Francesca Von Krauland

Drought, Migration, and Climate Change: When Hope Runs Dry

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future November 8, 2020November 8, 2020climate change, drought, migration, precipitation, wildfires

The World Health Organization defines a drought as “a prolonged dry period in the natural climate cycle that can occur anywhere in the world.” While widespread and naturally occurring, droughts impact certain regions far more drastically than others, and they do so with rapidly increasing frequency and intensity due to climate change. Rising temperatures elevate rates of soil moisture evaporation, which in turn decreases plant cover that could capture rainfall in dry areas. Climate change alters precipitation patterns, causing less rainfall overall in certain regions, and also affecting snowpack and melt, which diminishes the water supply. Areas that are already relatively dry, like the subtropics, will in coming years experience worsening droughts, while relatively wet places like the tropics will experience increased precipitation.

While some of the areas impacted by worsening drought conditions are located in the developed world, like the United States Southwest, most impacted regions are South and Southeast Asia—countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Cambodia, and Laos, which are under the monsoon climatic zone. In Indonesia, 92% of the country experienced drought due to El Niño last year, impacting nearly 50 million people. Water scarcity impacts 40% of the world’s population.

Severe droughts, exacerbated by global warming conditions, affect every aspect of society, including the agricultural industry, transportation, energy, and public health. Droughts decimate the growth of crops like wheat, soybeans, and corn, some of which are necessary to support livestock and some are necessary for human consumption. This results in food price instability, social unrest, and famine. Droughts are costly for the transportation sector because a certain water level in waterways is necessary for transport barges to effectively ship goods, and water levels drop in droughts. Roads also crumble from prolonged exposure to dry heat, deteriorating crucial infrastructure. Electric grids strain under increased demand during heat waves, and the availability of hydroelectric power decreases during droughts. Yet perhaps the most alarming human impact of droughts is in public health.

Image from the World Health Organization

Droughts in less developed areas can disturb local health services due to a lack of water, which is especially troubling considering the worsening in various health conditions that droughts lead to in effected populations. The WHO reports that droughts can cause:

malnutrition due to the decreased availability of food, including micronutrient deficiency, such as iron-deficiency anaemia
increased risk of infectious diseases, such as cholera, diarrhea, and pneumonia, due to acute malnutrition, lack of water and sanitation, and displacement
increased health risk in people already impacted by lung diseases, like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or by heart disease, due to lower air quality in connection with wildfires and dust storms from droughts.
psycho-social stress and mental health disorders

In many cases, the above conditions make certain regions unlivable. Thus droughts exacerbated by global warming contribute to the growing problem of climate migration. Up to 700 million people are at risk of being displaced by droughts alone within the next ten years—a number that contributes to the total of migrants fleeing other climate disasters and political instability. The UN reports that “new displacement patterns, and competition over depleted natural resources can spark conflict between communities or compound pre-existing vulnerabilities.” In this way, people displaced by climate issues can be categorized as refugees and receive the international protections entitled to this group. The overlap between climate migrants and those traditionally thought of as refugees is significant, with many people displaced by political and other conflicts facing a secondary displacement because they live in climate change “hotspots.” As long as droughts and other climate issues persist and worsen, such groups cannot return to their home areas, sometimes putting a strain on regional political relations and the distribution of resources. Migration itself can have a negative environmental impact, with refugee settlements built for temporary usage being an unsustainable model of community building.

While it is people in developing countries who most directly experience the effects of climate change, it is the developed world—places like Europe and the United States, which caused much of the environmental degradation that contribute to the rising number of climate disasters. As the cause of these interconnected issues, it should be the responsibility of top-emitting countries to aid governments struggling with the effects of climate change—whether that entails supporting programs to combat the droughts and other such events directly, financing repairs, or giving aid to climate refugees. There are several ways that the effect of droughts in particular can be mitigated: conserving water and enhancing water efficiency in city plans, making available alternative water supplies, planting drought-resistant crops, and increasing energy efficiency in buildings so that less water-cooled power is used to begin with. However, many of these are much more feasible in places like the Southwest U.S. than in rural Indonesia, for example, and all present only superficial solutions to a complex problem.

Worsening droughts are an economic, political, and environmental issue, but most of all, it is a human one—a problem that will continue to take and disrupt lives with alarming rapidity until the underlying cause of climate change is addressed. Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would simultaneously address each of the contributing factors not only to drought conditions, but also to wildfires and hurricanes, and to so many other destructive forces. Substantial progress in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement is the only humane way forward.

Climate Change Intensifies Hurricanes

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future November 8, 2020November 10, 2020climate change, global warming, hurricanes, natural disaster

In 2005, as Hurricane Katrina hurtled its winds and rains with startling velocity over the Atlantic, in the direction of the United States, I went bowling. There were two screens hovering over our small, late-summer birthday party: one with our bowling scores, and one showing the path of the hurricane drawn like a colorful, upside-down party hat.

The hurricane passed over Florida without too much damage—at least relative to Louisiana. Soon after, Hurricane Wilma had my family playing Monopoly on a blanket we spread out between the concrete walls of the downstairs storage room. My 23-floor building lost power, so we stuffed backpacks with the essentials: flashlights, a radio, food, my favorite doll, and we hiked down the stairs. When we reemerged, our apartment was intact, but our next-door neighbor was not so lucky. Her windows had blown out, leaving her apartment exposed to the wind.

