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:
Coldplay has long been a champion of sustainability, and now they’re teaming up with MIT to study the environmental impact of live concerts of all sizes. Results of the research, funded by Coldplay, Live Nation, and Warner Music, will be released this summer in an “Assessment Report of Live Music and Climate Change”, and will serve as a guide for the future of the industry. Recent efforts by Coldplay to minimize the environmental impact of their tours include subsidizing public transportation for concert-goers, reducing emissions of their 2022 tour by 47%, and of course planting trees. They also claim that all physical forms of their upcoming album out this year will be made from recycled plastic. Might we expect a follow up to their debut single, “Yellow”, entitled “Green”?
GETTING DOWN TO CLIMATE BUSINESS:
🌀 Category 6: Climate change is intensifying hurricanes so much so that researchers and climate scientists are proposing we expand the current 1 through 5 scale, and create a new category of hurricanes to define these super-charged storms.
💨 The EPA announced new restrictions on soot particles released from a variety of dirty deeds (get your mind out of the gutter, we’re talking about things that spew out emissions, like smokestacks). The current limit is 12 micrograms per cubic meter, and it will drop to 9. The pollution caused from this soot is linked to a plethora of human health issues, from asthma to premature deaths. Per Axios, “The agency estimates the rule will provide $46 billion in net health benefits in 2032, the earliest date that states must begin achieving the lower levels. These projected upsides in 2032 include up to 4,500 avoided premature deaths and 800,000 avoided cases of asthma symptoms.” People who like clean air applauded the move, while business groups, curiously made up of air-breathing people, vowed to fight it, citing threats to development and jobs. Sigh.
🌎 Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, invested $15M in a direct air capture (DAC) startup, Earth 280, that has spun out of Alphabet’s “moonshot factory” division, X. What’s unique is the startup’s approach to sucking carbon out of the air. The facility will be built next to a Google datacenter and will use the heat waste from these centers to power the process of DAC, which in itself is energy-intensive. To be able to use existing ‘energy waste’, makes the whole operation cleaner. Brin’s investment came from his nonprofit, Catalyst4, which he funded by selling off Tesla shares. And in the spirit of today’s SuperBowl, 49ers co-owner Gideon Yu is also an investor in Earth 280. There’s my reason to root for the Niners.
⚫️ The latest in bank climate pledge backtracking: in 2021 Bank of America said they would stop financing coal projects. Not anymore.
🚙 In a continued effort to get cars out of Paris for climate and health reasons, SUVs will now have to pay triple the rate for on-street parking as smaller cars do. Parking an SUV in the city center for four hours will cost around $125.
🥤 The second largest city in Denmark is piloting a closed loop system for to-go coffee cups in order to eliminate waste from this ubiquitous item. So far 44 cafes and bars have signed on to offer the reusable cups that customers can then drop off in any of 25 return bins placed throughout the city. Customers would pay an extra 70 cents, and then get that amount refunded when they drop off the cup in a credit card enabled return bin.
👷 Here’s a list of the top 6 fastest growing climate jobs, with solar technician taking the top spot. Missing from the list is the fact that all jobs can and will be climate jobs. We can all influence from within and apply an environmental lens to our work, because there is always a connection back to the natural environment. Can you see it in your work?
Some Stats:
$11B: ESTIMATED COST OF DAMAGES FROM LAST WEEK’S CALIFORNIA STORM (ACCUWEATHER)
1K: EXPECTED NUMBER OF PRIVATE PLANES TO FLY INTO LAS VEGAS FOR THE SUPERBOWL (NYTIMES)
Free Bird
If you live in NYC, you have likely heard of Flaco, the celebrity-status Eurasian owl who escaped from captivity in the Central Park Zoo a year ago. He spent his first 8 months or so living his best life in the parameters of Central Park, where birders and tourists alike could get a glimpse of the beautiful creature. I was lucky enough to see him one fine morning, birding in Central Park. In October, he decided it was time to expand his horizons, and he’s been spotted on apartment windowsills and building ledges in the Upper West Side of the urban jungle. This feature is a fun read with gorgeous pictures of him – he’s impossible not to love and admire. Flaco is a story of freedom, survival, and agency. Fly, Flaco, Fly.
