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Carbon Inequality | Earth Wise

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Everyone contributes to climate change through the generation of greenhouse gas emissions, but individual contributions vary greatly.   A study at the Paris School of Economics has determined that just 1 percent of the population is responsible for nearly a quarter of global carbon emissions growth since 1990.

The study estimated emissions from individuals’ consumption and their financial investments, and also from government spending in their country.  Individuals are responsible for carbon emissions as a result of their own activities, but they also bear their share of responsibility for the emissions of the firms that they own or invest in. 

In 2019, people living in sub-Saharan Africa produced an average of 1.8 tons of CO2 equivalent per capita.  In North America, the average per capita was more than 10 times higher.  Meanwhile, the top 10% of North America’s emitters produced more than 75 tons each.

From 1990 to 2019, the bottom 50% of emitters was responsible for just 16% of emissions growth, while the top 1% was responsible for 23%.  The top 0.1% saw emissions growth of 80%.

The inequality between rich and poor is driven more by inequality within countries than by inequality between countries.  This is particularly true for wealthy countries.  For example, over the study period, the top 1% saw their emissions grow by 26% while emissions actually declined 5-15% among low and middle earners even in wealthy nations.

Economic inequality drives a lot of the dynamics taking place within many countries around the world, and this even applies to pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

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Global carbon inequality over 1990–2019

Photo, posted December 11, 2017, courtesy of Bernal Saborio via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Whales As Ecosystem Engineers | Earth Wise

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Researchers from Stanford University have been studying the role of large whales on ocean ecosystems with some surprising results.

From 1910 to 1970, people killed about 1.5 million baleen whales in the waters surrounding Antarctica.  The whales were hunted for their blubber, baleen, and meat.  Baleen is the filtering fringe that certain whales use instead of teeth to capture food from the ocean.  A primary food source for these whales is krill, small shrimp-like creatures.   One would assume that the decimation of the baleen whale population in the Southern Ocean would have led to a surge in krill populations.  But the new research has found that the opposite is the case.

The precipitous decline of large marine mammals has negatively impacted the health and productivity of ocean ecosystems.

New high-tech tagging devices that attach to whales for brief periods allow researchers to record their movements and activities.  For the first time, it has been possible to accurately determine how much krill whales actually consume, and the answer is that they eat two to three times as much as previously thought.  Interestingly, the same technology shows that fish-eating whales like humpbacks eat somewhat less than previously thought.

Baleen whales are essentially mobile krill processing plants.  They eat the krill, digest it, and produce iron-laden excretions that are needed by phytoplankton, which comprise the bottom of the food chain that nourish krill and other small creatures.  With fewer whales, there is less nourishment for the krill.  In fact, based on the new data, estimates are that the historic abundance of krill in the Southern Ocean had to be about five times what it is today.

Whales are important ecosystem engineers.

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Stanford researchers find whales are more important ecosystems engineers than previously thought

Photo, posted November 18, 2010, courtesy of Dr. Brandon Southall, NMFS/OPR via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Russian Forests And Climate Mitigation | Earth Wise

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Russia is the largest country in area in the world, almost equal in size to the sum of the next two largest – Canada and the U.S.   Russia is also the world’s largest forest country, containing more than one-fifth of the world’s forests.  As a result, the country’s forests and forestry activities have enormous potential for impacting climate mitigation.

Since the dissolution of the USSR, there has been a decline in the availability of information on the state of Russia’s forests.  The Soviet Forest Inventory and Planning System compiled information until 1988.  Since then, the Russian National Forest Inventory has been the source of forest information on the national scale, and it hadn’t produced a comprehensive inventory until 2020.

The new data indicates that Russian forests have in fact accumulated a large amount of additional biomass over the intervening years.  Using the last Soviet Union report as a reference point, the new results show that the ongoing stock accumulation rate in Russian forests over the 26-year period is of the same magnitude as the net forest stock losses in tropical countries.

Thus, it is clear that Russian forests have great potential in terms of global climate mitigation as well as potential co-benefits relating to the green economy and sustainable development.   It is important to note that as the impact of climate change increases, disturbances to the Russian forests could have severe adverse effects on global climate mitigation efforts.

While much of the world’s attention is rightfully upon tropical rainforests in the Amazon and elsewhere, it is important to not ignore the largest country in the world hosting the largest land biome on the planet where even small percentage changes in the amount of forest biomass could have a major global impact.

