Are efforts to curb the growing climate change monster good enough?

Everyday news of climate change and environmental disasters make us wonder about the kind of future we’re leaving for our progeny. But humans never stop trying. News of innovation comes in every day about how we are trying to save the environment.

But first, let’s take a look at how bad it has got. In September, downpours caused devastating floods in central Europe. According to a Reuters report, such events are twice as likely to occur because of climate change. Drought is endangering farmers and bees in northern Mexico. Chilean scientists are beginning to question if Antarctica’s loss of sheet ice has reached a point of no return. And Canada’s wildfires last year released more greenhouse gases than some of the largest emitting countries.

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The world experienced its hottest April on record, the warmest February on record, and its warmest March, capping a 10-month streak in which every month set a new temperature record, as per the EU’s climate change monitoring service. The 12 months ending with March also ranked as the planet’s hottest ever recorded 12-month period.

The world experienced its hottest April on record, the warmest February on record, and its warmest March, capping a 10-month streak in which every month set a new temperature record, as per the EU’s climate change monitoring service. The 12 months ending with March also ranked as the planet’s hottest ever recorded 12-month period.

This summer was surely one of the hottest in 2,000 years with four continents contributing to hundreds of deaths. The heat caused hundreds of Haj pilgrims death and led to wildfires across Europe and North America. Almost 100 million Americans were under various heat alerts and Europe faced a spate of dead and missing tourists as well as power outages. In India, where 40,000 heatstroke cases were reported, the Safdarjung Observatory in New Delhi recorded a minimum overnight temperature reading of 35.2 Celsius, 95.4 Fahrenheit.

Global fossil fuel consumption and energy emissions hit all-time highs in 2023, even as fossil fuels’ share of the global energy mix decreased slightly on the year, the industry’s Statistical Review of World Energy report said. Still, countries cannot agree on the size of a global funding bill to help the developing world fight climate change – let alone how to split it.

According to a monitoring report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), global forest loss increased by 24% in 2023, from 22.8 million hectares in 2022 to 28.3 million hectares in 2023. The loss of tropical rainforest is particularly serious. In total, around 37,000 square kilometers (3.7 million hectares) disappeared in 2023 – a forest area much larger than Belgium. According to the WRI, the world has lost three to four million hectares of tropical forest per year over the past two decades. Areas of mature rainforest are particularly important for biodiversity, carbon storage, and the regulation of regional and local climate impacts. 

World events aren’t making it easier to control our carbon footprint. In December, a surge of attacks on ships traveling the waters of the Red Sea forced shippers to reroute their vessels. This sent them on longer journeys adding to their carbon dioxide emissions. These rerouted journeys have been adding to the challenge for companies struggling to account for the climate-warming emissions associated with their businesses. In May, a growing shadow fleet of tankers transporting sanctioned oil started filling up with the cheapest fuel available, hindering industry efforts to use cleaner fuel to cut shipping emissions, according to shipping data and sources.

Meanwhile, in January, we found out that YouTube made millions of dollars a year from advertising on channels that make false claims about climate change because content creators are using new tactics that evade the social media platform’s policies to combat misinformation.

Even as the world is on the brink of peaking its demand for fossil fuel highlighting a path towards investing in green energy, conflicts like those in the Middle East and Russia are becoming setbacks, says the International Energy Agency.

The Good Side

Efforts are on to prevent climate change though. People all over the world are trying as much as they can in ways they can to rein in the climate change monster that we ourselves have created.

In September, Stockholm started a flying electric hydrofoil ferry to cut travel time in half for Stockholm commuters. Candela’s ferries use up to 80% less electricity than traditional diesel vessels. In the Belgian province of Limburg, researchers are growing pears inside domes in a controlled environment that simulates how climate change will affect the region in 2040. Their aim is to see what global warming has in store for Europe’s fruit growers.

Efforts are on to prevent climate change though. People all over the world are trying as much as they can in ways they can to rein in the climate change monster that we ourselves have created

In Canada, dairy farmers are breeding calves that will burp less methane. Ben Loewith, a third-generation farmer in Lynden, Ontario, in June started artificially inseminating 107 cows and heifers with the first-to-market bull semen with a low-methane genetic trait.

A small dairy in Tasmania has come up with what it says is the world’s first branded milk produced by cows fed with a seaweed that makes them emit lower levels of environmentally damaging methane gas.

