October News You Can Use
Sorry we’re late. Somehow October wasn’t posted at the beginning of October, when it was complete. And while some of the news is a bit old, we believe much of it is still quite relevant. So please enjoy this issue, and the November issue coming in just a few days.
I Told You So
September 30, 2024
For nearly a quarter of a century I, Marianna, have been working to address climate change through many avenues: clean tech investments, advising businesses and government agencies, policy and politics, education, faith community activation and leading a non-profit consortium for sustainability. Four years ago, my family and I endured (along with millions of others in the Pacific
Northwest) unbreathable air from wildfire smoke, power outages and fear.
This month, Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc in Mexico and across 800
miles of the US Southeast. One of my daughters was in Asheville, North
Carolina, one of the hardest hit areas. Torrential rain (more than 20 inches
in two days) caused extreme flooding and landslides. Raging winds toppled
trees, making most of the roads in western North Carolina impassable.
Damage to the water system will take weeks to repair. Homes and other
buildings were ravaged. There have been least 30 deaths in one county with
hundreds still missing. No phone or internet service meant that loved ones
could not be contacted and rescues were delayed. For days I worried that
my daughter could have been one of the casualties. I heard from her
yesterday that she was safe. Relief for my family but not for so many others
left to clean up from an apocalyptic storm. The estimated damage from the
storm is approximately $100 billion. Hurricane season is expected to
continue through the end of November with more storms already forming.
The political campaigns talk about high prices but don’t make the link to the
huge capital and human costs of catastrophic events caused by a rapidly
heating climate. Prices for food, housing, insurance and everything else are
rising, in part due to our destruction of the web of life on which we all
depend. “I told you so” is not consoling in the face of devastation. This
newsletter is filled with solutions and calls to action. Let’s move forward
together, with determination, to turn rage and anxiety into action.
We’d love to hear from you! Send us new technologies, resources, stories and insights.
Events
Climate Leaders Monthly Meeting
Thursday, November 21, 4:00 - 5:00 PM PT
Join the Climate Leaders Meeting to exchange resources and inspiration with others who are also taking action to create a vibrant and healthy future.
All leaders are welcome.
This is a monthly on-line event hosted by Minerva Ventures.
Contending with Cascading Catastrophes
Tues. Oct 1, 4 PM Pacific
This Sustainable and Resilient Resources Roundtable Online Workshop addresses the question, "Who is planning for a post collapse world?" considering that there is more than one impending system collapse but rather, a cascade of collapses that has already begun, is growing more severe and is increasingly taxing the resilience of the ecosystem and human economic, social and other systems.
Join the latest Climate Reality Leadership Training - Online, OCTOBER 17–23, 2024
Wednesday, November 13 · 5 - 10pm PST
Opportunities for Action
Public Comment Period Open for First US National Nature Assessment's Zero Order Draft
In coordination with the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) seeks public comment on the proposed themes and topics of the first-ever National Nature Assessment (NNA1). Comments can be submitted via the USGCRP Review & Comment System from September 19 - November 4, 2024. The NNA1 will assess the status, observed trends, and future projections of America's lands, waters, wildlife, biodiversity, and ecosystems and the benefits they provide, including connections to the economy, public health, equity, climate mitigation and adaptation, and national security. More.
Oregon Community Green Infrastructure Grant Program
The Department of Land Conservation and Development's (DLCD) Community Green Infrastructure Program offers grants for green infrastructure projects, native seed banks and native plant nurseries, and green infrastructure master plans. Application window: October 4 tot 5:00 pm December 2, 2024.
Domains for Climate Action
Food and Agriculture
Farms and Ranches Make Progress on Cutting Their Carbon Footprint
In his new book The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos, ecologist Mark Easter looks in depth at the climate impacts of nine quintessentially “American” kitchen table staples, one per chapter. He brings forward some of the innovations being employed to decarbonize the agricultural sector in small implementations across the country, and theorizes how each could be applied at scale while quantifying how the widespread adoption of such techniques, and minimal shifts in consumer purchasing and consumption habits, could reduce agriculture’s gargantuan role in warming. Read more about the book here.
