Earth’s Energy Imbalance, A Whale Birth, & Net Zero Is Cheaper Than An Oil Shock

Welcome to The Climate Roundup newsletter. Your weekly edit of the climate and environmental stories shaping our planet and our culture and how the two are deeply connected. We live in a global ecosystem shaped by human decisions. Let’s make good ones.

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Of Nurturing Nature

🐋 The wild ocean birth of a sperm whale was documented with great precision from drone cameras and underwater audio, giving us an intimate glimpse into the rarely seen experience of wildlife birth. The findings are fascinating, and support evidence that humans are not the only species to receive assistance during childbirth. In this whale birth, a community of 11 whales, not all related, assisted the mother with her calf’s birth, helping to raise the newborn up to the surface to breathe. It’s the kind of discovery that touches the soul and confirms that other creatures on this planet have much more complexity going on inside than most humans give them credit for. And they all deserve our respect and protection from destructive human activity.

Philanthropy At Work:

🦜 The founder of One Earth Conservation, a parrot protection nonprofit, is on the ground in Honduras now helping the local communities in their constant work to patrol and monitor macaw nests to prevent poachers from stealing parrot eggs for illegal trade. What saints these humans are to organize and help another species survive. The opposite is true for the subsect of humans who steal baby and unhatched animals to then be controlled by other humans of the same vein. Watch OEC’s Unconditional Solidarity campaign on youtube and read about it here.

Environmental News:

🫠 The Arctic recorded its lowest ever level of winter sea ice, tied with last year. Scientists say that if this trend continues, in just 14 years we could see massive areas that have been historically covered in ice, ice-free in the summer. This would further accelerate our warming planet because year-round ice cover at our poles is crucial for reflecting sunlight (and hence warmth) back into space. Without the ice to reflect, more of that energy will be absorbed into our oceans and land…

🚨 Which brings us to another immensely important report released last week from the UN World Meteorological Organization. The State of the Global Climate 2025 report provides the latest data and findings on the various indicators of our climate system, including surface temperature, ocean temperature and pH levels, sea level rise, sea ice and glacier health, etc. This time they also looked at a holistic measure: the balance of Earth’s energy. Spoiler: it’s alarmingly out of balance. This means that instead of the healthy way for our planet to operate, where energy from sun comes in and out of our atmosphere in about equal measure, now much less energy is being sent back out, and more of it stays trapped on Earth. Why? Because of the enormous amount of excess greenhouse gases lingering in our atmosphere from over a century of intense fossil-fuel burning. These GHG concentrations are the highest in 800,000 years, and they trap the sun’s energy. As the indomitable climate truth teller and UN Secretary-General António Guterres said “The State of the Global Climate is in a state of emergency. Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits. Every key climate indicator is flashing red. Humanity has just endured the eleven hottest years on record. When history repeats itself eleven times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.”

🇬🇧 For the UK, it turns out that the total cost of getting the country to net zero emissions across its economy by 2050 is cheaper than just one more oil price shock of the magnitude of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Might that be happening now?) Building a more secure energy future has never been more obvious.

🌞 Also in the UK, home rooftop solar sales are up 54% this month vs last month, and heat pump sales are up 50%. People are seeing in real time how valuable it is to control and stabilize their own home energy costs and untether from dirty fossil fuels. Examples like this are beginning to rack up around the world in response to the war and its impact on global oil prices. Even in the US, interest in EVs is increasing, but experts say it will take higher gas prices for a longer duration to see a meaningful shift in consumer vehicle purchasing trends.

🔋 A bright spot in our domestic clean energy transition is grid battery storage. We need battery storage integrated into our electricity grids in order to meet high demand or supply electricity when natural inputs are low. American grid battery factories began to open and operate as a result of Biden’s brilliant 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and they somehow escaped the deathblow that is Trump’s anti-renewables agenda, allowing the home-grown industry to continue. Now, “For the first time, the United States now has the capacity to supply 100% of domestic energy storage project demand with American-built systems”. That’s a big deal. Read all about it.

🥊 A billionaire-backed climate philanthropy fund is taking a refreshingly aggressive approach to fighting back against the pro-fossil fuel set. Specifically, they’ve put a target on the back of Chip Roy, a Texas republican who claims credit for ensuring federal clean energy tax credits and incentives were axed in Trump’s tax bill last year. Roy is running for attorney general in Texas, and this climate group is investing in ads to help him lose the race. As payback. The executive director of the Clean Break Fund said “You’ve got to have some fear that if you vote against the clean energy industry, you may pay a political price.”

🥵 The western part of the country has been experiencing a massive heat wave, where 17 states have broken records for their hottest temperatures in March. In some places, temperatures have been 30 to 40 degrees fahrenheit above average. Scientists and their climate attribution models say this unprecedented extreme heat wave would not have been possible without human-caused climate change.

👿 Last week we shared the story of how the Trump administration was planning to offer a French energy company $1B to not build its two planned wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, and instead make them invest in a Texas dirty gas project. Well, the company took the bait. They are called TotalEnergies and we will never forget their betrayal.