Crisis Century’s First Real News Roundup

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week

Hello, friends.

Last time around, I decided to do a two-parter, adapted from some thoughts I recently shared on a podcast (the episode hasn’t been posted yet, but once it is you’ll be able to listen here).

If you missed it, here’s Part I, in which I reflect on my experience communicating about climate change, the term “climate emergency”, and Margaret Klein Salamon’s excellent book, “Facing the Climate Emergency.” 

Part II is coming next week, so please stay tuned. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the barriers to effective climate communication and how we should be talking about *waves hands* all this.

In the meantime, I wanted to do something a bit different and offer a more traditional curated news roundup.

As always, I’d love to hear what you think. Anything stand out? Anything I missed? Anything you’d like to read more about? Please let me know!

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:

THE ARCTIC

• NOAA released its 15th annual Arctic Report Card.

  Unsurprisingly, the trajectory in the far north continues to trend from bad to worse. The Report Cards chronicle astonishing loss over just the last 15 years.

  One key lesson, according to a lead editor, is “the interconnectedness of it all.”

  The cryosphere is an integral part of the global climate system. Beyond the devastating impacts of Arctic warming on local communities, we know that what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.

  For example, per Inside Climate News, “A series of recent studies have also linked the amplified Arctic warming to extreme weather in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, including simultaneous droughts in important agricultural areas, extreme cold outbreaks in the Northeast and flooding rains in the United Kingdom.”  

TECH & DISINFO

• If it wasn’t already apparent, QAnon’s fever-dream lies are hijacking our national conversations. Regrettably, Canadian politicians are not immune from “playing with fire” by coddling and winking at conspiracy cultists. It should be obvious by now how dangerous this is, and it should not be tolerated from our would-be leaders.

• If a friend, family member, or Senior Partner at your firm has been radicalized and swept away in the flood of disinformation and conspiracy theories that characterize our contemporary information environment, here are some tips on how to talk to them this holiday season.

• The Russians (almost certainly the Russians) are at it again. The US (and likely many other countries) has fallen victim to a months-long, ongoing cyber intrusion, one that appears to be unprecedented and potentially very dangerous.

  Read this explainer to see how it happened and why it may take years to expel the hackers. Expect this massive pwn to complicate and lend urgency to renewed attempts to hold Putin to account as Biden takes office.

OCEANS & FISHERIES

• We are eating our way through the seas, and global warming is making things worse. 5 years ago, the WTO was tasked with tackling overfishing and illegal fishing, but they’ve now failed to reach a deal.

  A number of variables appear to have contributed to the negotiations’ failure, but subsidies for large industrial fleets were a key sticking point.

  These fleets often deploy highly destructive fishing practices, undermine the food security of poorer coastal communities (and the world), and are also implicated in illegal fishing and human rights abuses.

  Nonetheless, large lower-income countries like India and China argued for exemptions that would allow for business-as-usual.

  This takes us in the wrong direction. We urgently need to end these subsidies and build out a global network of marine protected areas that are fully off-limits to fishing.

  Unless we turn this ship around, expect fish to become much scarcer and pricier in the years ahead, and growing conflict over exploitative and illegal industrial fishing practices (see e.g. Somalia, Britain, the South China Sea, and Nova Scotia, home of the Mi’kmaq), especially as climate change further degrades fisheries and shifts their locations.

‘MERICA (with a touch of Brexit)

• 1918 Germany has a Warning for America. This is a sobering read in the New York Times on the enduring danger of the “stolen election” myth being propagated in bad-faith by Trump’s Republican Party (if you missed it, also see my post-election take on why Trump & Trumpism are not going away).

• Similarly, as Brexit causes predictable disaster, those who voted for it will be urged to blame anybody but the Brexiters.

• Republicans Are Going Down A Dangerous Road — another great piece, this time in The Atlantic, on the irredeemability of Trump’s GOP: “In elections going forward, not trying to steal the election will be seen as RINO [“Republican in Name Only”] behaviour.”

THE (Mostly) GOOD NEWS — CLIMATE FINANCE & LEADERSHIP MATTERS

• Canada FINALLY has a real plan to meet its emissions-reduction targets and help ensure we’re not left behind in the new global economy (although we’re still not doing enough about adaptation). Now that there’s a plan, we just need the courage to implement it.

• However, as more companies and countries make net-zero pledges (a good thing!) here’s a critically important read on 10 Myths About Net Zero Targets & Carbon Offsets. Basically, a lot of offsets are scammy junk.

• With climate-literate leadership finally ascendant on both sides of the border, here’s a good read on the promise & peril of US-Canadian climate collaboration.

• High-emissions industries are getting squeezed as more and more investors, regulators, companies, and insurers get serious about the physical and transition risks imposed by our global climate emergency.

  The latest evidence? Lloyds of London is dramatically reducing support for “thermal coal-fired power plants, thermal coal mines, oil sands and new Arctic energy exploration activities”. In the months and years ahead, expect insurance to get increasingly, even prohibitively expensive for carbon-intensive industries and assets exposed to climate risks.

• Blackrock is also turning up the heat, integrating climate risk data into its risk management platform (called “Aladdin” — I kid you not), and vowing to vote more often against Boards that are moving too slowly on the climate crisis. Needless to say, ESG is here to stay.

• Relatedly, Boris Johnson managed to do something right as the UK became the first G20 country to end all overseas oil & gas funding.

• Following Biden’s election, the US Federal Reserve has formally joined the fast-growing Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS). The NGFS was formed in 2017 to share “ideas, research, and best practices on the development of environment and climate risk management for the financial sector.”

• Cecilia Malmström, the leading candidate to become the next Secretary-General of the OECD, wants to work with the WTO on an international carbon border adjustment regime.

  Integrating climate into international trade agreements would be an excellent way to lower global emissions and protect economies like Canada’s, which have priced greenhouse gas emissions, from those that continue to socialize carbon costs.

That’s all for now!

Thanks for reading and please stay tuned for the next edition — coming soon.

In the meantime, please consider sharing Crisis Century with someone who might enjoy it!

Take care and be well.
A.