Less doom and gloom; more rainbows and unicorns

Hi friend,

I’ve been feeling a bit demotivated with this newsletter lately and I’m thinking about changing some things – you know, less doom and gloom, more rainbows and unicorns.

Writing about the climate is fucking depressing, from a parched Amazon river and species extinctions, to douchebags who deliberately add to the pollution problem and politicians who only give half a shit.

To shake up this shit show, we now have climate advocacy groups spending millions of dollars to advertise Joe Biden’s climate and environment agenda ahead of the 2024 election.

Why a climate group is campaigning is beyond me. That US$80 million could have been spent on things like, oh I don’t know, helping the 20,000 children who are displaced due to climate change EVERY DAY!

Or maybe they could use that money to restore ravaged ecosystems.

Or here’s a wild idea: Why not give 80 climate start-ups $1 million each to scale their solutions?

The fact that the majority of Americans know little or nothing about Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act should not be of concern to a climate advocacy group. Campaigning should be left to the politicians or, in Biden’s case, Fox News.

How’s this for a nice dose of greenwashed propaganda? Fox News reports that offshore oil and gas permits under Biden have fallen to 20-year lows, and that since Biden took office, the government approved “just” 157 applications for new drilling permits. This includes an $8 billion plan to extract 600 million barrels of oil from pristine federal land in Alaska. What happened to his promise of no more drilling on federal land – “period”?

What Fox News fails to mention is that drilling may be down, but production sure as hell isn’t. The US’s domestic oil production hit an all-time high last week. They’ll blame the wars and supply chains and say they’re doing it for “energy security”, and this will be another reason to approve “just” a few more drilling permits (watch this space).

I never intended this newsletter to be a bitch fest about politicians, but it seems that’s what it’s become. And I don’t like it.

So I might change some things, I don’t know.

What do you think? What do you like about this newsletter. What should I stop, start, and continue doing? I’d love to hear from you about what would make this newsletter less shitty and more giggly.

— Tarryn ✌️

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This week's climate and sustainability news worth noting

🚨 The water level at a major river port in the Amazon rainforest hit its lowest point in at least 121 years last week. The drought has killed more than 100 endangered river dolphins, and remote villages have been cut off from food and water supplies as their boats lie stranded.

😵 The US Fish and Wildlife Service has declared 21 species as distinct. This includes the Little Mariana fruit bat, eight mussels, two fish, and 10 birds. Eight of the birds were endemic to Hawaii.

❌ The EU will seek a global phase-out of fossil fuels, and for their use to peak this decade, at the COP28 UN climate talks in November.

🐦‍⬛ Nearly 1,000 birds were found dead outside the McCormick Place Lakeside Center in Chicago after flying into the building during the fall migration season. Last Thursday, about 1.49 million birds had been migrating after being delayed by unfavourable weather conditions, but then they flew into a storm system and were confused by lights and reflective windows. The occurrence emphasises how important it is for buildings to turn off their lights during bird migration season.

🇬🇧 Thirty MPs, Lords, and Councillors have signed an open letter to the UK government, accusing it of “turning a blind eye to environmental degradation”. This comes after the State of Nature Report revealed that one in six of the UK’s plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction. It also concluded that the UK is not on track to restore degraded habitat in line with the government’s 2030 goals and that it would miss these goals even with an extra 20 years to do so, without further intervention.

⚡️ The electricity needed to run AI could boost the world’s carbon emissions, depending on whether the data centres get their power from fossil fuels or renewable resources. By 2027, AI servers could use between 85 to 134 terawatt hours (Twh) annually. That’s similar to what Argentina, the Netherlands, and Sweden each use in a year, and is about 0.5% of the world's current electricity use.

🔬 From the labs:

• 💧 Researchers have developed a solar-powered desalination device that can turn seawater into drinking water.

• ⚡️ Scientists have successfully mimicked the natural process of photosynthesis to produce methane, which could be scaled to replace solar panels as a primary source of limitless clean energy.

And in business news

✅ All private companies operating in California with a yearly global revenue over US$1 billion must disclose how much carbon they produce in their operations by 2026, and in their supply chains by 2027. Companies with revenue above US$500 million must publish their climate-related financial risks by 2026. The rules are the first of their kind in the US, and more than 10,000 companies may be affected, including OpenAI and Google.

🤖 Google has launched new artificial intelligence solutions to decarbonise the transport and energy sectors. It has also built an AI-powered forecasting system for floods, wildfires, and heatwaves, and has updated its search features to make it easier for people to learn about climate-friendly home heating and cooling options.

📦 eBay faces fines of up to US$2 billion for allowing the sale of hundreds of thousands of “rolling coal” pollution devices and other products that violate environmental laws. Rolling coal involves installing a device on a car to pump more diesel into the engine, leading it to spew out plumes of exhaust fumes. eBay enabled the sale of over 343,000 devices, which could each attract a fine of $5,580.

One small thing you can do

Gift experiences, not things.

Nobody needs more stuff.

Because lots of little actions combined can add up to something remarkable.

I'll leave you on this happy note...

Laughing foxes!

factsdailyy

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