Though these two hurricanes stand out in my mind, we’ve had many others since then. They’re so frequent in Miami that any true native knows that you only refresh your hurricane-preparedness supplies and oil the storm-shutters a day or two before, when you’re sure the forecast cone is accurate. The regional grocery chain, Publix, even sells hurricane cakes for those who throw (somewhat ill-advised) hurricane parties—such is the acceptance of the alarming reality of the increasingly-violent Atlantic hurricane season.

This year, the hurricane season, which lasts from June 1 to November 30, has so far had a historic 28 storms. Since the 1970s, intense hurricane activity has increased dramatically as a result of higher seas levels and warmer temperatures. Storms like the infamous 2017 Hurricane Harvey used to be considered a once every hundred years event; now, such a storm is a once in every 16 years event.

So, how exactly does climate change impact the frequency and intensity of these catastrophic storms? While the effect on the number of storms remains unclear, and some research actually suggests that climate change might reduce the overall amount of storms, higher power hurricanes will become more common. This is because as global temperatures rise due to climate change, the ocean absorbs excess heat, which fuels storm surge and rain fall. If the temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius, there will be a 10-15% rainfall increase within 100 km of a storm, making hurricanes much more destructive. There is also evidence that storms are slowing down, which means that they will hover over an area longer, causing greater destruction. NOAA reported that sea surface temperatures in the tropics are indeed “much warmer than average” this year.

Slow, powerful, frequent (or even infrequent!) hurricanes tearing up the Caribbean and southern coastal states have a massive human and economic impact. The Congressional Budget Office calculates annual $28 billion in hurricane repair costs, which will increase by almost a third within the next decades because of increased coastal development. Over a million Americans live in areas that put them at risk of substantial damage from hurricanes, including income loss as local consumption, production, and mobility are disrupted. In the U.S., economic activity eventually rebounds with government aid and insurance payments, but in places like the Caribbean, the effects are felt more acutely. With weaker infrastructure to begin with, some Caribbean cities impacted by hurricanes experience severe damage that require huge repair costs—sometimes exceeding the size of the economy, as in Dominica after Hurricane Maria, and taking years to rebuild. Puerto Rico was left completely without electricity after that same hurricane, costing the federal government $2 billion in repairs. This leaves less funding for other essential services, like education and health, and reduces the overall well-being of residents, plunging some into poverty.

Therefore, prevention is essential to mitigating the impact of hurricanes. Improving coastal infrastructure, elevating buildings to avoid flooding, building seawalls, and replenishing beaches are all simple measures that require relatively little effort for the benefits provided. A more forward-thinking approach would be to slow development along the coasts—in addition to the risks associated with rising water levels due to climate change, hurricanes also batter these properties, which continue to spring up every year despite logic and science. Preserving coastal wetlands, dunes, and reefs, which absorb storm surges, would also have benefits beyond hurricane damage mitigation. However, all of these measures together are inadequate unless the source of the storms’ increasing strength is addressed: climate change. Reducing the emissions that cause rising global temperatures is the only way to actually halt the escalating storm seasons, saving billions of dollars—not to mention hundreds of lives annually.

Featured image from the CDC

Orange Skies

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future November 1, 2020November 1, 2020climate change, economy, natural disasters, pandemic, sustainability, wildfires

There’s something unsettling about the virus, this seemingly inescapable, omnipresent, insidious force that keeps us locked in our homes. Some people almost wished for a tangible enemy, something obvious and terrifying but at the very least visible, so that they could justify the sacrifices and fear. The universe granted that wish in a very 2020 way—wildfires swept the west coast with the same force that the Australian wildfires did way, way back in January of this year. Suddenly, the sky was like something out of Dante’s Inferno, and you could taste the smoke particles floating in the air even through a face mask. The landscape matched the gathering feeling of apocalypse, and new numbers, like 4 million burned acres, joined the statistics we sing ourselves to sleep with: 45.1 million global COVID-19 infections, 230,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States eight months and counting of using the phrase ‘unprecedented times.’ An article written by Stanford University student Nestor Walters on the wildfires poses the question: “How many more times do we need to hear words like trying, tumultuous or challenging as adjectives to times before we accept that these are simply the times we live in?”

No one can escape it—not the wildfires, not the pandemic, and not climate change. Rozzi, an American pop singer, released a ballad called “Orange Skies” about the wildfires in her hometown of San Francisco. She said of the song, “Despite the massiveness of the issue, I knew I wanted to make the song personal – because of course the underlying issue itself is personal. Climate change isn’t some mythical thing happening to other people, in other places – it’s happening right now, right outside our doors.”

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk reports 7,348 wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, droughts, and heatwaves over the past 20 years. These natural disasters resulted in the deaths of 1.23 million people, affecting a total of 4.2 billion people, and caused $2.97 trillion in global economic losses. Most effected are China and the United States. The report unequivocally links these events to the rising global temperature as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, and finds that any improvements to disaster response or climate adaptation will be “obsolete in many countries” if climate change, the source of the problem, is not immediately addressed.

So how does climate change cause forest fires? National Geographic explains that as temperatures rise due to climate change, the hot air “soaks up water from whatever it touches—plants (living or dead) and soil, lakes and rivers. The hotter and drier the air, the more it sucks up, and the amount of water it can hold increases exponentially as the temperature rises; small increases in the air’s heat can mean big increases in the intensity with which it pulls out water.” In California, the rise in temperature is about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, far above the global average of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat combines with parched forest material, which is even dryer due to a persistent drought more intense than any for the past 1,200 years, producing the ideal conditions for a fire to consume forests, in addition to all of the settlements that have increasingly encroached among traditionally undeveloped lands.

