The Grumpy Optimist Returns 🌱
After a summer break, we're back to bring you positive environmental news!
Happy Monday 👋
It’s been a while. After a year of producing weekly newsletters, we realised we needed a break and our Sundays back to live our lives. Well, after a summer break and a little bit of thinking, we’ve decided to go ahead with the weekly news recaps, this time, keeping it short and sweet with just the headlines and the interesting things we’ve read.
In a world where climate disaster seems to be everywhere, from flooding in Pakistan to heatwaves in the US and the ever-increasing energy crisis happening in Europe, we look forward to getting back to giving you a summary of what we’ve read and what you should know. The world will never be completely optimistic, and neither will this newsletter, but we’ll do our best to give you a reason to be positive about climate action every Monday. It’s why we started, after all.
We’d love to find ways to connect with the readers of this newsletter more, we’ll release more in the coming weeks but if anybody has any suggestions, from a WhatsApp to an event, let us know!
For now, enjoy the read and your week,
The Grumpy Optimists
👀 Articles to read
🌞 Solar is the saviour? The EU collectively produced record levels of solar power this summer, saving €29bn (£25bn) of gas imports in the process. Solar has needed to step up in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the reduction in hydroelectric due to drought. Poland had the fastest growth in solar generation since 2018, mainly thanks to government subsidies on photovoltaics. This is a great example of how diversifying our energy sources will help our resilience to global emergencies and weather extremes.
🌡️ 6 Tipping points we risk the Earth crossing at current climate change rates. A paper published this week sets out six tipping points we risk crossing, should average global temperature exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. These are:
Greenland Ice Sheet collapse
West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse
The collapse of ocean circulation in the polar region of the North Atlantic
Coral reefs die off in the low latitudes
Sudden thawing of permafrost in the Northern regions
Abrupt sea ice loss in the Barents Sea.
Modelling suggests that even if all countries meet the decarbonising targets they’ve pledged, we are likely to see average warming of at least 1.8°C.
"Tipping points" refer to junctures in the climate system that, when crossed, can usher in irreversible changes. Each of these tipping points has its own threshold warming level at which it will be triggered but they’re all interconnected. This means if one is set off, it could increase the likelihood of others being set off too (known as “cascading”). For example, melting of ice sheets reduces albedo (reflecting of light and heat back into the atmosphere), causing further warming.
📺 France Bids Fossil Fuel Adverts Adieu. On 22nd August, France announced it was banning the advertisement of any energy products related to fossil fuels (except for natural gas, laws for which are likely to come out next summer). This is fantastic news, given the campaign of misinformation and climate denialism that fossil fuel industries have been fuelling (pun intended) for the past four decades. Whilst it has been done at city level before in Amsterdam, we hope to see similar laws appear in other countries.
🔨 Chris Skidmore to lead net zero review. Despite all the negative things that can be said about the current UK government, like the lifting the ban on fracking, Liz Truss has placed responsibility for a net zero review in the hands of a staunch campaigner for climate action. Chris Skidmore, who chairs the environment all-party parliamentary group has suggested that more should be done to help businesses decarbonise. Let’s see what happens.
🇺🇸 The US’s biggest ever climate law. While we were gone, Biden signed a $700bn (£579bn) bill that aims to fight climate change and healthcare costs. The bill includes $369bn in climate funding and is the largest in American history. It is projected to lower US emissions by up to 44% by 2030. The funding has already led to a huge surge in clean energy projects.
That’s all for this week folks, have a good one and we’re glad to be back.
The Grumpy Optimists 💚