Effects and Causes – Issue #63
Escalating climate catastrophes and G20 disagreements: The interconnectedness of climate change, its impacts, and geopolitical tensions underscore the need for coordinated efforts
News of the week
What will climate chaos look like? A short answer to that question: It will look like last week.
By 20th July, the earth had seen an unbroken string of 17 straight days where the mercury stayed above previously recorded maximums for global surface temperatures. Reports came of heatwaves from Rome, Greece and elsewhere in southern Europe. Reports came too of mass deaths of fish and coral bleaching from Florida and the Caribbean.
Climate change, however, is not the only horseman of the apocalypse we have around. And so, last week also saw mass deaths of Magellanic penguins. These fell to starvation (overfishing is one probable cause) and a sub-tropical cyclone which killed the weakest members.
Closer home, heavy rains continued. Not only did rains resume in the Himalayas, they also poured in Rajasthan and Gujarat. Arid Gir Somnath saw 540 mm of rain in 24 hours. Junagadh was flooded. So was Jodhpur. As was Navsari.
Even when floods recede, there will be fresh problems to contend with. Farmers in Punjab now must contend with sand and silt deposits in their fields. With multiple water treatment plants submerged in Delhi, drinking water supplies might run short. Elsewhere in the country, asymmetries in rainfall distribution continue. The videos are unbelievable.
Heatwaves over Europe. Unending downpours over India and Asia at large. Last week also produced assessments on the mechanics of this upheaval. Take the heatwave. One cause? The Jet Stream has stopped. “Scientists have long posited that rising temperatures may be weakening the jet stream, which is formed by the collision of cold, Arctic air with warm, southerly air,” wrote Yale. “With climate change, the Arctic is warming faster than the lower latitudes, narrowing the difference in temperature. As a result, the jet stream may grow slower and wavier, allowing warm air from the tropics to flow north and become trapped over Europe, Asia, and North America, fueling severe heat and intense wildfires.”
Read that line again. A planetary weather system is changing. It’s not the only one. Much of the atypical rainfall over India is due to another planetary weather system – the western disturbances – behaving increasingly atypical ways.
The next question writes itself. As the Financial Times wrote, the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the globe. One reason is dwindling sea ice -- which could have bounced sunlight back into the atmosphere. In other words, low temperatures in the Arctic helped keep Europe cool.
As this system frays, the world is heading towards food shocks. “Our food system is global,” John Marsham, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Leeds, told the Guardian. “There are growing risks of simultaneous major crop losses in different regions in the world, which will really affect food availability and prices. This is not what we’re seeing right now, but in the coming decades, that’s one of the things I’m really scared of.”
Another report made the same point. “New research finds that the heat waves that powered the Dust Bowl are now 2.5 times more likely to happen again in our modern climate due to... climate change,” reported CBS News. “A recent study predicted that the U.S. would exhaust 94% of its wheat reserves in a four-year Dust Bowl-like event. This would lead to a 31% loss of global wheat stocks.”
Little here is far-fetched. India, wary about the impact of heavy rains on forthcoming harvests, has banned rice exports. One such ban is enough to roil food prices. Imagine now a few food-exporting countries enforcing such bans at the same time.
From climate chaos to Russian chaos. In the days that followed perestroika and glasnost in the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR, Russia saw what was called the Sale Of The Century.
Coupons (shares) in state-owned assets were sold to civilians, and a clutch of businessmen got rich buying out those coupons – and bagging industrial, energy and mining giants for a song. That is how the current crop of Russian oligarchs emerged.
History is now repeating itself in Russia. After its invasion of Ukraine – and the imposition of sanctions – more than 1,000 large foreign companies have either withdrawn, suspended or completely exited operations in Russia.
As the Financial Times wrote last week, over 3,350 large foreign companies own assets in Russia. These companies were finalising sales to local buyers and awaiting state approval. Who are the buyers? In several cases, as the paper reported, “The beneficiaries are those who enjoy Putin’s trust and deserve his gratitude, such as (Chechenya’s Ramzan) Kadyrov. This is a mixture of state capitalism and feudalism.”