Some preventive measures exist, though actual implementation by governments and industry varies. In Australia, nomadic aboriginal groups used to practice surface vegetation burning to prevent outbreaks of fire. Though indigenous populations can no longer engage in that tradition, the method is still emulated by local governments. Urban planning in Australia—where the 2019/2020 season was the hottest on record and driest for 120 years—must prevent expansion into flammable wildland areas, include vegetation-free zones around properties, use fireproof building materials, and plan evacuation and rescue routes in advance. In California, controlled burning of dry brush and excess debris is a common practice, though it contributes to air pollution. Currently, timber companies and biomass industries do not substantially support the state’s fire prevention strategy, so reducing costs of thinning projects would create better incentives for participation on an industry level. Additionally, as in Australia, building codes should emphasize fire-resistance and developing into high-risk areas should be banned. As a whole, these measures could reduce short term damage, but would address only the symptoms of the problem, rather than the problem itself. Unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, and the warming of the Earth slows, these practices will not suffice.

Economically, the stakes are high for leaders to respond effectively. California Governor Gavin Newsom announced investments in the CAL FIRE air fleet, early wildfire warning technologies, fire detection cameras, and permanent firefighting positions, along with related crisis counseling, legal services, and housing and unemployment assistance for people affected by the fires. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, on the other hand, was widely criticized for his slow response to the wildfires, though he did expressly link them to climate change—a link that the Australian Finance Minister denied. Though Australia has pledged to reduce its emissions by between 26 and 28% within the next decade, a UN report noted that few of the Conservative government’s policies are designed to reach this target. Studies on the economic impact of wildfires on affected areas show that “large wildfires lead to instability in local labor markets by amplifying seasonal variation in employment over the subsequent year” and that rural areas in particular struggle to recover. Even without the pandemic-induced recession, effects last months and even years in places like rural Oregon. Short term economic gains as local laborers rebuild are overshadowed by the slow economic growth that follows as tourism, logging, and other essential industries drop.

It’s been an overwhelming year, but the pandemic, the wildfires, and climate change are nothing new. We are experiencing the colliding effects of problems we as a global society created and then ignored, until a virus halted civilization and the skies turned orange. The problem isn’t invisible, it’s in everything: it’s the fuel that runs the world we are literally watching burn. But we still have time, just a tiny bit of time, to turn things around, and to lower our emissions by switching to renewable energy, and to rebuild a post-pandemic society sustainably. Nestor Walters puts it best: “We don’t own the past or future; all we have is now. We can’t let hope take away our now, or we’ll find ourselves looking out the window one morning, wondering if the sky used to be blue.”

Featured Image from Bloomberg

Lessons in Sustainability: Sub-Saharan Africa

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 28, 2020October 28, 2020agriculture, sub-saharan africa, sustainability, trees, U.S. election

Last week, the two U.S. presidential candidates completed their final debate before the election. It was surprisingly normal compared to the last one, which is equal parts depressing and only dubiously true. While both candidates managed to finish their sentences, the substance of their ideas on climate change was lacking. And, as this journalist pointed out, the way the moderator posed the question, “We’re running out of time so we gotta get on to climate change,” reveals an important truth about the issue itself: it’s been neglected for too long.

It was encouraging to hear former Vice President Biden make his stance unequivocally clear when he said,”Global warming is an existential threat to humanity. We have a moral obligation to deal with it.” He then outlined concrete solutions he supports, including the creation of charging stations for electric cars on highways, increasing energy efficiency of buildings, and switching to wind and solar energy. He even directly confirmed that he would transition from the oil industry over time, to which President Trump replied, “Oh, that’s a big statement.” Politically it might be, but when one considers the urgency with which most of the rest of the world has committed to that sentiment, it really shouldn’t be that shocking.

The current U.S. President’s stance on the environment and climate change was clear long before this final debate. His administration has reversed nearly 100 rules regarding emissions standards, he famously placed a former coal lobbyist at the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, he removed the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, and he cited misinformation to support his anti-wind energy stance during the debate, to name a few. It seems the one positive thing Trump has done for the environment is promise the U.S.’s support of the World Economic Forum’s One Trillion Trees Initiative—an action he made sure to highlight during the debate. The Initiative’s stated goal is to “grow, restore and conserve 1 trillion trees around the world,” and that seems like a force for positive change.

Another such force exists, far from the power dynamics of international institutions and hegemonic presidents. Despite Trump’s disinterest in Africa, demonstrated by his lack of a single visit to the continent during his presidency, a particular program, Trees for the Future, based in sub-Saharan Africa, has already achieved great results. The program, which was founded by a Maryland couple and receives funding from institutions like Google and UN Migration, aims to help farmers plant forests in Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, and Tanzania in order to make regenerative gardens in arid regions. The program is locally run and sustained. According to the 2020 Impact Report, Trees for the Future has planted 191 million trees, which resulted in the restoration of almost 20,000 gardens and helped over 150,000 people in the region. Not only is the regenerative gardening program good for the environment, but it also decreases food insecurity and poverty, thereby reducing migration of people in need of resources. By 2025, the organization aims to lift 1 million people out of poverty by planting 125,000 Forest Gardens.

