A Year of 1.5°, Land & Water Protections, Hockey In Miami, and More!

Hey climate heroes! Welcome to The Climate Roundup, where we round up the change, er the news about climate and the environment. As part of the Gen E community, we thank you for making climate action part of everyday life. (Reading this newsletter counts!)

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In Pop Culture:

🏒 Last week, the NHL announced that next year’s OUTDOOR ICE HOCKEY WINTER Classic will be played in…Miami. Blasphemous! I guess the NHL is getting a head start on the climate-impacted future of hockey, where temps will be much warmer and we’ll be hard-pressed to even find a frozen pond to skate on. But Florida-level hot for an outdoor ice hockey game? C’mon. We should be milking the colder temperature locations while we can. The Winter Classic belongs in cold places, ideally with snow on the ground and falling from the sky. Sure, Florida has become a hotbed for hockey, with the past 5 straight Stanley Cup Finals featuring a Florida team. But I’d like to know the mechanics of building this rink and maintaining ice in 80+ degree temps. It’s not a great look from an environmental perspective, as I’m sure there’ll be a heavy mix of chemicals and dirty generators behind the scenes, not to mention the players are sure to get uncomfortably hot in all that equipment. And please don’t tell me they’d even dream of using fake ice. But I’m just projecting here, because not one of the many articles I read about this announcement dares to question the heat factor or the viability of an NHL game-ready rink withstanding the Florida sun. For me, this is an ominous foreshadow of hockey’s future, and I wish the NHL would use it as an opportunity to educate on climate change’s impact on the game. They’ve got a year to figure that out.

First, The Bad:

🔥 “Hydroclimate whiplash” is a scientific term to describe extreme weather shifts from wet to dry. The wet-times drive an abundance of plant growth, and the dry, or megadrought-times create a mass of highly flammable material. Add in 80mph winds, and this is the situation in LA, where yes, climate change made these extremes worse. David Wallace-Wells touches on all the factors at play in his latest op-ed in the New York Times. This Time article discusses the fires amid a backdrop of the 1.5°C world we’re now in, one year running anyway, and if you’re feeling up for it, it provides an overview of the science of climate change playing out in disasters the world over. We must know reality to address it. Lastly, some resources for sending help to LA: California Community Foundation Wildfire Recovery Fund and more links here.

🚨 One more dose of the hard stuff to sound the alarm bells. We must never become jaded by the climate facts that continue to roll in, proving the scientists right. Officially, 2024 was the hottest year on record, with the previous hottest year being 2023. We do not want what is coming from a consistently warmer world (Exhibit LA). Additionally, 2024 should be remembered as the year we exceeded 1.5°C of warming – the limit that the world agreed to avoid 10 years ago with the Paris Agreement. While much too early to be a trend, this is a very serious marker in humanity’s failure to decarbonize with urgency. And one last thing for the record books: humans pumped a record amount of carbon emissions into the atmosphere last year, despite all the clean energy gains. Clearly, the current systems in place and the powers in charge aren’t aligned with the concept of sustaining life on Earth. The tragedy of our epoch is that we are watching our planet go up in flames in real time for fear of severing our attachment to fossil fuels. That is not a legacy of an intelligent species.

Now, Some Better News:

🏃‍♂️ President Biden continues to make pro-environmental moves right up until the end. Using a law from the ‘50’s that governs the Outer Continental Shelf, and therefore making it harder for Trump to overturn, he blocked 625M acres of ocean area from oil and gas drilling. Also last week, he designated two new national monuments in California, officially solidifying him as the president who conserved the most land and water of any of them.

⚡️ In the EU, 2024 emissions fell by 13%! Equally impressive is the composition of their power generation mix: only 28% is from fossil fuels, and 72% is clean energy from renewables and nuclear.

🗽 New York State signed the Climate Change Superfund Act into law, being the second state to do so, behind Vermont. The law makes polluters, in this case fossil fuel companies, pay for the damage they’ve caused from carbon emissions. Over 25 years, $75B will be collected, meant to take some of the burden off of taxpayers who end up paying to repair damage from climate-fueled disasters. Funding will restore coastal wetlands, improve storm water drainage systems, and update roads and bridges.

☀️ US clean manufacturing is humming along, with our country now producing more solar panels and batteries than ever before. Canary Media has more on the state of these two growing domestic industries.

🧥 As of Jan 1 of this year, the sale of clothing with “forever chemicals” is banned in California and New York. This deadline caused apparel brands to develop PFAS-free clothing, which will benefit consumers in other states. Only Patagonia, Columbia, and L.L.Bean made the deadline, but other brands will follow. The toxic PFAS chemicals are prominent in water-proof/repellant outerwear, so be sure to confirm the garment is PFAS-free before purchase.

🔮 Bloomberg made climate predictions for 2025, and while there’s both good and bad, here’s some of the good: investing in the E of ESG is here to stay, China’s embrace of electric vehicles will accelerate timelines for oil demand declines, 100 countries that want to reduce plastic production and pollution will form their own treaty in the wake of a failed UN process, and the “underconsumption trend” will continue to grow on social media with more people vowing to buy less. Here’s hoping.

In Memoriam

🫡 Rest in peace, Jimmy Carter. His environmental legacy will live on, as he was a modern environmentalist of his time, a conservationist, and lover of the outdoors. Most of us know that he put solar panels on the roof of the White House, but he also wanted for the US to produce 25% of its power from solar by 2000. Jimmy created 39 national parks during his presidency, with a special focus on protections in Alaska. Thank you, President Carter, for the love you showed our beautiful country.