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Scandinavian Wine

December 20, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The warming climate is creating some unexpected entrepreneurial opportunities. Many places that have traditionally dominated the wine industry are starting to be worried that the local climates that made them ideal for vineyards are changing and becoming much less ideal. On the other hand, places where wine-making was regarded as a losing proposition are becoming much more hospitable. A prime example is Scandinavia.

Nordic vintners are increasingly convinced that they can develop thriving commercial operations in what used to be places that are too cold for successful wine-making.

Denmark now has 90 commercial vineyards, up from just two 15 years ago. Forty vineyards have sprung up in Sweden. About a dozen vineyards are now operating as far north as Norway.

Many of these Nordic vineyards are in the startup stage and are tiny compared with the established wineries of Europe. Europe has 10 million acres of vineyards, which is enough to cover almost the entire country of Denmark. At the moment, there are only about 1,000 acres of vineyards in Denmark and Sweden.

But, looking forward, Scandinavia’s climate is forecast to be more like northern France, as regional temperatures climb as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Over the past decade, warming has produced milder winters, a longer growing season, and even a small but rising number of award-winning Scandinavian wines.

Meanwhile, traditional wine-growing regions are also dealing with climate change. Winemakers in France, for example, are experimenting with grapes from warmer countries like Tunisia to see if they can retain the tastes and yields that are the basis of a multibillion-dollar wine industry. Spanish and Italian winemakers are planting grapes higher up on mountainsides or on shaded north-facing slopes to preserve the quality of their wine.

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Scandinavian Wine? A Warming Climate Tempts Entrepreneurs

Photo, posted August 24, 2019, courtesy of Ron Reiring via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Booming Electric Car Sales

September 12, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electric cars are becoming more and more commonplace over time. There is no place in the world where this is more evident than in Norway. This year, about half the new cars sold in Norway have been electric. This compares to only 25% just last year. In March alone, nearly 60% of vehicle purchases in Norway were plug-in cars, outselling gas and diesel cars for the first time ever.

Norway has encouraged the switch to electric transportation by making battery-powered cars tax exempt as well as offering various other incentives. This is all part of the country’s plan to end the sale of fossil fuel cars entirely by 2025.

Although Norway leads the world in electric car sales on a per capita basis, there are many other places seeing rapid growth. In Maryland, for example, so many electric cars were sold in the past year that the state’s tax credit program, which has a $3 million annual budget, ran out of money seven months before the end of the fiscal year. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of EVs registered in Maryland doubled to over 18,000.

New York has also seen robust growth in electric vehicles. There are now more than 40,000 plug-in cars registered in New York State. About a third of those are Tesla models, with the increasingly popular Tesla Model 3 rapidly becoming the dominant plug-in car in the state. In fact, this year the Tesla Model 3 has accounted for about 60% of all plug-in car sales in the United States.

Not only are electric car sales going up, so are the options for car buyers. Within the next year or two, there will be numerous new electric car choices available from multiple manufacturers appealing to the tastes of a growing range of car buyers.

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EVs Make Up Half of New Car Sales in Norway So Far This Year

Photo, posted May 16, 2019, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And Economic Inequality

June 3, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

A new study by Stanford University looked at the effects of climate change on global economic inequality. The study found that the gap between the economic output of the world’s richest and poorest countries is larger today than it would have been without global warming.

The warming climate has enriched cooler countries like Norway and Sweden while dragging down economic growth in warm countries such as India and Nigeria. The results of the study showed that most of the poorest countries on Earth are considerably poorer than they would have been in the absence of rising temperatures. At the same time, the majority of rich countries are richer than they would have otherwise been.

Detailed analysis of 50 years of annual temperature and GDP measurements for 165 countries demonstrated that growth during warmer than average years has accelerated in cool nations and slowed in warm nations. Historical data clearly show that crops are more productive, people are healthier, and they are more productive at work when temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold. That means that in cold countries, a little bit of warming can help but the opposite is true in places that are already hot.