These successes result from the intersection between the developed and developing worlds, in which technologies and ideas can be transplanted and adapted to suit the needs of developing countries in a way that empowers local people to self sufficiency. Such an approach addresses the ethical question I posed in my last article, in which the historical rise of developed countries to power using nonrenewable energy created the problem of climate change, but even countries less responsible for the problem are needed to tailor their growth to fix it. By helping farmers in sub-Saharan Africa plant trees to develop their agricultural industry, local resource needs are met, national development goals are furthered, and global emissions are offset. This approach presents a model that other developing nations could easily implement—one that is separate from the boasting of politicians whose own interests come first, and whose progress can be dismantled by the next person in office with a different agenda.

With much of the continent still lacking adequate access to electricity, much of Africa’s energy infrastructure is yet to be built. Studies find that solar has huge potential, along with wind, and already in Kenya, geothermal energy has shown great results. Currently, only 5 GW of solar energy—less than 1% of the global total—have been installed in Africa. The potential for widespread use of renewable energy in the continent with the fastest growing and youngest population is massive. Connecting the almost billion people who don’t have access to electricity or clean cooking to a clean electricity source would save countless lives, but not if this is achieved with fossil fuels contributing to climate change, which causes the droughts and unpredictable weather responsible for so many other deaths and social issues in Africa. As in the U.S., and Europe, and India and China, and the rest of the world, now—well, really, years ago—but now is the time to transition to renewable energy everywhere, to divest from fossil fuels, to empower local farmers, and to vote into office candidates who will support these crucial goals.

Featured Image from Trees for the Future

Lessons in Sustainability: China and India

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 26, 2020October 26, 2020china, india, solar, sustainability, wind

A variety of political, ethical, and economic considerations shape the progress of leading Asian countries as they convert to renewable energy. With China investing in a variety of sources, emphasizing solar, and India raising questions about the burden of historical legacies of development, the decisions, progress, concerns and innovations of these Asian powers have a huge impact on the rest of the world, and can serve as role models for other nations.

Every year, over a million people die as a result of poor air quality in China—decades of economic progress fueled by coal slashed poverty rates, but at the cost of the environment, and of lives. Recently, the Chinese government has been asserting the importance of lowering its emissions levels, and in cooperation with international goals set by the Paris Agreement, China has agreed to reduce its coal consumption and have 20% of its energy come from renewable sources like solar and wind by 2030. It intends to significantly increase its wind, solar, and natural gas capacities, has regulated car emissions standards as stringently as Europe, and closed many coal-fired plants in heavy industry.

Yet, as China develops its COVID-19 stimulus plan, it will continue to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into non-renewable energy projects—vastly exceeding spending plans for low-carbon energy. It employed a similar tactic following the 2008 financial crisis, though China’s economy has been impacted far less by the pandemic than by that recession. The stimulus plan stands in alarming contrast to the recent announcement by President Xi Jinping to achieve “carbon neutrality” before 2060, raising the question of the extent to which China, and of course many other countries, make these kinds of pledges for the sake of international prestige rather than out of a true commitment to the aim of reducing harmful emissions. While China’s progress and leadership in recent years has been admirable, now more than ever, doubling down on sustainability goals is the most prudent approach to recovering from the pandemic—not abandoning them for short-sighted relief.

India’s priorities have also shifted over time, from rapid growth with fossil fuels to a greener approach that includes investing in a variety of renewables in addition to more traditional carbon-based forms of energy. The slow transition can be attributed to several factors. India has the second greatest population of any country, and one that is still rapidly growing, but lacks the infrastructure to support even its current residents. This created an urgent need to expand the power grid to provide millions of people with electricity—a goal that has largely been achieved with reliance on fossil fuels. India has also leaned away from international agreements on climate goals because of a general distrust for international organizations, which are dominated by western powers like the U.S.—themselves massive emitters. Finally, the historical legacy of development discouraged an earlier transition in India, with many people believing that most of the damage to the environment has been the fault of western countries since the Industrial Revolution, and it is these countries that benefitted from the very same processes that they now discourage developing nations from utilizing. The ethical questions surrounding the historical burden of the west’s development are further complicated by India’s own religious and historical legacy of environmental protection. In translation, the ancient Hindu text says “Keep pure! For the Earth is our mother! And we are her children!”—a policy that embeds sustainability into Indian culture.

Despite these conflicts, India has ultimately begun the transition toward sustainable energy sources. Financial analysts have predicted that energy from solar in particular will be cheaper than coal in the coming years, so investing in renewables is the most sensible solution to both questions of development and of the environmental crisis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government announced the goal of 450 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, up from the 86.3 GW it had at the beginning of this year. Ajay Shankar, a distinguished fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), emphasizes in regards to India that one of the greatest remaining hurdles in wind and solar is the cost of energy storage, but that “India is taking the first steps towards deploying storage technologies.” As a whole, questions of ethics and legacy seem to fall away in the face of urgent development needs and the increasingly dire environmental situation.

In contrasting China and India’s approaches to converting to renewables, one must consider the historical and economic forces at play. After some obstacles, both seem to be on a path toward sustainability, which is crucial to the possibility of seriously lowering global emissions, considering the two country’s growing populations. Ideally, countries around the world can model their development on China and India, and smaller neighboring countries will benefit from implementing similar systems with the help of these regional powers.

Featured Image from Travel Triangle

Lessons in Sustainability: Nordic Countries and the UK

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 20, 2020October 20, 2020geothermal, hydropower, innovation, nordic countries, UK, wind power

Climate change is a global problem not only because its effects can be felt around the world, but also because the impacts of measures taken by different countries are not isolated to that country. As such, it’s important to observe the innovative approaches that different nations are taking to convert to renewable energy sources, in order to adopt them elsewhere. Nordic countries in particular, for a variety of reasons I’ll examine below, have successfully pioneered the switch to renewable energy.

