Sustainability Pushed Back Into Spotlight

William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, pioneers in adapting the western economic growth model to focus on environmental issues and sharing the benefits of technology, won the 2018 Nobel Economics Prize.

In a joint award that turned the spotlight on a rapidly shifting global debate over the impact of climate change, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the duo’s work helps answer questions about promoting long-term, sustainable prosperity.

Romer, of New York University’s Stern School of Business and best known for his work on endogenous growth – a theory rooted in investing in knowledge and human capital – said he had been taken by surprise by the award, but offered a positive message.

“I think one of the problems with the current situation is that many people think that protecting (the) environment will be so costly and so hard that they just want to ignore them,” he told a news conference via telephone.

“We can absolutely make substantial progress protecting the environment and do it without giving up the chance to sustain growth.”

Hours before the award, the United Nations panel on climate change said society would have to radically alter the way it consumes energy, travels and builds to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax, and last year announced that he would withdraw the United States from a global pact to combat it reached in 2015 – calling the deal’s demands for emissions cuts too costly.

Nordhaus, a Professor of Economics at Yale University, was the first person to create a quantitative model that described the interplay between the economy and the climate, the Swedish academy said.

“The key insight of my work was to put a price on carbon in order to hold back climate change,” Nordhaus was quoted as saying in a Yale publication this year. “The main recipe …is to make sure governments, corporations and households face a high price on their carbon emissions.”

Nobel committee chair Per Stromberg told Reuters Monday’s award was honoring research into the negative effects of growth on the climate and to make sure that this economic growth leaves prosperity for everyone.

Romer had shown how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to innovate, helping some societies grow many times faster than others. By understanding which market conditions favor the creation of profitable technologies, society can tailor policies to promote growth, the academy said.

While on leave from the Stern School, Romer served as chief economist and senior vice president at the World Bank until early this year. His work on endogenous growth theory is not universally admired.

Read More About The Economics of Climate Change

Crossbow is an award-winning and record-setting communications firm. We influence public opinion, public policy and business decisions around the world. We have generated millions of dollars in revenue, stockholder equity and media coverage for our clients. We’re helping stakeholders around the world tackle some of the most urgent issues of our time. Our headquarters are in Denver, Colorado. We’re opening a new office in Phoenix, Arizona.

Hurricanes, Cyclones Gathering Strength

Editor’s Note: This study was published just weeks before Hurricane Michael rearranged the Florida panhandle.

The IPCC AR5 presents a strong body of scientific evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past half century is very likely due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. But what does this change mean for hurricane activity? Here, we address these questions, starting with those conclusions where we have relatively more confidence. The main text then gives more background discussion. Detectable change refers to a change that is large enough to be clearly distinguishable from the variability due to natural causes. Our main conclusions are:

• Sea level rise–which very likely has a substantial human contribution to the global mean observed rise according to IPCC AR5–should be causing higher storm surge levels for tropical cyclones that do occur, all else assumed equal.
• Tropical cyclone rainfall rates will likely increase in the future due to anthropogenic warming and accompanying increase in atmospheric moisture content. Modeling studies on average project an increase on the order of 10-15 percent for rainfall rates averaged within about 100 km of the storm for a 2 degree Celsius global warming scenario.
• Tropical cyclone intensities globally will likely increase on average (by 1 to 10 percent according to model projections for a 2 degree Celsius global warming). This change would imply an even larger percentage increase in the destructive potential per storm, assuming no reduction in storm size.  Storm size responses to anthropogenic warming are uncertain.
• The global proportion of tropical cyclones that reach very intense (Category 4 and 5) levels will likely increase due to anthropogenic warming over the 21st century.  There is less confidence in future projections of the global number of Category 4 and 5 storms, since most modeling studies project a decrease (or little change) in the global frequency of all tropical cyclones combined.
• In terms of detection and attribution, much less is known about hurricane/tropical cyclone activity changes, compared to global temperature.  In the northwest Pacific basin, there is emerging evidence for a detectable poleward shift in the latitude of maximum intensity of tropical cyclones, with a tentative link to anthropogenic warming.  In the Atlantic, it is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on hurricane activity. Reduced aerosol forcing since the 1970s probably contributed to the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since then, but the amount of contribution, relative to natural variability, remains uncertain. There is some evidence for a slowing of tropical cyclone propagation speeds globally over the past half century, but these observed changes have not yet been confidently linked to anthropogenic climate change.  Human activities may have already caused other changes in tropical cyclone activity that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of these changes compared to estimated natural variability, or due to observational limitations.

