The
podium at the Santa Marta conference, with one
of the finest logos for any gathering I’ve
ever seen
Many
of the people who’ve been working for years on
climate issues assembled this week in Santa
Marta, Colombia for a conference on how to get
off fossil fuels. Sponsored by the Colombians
and the Dutch, it was an outgrowth of December’s
unhappy COP negotiations in Brazil: the fifty or
so nations that actually wanted to move
decisively past coal, gas and oil scheduled a
meeting of their own. By all accounts it was a
kinder, gentler version of the regular climate
talks, in part because fossil fuel lobbyists
(who have become the largest “country” at the
regular negotiations) were not welcome. The
wonderful Irish diplomat Mary Robinson put it well:
“COPs are more formal, negotiators have their
lines and they will not cross them and it’s so
different here,” she said, adding that
participants “have felt more human together.”
By
lucky accident, the gathering took on extra
meaning because it coincided with Donald Trump’s
absurd misadventure in Iran. All of a sudden
there was a new reason, past the destruction of
the planet, for getting off fossil fuel: gas is
too damn expensive, assuming you can get it all.
What we’ve done in the Strait of Hormuz is one
of those accidents that changes history: as the
head of the International Energy Agency, the
venerable Fatih Birol, said last week:
“The
vase is broken, the damage is done – it will be
very difficult to put the pieces back together.
This will have permanent consequences for the
global energy markets for years to come.”
I
think the original premise of this
newsletter—that we live in the Crucial
Years—is being borne out. Many thanks to
those generous souls who take out a
voluntary subscription to keep this
information flowing freely to all
The
pieces of that broken vase are scattered across
the planet, especially in Asia and Africa, where
fuel prices are soaring and fertilizer made with
fossil fuel is suddenly either unavailable or
ruinously expensive. As Reuters reported this
week
Agricultural
bodies, including the International Grains
Council, are already cutting their forecasts
for the next harvests. And the United Nations,
which is trying to negotiate shipping access for
fertiliser through the Gulf, has
sounded the alarm over food security in developing nations.
In
2022, after the invasion of Ukraine, high fertiliser costs
contributed to exacerbated hunger in poor,
import-dependent countries, and analysts say
regions like East Africa are again vulnerable.
Australia
may offer an early indication of the impact on
production of global staples.
In
the bread-basket state of Western Australia,
one industry group now expects the wheat
planting area to drop by 14% as growers shift
away from the fertiliser-intensive, low-margin
grain.
But
the good news, of course, is that these
countries are rapidly putting together a new and
sturdier vase, this time based on energy from
the sun and wind that doesn’t need importing.
The Santa Marta conference focused on the
financing needed to make this switch work—a very
real problem, but in the face of the desperation
caused by events in the Mideast those who can
are going ahead. As Wing Kuang reported,
“Chinese EV manufacturers reported an 82.6
percent rise in month-on-month sales in March.”
As the business pages of the India Times
reported yesterday,
Increasing
penetration of EVs, especially two- and
three-wheelers, and rapid deployment of
Battery Electric Solar Systems across
Southeast Asia and South Asia is now viewed as
guaranteed by those in the industry.
The optimism was palpable at this week's
Asia Battery Raw Materials & Recycling
Conference in Hanoi, where much of the
discussion among delegates was more how the
region was going to source sufficient raw
materials to make batteries, rather than how
to increase demand from current levels.
That
all this counts as irony is the one delicious
lining to all the pain and suffering. Donald
Trump, purchased underling of the fossil fuel
industry, has managed through his own colossal
incompetence and ego to nip the hand that feeds
his bank account. Yes, at the moment the
industry is soaring: BP reported the
kind of grotesque returns yesterday that should
have any rational government reaching for a
windfall profits tax.
Maja
Darlington, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace
UK, said the war had been “an entirely
predictable disaster for everyone except the oil
industry. BP’s profits are booming, with Trump’s
bombs bringing billions for them and bigger
bills for us.”
But
those billions are in the here and now; in the
slightly longer term the opposite is happening.
Big Oil’s only real growth strategy has been
exporting liquefied natural gas to Asia.