Denmark has proven to be a leader in onshore wind energy. In 2017, 32% of Denmark’s energy consumption came from renewable sources, with 40% from oil, 15% from natural gas, 9% from coal, 2% from nonrenewable waste, and 2% from imported electricity, and wind-generated electricity met 43.4% of the domestic electricity supply; these percentages have consistently increased in the past three years with construction of four new large offshore wind farms. The Danish government has an objective of 50% renewable energy by 2030.

The successful implementation of wind energy throughout the country seems due to a number of factors: the leadership of the Danish government in setting ambitious goals and following through on the necessary steps to achieve them, the financial capacity of the country to support the transition, and the inclusion of the public in the process of converting. Danish residents living near wind power projects receive shares in the project, compensation for any loss in house value, and a direct allocation per megawatt of power generated. Meeting international business interests, in addition to international sustainability goals, adds additional incentive for a successful transition. A partnership between Sweden, Germany, and Denmark resulted in a 600-megawatt wind farm in the waters between the three countries using wind turbines provided by the German company Siemens.

While Denmark is leading in onshore wind energy, Britain has made the most progress offshore, having increased from 1 GW a decade ago to almost 10 GW at the start of 2020, and building costs have been driven down by almost two-thirds. Recently, Boris Johnson announced an ambitious goal for offshore wind to power every home in the UK by 2030 as part of the plan to “build back better” following the coronavirus’s economic impact. It’s heartening to think that even the more conservative world leaders are aiming for this kind of progress—though of course this makes the United States’ staunch opposition to anything resembling a forward-thinking policy even more frustrating to consider. Currently, the U.S. has one pilot offshore plant, Block Island, with five wind turbines, putting it far behind the strides that Scandinavian countries, the UK, and so much of the world have made in recent years.

Renewable energy is not limited in use to powering homes and cities—I recently came across an article detailing the creation of a wind-powered, almost completely emission-free shipping vessel developed in Sweden. As of 2018, shipping accounted for almost 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The International Maritime Organization, a UN body, announced the goal to reduce annual emissions by 50% by 2050. The vessel, created to ship about 7,000 cars across the Atlantic, has rotating steel sails that propel the 650 ft.-long vessel. An innovation that combines historic methods with modern technology, this business and government-led solution to one of the most significant contributors to emissions presents another exciting approach to solving the climate crisis.

Iceland is an example of a place that efficiently tailored its energy systems to its unique landscape. Dotted with volcanoes, glaciers, waterfalls, and hot springs, the country is abundantly suited to support its energy needs using hydropower and geothermal energy. With the breakdown of geothermal energy use represented in the image below, it’s clear that renewables are crucial to every industry and part of society in Iceland. About 85% of the total primary energy supply is derived from renewable energy produced domestically—the most in any national total energy budget. Iceland’s success is due in large part to its landscape, but the idea of using the Earth’s features in a particular place to suit localized needs can be transplanted anywhere. This indicates there is no one set strategy of adopting renewables that would work everywhere, but rather, that particular cities and countries should evaluate their resources and needs and customize their approaches accordingly.

Of course, every country has its own unique combination of available resources, economic circumstances, public values, and political systems, but one thing has to remain consistent for there to be positive change: a commitment to achieving the goal of converting as quickly and completely as possible to renewable energy.

Featured Image from Extreme Iceland

A Clear Solution

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 16, 2020October 16, 2020climate change, economy, politics, rebuilding, renewables, solutions project

In my last blog, I discussed the importance of keeping environmental sustainability goals in mind when rebuilding the economy as we weather and eventually emerge from this global health crisis. I think it’s crucial to note that not only is it important to rebuild sustainably, but it is also entirely feasible, and actually the strongest option economically. I think the public has this general conception of there being a need to wait for some kind of miracle solution that scientists need to labor over for many more years to come, before the transition to renewables can occur. This is far from the case. Research on solutions to climate change is well supported, the technology needed to transition already exists, and the only thing still lacking is the public’s understanding of the facts of climate change, so that policies will finally support what scientists have long known. The time for the public to come to this realization is now, as we look beyond this year of chaos and horror into a still-undetermined future.

In 2011, Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson co-founded The Solutions Project, an advocacy group with the goal of promoting a policy shift to support 100% renewable energy by 2050. The project’s comprehensive research details how switching to renewables actually leads to a huge cost decrease for top-emitting countries like the United States. As the world’s top emitter of carbon per capita, the health and energy security of the country are at stake if the U.S. doesn’t speed up its transition. If the current energy norms continue, the estimated aggregate private and social costs are $2.1 and $5.9 trillion per year, respectively, whereas those of wind-water-solar energy are both $0.77 trillion per year.

Social cost refers to the full cost to society of adding one additional ton of CO2 to the atmosphere, and is used to understand both current and future climate damages, and to set policies like a carbon tax. 63,000 deaths caused by air pollution-related illnesses in the U.S. could be prevented by 2050 if we switch to 100% renewable energy. The switch would also create two million net long-term, full-time U.S. jobs. As a whole, a complete U.S. transition would reduce yearly aggregate energy costs, health-care costs and mortality, climate damage, and would create jobs—all vital aims after a year that has seen the U.S. plunge into recession, the unemployment rate soar, and the healthcare system become more burdened than ever as a result of the pandemic.