Global Warming and Atlantic Hurricanes

A. Statistical relationships between SSTs and hurricanes

Observed records of Atlantic hurricane activity show some correlation, on multi-year time-scales, between local tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the Power Dissipation Index (PDI) —see for example Fig. 3 on this EPA Climate Indicators site. PDI is an aggregate measure of Atlantic hurricane activity, combining frequency, intensity, and duration of hurricanes in a single index. Both Atlantic SSTs and PDI have risen sharply since the 1970s, and there is some evidence that PDI levels in recent years are higher than in the previous active Atlantic hurricane era in the 1950s and 60s.

Model-based climate change detection/attribution studies have linked increasing tropical Atlantic SSTs to increasing greenhouse gases, but proposed links between increasing greenhouse gases and hurricane PDI or frequency has been based on statistical correlations. The statistical linkage of Atlantic hurricane PDI to Atlantic SST suggests at least the possibility of a large anthropogenic influence on Atlantic hurricanes.

If this statistical relation between tropical Atlantic SSTs and hurricane activity is used to infer future changes in Atlantic hurricane activity, the implications are sobering.

The large increases in tropical Atlantic SSTs projected for the late 21st century would imply very substantial increases in hurricane destructive potential–roughly a 300 percent increase in the PDI by 2100.

On the other hand, Swanson (2008) and others noted that Atlantic hurricane power dissipation is also well-correlated with other SST indices besides tropical Atlantic SST alone, and in particular with indices of Atlantic SST relative to tropical mean SST. This is in fact a crucial distinction, because while the statistical relationship between Atlantic hurricanes and local Atlantic SST shown in the upper panel of Figure 1 would imply a very large increases in Atlantic hurricane activity (PDI) due to 21st century greenhouse warming, the alternative statistical relationship between the PDI and the relative SST measure shown in the lower panel of Figure 1 would imply only modest future long-term trends of Atlantic hurricane activity (PDI) with greenhouse warming. In the latter case, the alternative relative SST measure in the lower panel does not change very much over the 21st century, even with substantial Atlantic warming projections from climate models, because, crucially, the warming projected for the tropical Atlantic in the models is not very different from that projected for the tropics as a whole.

A key question then is: Which of the two future Atlantic hurricane scenarios inferred from the statistical relations in Figure 1 is more likely? To try to gain insight on this question, we have first attempted to go beyond the ~50 year historical record of Atlantic hurricanes and SST to examine even longer records of Atlantic tropical storm activity and second to examine dynamical models of Atlantic hurricane activity under global warming conditions. These separate approaches are discussed below.

B. Analysis of century-scale Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane records

To gain more insight on this problem, we have attempted to analyze much longer (> 100 yr) records of Atlantic hurricane activity. If greenhouse warming causes a substantial increase in Atlantic hurricane activity, then the century scale increase in tropical Atlantic SSTs since the late 1800s should have produced a long-term rise in measures of Atlantic hurricanes activity, similar to that seen for global temperature, for example.

Existing records of past Atlantic tropical storm or hurricane numbers (1878 to present) in fact do show a pronounced upward trend, which is also correlated with rising SSTs (e.g., see blue curve in Fig. 4 or Vecchi and Knutson 2008). However, the density of reporting ship traffic over the Atlantic was relatively sparse during the early decades of this record, such that if storms from the modern era (post 1965) had hypothetically occurred during those earlier decades, a substantial number of storms would likely not have been directly observed by the ship-based “observing network of opportunity.” We find that, after adjusting for such an estimated number of missing storms, there remains just a small nominally positive upward trend in tropical storm occurrence from 1878-2006. Statistical tests indicate that this trend is not significantly distinguishable from zero (Figure 2). In addition, Landsea et al. (2010) note that the rising trend in Atlantic tropical storm counts is almost entirely due to increases in short-duration (<2 day) storms alone. Such short-lived storms were particularly likely to have been overlooked in the earlier parts of the record, as they would have had less opportunity for chance encounters with ship traffic.