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Russian forests are crucial to global climate mitigation

Photo, posted June 6, 2015, courtesy of Raita Futo via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Banning Short Plane Flights | Earth Wise

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Almost everything we do ultimately results in greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and therefore has an impact on the climate.  But some activities have much more impact than others.  The aviation industry is responsible for about 5% of global warming.

This doesn’t seem like that large a contribution, but only a very small percentage of the world’s population flies frequently and even in richer countries, only around half the population flew in any given year (at least before the pandemic.)

Flying is generally the only practical option for most long-haul trips and unless people give up on seeing the world or conducting global business in person, they are not going to give up taking air trips.

But shorter flights are a different story.  If you are planning to take a reasonably short trip in France, a plane will soon no longer be an option.  The French government says that flights will be banned on any route where the trip could be made on a train in 2.5 hours or less.  The driving force is the reduction of CO2 emissions.  A plane trip emits an average of 77 times more CO2 per passenger than taking a train on the same route.

The Netherlands and Belgium are also considering bans on short-haul flights and Austrian Airlines recently replaced its Vienna-to-Salzburg flights with train service.

Advocates of the flight bans say that not only does taking the train significantly reduce a traveler’s carbon footprint, but it can be cheaper and actually faster than a plane when factoring in the time spent getting to airports, standing in security lines, getting on and off planes, and so on.  Europe’s extensive train system makes this approach broadly practical. Unfortunately, here in the U.S., it is not quite that easy.

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France Will Ban Short Flights That Could Be Replaced By a Train Trip

Photo, posted December 17, 2016, courtesy of Dylan Agbagni via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Artificial Light And Nature | Earth Wise

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Most of us are familiar with air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, and noise pollution.  But it turns out that light can also be a pollutant as well. 

Light pollution is a consequence of industrial civilization.  Sources of light pollution include building interior and exterior lighting, advertising billboards, factories, commercial properties, streetlights, and sporting venues.      

According to findings in a new report from the University of Exeter, artificial nighttime lighting has a wide range of effects across the natural world and should be limited wherever possible.  The research team analyzed more than 100 studies and found that artificial lighting has widespread impacts on both animals and plants. 

In the study, which was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council in the U.K., researchers consistently found changes to animals’ bodies and behavior as a result of artificial lighting.  In particular, levels of the sleep cycle-regulating hormone melatonin were reduced by exposure to artificial lighting at night in all animal species studied. 

Exposure to artificial nighttime lighting also affected the timing of animals’ activities.  For rodents, which are largely nocturnal, the duration of activity was often reduced by exposure to nighttime lighting.  On the other hand, for diurnal birds, exposure to nighttime lighting led to an extension of the duration of their activities.  

Previous studies have found other wide-ranging impacts of nighttime lighting, from reducing pollination by insects to trees budding earlier in spring.  

Artificial nighttime lighting is human driven and very disruptive to the natural world.  While there’s no off switch for the planet, we could reduce the amount of light pollution drastically with no impact on our lives. 

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Artificial night lighting has widespread impacts on nature

Photo, posted July 29, 2017, courtesy of spacedust2019 via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Pandemic Lockdowns And Carbon Emissions | Earth Wise

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The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic saw many human activities reduced to a fraction of what they were previously.  Notably, air pollution in major cities was dramatically lower than it had been in decades.  Now, a new study has looked at the effect of the pandemic shutdowns on carbon dioxide emissions.

An international team of climate scientists has published an assessment of carbon dioxide emissions by industry, transportation, and other sectors from January through June.  According to their measurements, this year’s pandemic lockdowns resulted in a 9% decline in emissions from 2019 levels.

An earlier study reported a 17% drop in CO2 emissions, but the new study was more comprehensive and detailed.

The new data includes estimates of day-by-day, sector-specific and country-level differences in CO2 emissions derived from frequently updated data sources, some of which are nearly in real-time.  It tracks the effects of COVID-19-related disruptions of human activities in China starting in February and in the United States and Europe in March through May.

The data revealed the resumption of emissions in many regions, such as in China, where they are now back to pre-pandemic levels.  Emissions in the Americas and Europe have been slower to recover, especially in the US, where COVID-19 hotspots are continuing to emerge. 

The reduction in carbon emissions has been due mostly to transportation with fewer people driving to work and traveling by air.  Even by June, when lockdowns were easing, global emissions were still significantly reduced.  In any case, a pandemic is a highly undesirable and unwelcome way to reduce carbon emissions, but the data from this year does show that it is effective.