Energy
Balcony Solar Takes off in Germany
Hundreds of thousands of balconies across Germany now have solar panels on them, using a simple and affordable system that can be purchased online or at the supermarket for about US$550. Set up is as easy as plugging it in with a micro-inverter plugged into a wall outlet. Overcoming policy hurdles took years, but since the pandemic and the Ukraine war adoption has grown. And while the overall contribution to energy consumption in Germany will likely only ever be 1% or less, it is a tangible way for more people to take concrete climate action, and achieve some degree of energy independence.
Finance
Senator Whitehouse: We Ignore Climate Change At Our Economic and Fiscal Peril
The Senator goes into depth about the impact of climate-fueled disasters on insurance, “if you can’t get insurance, you can’t get a mortgage,” how “Climateflation” is damaging crop yields and driving up prices, and other climate impacts
More than $1 Billion for Natural Capital Projects
Climate Asset Management has raised in excess of $1 billion for natural capital projects from a geographically diverse range of financial institutions and leading global corporations for it’s three flagship funds.
Natural Capital Fund targets financial returns alongside improved environmental outcomes from real asset investments in regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry and environmental assets across developed markets.
Nature Based Carbon Fund targets the generation of high quality carbon credits from large-scale landscape restoration and conservation projects that aim to deliver climate resilience, biodiversity improvements and community benefits in developing economies.
The Restore Fund, designed by Apple and Climate Asset Management, adopts a unique blended approach across both strategies, targeting a financial return and carbon credits from high-quality carbon removals.
Projects range from transitioning from sugar cane to sustainable regenerative macadamia orchards, to restoring 900,000 hectares through rapid rotational grazing practices with Maasai communities, and agroforestry projects in Kenya, Uganda and Malawi restoring degraded land, improving food security and generating revenues for local communities. Read more.
Voluntary Carbon Markets Get Another Chance
Despite issues with voluntary credits exposed in the past year, VCMs are getting a lot of attention at Climate Week in New York. “We’re at an inflection point,” said Ricardo Bayon, founder and partner of Encourage Capital, an investment firm focused on environmental and social issues. “This market has seen numerous inflection points. But what’s different about this transition is it’s bigger and is more in the public eye. More people have heard about carbon offsets and carbon markets. The stakes are higher in this transition.” The Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently approved carbon market guidance meant to limit fraud and deception in credits backed by projects that have the potential to both mitigate climate change and help disaster-prone areas adapt to a world with more extreme weather events.
Circular Economy/Materials
Water/Natural Resources/Biodiversity
I.R.A. Funds for Planting Trees
Not many people know that the Inflation Reduction Act includes $1.5 billion for planting and maintaining trees in cities and towns across the US, more than 40X more than the Forest Service typically spends each year. With 1.25 billion already distributed, there is another $0.25 billion awaiting distribution in the coming year.
Built Environment
Retrofitting Buildings On the Outside to Cut Energy Needs
Roughly 40% of global emissions come from the built environment. To reduce these emissions will require both reducing the demand for energy and the type of energy used to supply the remaining demand. A new company, Hydronic Shell Technologies, has developed an exciting technology that can do both in hard-to-retrofit older buildings (think large apartment buildings in NYC and elsewhere, for example). Their solution involves installing pre-fabricated insulating panels to create an airtight shell around the buildings exterior, and building heat pump HVAC systems right into the panels, thus avoiding the need and difficulty of altering the building’s interior. Read more.
Transportation
Ammonia-Powered Shipping
New York-based startup Amogy has converted a diesel tugboat to run on cleanly-made ammonia, in a demonstration of the potential for shipping based on this carbon-free fuel. Ammonia, which is widely used for fertilizer, already has infrastructure in place for handling and transporting it. Ton for ton, it can hold more energy than hydrogen, and can be stored and distributed more easily. “It certainly has the potential to be a main or even the main fuel,” according to Jesse Fahnestock, leader of the Global Maritime Forum’s decarbonization work. “It has a potentially very friendly greenhouse gas footprint.” Read more.