If we instead consider Atlantic basin hurricanes, rather than all Atlantic tropical storms, the result is similar: the reported numbers of hurricanes were sufficiently high during the 1860s-1880s that again there is no significant positive trend in numbers beginning from that era (Figure 3, black curve, from CCSP 3.3 (2008)). This is without any adjustment for “missing hurricanes”.

The evidence for an upward trend is even weaker if we look at U.S. landfalling hurricanes, which even show a slight negative trend beginning from 1900 or from the late 1800s (Figure 3, blue curve). Hurricane landfalling frequency is much less common than basin-wide occurrence, meaning that the U.S. landfalling hurricane record, while more reliable than the basin-wide record, suffers from degraded signal-to-noise characteristics for assessing trends.

While major hurricanes (Figure 3, red curve) show more evidence of a rising trend from the late 1800s, the major hurricane data are considered even less reliable than the other two records in the early parts of the record. Category 4-5 hurricanes show a pronounced increase since the mid-1940s (Bender et al., 2010) but again, we consider that these data need to be carefully assessed for data inhomogeneity problems before such trends can be accepted as reliable.

The situation for various long-term Atlantic hurricane records and related indices is summarized in Figure 4. While global mean temperature and tropical Atlantic SSTs show pronounced and statistically significant warming trends (green curves), the U.S. landfalling hurricane record (orange curve) shows no significant increase or decrease. The unadjusted hurricane count record (blue curve) shows a significant increase in Atlantic hurricanes since the early 1900s. However, when adjusted with an estimate of storms that stayed at sea and were likely “missed” in the pre-satellite era, there is no longer any significant increase in Atlantic hurricanes since the late 1800s (red curve). While there have been increases in U.S. landfalling hurricanes and basin-wide hurricane counts since the since the early 1970s, Figure 4 shows that these recent increases are not representative of the behavior seen in the century long records. In short, the historical Atlantic hurricane record does not provide compelling evidence for a substantial greenhouse warming-induced long-term increase.

There is medium confidence for a detectable human contribution to past observed increases in heavy precipitation in general over global land regions with adequate coverage for analysis (e.g., IPCC AR5) and over the United States (Easterling et al. 2017), although an anthropogenic influence has not been formally detected for hurricane precipitation alone.  Several recent studies (e.g., van Oldenborgh et al. 2017; Risser and Wehner 2017) have concluded that Hurricane Harvey’s (2017) extreme rainfall totals, though primarily due to the storm’s slow movement over eastern Texas, were likely enhanced by anthropogenic warming.  Physically, a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor that can enhance moisture convergence and rainfall rates in storm systems such as hurricanes.  The statistical analyses in these Hurricane Harvey studies focused on extreme precipitation in general, to which hurricanes contributed, but were not analyses of extreme rainfall only from hurricanes.

C. Model simulations of greenhouse warming influence on Atlantic hurricanes

Direct model simulations of hurricane activity under climate change scenarios offer another perspective on the problem. We have developed a regional dynamical downscaling model for Atlantic hurricanes and tested it by comparing with observed hurricane activity since 1980. This model, when forced with observed sea surface temperatures and atmospheric conditions, can reproduce the observed rise in hurricane counts between 1980 and 2012, along with much of the interannual variability (Figure 5). Animations showing the development and evolution of hurricane activity in the model are available here.

Turning to future climate projections, current climate models suggest that tropical Atlantic SSTs will warm dramatically during the 21st century, and that upper tropospheric temperatures will warm even more than SSTs. Furthermore, most of the CMIP3 models project increasing levels of vertical wind shear over parts of the western tropical Atlantic (see Vecchi and Soden 2007). Both the increased warming of the upper troposphere relative to the surface and the increased vertical wind shear are detrimental factors for hurricane development and intensification, while warmer SSTs favor development and intensification. To explore which effect of these effects might “win out”, we can run experiments with our regional downscaling model.

Our regional model projects that Atlantic hurricane and tropical storms are substantially reduced in number, for the average 21st century climate change projected by current models, but have higher rainfall rates, particularly near the storm center. The average intensity of the storms that do occur increases by a few percent (Figure 6), in general agreement with previous studies using other relatively high resolution models, as well as with hurricane potential intensity theory (Emanuel 1987).