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Pandemic lockdowns caused steep and lasting carbon dioxide decline

Photo, posted August 7, 2020, courtesy of Michael Mueller via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Paying To Combat Climate Change | Earth Wise

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The majority of Americans believe that climate change is happening, that human activities are largely responsible, and are actually willing to put up their own money to help fight it.   Unfortunately, these views diverge sharply along party lines and, as in many other areas these days, the will of the overall majority has little influence on policy.

According to Yale University research, 73% of adults think that global warming in happening and 57% think it is mostly caused by human activities.  Furthermore, only 32% believe it is due to natural forces.

A survey conducted in the U.S. in August found that more than two-thirds of Americans – actually 70% – indicated willingness to donate a percentage of their personal income to support the fight against climate change.

Breaking that down further, 28% were willing to provide less than 1% of their income, 33% were willing to contribute 1-5% of their income, 6% said they would give 6-10% of their income, and 3% said they would contribute more than 10% of their income.  On the other hand, roughly 30% indicated that they were unwilling to contribute.

The survey also looked at opinions on how the fight against climate change should be paid for.  The majority (59%) chose government incentives for both businesses and consumers.   Three other options each favored by over 40% of those surveyed were taxes, conservation programs, and business investments. 

Another finding of the survey was that 44% are dissatisfied with the job that the federal and state governments are doing to address climate change, 35% are somewhat satisfied, and only 21% are very or completely satisfied with the government’s role.

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Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2020

Two-thirds of Americans are willing to donate part of their income to fight climate change

Photo, posted April 29, 2017, courtesy of majunznk via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

How To Bend The Curve On Biodiversity Loss | Earth Wise

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Biodiversity has been declining at an alarming rate in recent years as a result of human activities, including land use changes, pollution, and climate change.  According to a 2019 UN report, one million species – out of an estimated eight million – are threatened with extinction.  Many scientists warn we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history.  Previous mass extinction events wiped out up to 95% of all species and took ecosystems millions of years to recover. 

Fortunately, new research indicates that it might not be too late to bend the curve on biodiversity loss.  According to the report, which was recently published in the journal Nature, more ambitious conservation measures are needed in order to  preserve biodiversity.  In addition, more efficient food production and healthier and less wasteful consumption and trade are needed to bend the curve. 

If these measures are undertaken with unprecedented ambition and coordination, the research team says the efforts will provide an opportunity to reverse biodiversity loss by 2050.

But even under the best case scenario, ongoing land conversion will lead to further biodiversity losses before the curve starts to bend.  In fact, at least one third of projected losses in the coming years are unlikely to be avoided under any scenario.  Biodiversity losses were projected to be highest in the regions richest in biodiversity, including South Asia, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. 

The study, which was led by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, makes it clear that urgent action is needed this decade in order to have any chance of bending the curve. 

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Curbing land clearing for food production is vital to reverse biodiversity declines

Photo, posted November 1, 2017, courtesy of Rod Waddington via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Wildlife Reclaims Yosemite National Park | Earth Wise

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Our stories often discuss how human activities change the natural environment.  With most of us confined to our homes, the lack of human activities is having profound effects on the environment.  We are talking about some of these this week.

Yosemite National park is normally awash in humanity – there were over 300,000 visitors in April of 2019 and typically 4 million people visit each year.  But as of March 20, the park was closed to tourists to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.  Only a skeleton crew of employees remains in the park.

Without all the people, wildlife is coming out of hiding.  It did so in previous park closures during government shutdowns, but those closures were pretty short.  This one is expected to be the longest on record.

The bear population within the park has quadrupled and many larger animals – such as bobcats and coyotes – are congregating outside of cabins and other buildings and prowling empty roads and walkways instead of hanging back at the edges of human settlements. 

In addition, the air at Yosemite is cleaner due to the lack of exhaust and diesel, and Yosemite Valley is nearly silent, apart from natural sounds from the river and the wind.  According to some observers, the park’s current condition is probably similar to what visitors in the 19th century witnessed. 

The few park employees sheltering in place are taking advantage of the virtually unimpeded natural amenities of the park.  Many are hiking to its lakes and waterfalls, enjoying trails that are empty apart from animals.  As some of the people staying in the park have noted, one could not ask for a better place to be isolated.

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Coyotes, bobcats and bears: Wildlife is reclaiming Yosemite National Park

Photo, posted October 30, 2019, courtesy of Ania Mendrek via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

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