Graphic by A.K. von Krauland and M.Z. Jacobson

The early implementation of renewables will translate to enormous savings in money not lost to rescues after major hurricanes (which are caused increasingly by climate change), infrastructural damage, and abandoned property. The transition would also make the U.S. less dependent on foreign sources of energy, which could be hugely beneficial politically. Fear of attacks on the energy grid would be greatly diminished by the flexibility that renewables provide, making energy infrastructure a matter of national security. In short, if the use of fossil fuels is not rapidly diminished, rising demand for increasingly scare fossil energy will lead to economic, social, and political instability, enhancing international conflict.

Power providers can often build wind and solar farms more quickly than larger‐capacity conventional generating plants. This can enable them to meet incremental demand growth with less economic risk. The employment of renewable energy systems diversifies the fuel mix of utility companies, thereby reducing the danger of fuel shortages, fuel cost hikes, and power interruptions, while meeting demand for reduced greenhouse gas emissions. This translates to a higher energy resilience due to the nature of distributed renewable energy, which is far more difficult to disrupt than a centralized power plant.

Beyond the indisputable facts and figures, I believe so strongly in switching to renewable energy sources because I’ve witnessed the effects of climate change firsthand, where I grew up in Miami, and where the water levels are rising rapidly. I remember tense drives home from school after hours of thunderstorms, when half a dozen cars stalled on the street because the flooding from the rain reached their tailpipes. We had to navigate our car through water that was in some places several feet high. Driving to South Beach on weekends, we complained of the endless construction—as soon as one project to raise the barriers between the canals and the street concluded, the next began to raise them even higher. Still, despite the increase in devastating hurricanes that tear through my hometown almost yearly, another result of climate change, we watch as skyscrapers continue to be built along the few remaining undeveloped stretches of beach. It would be a laughable exercise in denial if it weren’t so sad to think that I have no idea if the city will be recognizable just a few decades from now. Here too, the cost is not just personal, but also financial. A new study shows that if action isn’t taken, the damage to South Florida will surpass $38 billion by 2070. Prioritizing raising and floodproofing streets and buildings, and armoring the coast, over the continued short-sighted investment in real estate could in the not-so-long term save billions of dollars and create countless jobs.

As a whole in my hometown, the rest of the U.S., and the world, transitioning to renewable energy has proven social and economic benefits. We already know what to do, and how to do it, and why it’s important. The miracle solution we’ve been waiting for is this— the realization that we can still fix this, now.

Featured Image from Physics World

Written by Francesca von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.

Rebuilding Sustainably

Francesca Von Krauland COVID-19, Global Future October 13, 2020October 13, 2020business, pandemic, public policy, recovery, renewables

When the world went into lockdown earlier this year, and the streets and skies were emptied of their usual polluting noisiness, people enthusiastically counted a decrease in environmental degradation as the one positive outcome of the pandemic. For anyone still doubting it, the drop in emissions proved that humans are responsible for climate change, but also that nature is resilient and flourishes again the moment human interference is diminished. We can learn from the societal changes we saw during the pandemic in order to develop policies that will stimulate the rebuilding of the economy with sustainability in mind, so long as the temptation of short-term fixes doesn’t distract and further entrench harmful and outdated practices.

“Epidemiologists have long warned that the characteristics of today’s global society (e.g. shifts in and destruction of wild habitats, greater global interconnectedness, high-density in large urban centres) increase the risk of future pandemics, even if no one could predict when one would happen,” reports an OECD article on the coronavirus and policy responses. Clearly, the causes of the pandemic and climate change have significant overlap, but that certainly doesn’t mean that the pandemic on its own will make a huge impact in solving the environmental crisis. Early on in the pandemic, the IEA predicted that there would be a 6% drop in energy demand in 2020, “wiping off five years of demand growth.” Another source traced monthly decreases of CO2 emissions by sector, emphasizing how surface transport accounted for half of the 17% drop at the time of the study. Both sources, however, agree that temporary, lockdown-induced improvements are not enough, a mere drop in the ocean of the improvements that need to happen for the effects of climate change to be reversed. Also, this is not even the first crisis to have a temporary positive impact—the 2008 Global Financial Crisis also caused a short drop in emissions, which was then followed by an even greater growth in subsequent years. It’s not the lockdown that has the biggest effect, but the policies that we decide to implement following the lockdowns.

These policies should correspond to the changes we saw that were effective in decreasing environmental degradation during the lockdown. Before the pandemic, companies like Deloitte, which flew its consultants out to locations around the country on a weekly basis, were the top customers of airlines like Delta and United. After having switched to remote work during the pandemic, such companies have realized how much more effective and profitable decreasing business travel can be. Even now, office buildings in Manhattan stand mostly empty, meaning that the energy required to operate these buildings, to transport workers to and from their offices, and to fly for business trips are all being saved. With an increased emphasis on remote work, it’s possible that companies will lean toward shortening global supply chains and growing online, which would also decrease emissions from shipping—one of the top causes of pollution globally.

As of right now, the positive impact on the environment is incremental when compared to the massive economic problems the lockdowns have resulted in. As a result, it might be hard to see why prioritizing the environment would be important as policymakers and businesses struggle to rebuild. There are a few key actions that might be helpful to the economy in the short term that would create long term damage to the environmental progress we’ve made, like dismantling carbon markets, lowering vehicle fuel efficiency standards, or just generally weakening existing environmental policy enforcement in order to cut costs. Also, other potential issues include a drop in investment in renewable energy due to the recent drop in oil prices, and the longer period before returns characteristic of some renewables, in addition to a decrease in innovation from smaller firms that usually spearhead progress but who were harder hit during the pandemic.