Knutson and Tuleya (2004) estimated the rough order of magnitude of the sensitivity of hurricanes to climate warming to be about 4 percent per deg C SST warming for maximum intensities and about 12 percent per deg C for near-storm (100 km radius) rainfall rates (see also Knutson and Tuleya (2008) abstract here). Such sensitivity estimates have considerable uncertainty, as a subsequent assessment of multiple studies (Knutson et al. 2010) projected total increases by 2100 of about 2-11 percent for tropical cyclone intensity, and roughly 20 percent for near-storm rainfall rates.  Our more recent late 21st century projections of hurricane activity continue to support the notion of increased intensity (~ 4 percent) and near-storm rainfall rates (~ 10 to 15 percent) for the Atlantic basin (Knutson et al. 2013)  as well as for most other tropical cyclone  basins (Knutson et al. 2015). Wright et al. (2015) found model-projected increases in rainfall rates for U.S. landfalling tropical cyclones using this modeling system.

A review of existing studies, including the ones cited above, lead us to conclude that:

“It is likely that greenhouse warming will cause hurricanes in the coming century to be more intense globally and have higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes.”

Turning now to the question of the frequency of very intense hurricanes, the regional model of Knutson et al. (2008) has an important limitation in that it does not simulate such very intense hurricanes. For example, the maximum surface wind in the simulated hurricanes from that model is less than 50 m/s (which is borderline category 3 hurricane intensity). Furthermore, the idealized study of Knutson and Tuleya (2004) assumed the existence of hurricanes and then simulated how intense they would become. Thus, that study could not address the important question of the frequency of intense hurricanes.

In a series of Atlantic basin-specific dynamical downscaling studies (Bender et al. 2010; Knutson et al. 2013), we attempted to address both of these limitations by letting the Atlantic basin regional model of Knutson et al. (2008) provide the overall storm frequency information, and then downscaling each individual storm from the regional model study into the GFDL hurricane prediction system. The GFDL hurricane model (with a grid spacing as fine as 9 km) is able to simulate the frequency, intensity, and structure of the more intense hurricanes, such as category 3-5 storms, much more realistically than the regional (18 km grid) model.

Using this additional downscaling step, the GFDL hurricane model reproduces some important historical characteristics of very intense Atlantic hurricanes, including the wind speed distribution and the change of this distribution between active and inactive decadal periods of hurricane activity (Fig. 1 of Bender et al. 2010). The model also supports the notion of a substantial decrease (~25 percent) in the overall number of Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms with projected 21st century climate warming. However, using the CMIP3 and CMIP5 multi-model climate projections, the hurricane model also projects that the lifetime maximum intensity of Atlantic hurricanes will increase by about 5 percent during the 21st century in general agreement with previous studies.

The Bender et al. (2010) study projected a significant increase (+90 percent) in the frequency of very intense (category 4 and 5) hurricanes using the CMIP3/A1B 18-model average climate change projection. Subsequent downscaled projections using CMIP5 multi-model scenarios (RCP4.5) as input (Knutson et al. 2013) still showed increases in category 4 and 5 storm frequency. However, these increases were only marginally significant for the early 21st century (+45%) or the late 21st century (+39 percent) CMIP5 scenarios (based on model versions GFDl and GFDN combined). That study also downscaled ten individual CMIP3 models in addition to the multi-model ensemble, and found that three of ten models produced a significant increase in category 4 and 5 storms, and four of the ten models produced at least a nominal decrease. While multi-model ensemble results are probably more reliable than individual model results, each of the individual model results can be viewed as at least plausible at this time.  Based on Knutson et al. (2013) and a survey of subsequent results by other modeling groups, at present we have only low confidence for an increase in category 4 and 5 storms in the Atlantic; confidence in an increase in category 4 and 5 storms is higher at the global scale (see below).

Returning to the issue of future projections of aggregate activity (PDI, as in Fig. 1), while there remains a lack of consensus among various studies on how Atlantic hurricane PDI will change, no model we have analyzed shows a sensitivity of Atlantic hurricane PDI to greenhouse warming as large as that implied by the observed Atlantic PDI/local SST relationship shown in Figures 1 (top panel). In other words, there is little evidence from current dynamical models that 21st century climate warming will lead to large (~300 percent) increases in tropical storm numbers, hurricane numbers, or PDI in the Atlantic. As noted above, there is some indication from high resolution models of substantial increases in the numbers of the most intense hurricanes even if the overall number of tropical storms or hurricanes decreases.

