THE BRIEF [Aug 23-29 ‘21]
THE BRIEF [Aug 23-29 ‘21]
Smoke from wildfires are causing premature births, lead UK hydrogen lobbyist quit due to blue hydrogen lies, be a solutionist and 12 central banks funnels 3.8T$ into the fossil fuel industry.
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Weekly Climate 🎉
References: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6].
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As you’re reading this I’m somewhere close to Mâcon in France. We decided to take the next three weeks as vacation and I really need some non-screen time, so the next issue will be out Sep 27. I’ve been doing this for a full year now with no breaks and it seems that even top journalists like Emily Atkin is taking vacation so I hope this fine. So thank you again for subscribing and I will see you on Sep 27.
‼️News you can’t miss
Here’s one important scary/bad (🙀), good (😻), interesting (😼) and fossil (💩) news item.
🙀 Smoke from wildfires may be contributing to premature births.
😻 While not exactly good news but still warrants a celebration of an individual, the lead hydrogen lobbyist in the UK quite citing fossil fuel propaganda and lies about blue hydrogen.
😼 Be a solutionist, not an optimist nor a pessimist.
💩 Just 12 central banks have funneled 3.8T$ into the fossil fuel industry in the past 4 years.
This weeks highlights
[#infrastructure] — One of the biggest hurdles of the climate crisis is the big infrastructure problem that comes along with it. Some might argue that the climate crisis is primarily an infrastructure problem (I’m not so sure about that but it is definitely a big part). Here’s an example of that. Here’s a map of EV chargers in the US. I would not be surprised if people in the middle of US think that EVs are a really bad idea, since they have quite a lot fewer chargers than the coasts. One solution to the charger problem is to not charge at all and simply swap out your battery when you need a new one. Ample is working on that and just got 230M$ in funding. But then again maybe all of this won’t be a problem in the future because there’s evidence that we may have reached peak car.
[#democracy] — “Is democracy getting in the way of saving the planet?” asks Kate Aronoff. No is her answer. In fact she argues that we need more. And that it’s the anti-democratic interests of companies that get’s in the way.
[#wildfires] — A new study reveals that smoke from wildfires could be increasing the number of premature births. The study looked at preterm births between 2007 and 2012 and at least 7000 of these could be attributed to exposure to wildfire smoke. There are indications that the culprit are so called PM2.5 particles or the most dangerous types of soot particles which can cause inflammation and definitely activates the immune system which can reduce blood flow to organs including the placenta which is a condition know to provoke premature birth. And if that wasn’t bad enough, wildfire smoke have also been linked in a new study to skin damage regardless of whether you’re pregnant or not.
[#fossilhydrogen] — Hydrogen could be green. But it requires that you produce it using renewable energy and electrolyzers for instance. And not from fossil fuels. Blue hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels. And that is the biggest problem IMO that hydrogen has. The fact that hydrogen will become the target of big fossils propaganda and lobbyism machine. Hydrogen could easily become the next “natural gas” (or what we here at the Weekly Climate calls “fossil gas” because that’s what it is). Which is already happening according to this piece in Desmog. So just as with “natural gas” the next time you hear somebody say “blue hydrogen” remember to correct them and say “no it’s called fossil hydrogen”. You know who did exactly that on a big scale and should be celebrated as a hero for it? The lead hydrogen lobbyist in the UK. He quit his job citing all the false claims and propaganda surrounding blue hydrogen and that if we went with blue hydrogen would lock in fossil fuels for a long time.
That’s it for this week folks!
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See you all next week 👋