Bloomberg checked in the
other day on how that’s going
The
near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the serious damage
sustained by Qatar’s LNG export plant has sent
prices higher and buyers scrambling for
alternatives. Gas’s reputation as a reliable
and affordable energy source has taken a
serious hit, and plans for its speedy adoption
in Asia’s developing nations have been
derailed, with potentially long-lasting
consequences.
“Every
day this is extended, prices elevate, the
market tightens and demand destruction
happens,” said Masanori Odaka, an analyst at Rystad Energy.
“The longer this lasts, the more structural it
becomes.”
Bloomberg
News spoke to more than two dozen executives,
traders and analysts across Asia, who painted a
picture of a region that had been thought of as
the future of LNG, but is now rapidly losing
faith in the super-chilled fuel. Most requested
anonymity because they weren’t authorized to
speak to media.
Importers
in India and Bangladesh are already rethinking
whether to keep the fuel as a center piece in
future strategies. Countries like Vietnam and
the Philippines that were expected to become
large growth markets, are looking
alternatives. A planned gas power project in
Vietnam is looking to switch to wind and solar plus
batteries. In Thailand policymakers
are pushing for more renewables.
This
is an appropriate reaction. Cheap renewable energy
had already begun to fuel the remarkable energy
transition I’ve been chronicling over the last
four years in these pages. Now it’s been
supercharged by events, and responsible leaders
around the world are drawing the obvious
conclusions. As Selwin Hart, the UN’s envoy to the
Santa Marta talks, put it in his address to the
gathering:
“Renewables
offer something fossil fuels never did:
stability and sovereignty. There are no
embargoes, price shocks or tariffs.”
But
that’s not been the reaction, of course, in this
country, where energy policy just keeps getting
stupider. Read, for instance, Elizabeth
Kolbert’s masterful takedown
of EPA commissioner Lee Zeldin
In
a little more than a year, Zeldin has
transformed the E.P.A. from an agency devoted to
protecting human health and the environment into
one that, more or less openly, sides with
polluters…The E.P.A. has not only abandoned its
own efforts to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions;
it has stepped in to prevent states from taking
action. It has come out officially, if
astonishingly, as pro-coal.
But
here’s what’s astonishing. The person that Zeldin
very nearly beat for governor of New York, Kathy
Hochul, has been embarked on an environmental
demolition project of her own. At the precise
moment that gas prices are soaring, and as a new
and supercharged El Niño brings climate concerns
back to the center of public consciousness, Hochul
is doing her very best to sink New York’s landmark
climate law and stick the Empire State with more
expensive gas. She’s not showing the policy-making
chops of her peers in far poorer places like
Pakistan or Bangladesh.
The
background here is long, and like all things in
New York politics opaque. Suffice it to say that
New Yorkers passed a reasonably ambitious
climate law, and that the governor has not done
much to enact it. If you want some background,
the redoubtable David Roberts interviewed the
equally redoubtable Pete Sikora, who explains
The
governor just took everything that the Climate
Action Council came up with—her own
appointees—and ignored it. That’s the capsule
summary. They didn’t do the policies, they
didn’t do the regulations, they didn’t do the
things that would have implemented the law. They
did a few things here and there, but by and
large, nothing that would have implemented the
law correctly was done. Little bits and pieces.
For example, the state passed ending oil and gas
in all new construction. That’s fantastic.
That’s really good.
As
you pointed out, distributed solar is a real
bright spot. The numbers are moving there. It’s
good. The CHPE project is about to connect.
That’s a big transmission project from Canadian
hydropower to New York City. Very cool too.
There’s good things happening. But by and large,
the long list of things in the climate plan was
not done—90% of it not done. The centerpiece was
Cap and Invest. The governor pulled that back at
the last second the same way she did on
congestion pricing. It’s in this weird limbo
where it’s paused now.
If
you want a comprehensive list of the
opportunities she’s missed, try here. Most
political pros I’ve talked to—and I talked to
some more this week because I was in New York
this week to lobby on the state’s solar
laws—seem baffled by what Hochul’s up to. She’s
not in a tough election fight—after Trump pushed
Elise Stefanik out of the GOP primary she faces
only a Zeldin-lite Long Island pol, and in a
year when an onion bialy could win in blue New
York. My guess is that she’s about a year behind
on her talking points; in the wake of Kamala
Harris’s loss, a certain kind of moderate Dem
decided that “affordability” was the new
watchword and brought the idea that talking
about climate was a mistake. (Not everyone went
along—J.B. Pritzker in Illinois, for instance,
has kept up the state’s clean
energy momentum).