The European Green Deal, first presented last December, is being incorporated into the regrowth of the European economy following the first wave of the pandemic. Countries like Sweden are committing to financially supporting “green job” creation to reduce unemployment within a green stimulus package. Europe is serving as a model for how to transition from an unsustainable, pre-pandemic economy to one that suits the modern needs of recovering from the economic blows of the pandemic while addressing the urgency of climate change. The goals of the European Green Deal include:

-No net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050
-Economic growth is decoupled from resource use
-No person and no place is left behind

They specify that these goals will be reached by:
-Investing in environmentally-friendly technologies
-Supporting industry to innovate
-Rolling out cleaner, cheaper and healthier forms of private and public transport
-Decarbonising the energy sector
-Ensuring buildings are more energy efficient
-Working with international partners to improve global environmental standards

In the United States, meanwhile, talk of the Green New Deal largely fizzled out after it was defeated in the Senate in 2019. Progressive climate policy cannot continue to be regarded in the U.S. as idealistic, something to perhaps be pursued in some distant future when the need will be greater. The pandemic revealed the extent of our impact on the climate, and our own globalized world forced us to slow down and rapidly dismantle much of what we built, and what we had planned for. The only way forward that addresses the joint cause of the pandemic and of climate change is a focus on sustainability and climate justice as we rebuild our shared world.

Featured Image by The Economic Times

Written by Francesca von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.

There’s No Vaccine for Climate Change

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 9, 2020October 9, 2020businesses, climate change, deaths, environment, facemask, global, local, pandemic

Everything is connected—the world is woven together by invisible threads of causation and carelessness, effects and unintended consequences.

People tend to collapse the world when they imagine it. An American envisioning India, for example, might have a pretty homogenous view of the country, but even someone living in New Delhi inhabits only a small segment of a full reality comprised of a layered social system, an economy, a fraught history, and the lives of millions of people. People get caught up in the immeasurability of community, religion, nationality, and race and how they overlap in so many unique ways, making it difficult to pick up the threads of a global problem in a local community, or conversely to trace local priorities across transnational boundaries.

The difficulty of scale is apparent now more than ever, and as a global problem, the pandemic works its way into every single community in the world. From our homes, we watch our favorite local bookstores and cafes go out of business, we watch our neighbors grow tomatoes for the first time in their front garden, we watch the local supermarket stock packages of disposable face masks by the entrance. These things feel more real than the news that the U.S. has reached 100,000, now 200,000, now 218,000 deaths. More real than the nearly 900,000 people currently infected in India, certainly.

The local/global scale perspective problem isn’t limited to the pandemic. It’s the defining feature of climate change, too. The world as a whole contributes to the worsening of the global environment but the impacts are felt locally in countless different ways. Wildfires and hurricanes are more prevalent than ever, causing life-changing catastrophes for thousands, if not millions, of people. The water level rises down in South Beach, near where I grew up, so that there is almost constant construction on the streets that trace the beaches and canals, always to raise them just a few more inches against the floods that don’t always need rain anymore to spill over.

There’s a quote that’s been floating around on social media: There’s no vaccine for climate change. People have been wearing face masks against the smoke from polluted air since before the pandemic, and should we be so fortunate as to find a cure for COVID-19, people will continue wearing their masks against air pollution after the virus has abated. This is the new normal, right? Except it’s not new, and it’s not something we should accept as normal. Now, nestled away at home in our own communities, we have time to think, to reevaluate how our lives and decisions support a global system that is killing not the Earth but its most prolific inhabitants, humans. Now is the time to tie together the knowledge of what’s happening and rebuild.

This sounds overwhelming, and challenging, and exhausting, because when something is too big and miraculous or terrible to comprehend or verbalize, people focus on the small, and so it is often the small things which count more so than the big. Focus on the small, then—what can you do in your life, yes, during the pandemic, yes, during the most political turbulent time in our lives, yes, despite the fatigue of emotionally dealing with these realities, to better the world?

Small things. Wear a washable, reusable face covering instead of one that will end up in a landfill or strangle wildlife. Buy local produce to reduce emissions from shipping, and if you safely can, eat at or order food directly from local restaurants, instead of ordering food through UberEats or other companies that take a percentage of profits from small businesses already struggling to pay rent.

I know it’s difficult to balance the world’s needs with your own. I typed out ideas for this article while under the heating lamps of a cafe in Paris, where I’m based this Autumn. Those warm, glowing contraptions that make the tables that spill out onto the sidewalk so inviting—the idea being to heat the literal outdoors—were going to be banned in the city starting this year due to their environmental impact, but because of the pandemic, the policy was postponed a year so that restaurants can keep people outside and reduce contact. Hence, my face is as warm as the steaming cup of coffee before me as I ponder questions of how to not kill the planet. We do what we can in an imperfect world.

That’s why it would be tempting to add, don’t order from corporations like Amazon, which doubled its profits during the pandemic, but Amazon in particular has actually been somewhat proactive in minimizing the harm it causes, creating 175,000 new jobs, distributing a $500 million bonus to its frontline workers and partners, and increasing its hourly wages. Whether this balances out the cost to the environment and to local businesses is for you to decide, but perhaps corporations are more aggressive about creating positive change than other powerful entities, like the government, because sometimes they have a financial incentive to do so.