Researchers have found a fungus called Parengyodontium album that degrades UV-exposed polyethylene in the ocean, suggesting that similar fungi might also break down plastics in deeper waters.

Companies Doing Green

Recently, Bill Gates pointed out that innovation in cleantech is in full swing. This year’s Breakthrough Energy Summit in London saw innovations like a window glass so energy efficient that it performs like a see-through wall, microbial products that make crops need less fertilizer, EV battery recycling that recovers critical minerals and slashes emissions, technology that turns plant waste into carbon-trapping bricks, and advanced power lines that can double our current grid’s transmission.

Technology usage is also afoot to innovate, and big companies are eager to show their contributions. Hanover based Continental is developing a tree seeding robot together with the nature restoration company Land Life to mitigate the effects of deforestation. The robot can sow at a rate of one tree seed per minute, with the remote-controlled vehicle placing up to 60 pits in the ground per hour. The tree seeding robot blends Continental’s automotive know-how with Land Life’s reforestation expertise for autonomous, high-quality nature restoration globally.

NASA and Google created an interactive digital experience around global freshwater resources titled “A Passage of Water.” This immersive experience leverages data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites and new high-resolution data from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission to illustrate how climate change is impacting Earth’s water cycle.

Toymaker Lego plans to replace the fossil fuels used in making its signature colorful bricks with more expensive renewable and recycled plastic by 2032. The company whose sales outpaced the overall toy market in the first half of the year plans to replace oil-based bricks with renewable plastic as profits soar.

India-based startups are harnessing cow dung as an energy source, producing biomethane in an effort to reduce dependence on imported gas. The government aims for a 5% blend by 2028.

Regulations in Effect

Governments around the world must go into high gear to ensure real change in energy efficiency. A team of researchers said governments need to plant more trees and deploy technologies that will quadruple the amount of carbon dioxide removed each year from the atmosphere to meet global climate goals. According to IMF research, Europe can reap sizable energy security rewards by scaling up climate action.

The International Energy Agency said in a report that the goal to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 and cut fossil fuel use is within reach but will require a huge push to unlock bottlenecks such as permitting and grid connections.

Governments around the world must go into high gear to ensure real change in energy efficiency. A team of researchers said governments need to plant more trees and deploy technologies that will quadruple the amount of carbon dioxide removed each year from the atmosphere to meet global climate goals.

In June, analysts said that global petrol demand growth could halve in 2024, squeezing second-half refinery margins, as we see a shift to electric cars in China and the US and a return to normal consumption after last year’s bounce following COVID-19.

Europe is on top of things. In June, European Union countries gave their final approval to a law to cut carbon dioxide emissions from trucks, which will require most new heavy-duty vehicles sold in the EU from 2040 to be emissions-free. The same month, Europe clocked a record number of hours of negative power prices this year owing to a mismatch between demand and supply as solar power generation soars, potentially helping to shift investment to much needed storage solutions.

Good Results

Some good news, we’re progressing. The world’s ozone layer is on “the road to long-term recovery” despite a destructive volcanic eruption in the South Pacific, the World Meteorological Organization said, after efforts to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals.

International agreements, such as the Paris Agreement, are pushing the growth of the global renewable energy capacity and binding countries to spend on renewable energy technologies and commit to the clean energy transition. Incentives, such as the US Inflation Reduction Act, will significantly accelerate private investment in solar. The Act offers support for solar expansion through measures like tax credits, which will increase solar capacity by making private solar PV systems more accessible to consumers.

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As per a Juniper Research study, the total amount of CO2 saved globally through renewable energy will grow by 25% over the next five years. These savings, compared to a fully non-renewable energy system, will rise from almost 2 Gt (Gigatonnes) in 2024. Furthermore, solar energy is anticipated to benefit from several innovations, including pyramidal lenses. This passive technology captures light and focuses it on a single cell; removing the need for motorised panels that move with the sun and further reducing commercial installation costs. These advancements mean that solar capacity, and resultant CO2 savings will grow exponentially.

A look at the number of words dedicated in these paragraphs reveals that the results are nowhere near as large and varied as the problems we face. Human beings have been ruling this planet for thousands of years. There was bound to be an environmental impact someday. As we scramble to save what we have before the day of reckoning arrives, it remains to be seen whether we succeed or not.