For most counties, whether global warming has helped or hurt economic growth is pretty certain. Tropical countries in particular tend to have temperatures far outside the ideal for economic growth and they are already among the poorest countries. It is less clear how warming has influenced growth in countries in the middle latitudes, such as here in the United States. Some of the largest economies are near the perfect temperature for economic output but continued warming in the future is likely to push them away from the temperature optimum.

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Climate change has worsened global economic inequality

Photo, posted November 1, 2011, courtesy of CIAT via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Electric Cars In Norway

February 18, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Norway has long been a world leader in sales of electric vehicles. The country only has 5.3 million people, so the absolute numbers cannot compete with those of large countries. Despite that, it wasn’t until the first quarter of last year that Germany became the leader in number of electric cars sold in Europe and Germany has 15 times the population of Norway.

In percentage terms, almost one-third of all new cars sold in Norway last year ran on batteries. The country offers generous subsidies for buyers who opt to go electric. The government has set a goal of having all new cars be emission-free by 2025. Last year, three of the top five most popular new car models were electric: the Nissan Leaf, the BMW i3, and the Tesla Model X.

Tesla’s Model 3, which has shattered all records for electric car sales in the United States, has yet to go on sale in Norway. When the car becomes available there in the next few months, it is expected to generate very high sales figures.

The 31% market share for electric cars in Norway far exceeds that of most other countries. In the United States, for example, plug-in cars account for only about 2% of new car sales. Only Hong Kong and Iceland are also currently above 5% electric.

Norway’s role in all of this is rather convoluted. The country has copious hydroelectric power resources that provide virtually all of its electricity. Thus, electric cars in Norway are truly clean, green vehicles. On the other hand, Norway is the 15th largest producer of oil in the world and gets about 17% of its GDP from oil exports. Tackling climate change must ultimately deal with the emissions Norway continues to export.

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Photo, posted October 3, 2018, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Japan And Whaling

January 10, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The commercial hunting of whales nearly drove the giant mammals to extinction. By the 1960s, as hunting technologies improved and ships began to resemble floating factories, it became clear that whaling could not continue unchecked.

But despite all this, commercial whaling was never actually banned. Instead, in 1986, members of the International Whaling Committee (IWC) agreed to a whaling moratorium in order to allow whale stocks to recover. Pro-whaling nations like Japan, Iceland, and Norway expected the moratorium to be temporary until the whales stocks recovered, and a consensus on catch quotas could be established. But the temporary moratorium became a quasi-permanent ban, much to the delight of conservationists and to the dismay of whaling nations.

As a result, Japan recently announced it is leaving the international agreement and plans to resume commercial whaling. The agreement though never really stopped Japanese whaling in the first place, because it allowed the country to kill whales for scientific research. Japan has had an annual Antarctic catch quota of 333 minke whales, producing notoriously little in terms of whale science while producing lots of whale meat. As part of its withdrawal from the IWC, Japan will cease its Antarctic hunts and limit whalers to its own waters. Commercial Japanese whaling will resume in July.

Once popular in Japan, whale meat consumption has plummeted, falling 98% between 1962 and 2016. The industry employs fewer than 1,000 people and is dependent on government subsidies.

Many governments and conservationist groups condemned Japan’s withdrawal, declaring the move out of step with the international community. They argue that, rather than hunting whales, urgent action is needed to conserve marine ecosystems.

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Japan to Resume Commercial Whaling, Defying International Ban

Photo, posted February 5, 2009, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Sustainable Whaling?

October 10, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The hunting of whales in the 19th and 20th Century nearly drove the giant mammals to extinction. By the 1960s, improved hunting methods and factory ships made it clear that whaling could not continue unchecked.

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Reducing Food Waste

October 9, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Food waste is a huge problem. About a third of all food produced globally goes to waste, and the numbers are even worse in the US. If food waste was a country, it would be the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Worse yet, all of this takes place in a world where 850 million people are chronically undernourished.

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A Million Electric Cars

September 25, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Last year, China was the first country to reach the milestone of having one million electric cars. This year, China will add another million plug-in vehicles. Of course, with its huge population, China sells four times as many cars in total per year as any other country.