Health
Climate Interventions:
Regeneration, Methane, Geoengineering, CCUS
Increasing the Ocean’s CO2 Absorption to “Buy Time”
CarbonRun believes it has an approach, adding limestone to rivers to convert the carbon dioxide in the water into a stable molecule that will wash into the sea, where it should remain trapped for thousands of years. Frontier, a $1 billion fund backed by tech giants like Stripe and Alphabet, announced it would pay CarbonRun $25 million to add limestone to multiple rivers and remove an initial 55,442 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Scientists estimate that similar methods deployed in oceans could remove billions of tons per year. Read more in the NYTimes.
Adaptation and Resilience
Climate Change Driven Relocations On The Rise
Once desirable US locations, from a climate perspective, were those with lots of sunshine and beaches, like California, Florida and Texas. Climate change, however, is making these places much less attractive as the risk of floods, storms and fires drive up both residents’ stress levels, and insurance costs. Suddenly locations in the mid-west are growing more popular, with lower costs and lower risks. Are you or anyone you know considering such a move? Read more.
Policy
Understanding the Biden/Harris Record on Climate
While many climate voters are strong backers of the Harris/Walz ticket, there are a substantial number who are still undecided, not planning to vote, or even planning to vote for Trump. Some of this may be stemming from feelings of betrayal by the current administration’s track record. This recent report in Distilled lays out some compelling facts that help clarify that record. For example, while candidate Biden promised no more new drilling on federal lands, he was not able to keep that promise as president, not because of a change in his intent, but due to limits on presidential power. However he was able to use the power of his office to constrain new leases to 324,000 acres of public land, as compared to the 2.4 million acres the Trump administration leased in its first two years in office. Another concern has been the large volume of oil and gas produced and exported under this administration. Unfortunately, the president has little power over production, and new technologies have allowed companies to get a lot more oil and gas out of existing wells than previously projected, and thus the high production. If you want to know more, I highly recommend this detailed and well researched report.
Global Leaders Sign a New “Pact For The Future”
Meeting in New York in advance of the UN General Assembly, world leaders signed the Pact for the Future, a vision for multilateral cooperation on a wide range of global issues, including peace and security, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), development finance, governance reform, climate change, gender equality, AI, and digital cooperation. It is described by the UN as “the culmination of an inclusive, years-long process to adapt international cooperation to the realities of today and the challenges of tomorrow.” “Unfortunately,” writes Karen Mathiasen, Project Director with the Center for Global Development, “the Pact suffers from two fatal flaws: the first is the disconnect between its vision and current events and the second is the disconnect between its signatories’ pledges and their capacity to deliver.”
The Ultra Rich Need to Step Up
Former UN Secretary General Bn Ki-moon, in an opinion piece in Foreign Policy, makes an impassioned and compelling case for policies that hold the rich, and those who have benefitted from contributing to climate change, be required to contribute to the solutions. “The clock is ticking, and the time for excuses is over. The choice is clear: Either we ensure that the wealthiest contribute their fair share to address the climate crisis or we all face a future where the consequences of inaction will be devastating.”
Climate News
President Biden Speaking on Climate in New York
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly and later at a Climate Week event in New York, Biden outlined his administration’s climate actions, saying, “This is a new formula on climate: creating jobs, reducing pollution, cleaning up our water and air, improving our quality of life, building a better America.” Read more.
A Big Three Months for Climate
Beginning with the UN General Assembly and Climate Week in New York City at the end of September, then in October the COP16 summit on global biodiversity goals, the same week as the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings on international development finance, and finally in November the UN climate summit (COP29) and the G20 Leaders’ Summit, there’s a lot to pay attention to this fall. “With these successive and connected convenings, decision-makers have an unprecedented opportunity to finally put the world on track for a livable future,” according to Ani Dasgupta president and CEO of the World Resources Institute. Pointing out that global sustainability efforts are far off track, he lays out a roadmap for stepping up to the opportunity of the moment. “The next few months will help determine whether the world continues to settle for unmet goals and incremental progress — or if we will deliver the change needed to build a global economy that is good for people, nature and climate.”
