken now.

After exceeding this limit, the world could obviously get its act together and reach negative emissions in the 2030s and 2040s, bringing the temperature increase back to below 1.5°C.But exceeding 1.5°C carries the risk of irreversible ecological tipping points.The world's weather systems will find a new balance, and scientists cannot predict how they will differ.

Many will try to use this moment to argue that we should give up on the 1.5°C target.These are the same people who caused the failure to achieve the goal.If we exceed this limit, the message to send is not to give up, but to double the pace of emissions reduction:we need to act decisively, rather than taking a steady approach.”

Even insiders don't always know exactly what is happening. “The COP process is very difficult to follow for all concerned.Delegates from 195 countries are organized into several negotiating groups that work simultaneously on dozens of different issues:financing, adaptation, emissions measurement and reporting, and so on.It is impossible for a single individual to be aware of all these activities.

Added to this is the fact that governments have very different opinions on which countries are most responsible for causing climate change.This inevitably leads to widespread mistrust and suspicion, which countries eager to slow progress can easily exploit by spreading rumors about other nations' positions."

World leaders can be helpful or hopeless. “Leaders behave in very different ways during these summits.Gordon Brown was very attentive to the details of COP 2009 in Copenhagen and personally helped save the meeting from failure by throwing himself into the negotiations.David Cameron spent much of his brief stay at the 2015 COP in Paris sitting in the VIP tent and was one of the few heads of government not to meet his delegation.In Glasgow in 2021, Boris Johnson and his team focused almost exclusively on producing slogans that presented the COP as a success.Johnson also criticized his COP president, Alok Sharma, for succumbing to tears after a last-minute intervention by India and China undermined efforts to phase out the use of coal power.Johnson apparently thought this made the COP look like a failure.”

Now it's China's turn. “It is true that the United States is the largest historical emitter and that in the last 30 years it has not done its part.But today the largest emitter is by far China and the decisions made in Beijing matter more than anything else.(...) The emissions cuts of a country like the United Kingdom will always be arithmetically insignificant compared to those of China, and the climate problem cannot be solved without China.

I am absolutely not saying that pressure should not be put on developed countries.(...) But given that the majority of global emissions today come from emerging economies, it is even more important to pressure richer countries to provide the financing to help poorer nations switch to renewable energy, which is cheaper over their lifetime compared to fossil fuels, but which require a lot of capital initially.At the moment this funding is dramatically insufficient."

Google promised it would stop running ads next to content that denies climate change, but these policies continue to be violated

In October 2021, Google promised to no longer serve ads next to content that denies the existence and causes of climate change, so that supporters of these false claims can no longer make money on its platforms, including YouTube.But monitoring by a coalition of environmental organizations and the Center for Countering Digital Hate he noted that the promises of two years ago continue to be unfulfilled.

In a relationship published on May 2, 100 videos, viewed at least 18 million times in total, were identified as violating Google's policy.The study's authors found videos accompanied by advertisements from major brands such as Adobe, Costco, Calvin Klein and Politico.A Google search engine advertisement also appeared before a video claiming there was no scientific consensus on climate change.Additionally, another 100 videos were identified that did not explicitly violate Google policies, but met a broader definition of climate misinformation that should have been covered.These also included videos from Exxon Mobil and Fox News.

A YouTube video titled “Who is Leonardo DiCaprio,” which features a slew of claims that climate change is a hoax and the world is cooling, contains a Paramount+ ad for the film “80 for Brady,” starring Lily Tomlin , Sally Field, Rita Moreno and Jane Fonda.

Jane Fonda herself has long been personally dedicated to the fight against climate change.“I am appalled that an advertisement for one of my films appears in one of these videos and I hope that YouTube stops this practice immediately,” said Fonda, who called it abhorrent that “YouTube violates its own policy” by running climate hoax videos with ads, giving the content added validity while “the planet is burning”.

“We wonder what Google's current level of policy enforcement is,” Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said in an interview.

It's difficult evaluate the scope of misinformation on YouTube, the researchers said, because watching videos is time-consuming and access to data is limited, forcing them to laboriously search the platform with keywords.“We think this is probably just the tip of the iceberg,” Hood added, referring to what the study was able to find.

Michael Aciman, a spokesperson for YouTube, said in a statement that the company allows “political debates or discussions of climate-related initiatives, but when content crosses the line into climate change denial, we remove advertisements from those videos.We enforce this policy rigorously, but our enforcement is not always perfect and we are continually improving our systems to better detect and remove content that violates the policy.That's why we welcome feedback from third parties when they think we've missed something."Aciman added that YouTube has removed advertisements from several videos flagged by researchers, including one promoting "80 for Brady."

Below some of the climate videos the researchers found — some with ads and some without — YouTube placed a “context” box with authoritative information, signaling that it knew the videos contained false or at least disputed claims.“Climate change refers to long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns, caused primarily by human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels,” YouTube wrote, linking to a United Nations site on the topic.

ENI's role in the Pakistan crisis

ENI has earned around 550 million dollars by not fulfilling contracts with Pakistan and then reselling the liquefied natural gas (LNG) promised to Pakistan in the last two years to others and contributing to worsening the Asian country's energy shortage.This is what the non-profit organization Sourcematerial and Recommon, an Italian environmental group, claim.