In
New York’s case this may have been magnified by
the sudden rise of Zohran Mamdani, who talked
about affordability—but with a particular set of
policies attached to it that made it more than
rhetorical. For Hochul, an all-out push for wind
and solar and batteries would have been wise
since they are in fact affordable, but it was
easier to go with the fracked gas lobby. So
she’s fast-tracking
new pipelines—in essence building the very
infrastructure that New Yorkers rejected when
they shut down fracking in the state. It’s all a
tragic muddle, benefiting only Big Oil. Indeed,
as Colin Kinniburgh reported last month,
A
national industry group, led by some of the
country’s largest pipeline builders and a slew
of other gas interests, has recently entered
the fray, tapping former state politicians to
help advance Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “all of the
above” energy strategy. Top of their agenda:
pressing pause on the state’s climate targets.
New
Yorkers can do a couple of things. One is press
their state legislators to resist Hochul’s
gutting of the climate law. The other is to
lobby those same legislators to pass the ASAP and SUNNY laws,
which would at least speed up solar permitting
and allow balcony solar in the state.
And
all of us can do a better job of demanding real
action from our blue state leaders. Because this
drift is not confined to New York—in Hawaii, for
instance, Democratic governor Josh Green has
called for a huge new liquefied
natural gas project to supply the
state’s electricity, ignoring the fact that the
Aloha State is bathed in sunlight and washed by
the steady trade winds that make it so
delightful. Again, this is exactly the opposite
tack that leaders across the rest of the world
are taking, and in both states it will saddle
residents with gas projects for decades to come.
I
wrote about “climate-hushing” last
week, and decisions like this are the
inevitable result—on purely political grounds
alone they surrender the high ground on what
will be the most important issue of our century.
And they surrender the gift that cheap
renewables provide to both planet and consumer.
They are exactly the opposite
of what scientists told the Santa Marta
conference was required—an end to new fossil
fuel expansion. The next time a climate disaster
strikes these states their governors will mouth
the usual pieties, but they won’t mean much.
+Extreme
heat is threatening the global agriculture
system, according to a new report jointly
produced by the UN’s Food and Agriculture
Organization and the World Meteorological
Organization. As Fiona Harvey reports,
Farmers
could find it impossible to work
safely for as many as 250 days of
the year – more than two-thirds of the time –
in already hot regions including much of India
and south Asia, tropical sub-Saharan Africa
and swathes of Central and South America.
Livestock
are already experiencing an increase in
mortality rates, as heat stress begins for
common species at about 25C. Extreme heat reduces yields from
dairy cows and cuts the fat and
protein content of milk. Pigs and chickens are
unable to sweat and, as temperatures rise,
face digestive tract breakdowns, organ failure
and cardiovascular shock.
Yields
begin to decline at
temperatures above 30C for most agricultural
crops, with damage including weakened cell
walls and the production of toxins. The yields
of maize in some areas have declined by about
10%. Wheat has fallen by nearly as much, and
is projected to decline further as
temperatures rise to more than 1.5C above
preindustrial levels.
Meanwhile,
the FT has a comprehensive report on the ways
that the cattle industry is “eating its own
tail.” As Stephanie Walton writes
The
US cattle and beef industry is in a bad way.
The megadrought currently plaguing the western
states has been going on for 22 years, with no
signs of abating. The quality of grazing land
has declined, raising feed costs and driving
the cattle herd to its lowest numbers since
1951. Meatpackers are paying high prices for
live cattle, which would normally cause
ranchers to increase herd sizes — but that’s
not happening. Costs are passed on to
consumers, but meatpacking plants are also
closing…
We are in this situation for two reasons:
rising temperatures and groundwater depletion.
Rising temperatures are the result of
greenhouse gas emissions — a not insubstantial
amount of which comes from cattle. Methane
emitted from cattle has roughly 80 times the
warming potential of CO₂ over a 20-year
period.