California Files Plastics Lawsuit Against ExxonMobil
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit accusing Exxon of violating state nuisance, natural resources, water pollution, false advertising and unfair competition laws in relation to its plastics production and recycling claims. It seeks an injunction to block “further pollution, impairment, and destruction, as well as to prevent Exxon Mobil from making any further false or misleading statements about plastics recycling and its plastics operations.” Read more.
Gore calls out climate backsliding
Point out that, "The world is not on track at present, to reach the goal of net zero emissions by 2050," Al Gore and his investment colleagues have released a new sustainability trends report, detailing how oil and gas companies are moving away from renewables as they chase shareholder returns, while major financial firms with sustainability targets have been fleeing groups of like-minded corporations, due in part to political pressure, Gore told Axios. He also points out that renewable electric generation is a bright spot, particularly solar.
Clear Evidence of Harmful Effects of Microplastic Pollution
A new study published in the journal Science establishes “…clear evidence of harmful effects from microplastic pollution on a global scale. That includes physical harm to wildlife, harm to societies and cultures, and a growing evidence base of harm to humans. Added to that is the fact that microplastics are persistent contaminants, and once in the environment they are virtually impossible to remove. There are still unknowns, but during the 20 years since our first study the amount of plastic in our oceans has increased by around 50%, only further emphasizing the pressing need for action,” according to Professor Richard Thompson OBE FRS, Director of the Marine Institute, leader of the study. Existing legislation is insufficient to address the challenge.The United Nations’ Plastic Pollution Treaty – which will undergo its fifth round of deliberations in November 2024 – presents a “tangible opportunity” for joined-up international action, if signatories will commit to an overall reduction in plastic production alongside measures to reduce the emission and release of microplastic particles along the entire plastics life cycle. Failing to do so, the researchers add, could bring “a high risk of irreversible environmental damage”. More here.
The Climate Has Been a Lot Warmer Than We Thought
A new model of the history of the earth’s climate indicates much higher temperatures in the past than previously thought, and while some forms of life survived those temperatures, humanity has evolved during an unusually cold spell. This new study once again shows that temperatures rose and fell in proportion to concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “Carbon dioxide is really that master dial,” Jess Tierney, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study, said. “That’s an important message … in terms of understanding why emissions from fossil fuels are a problem today.”
Book Recommendations
We’re excited to check out, What If We Get It Right?, a new book by marine biologist and climate policy expert Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (in conversation with a couple dozen other leading voices across the climate spectrum, including Bill McKibben, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Adam McKay, and Leah Penniman). The book focuses on solutions, as well as visions of the world we could have if we implement them — and the importance of holding up those visions as something to work toward. You can read more about the book here, or just go ahead and get your own copy.
About Minerva Ventures:
Are you concerned about climate change and seeking ways to take action? Business survival depends on addressing competitive challenges every day. Leaders attend to urgent business matters while counting on tomorrow’s weather and operating conditions to be similar to yesterday’s. What happens when underlying conditions change as climate consequences become more severe? It is hard to adjust to a disruptive future while you are focused on competing today.
Minerva advises clean tech companies on strategic and business development. We help you find customers, new markets, and new investors to build your momentum and success. Minerva helps established companies create strategies to identify and contend with climate risks to your business. Discover how you can protect your operations, assets, products, and services. Understand how climate risk will affect your suppliers, customers, and partners. Determine how you can strengthen your company to navigate change and seize opportunities as markets reconfigure in the face of the coming changes. Find innovative ways to change your operations, products, and services to help address climate change. Consider policy measures that your industry can pursue that will help address shared risks.
Minerva can help you find new solutions that will make your business more resilient and adaptable to change. Your company will be advancing climate solutions rather than just reacting to disruptions to your industry and markets.
Visit Minerva Ventures’ website at MinervaVentures.com!
Newsletter Editor: Dinyah Rein, Consultant, Minerva Ventures, LLC
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