Climate-y Ski Suits, Let The Suing Begin, Fog Farming, 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:

⛷ During the World Championships this month, the US alpine and cross country ski teams will be wearing race suits with designs of a melting glacier to draw attention to the climate crisis. Snow sports are already suffering from shortened seasons and declining snow due to human-caused climate change. Winter athletes seeing their beloved activities threatened are the perfect spokespeople to spread the message for the urgent need for climate action to save their sport. I do wish the suit design was more in-your-face-obvious because I don’t think anyone seeing it without context will think it has this meaning. But hopefully the broadcasters will fill in the gaps. Still, I applaud the effort. It’s exactly what we need to be doing – using every opportunity to wake people up. Go team!

Philanthropy At Work:

👩‍⚖️ Environmental nonprofits have begun their work to legally defend our right to a healthy planet. NRDC and Earthjustice sued the Trump administration this past week in an effort to stop his executive order that opens up federal waters for offshore oil and gas drilling in areas protected under Biden, plus they filed an additional suit regarding waters protected under Obama. The good news here per the NYTimes, is that “a nearly identical effort by the first Trump administration to expand drilling was stopped by a federal judge in Alaska in 2019.” Precedent.

In Environmental News:

😵 (Sigh) Let’s get the disturbing Trump orders out of the way in one shot: This first one is not only moronic but downright dangerous. The Department of Homeland Security was ordered to “eliminate all climate change activities and the use of climate change terminology in DHS policies and programs, to the maximum extent permitted by the law”. Next up, one that should hit home across the political spectrum. The National Park Service was ordered to fire 1,000 new employees. Our national parks were already understaffed and underfunded, not to mention they’ve become overcrowded, especially in recent years. Conditions will become much worse, which is a blow to every American who has a right to enjoy our country’s nature.

🚢 The international shipping industry is developing plans to decarbonize by 2050, and as the International Maritime Organization works to set industry emissions reductions rules by this year, major shipping companies are calling on them to not accept biofuels as part of the solution. This is because plant-based biofuels that use palm oil for example, can also cause deforestation, and are 2-3 times worse for our climate than traditional fuels, say the companies pushing back. Ok, shipping companies, we see you.

🌁 Fog-farming is the practice of harvesting water from fog. It’s one of those deeply satisfying solutions that’s like a layup gift from the powers that be. Fog is a low-key water resource that hangs out in the air at surface level. It’s basically asking to be useful, but nobody notices. And useful it can be, especially in coastal areas that experience extreme droughts, like populated parts of Chile’s Atacama Desert, where the simple, cheap technology of fog collectors is being used today. Expect to see fog collecting expand to farms and vineyards as a sustainable source of water.

🛂 Small island nations will be the first to be decimated by rising sea levels from climate change, and they’ve been fighting the hardest on the international level to get the rest of the world to literally save them by taking urgent climate action. Sadly, it’s not working, so they must take matters into their own hands. On that note, Pacific Ocean nation, Nauru, is selling passports at $140K a pop with the goal to raise $65M for climate adaptation. With this money, they will rebuild the barren inner part of the island on higher ground and move 90% of their population there, all of which currently live along the coasts. They don’t expect these new ‘citizens’ to ever come to the island, rather the passport provides backdoor visa-free access to the UK, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Stop! Nature Time.