Get Out The Green Vote, Biodiversity COP, ‘The Wild Robot’, 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:

🤖 “The Wild Robot” is a new animated film that has great reviews so far. It’s said to be visually beautiful with its lush nature setting, and has a hint of a climate change narrative. The Dreamworks creative team consulted with environmental nonprofit NRDC about climate change, extreme weather, and wildlife behaviors in order to accurately depict these in the film. The movie is about “the journey of a robot that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.” I’m going to see it today.

In Enviro News:

🌎 For the past two weeks, delegates from around the world met in Cali, Colombia for COP16, the UN Convention on Biodiversity. COP16 is the nature version of the equally important UN Climate COPs, of Paris Agreement fame. To address the biodiversity crisis, a similar agreement was formed two years ago at the last biodiversity conference, called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, notably by protecting 30% of our land and water by 2030. This year, the focus was on how to finance biodiversity protection, particularly in developing nations, and to come up with metrics for countries to monitor progress, among other things. Well as of last night, the finance piece did not get sorted. But one big accomplishment is the formation of a subsidiary body for Indigenous people, giving them a voice in decisions on nature conservation.

🧬 An interesting topic discussed at COP16 involved pharmaceutical companies and their (typically free) use of genetic codes from species found in biodiverse (and often poor) countries to develop commercial drugs. “Biopiracy”, so it’s called. A hotly contested idea was to implement some form of profit-sharing between Big Pharma and the biodiverse nations, and it ended in a win for the nature-rich nations. “Delegations agreed on a genetic information fee of 0.1% of companies’ revenues from products derived from such information. That money will be directed into a new fund, with 50% reaching Indigenous communities.”

🐋 This interactive article in the New York Times educates on the endangered North Atlantic right whale and their chronic entanglement in fishing gear and the fight to regulate its use, while gracing us with majestic whale video and images.

🐻‍❄️ Another interactive nature article! This time from the Washington Post, about the pending fate of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with stories of both the human and wildlife residents there. The debate about whether to protect the refuge or extract its resources may depend on this presidential election.

🎓 Climate is becoming an increasingly popular field of study across a variety of disciplines, and universities are creating climate programs to meet the demand. UC San Diego is now requiring all students to take a climate change course. Just this week, Columbia’s Climate School announced a new dual degree with the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. And the University of Chicago is creating an entirely new Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees. The future is climate-friendly. Whether the climate reciprocates the friendliness depends on how fast we can transition to clean energy.

💰 A good point about why the number of billion dollar extreme weather disasters is increasing is that there’s simply more to destroy. More people are living and building in the path of highly probable danger.

🧑‍🏭 Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, we are seeing an incredible boom in American manufacturing, with $154B in announced investments in factories that will build the parts for a domestic clean energy supply chain, secure jobs, economic growth, and independence from China’s stronghold on transition manufacturing. That sounds like a Republican platform! Yet Trump has vowed to dismantle the law and stop future funding of this green revolution, despite 80% of new manufacturing investments going to Republican districts. Read more here.

Get Out The Green Vote

☎️ So much depends on the outcome of this election. Did you know that an estimated 8M environmentalists did not vote in the last presidential election? Not this time! The Environmental Voter Project mobilizes first time climate voters in key battleground states, and they need help! If you have some time to spare over the next few days, consider taking on a 2 hour phone banking shift to help make a difference. No experience required!