According to the two organizations, between late 2021 and early 2023 the Italian energy major failed to deliver a number of scheduled shipments under a contract to supply one LNG cargo per month.Around that time, ENI's LNG ships stopped going to Pakistan and headed to Türkiye.

In 2017, it reads in the joint report by Sourcematerial and Recommon, “ENI has been awarded a long-term contract to supply liquefied gas (LNG) to Pakistan until 2032.But since energy prices have skyrocketed, the Italian multinational has missed several gas deliveries, jeopardizing the country's supplies, which are now exhausted."Although the Pakistani crisis has deep and systemic roots, the report continues, “ENI has direct responsibility for what is happening in the country”.From the autumn of 2021 onwards, the Italian company would have missed more than a third of the deliveries foreseen by the contract, or 8 out of the 20 agreed upon.

ENI denies taking advantage of the situation, and all cargoes not delivered to Pakistan were beyond the company's reasonable control, reports Bloomberg.“Only when mutually acceptable commercial solutions were not available were contractual non-delivery provisions applied,” the company said in response to the report.

The cancellations came as global gas markets began to tighten in 2021, with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine sparking a rush on LNG causing shortages for buyers who could no longer afford the fuel.Pakistan's contracts, tied to oil rates, carried a relatively modest 30% penalty for cancellation, making it profitable for suppliers to legally abandon shipments. The Pakistani government stated that "ENI's failure to supply LNG cargoes is a contractual matter covered by confidentiality provisions".

The decline in deliveries to Pakistan it aggravated widespread blackouts across the country because the state importer was unable to find alternative supplies.

ENI was also struggling with a supply shortage following production problems at its LNG plant in Nigeria, which led to a reduction in shipments to the Rome-based company, traders told Bloomberg.

The return of El Niño could lead to new record temperatures in 2023

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), it's probable that the El Niño weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean develops over the course of the year and may contribute to rising temperatures and bring new heat waves.

The WMO said that after three years of a La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which often slightly lowers global temperatures, there is a 60% chance it will transform into El Niño, its warmer counterpart, in the period May-July this year.This probability will increase to 70-80% between July and September.

The exceptionally warm conditions should be brought about by the end of the “triple dip” of La Niña (a very rare event so called because it characterizes three winter seasons for the Northern Hemisphere and three summer seasons for the Southern Hemisphere, recorded only twice more before today, between 1998 and 2001, and between 1973 and 1976) and by a rapid transition to warmer El Niño conditions.

“To have three consecutive years with a La Niña event is exceptional.Its cooling influence is temporarily slowing the rise in global temperatures, but will not stop or reverse the long-term warming trend." he had stated last year Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the WMO.“Worsening drought in the Horn of Africa and southern South America bears the hallmarks of La Niña, as does above-average rainfall in Southeast Asia and Australasia.The new La Niña update unfortunately confirms regional climate projections that the devastating drought in the Horn of Africa will worsen and affect millions of people."

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Wilfran Moufouma Okia, head of the WMO's regional climate forecasting services division, said there was no current estimate of how much El Niño would push temperatures higher.

According to one esteem Of Carbon Brief, 2023 could be one of the four warmest years on record, with a small chance of being the warmest ever.However, “since the effect of El Niño on global temperatures usually manifests itself in the year following its onset, the impact could be more evident in 2024”, he commented a WMO official.

How shellfish are migrating onto the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the world's largest plastic island, generating new ecosystems

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also called the “Pacific Trash Vortex,” is the largest patch of trash in the oceans.It is located in the Pacific Ocean, between California and the Hawaiian Archipelago, and moves following the oceanic current of the North Pacific subtropical gyre.It is mainly composed of plastic, light metals and decomposing organic residues.

However, as observed by a recent study, now a new ecosystem is being born around this immense plastic island.Sea anemones as large as a fingernail or as large as the palm of a hand;white and lacquered bryozoans;hydroids sprouting like orange feathers;shrimp-like amphipods;Japanese oysters;mussels.None of these creatures belong here but somehow they have learned to survive in the open sea, clinging to plastic.

And not only that:they now live side by side in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with creatures that normally dwell in the middle of the ocean.Coastal and open sea ecosystems are merging into one plastic-related ecosystem.“As humans, we are creating new types of ecosystems that have potentially never been seen before,” explains Ceridwen Fraser, a biogeographer at the University of Otago, who was not involved in the study.The Garbage Patch, far from being a wasteland, is the site of an active biology experiment.

The scientists who conducted this study were initially intrigued by debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami.Even after six years, debris continued to arrive in the United States loaded with creatures native to the Japanese coast.Scientists have counted more than 60 species of mollusks.If molluscs and crustaceans, which usually live on coasts, were able to survive a six-year ocean crossing thanks to plastic, how much longer could they survive?Could they live on the high seas permanently?

Many of the Garbage Patch objects that the study authors found covered in shellfish come from the fishing industry:nets, buoys, ropes, boxes, cones for traps.These objects do not decompose quickly precisely because they are designed to last a long time in sea water.They are part of an industry that has destroyed ocean ecosystems, driving billions of fish and shellfish from their habitat.Now plastic remains are helping to create new ecosystems that we would never have imagined, disrupting existing ones.

How heat pumps can help cities reduce carbon emissions

Heat pumps are a key solution to help reduce carbon emissions.Instead of creating heat, they move it from one place to another and have a much lower carbon footprint.But can we make them accessible to everyone?A documentary try to explain itor. 

Preview image via surfertoday.com