Finally, one can ask when a large increase in Category 4-5 hurricanes, as projected by our earlier Bender et al. (2010) study, would be expected to be detectable in the Atlantic hurricane records, if it occurred in the real world. Owing to the large interannual to decadal variability of SST and hurricane activity in the basin, Bender et al (2010) estimate that detection of an anthropogenic influence on intense hurricanes would not be expected for a number of decades, even assuming a large underlying increasing trend (+10 percent per decade) occurs. While there is a large rising trend since the mid 1940s in observed category 4-5 numbers in the Atlantic, our view is that these data are not reliable for trend calculations, until they have been further assessed for data homogeneity problems, such as those due to changing observing practices.

D. Other possible human influences on Atlantic hurricane climate

Apart from greenhouse warming, other human influences conceivably could have contributed to recent observed increases in Atlantic hurricanes. For example, Mann and Emanuel (2006) hypothesize that a reduction in aerosol-induced cooling over the Atlantic in recent decades may have contributed to the enhanced warming of the tropical North Atlantic, relative to global mean temperature. However, the cause or causes of the recent enhanced warming of the Atlantic, relative to other tropical basins, and its effect on Atlantic tropical cyclones, remains highly uncertain (e.g., Booth et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2013;Dunstone et al. 2013; Villarini and Vecchi 2013). A number of anthropogenic and natural factors (e.g., aerosols, greenhouse gases, volcanic activity, solar variability, and internal climate variability) must be considered as potential contributors, and the science remains highly uncertain in these areas. IPCC AR5 concluded that there is medium confidence that reduced aerosol forcing contributed to the observed increase in Atlantic tropical cyclone activity since the 1970s, but does not state any estimate of the magnitude of contribution.  They also conclude that it remains uncertain whether there are any detectable changes in past tropical cyclone activity.

Sea level rise must also be considered as a way in which human-caused climate change can impact Atlantic hurricane climate–or at least the impacts of the hurricanes at the coast. The vulnerability of coastal regions to storm-surge flooding is expected to increase with future sea-level rise and coastal development, although this vulnerability will also depend upon future storm characteristics, as discussed above. All else equal, tropical cyclone surge levels should increase with sea level rise.  There are large ranges in the 21st century projections for both Atlantic hurricane characteristics and for the magnitude of regional sea level rise along the U.S. coastlines. However, according to the IPCC AR5, the average rate of global sea level rise over the 21st Century will very likely exceed that observed during 1971-2010 for a range of future emission scenarios.

E. Summary for Atlantic Hurricanes and Global Warming

Early GFDL Research on Global Warming and Hurricanes

The strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanes over the next century as the earth’s climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Although we cannot say at present whether more or fewer hurricanes will occur in the future with global warming, the hurricanes that do occur near the end of the 21st century are expected to be stronger and have significantly more intense rainfall than under present day climate conditions. This expectation (Figure 11) is based on an anticipated enhancement of energy available to the storms due to higher tropical sea surface temperatures.

The results shown in Figure 11 are based on a simulation study carried out by Thomas R. Knutson and Robert E. Tuleya at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). In this study hurricanes were simulated for a climate warming as projected to occur with a substantial build-up of atmospheric CO2. An increase of intensity of about one-half category on the Saffir-Simpson scale was simulated for an 80 year build-up of atmospheric CO2 at 1 percent/yr (compounded). For hurricane wind speeds, our model shows a sensitivity of about 4 percent per degree Celsius increase in tropical sea surface temperatures, with a larger percentage increase in near-storm rainfall.

Read The Full Story About Global Warming And Hurricanes

Crossbow is an award-winning and record-setting communications firm. We are public affairs and public relations experts who influence public opinion, public policy and business decisions around the world. We’re helping stakeholders tackle some of the most urgent issues of our time. Our headquarters are in Denver, Colorado. We’re opening a new office in Phoenix, Arizona.

Economic Toll Already Adding Up

By Umair Irfan, Vox News

Federal scientists have once again contradicted the White House, this time in a major new climate change assessment that was rushed to release the Friday after Thanksgiving. The findings, however, should give even the Trump administration pause: Global warming could cause more harm to the US economy by 2100 than the Great Recession.