+Many
thanks to Congressmen Jamie Raskin and Jared
Huffman for pushing back hard
on the Trump deal to send a billion dollars in
taxpayer money to buy back offshore wind leases.
They’ve openen an investigation into the company
in question, Total Energies, as Emily Pontecorvo
reports:
“We’re
going to get every document, every email,
every last receipt on this deal, and every
person who had a hand in this is going to
answer for it,” Huffman said in a press release.
“What I have to say to TotalEnergies is this:
Consider yourself on notice, we’re coming for
you.”
+Just
noting for the record: Energy Secretary Chris
Wright said last week
in Congressional testimony that he was “pretty
confident coal will lead the world in global
electricity production when I die." Also last
week: new global data shows that renewables had
overtaken coal to become the largest source of
electricity production.
+Project
Drawdown has been investigating a
question I know is on your minds: which kind of
chocolate is worse for the atmosphere? It is, of
course, complicated—cacao usually leads to
deforestation. But the best answer is fairly
clear.
Rather
than cutting down trees to plant cacao,
growers can plant the crop in the shaded
understory of forests—a practice known as
agroforestry. Planting cacao and other trees
on degraded croplands can improve carbon
sequestration while improving local incomes
and food security. In Ecuador, for example,
the Third Millenium
Alliance is paying
farmers to protect existing
cloud forests and restore
adjacent forests with native trees including
cacao.
+The
remarkable organizer Luisa Neubauer wrote last
week from Germany to report that they’d had much
bigger than expected turnout for protests
demanding faster climate action from the
government. Agence France Presse covered the
demonstrations, quoting Neubauer:
“I’m
surprised that the federal government thinks it
can get away with its lame excuses and its
obstruction of the energy transition,” she said.
“No one here is buying that.”
The
organisers, who included groups like Greenpeace
and WWF, said about 24,000 people demonstrated
in Berlin, 30,000 in Cologne, 15,000 in Hamburg
and 12,000 in Munich.
+The
Bureau of Investigative Journalism has a
fascinating story about the
links between UK pension funds and American
fossil fuel projects.
Sixty
local government pension funds have invested a
total of £8bn into funds paying for the rapid
construction of gas infrastructure on the Gulf
Coast of the US. Residents say these terminals
are already causing health problems in their
communities. Experts say they represent one of
the biggest threats to the future of the planet.
Over
7 million school staff, civil servants and other
public sector workers either save with, or
receive their pension from, local government
pension schemes. Our revelations have sparked
concerns among local councillors, who have urged
fund managers to divest from fossil fuels.
While
the companies behind these projects are enjoying
a boost from the war in Iran, they could tumble
in value as the world switches to renewable
forms of energy. Councillor Andrew Scopes, who
sits on an advisory panel for West Yorkshire
Pension Fund, said: “We will still be paying
benefits out in 60 years’ time. We need to be
looking beyond the possible short-term gains, at
the long-term risk.”
In
sweeter news from the UK, researchers are finding that
new solar farms are attracting lots of birds. As
Warren van der Sandt writes:
Where
diesel-chugging tractors once dominated, solar
arrays now stand sentinel. Many people in the
region have raised concerns about this shift.
They naturally fear for the future of their
rural and agricultural heritage.
New
data has unmasked a startling silver lining:
these industrial sites are becoming accidental
havens. Birds are now flocking to solar panel
arrays in the English countryside. And a few
unexpected visitors have been found.
+New
research from
Brazil confirms that women are often the most at
risk in extreme weather events
“This
multiple responsibility means women tend to
prioritise the safety of others, which can delay
their own escape and increase exposure to
risks.”
The
pattern repeats with brutal consistency, says
the expert. “Factors such as poverty, race,
informal work and single motherhood interact
with the effects of climate change and create
layers of interconnected vulnerability,” Sander
says.
+Lovely
news from the
Amazon, where solar projects are replacing
expensive, dirty and noisy diesel generators in
thousands of small settlements. As Fabiano
Maisonnave writes:
“We
used to depend on diesel and lamps,” said
Waldemir da Silva, a leader in the Três Unidos
Indigenous community of about 40 families at the
mouth of the Cuieiras River, located about 45
miles (72 kilometers) from Manaus, the capital
of Amazonas state, and accessible only by boat.