Other news. India has rejected BYD’s offer to set up a plant in India. The news came in the same week CEOs of chip-making companies asked the US to reconsider its sanctions on Chinese imports. In our global world, as the NYT reported as well, the US cannot build a green economy without China. India has to ask itself similar questions. Can indigenisation help the country meet its ambitious 2030 targets for e-mobility?
There are other lessons we are not learning. The US is pushing hard to boost rechargeable battery recycling.
Meanwhile, a big rift is opening up between two old comrades that have spent a century working together – Big Oil and Big Auto. We had alluded to this in the previous issue of our newsletter. Even as Big Auto goes electric, ExxonMobil has produced an advert mocking EVs.
“Automakers and oil companies first joined up to bust unions in the early 1900s, then to push infrastructure and culture toward car dependency in the 1950s and, in the 1980s and ’90s, to block climate policy,” wrote New Republic. “Today, that’s all changed. Electric vehicles’ share of the auto market has tripled in three years, all the major automakers have multiple EV models, and the transition seems unstoppable. As with any big breakup, things are getting complicated and messy. And, if the Exxon ad is any indication, the first public stage of this titanic fight seems set to play out in advertising.”
Yet other news. As Russian oil gets costlier, Indian state refiners might start shifting back to traditional suppliers in the Gulf.
Turning from energy to biodiversity, radio collars have been removed from the beleaguered Cheetahs of Kuno. In a surprising development, India’s Project Tiger division has been merged with Project Elephant to create a new division called ‘Project Tiger and Elephant Division’. Even more consequentially, the division will now be a part of India’s environment ministry. One wonders what this means.
The G20 Energy Transition Working Group concluded its fourth and final meeting in Goa last week. The outcome of the meeting is less than ideal. Disagreements, prominently over the language around fallouts from the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine, thwarted any chance of a joint communique formed by consensus. But this was far from the only sticky issue in the meeting that went several hours into overtime.
So far, none of the G20 working groups this year has been able to carve out a joint communique. Instead, the G20 Indian presidency produced an outcome document and a 'Chair's Summary'. The outcome document was marked by watered down language and an absence of concrete targets or commonly-determined approaches for energy transition. Somewhat controversially, 'low-carbon' hydrogen, carbon capture and nuclear energy were retained as significant instruments of the G20's decarbonisation pursuit.
And then, there is the Adani Group. As expected, international lenders (like Barclay’s) are getting cautious. Indian banks, however, continue to lend. Will this become a trend? Will the group revert to the earlier time when it mostly ran on domestic borrowings? What does that mean for its capacity to raise funds? And what does that mean for its capacity to repay loans – and expand?
Climate reads of the week
Australia’s Lithium Extractivism is costing the earth. A detailed look at what lithium mining means for the country. (Substack)
Revealed: Media Blitz Against Heat Pumps Funded by Gas Lobby Group. (DeSmog)
The Demon River. “On the one-year anniversary (of the Nicola Valley flood), J.B. MacKinnon recounts an extraordinary flood that laid waste to homes and lives—and the idea that we can control nature.” This is beautifully told. (Hakai):
We hyperlinked to this CNBC report on critical minerals recycling. It really is worth reading for its details. And so, a replug here.
Six Days in Suez: The Inside Story of the Ship That Broke Global Trade(Bloomberg).
Book of the week
We are reading a book on journalism right now. This is John Pilger’s Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs. Here is a review.
Why this book? It’s an edited volume linking to some of the greatest journalism since the second world war. Here you find William Burchett’s trip to Hiroshima just after it was nuked. Seymour Hersh on My Lai. Anna Politikovskaya on Putin’s kleptocratic annexation of Russia. Amira Hass on Israel’s occupation of Gaza. Paul Foot on the UK’s war on mining unions.
A bunch of folks reading this newsletter are reporters. They are all engaging with some of the biggest stories of our time – our species’ continuing ecocide, India’s war on its environment. This week’s recco is dedicated to them all.