It would seem that governments and corporations have the power to influence the course of the pandemic, as well as of climate change, on every level from the international to the local. Individuals have a more direct influence on the local level, but also have the power to vote both in political elections (like this November—make sure you’ve registered!) and with where they choose to spend money. The local and global, and indeed, the pandemic and climate change, are more interconnected than they seem.

How people value those around them impacts how they perceive and interact with the world. Each person must strive to value the small: every individual is capable of planting a tree, and also of being a virus super-spreader. In addition, each person must attempt to grapple with the big: the forces of history that seem to, but can never fully, overshadow the small, that led to the globalized system that made the spread of the virus and the level of industrialization that is fundamentally altering the environment possible. The world is both too big and too small for human comprehension, but action is still possible, and necessary.

Featured image from Hydroinformatics Institute

Written by Francesca Von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.

From Disruption Comes Creation

Francesca Von Krauland Global Future October 6, 2020October 6, 2020climate change, COVID, future, global, pandemic, quarantine, science

As bodies packed together, a mass of glitter, champagne and excitement, to welcome in the new year and new decade just ten months ago, no one thought that such a scene would be unthinkable so soon after. Even then, the virus was beginning to spread. In the coming months, flights would be cancelled, sports seasons called off, museums, theme parks, and universities closed. All the noise and movement, the hallmarks of normalcy in our society, ceased.

It was science, meticulous building and testing and perfecting and creating, that built this complex, shared, unsustainable world. It was science—the way that a virus shuts down a body, lingers on surfaces, spreads to other bodies—that made it impossible for the world to continue as it was. And it was science, or more precisely, the system of technological communication that people have designed, that alerted everyone of the need to shut everything down.

So, the world went home. And at home, people went online. We looked inwards, but we also looked to each other, and the way we did it is a testament to the success of modern technology in creating a new realm for social interaction. People also turned to gardening, cooking, and bread baking as ways to pass the countless hours at home. These, too, are a science: an older kind, a timeless kind, chemicals interacting with chemicals in the heat of a seldom used oven. People rediscovered their own ability to make things, to grow things, as the world slowed down in quarantine. But not everyone was at home and online. More than ever, essential workers relied on technology to hold up what remained of the societal infrastructure. Factories continued, despite multiple outbreaks among workers, to produce and deliver goods to grocery stores. Drivers from food delivery apps dropped food directly at the houses of people who couldn’t safely enter supermarkets. Doctors used ventilators to keep patients with the virus breathing. The phrase “essential worker” was popularized, but each group relied on essential technologies to keep the population fed, home, and safe.

The workings of science did more than just sustain. They also inspired. At the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, NASA launched its first manned commercial rocket, marking the beginning of a new era of space travel. People from around the world watched onscreen as science made something so seemingly magical and otherworldly happen. It was a reminder that it is still possible for people all around the world, all of whom are impacted by the pandemic, to look up at the sky and dream of a future, and to feel proud of what science can achieve.

Science and fiction may have blurred when some articles about nature’s rebirth as a result of the pandemic were popularized, like that of dolphins returning to Venetian canals, but there was some fact in the coverage, too. Pollution levels dipped internationally, if only for a while, demonstrating how intrusive the processes are that fuel our pre-pandemic society. But nature is equally uncompromising in its determination to thrive, and after only a few weeks demonstrated the resilience of its ancient processes. Nature is a reminder that scientific achievement predates humanity.

It’s all science, our lives and societies. Science is behind our education and entertainment, supports our creativity and both fuels and is fueled by the limits of our imaginations. Yet nothing served as so potent a reminder about the human relationship to science as the virus itself. The pandemic showed that despite our ability to create and imagine, and despite the complexity of modern life, people are still just bodies, capable of contracting and spreading microscopic particles that in weeks can bring our world to a halt. No single body can be separated from the vast network in which it operates, and it is our interconnection that makes us so vulnerable. Society flourishes and crumbles around the resilience of our very fallible human forms, which scientists don’t yet fully understand.

Science, ideally, is behind the policies that states adopt to combat the spread of the virus. In much of Europe, public policies informed by science prevented countless infections. In other countries, like the U.S., a denial of the scientifically proven efficacy of masks and a refusal to follow social distancing guidelines has resulted in the highest infection rate on the globe. The outcry against the dangers of COVID-19 echoes that of the climate change deniers. If nothing else, science should be valued for its ability to save lives.

The past few months have given us cause to reevaluate every part of society: our healthcare infrastructure, the way that businesses and governments, from the local to national level, function, the role of international organizations like the WHO, and our values as individuals and as one global collective. The pandemic revealed the flaws and weaknesses in a system that has been plowing forward, slowing for nothing and no one, since the Industrial Revolution. Now, we have a unique opportunity to rebuild every area of society. Sustainability must be the ideology that guides our recovery, with the science of climate justice underlying every decision as we go forward. In the blog posts that follow, I want to more closely examine the global perspectives on the future of climate progress. I hope to inspire readers to think about how sustainability and social equity are interrelated concepts that should be built into every aspect of our shared future. The atmosphere has no boundaries, and neither should our solutions, in this one, shared world. We are experiencing a moment of disruption—next comes creation.

Featured image from Diplomatist

Written by Francesca Von Krauland, Columbia University Masters Student in Global Thought and Climate Justice Now Intern.