Can you spare an hour for Earth?

Hello friend, and happy Earth Hour Day!

At 20:30 on 25 March (your local time), people all over the world are encouraged to switch off their lights, unplug, and spend 60 minutes doing something positive for the planet.

Here are some ideas of how you can spend your Earth Hour today:

• Learn more about the planet. You can use the time to read this newsletter 😬 and past issues on topics including offsetting, insetting, and why we're putting too much faith in trees to fight climate change. In one hour, you could also listen to a podcast, watch an educational video, or read two articles about biodiversity.

• Reconnect with nature. Spend the hour outside in nature. Go for a walk on the beach, meditate in your garden, or lie on a blanket and look at the stars.

• Get your hands dirty. Plant a tree, pick up litter in your neighbourhood, dig through your recycling and create a piece of art from reused rubbish.

• Inspire others to get involved. Tell your social media pals about Earth Hour, sign climate change petitions, or share this newsletter with a friend 😬

— Tarryn ✌️

P.S. Did someone forward this to you? You can subscribe here, if you want.

This week's climate and sustainability news worth noting

💣 The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, and it does not make for light reading. The IPCC has revised the target for slashing annual greenhouse gas emissions to 60% by 2035 – up from its previous target of a 43% cut by 2030. Meeting this new target will require even more aggressive action in this decade, with the IPCC warning of widespread food insecurity due to more extreme heatwaves and droughts. The problem, however, is that we're hurtling towards "catastrophic" climate change, with a projected 10.6% increase in emissions by 2030.

🧑🏽‍⚖️ Greta Thunberg and 600 other climate activists have been given the go-ahead to sue the Swedish state for insufficient climate policy. The state has three months to respond to the lawsuit before the case could be heard or settled in writing.

👴🏽 Senior citizens in the US have been protesting in rocking chairs outside America's four largest banks to pressure them to stop financing fossil fuels. Demonstrations have taken place in 100 cities across 29 states outside branches of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo – the world's largest lenders to the fossil fuel industry.

💦 World Water Day was on 22 March. The UN Water Conference in New York – the first such meeting in five decades – opened on a sombre note with the UN warning that we're draining humanity’s lifeblood through "vampiric overconsumption, unsustainable use, and evaporating it through global heating". Leaders warned that unless countries work together to tackle overconsumption, water-guzzling industries and the climate crisis, we will face more hunger, conflicts, droughts, and forced migration due to worsening water scarcity.

💧 Other notable news from World Water Day: Australia announced the AquaWatch mission, which will see $83 million invested into a 'weather service for water quality' mission that will deliver accurate, real-time water quality data monitoring and forecasting using satellites and ground-based sensors. The bottled water market grew by 73% from 2010 to 2020, reflecting the failure of governments to improve public water supplies. The industry produced 600 billion plastic bottles in 2021, with 85% of these likely to end up in landfills.

😷 Sandstorms in China have caused air pollution levels in 60 cities to reach ‘severe’ or worse levels.

💨 Just when we thought wetlands were the answer to the carbon offsetting challenge, new research finds that methane emissions from wetlands have risen faster this century than in even the most pessimistic climate scenarios, as climate change raises global temperatures and disrupts rainfall patterns.

And in business news:

🏷️ In an effort to stamp out greenwashing, the European Commission has proposed rules that would require companies in Europe to back up climate-friendly claims about their products with evidence. The proposed rules would regulate labels like "natural", "climate neutral" or having "recycled content". To use such labels, a company must carry out a science-based assessment, assessing all significant environmental impacts, to prove that its product lives up to the claim, or have it verified under an environmental labelling scheme.

🌏 The Bezos Earth Fund has pledged $34.5 million toward better climate reporting and sustainable food. Recipients include the Carbon Disclosure Project and the GHG Protocol to help refine their models and increase the transparency of climate impact data. The remaining grants will go towards Cornell University and the Good Food Institute to make meat less environmentally damaging to cultivate and consume.

💰 S&P Global's Sustainability Quarterly Report shows that many large companies are not engaging in climate adaptation efforts and recommends that more financing should go toward adaptation (as opposed to mitigation). It found that the issuance of green, social, sustainability, and sustainability-linked bonds could contribute to addressing that gap, presenting a source of growth for the sustainable bond asset class in 2023 and beyond.

♻️ TileGreen, an Egyptian start-up, has created a process to turn plastic bags into tiles that are tougher than concrete. Mixed plastic waste is melted down and compressed into tiles, which are sold to developers and construction companies for use in outdoor paving. So far, the company has recycled more than five million plastic bags and aims to increase that to five billion by 2025.

Well, that's interesting

Scientists may have figured out how to create electricity from thin air.

🧫 Mycobacterium smegmatis, a bacterial relative of tuberculosis that's found in soil all over the world, can absorb trace amounts of hydrogen in the atmosphere and water around it to convert into energy.

If scientists can grow the enzyme responsible for absorbing hydrogen at scale, it could usher in a new era of revolutionary, clean energy.

In fact, you may never have to charge your devices ever again since they'll be able to generate their own energy just by being in contact with the air.

You can read the scientific explanation here, or the kid's explanation here.

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

This bird figured out that golf balls bounce on concrete, and it's having the time of its life.

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