Indonesian Deforestation Continues

May 3, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Worldwide, deforestation and land disturbance are responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. The largest contributor to this problem is Indonesia and getting control of its emissions is a crucial part of meeting global carbon reduction targets.

Upgrading The Doomsday Seed Vault

April 11, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located nearly 400 feet beneath the earth’s surface and fully funded by the Norwegian government, offers any government access to seeds in case of natural or man-made disaster. It’s more often referred to as the Doomsday Seed Vault. And ironically, it too is threatened by climate change.

Electrifying Shipping Fleets

March 26, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Container ships, tankers, freighters, and cruise ships are a significant source of carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants. They currently account for 3% of global emissions – which doesn’t sound like much – but most other sectors such as power plants and automobiles are gradually decarbonizing. As a result, experts believe that shipping could account for as much as 17% of global emissions by the year 2050.

An Electric, Autonomous Container Ship

September 18, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Electric cars are big news these days and so are self-driving cars. But now there is about to be an electric, self-navigating cargo ship. The soon-to-be-finished ship is called the Yara Birkeland, and is being built under a partnership between two Norwegian companies.

Ditching Gas And Diesel Cars

September 14, 2017 By EarthWise

Electric cars represent only a tiny fraction of the overall auto market. The numbers are growing, most certainly, but they are still quite small in most places. The recent start of production of the Tesla Model 3 has attracted quite a bit of attention to electric cars, but in many countries, there is much more to the story than just media buzz about a new car.

Exporting Emissions

July 26, 2017 By EarthWise

The Paris Climate Agreement seeks to reduce global carbon emissions. The nearly 200 countries who signed it have pledged to reduce their own emissions within their borders. And therein lies the rub: the agreement says nothing about the impact their products have across the world. For some countries, the problem is not so much the emissions they produce; it is those they export.

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‘Noah’s Ark’ Takes On Water

June 23, 2017 By EarthWise

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built into a hillside in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard far above the Arctic Circle, is often described as humanity’s last hope against extinction after some global crisis. While there are more than 1,700 gene banks around the world that keep collections of seeds, all of them are vulnerable to war, natural disasters, equipment malfunctions, and other problems. Except the Svalbard vault – or so we thought. It has been dubbed the “Noah’s Ark” of seeds and a last chance for the world to regenerate if the worst should come to pass. It’s mission is to keep the world’s seeds safe.

The Doomsday Seed Vault

April 12, 2017 By EarthWise

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, tucked away on a Norwegian island far above the Arctic Circle, is often described as humanity’s last hope against extinction after some global crisis and is popularly known as the “Doomsday Vault.” Although its mission is to keep the world’s seeds safe, it wasn’t actually created to reseed the planet after a world-wide catastrophe.

Europe’s E-Mobility

March 22, 2017 By EarthWise

With the arrival of the Chevy Bolt and the long waiting list for the forthcoming Tesla 3, there is starting to be some momentum for electric cars in the United States. But we are still well behind Europe in terms of the significant growth of so-called e-mobility.

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Record Low Sea Ice

January 13, 2017 By EarthWise

This time of the year, sea ice in the Arctic is on the rise as winter sets in. A combination of unusually high air temperatures and a warmer than normal ocean led to a record low for Arctic sea ice extent in November. In the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctic sea ice extent also hit a record low for the month.

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Electric Car Boom

May 17, 2016 By WAMC WEB

The introduction of the Tesla 3 and the 400,000 advanced orders for the vehicle have put the spotlight on electric cars recently. But despite all the buzz, electric cars are sill only a tiny piece of the US car market: about 0.66 percent last year.

[Read more…] about Electric Car Boom

Norway And Electric Cars

January 18, 2016 By WAMC WEB

One of the standard criticisms aimed at electric cars is whether they actually are good for the environment when everything is taken into account. For example, people worry about the amount of energy expended and the environmental impact of actually building the car. Recent studies have shown that this balances out over a relatively short amount of the car’s lifetime.