“Today we have electricity 24 hours a day,
without noise or smoke.”
Meanwhile,
Sam Matey-Costa, reporting this week from
Africa, describes a
battery factory emerging in Uganda. To get a
sense of what those batteries might be used for,
check out his remarkable account of the
Zipline drone program that brings lifesaving
medicines instantly to every corner of Rwanda
First,
we went to “mission control,” a room of screens
and maps. One huge wall map showed all flight
routes from this base, and one screen showed
live tracking of all the drones currently in the
air. This one Zipline base sends drones to over
1,000 health center drop points, hospitals and
clinics across the western half of Rwanda. Their
longest regularly supply flight is to Mibilizi,
near the Congolese border. Before Zipline, it
had taken seven to eight hours for someone to
drive to Mibilizi to resupply their medical
center. (And then, of course, that person had to
drive seven to eight hours back). Now, Zipline
drones have cut resupply time to Mibilizi, from
order to delivery, to just 45 minutes. Less for
everywhere else.
+About
half of
American children live in places getting failing
grades for air pollution.
“Clean
air is not something we can take for granted. It
takes work,” Harold Wimmer, the American Lung
Association’s president, said in announcing the
latest findings. “For decades, people in the
U.S. have breathed cleaner air thanks to the
Clean Air Act. Unfortunately, that progress is
now at risk due to extreme heat and wildfires,
fueled by climate change, and policy changes
that are making the problem worse.”
+From
Hayley Smith, an excellent account of the
absurd $400 million greenwashing deal between
Saudi Aramco and FIFA for sponsorship of the
soccer World Cup.
The
soccer organization has touted its
sustainability goals — including reaching net-zero emissions by
2040. But some experts say its deal
with Aramco compromises that position. The oil
company consistently ranks among the top
greenhouse gas emitters in the world,
responsible for 4.28% of global carbon dioxide
emissions in 2024, more than any other
company, according to the independent Carbon Majors database.
(2025 data were not yet available).
“Having
Saudi Aramco as a major worldwide sponsor of
this FIFA World Cup completely undermines any
credibility FIFA has, or could have had, around
sustainability claims,” said Madeleine Orr, an
assistant professor of sport ecology at the
University of Toronto.
If
this annoys you, join in the ongoing efforts
against sportswashing—protests are planned for
all the World Cup venues, and you can sign up here
Tanya
Aldred has a fine account of how
sports can help in the climate fight. And I’ll
note that later this month I’ll get to both
speak at the half of the home opener for the Vermont Green Football
Club (our local very socially
conscious soccer team that also happens to be
national champion) and interview the
recently retired xc ski great Jessie Diggins
onstage at a big conference sponsored by Outside
magazine in Denver. Diggins is the prototype
athlete activist, working hard with the
estimable Protect Our Winters
group to argue for climate action.
+If
you find yourself in New Haven, check out the
new Rachel Carson exhibit at the Beinecke
Library
Meanwhile,
from the great Brown University researcher
Timmons Roberts and colleagues, an important new book on
the sprawling global effort of the fossil fuel
industry to disrupt climate action. This is a
truly important new global assessment:
People
burning fossil fuels causes climate change, a
scientific fact that has been clear for decades.
And climate policy is broadly popular, with as
many as 89% of people around the world wanting
more climate action from their leaders. So why
haven’t those leaders taken appropriate action?
Because at every step, the fossil fuel,
agriculture, and other high-carbon industries
and their enablers have made it “exponentially
more difficult” to enact policies to keep the
climate, and the public, safe
+Rivian’s
EV factory in Illinois will run on…recycled EV batteries.
Patrick George reports:
In
the Rivian project, the batteries will come from
either its test vehicles or from vehicles that
have viable batteries but can no longer drive.
Those batteries get sent off to Redwood, which
integrates them into power storage units.
Both
companies declined to specify the cost of this
project. The setup is expected to initially
provide 10 megawatt-hours of energy, equivalent
to about 1,000 home-energy battery storage units
linked together, Redwood’s Straubel said.
“These
batteries are already built,” he said. “We need
to integrate them and connect them together, but
that can happen quite fast. They don’t have to
get imported from some other place.”
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