And the risks aren’t just down the road. The 1,600-page report directly connects climate change to ongoing issues like declining water levels in the Colorado River Basin and the spread of ticks carrying Lyme disease, phenomena that are currently costing Americans resources and lives.

“The impacts and costs of climate change are already being felt in the United States, and changes in the likelihood or severity of some recent extreme weather events can now be attributed with increasingly higher confidence to human-caused warming,” according to the new report, the second volume of the fourth National Climate Assessment.

The assessment comes from the US Global Change Research Program, a consortium of 13 federal agencies including the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, and NASA. It’s required by law and the latest report is the second installment of the fourth assessment.

That’s why a White House that is in denial about climate change has to continue publishing reports that say otherwise. Even when confronted with California’s deadliest wildfire on record, a disaster fueled in part by rising average temperatures, members of President Donald Trump’s administration — including Trump himself — have chosen instead to blame environmentalists rather than acknowledge climate change.

The first volume of the assessment was released about a year ago, highlighting the science of how global climate change is rippling throughout the US. Nothing in the latest volume is particularly surprising, but it includes new research that more directly highlights humanity’s role in extreme weather events and measures how future changes will play out at smaller scales, like cities.

The National Climate Assessment is more limited in scope than the October report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that explored what it would take for the world to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But the latest report echoes the same basic themes about climate change:

1. It’s already happening
2. It’s going to get worse.
3. It’s going to cost us dearly.
4. We can still do something about it.

What was surprising about the latest installment of the National Climate Assessment was that it was rushed to release — surprising even many of the 300 scientists who contributed to it.

Trump told reporters Monday, he “didn’t believe it.”

Exhausted fisheries, declining crop yields, deteriorating infrastructure, lost tourism, and extreme weather damages all stemming from climate change will slice hundreds of billions of dollars out of the US economy. By the end of the century, climate change could cost the United States $500 billion per year.

But most striking is how the report highlights the incongruence of what the science says about climate change and what the Trump administration is doing about it. While the warnings about the destruction from rising seas, extreme weather, and forced relocation grow more dire, and while researchers warn that time is running out to limit warming, the White House is still trying to weaken rules governing greenhouse gas emissions. Doing so in the face of the overwhelming science has forced the executive branch to invoke bizarre rationales to continue to avoid doing anything to reduce emissions and to prepare for the effects of climate change.

The National Climate Assessment joins a long history of climate science at the White House. Benjamin Hulac at E&E News reported this month that every president since John F. Kennedy has been briefed or received warnings about the changes humanity has wrought on the global climate.

Compared to prior reports, the fourth National Climate Assessment goes further in estimating the economic damages from climate change. It also draws on a suite of new research published since the last report came out in 2014, highlighting advances in how we understand extreme weather, ocean circulation, melting ice, and humanity’s role in the climate. It shows that the impacts of climate change will be more extensive than previously thought, leaving no region of the country insulated from the consequences of warming.

Since the first report was published in 2000, the National Climate Assessment has become one of the most robust works in climate change science and the impacts of warming on the United States. The Executive Office of the President oversees the report. Some scientists were worried that the White House would tamper with the report’s conclusions, leading some researchers to leak drafts of the report. However, there’s no evidence that the White House has altered the assessment.

Trump has nonetheless made his disdain for climate change and the regulations around it clear. But a government agency can’t simply undo an environmental rule on a whim; they have to justify a rollback on the grounds that the existing regulation violates the law, that it isn’t supported by the science, or that its replacement will be better.

Here, the Trump administration has repeatedly tripped up. Since the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court decision, the Environmental Protection Agency has been required to regulate greenhouse gases. Changing this precedent would require a massive, years-long legal effort to overturn the decision, and the administration hasn’t shown much appetite to take up this challenge.

That means the government still has to come up with regulations around climate change to replace the rules they want to discard. To justify getting rid of rising fuel economy standards, a huge step toward limiting carbon emissions from cars and trucks, the Trump administration has cited safety. They’ve argued that new fuel efficiency rules make cars more expensive, thereby making it harder for people to buy newer, safer cars. But internal emails at the EPA showed that the agency found the proposed rollback would increase highway fatalities.

Buried in Trump’s fuel economy rollback proposal is a grim vision of the future under climate change. It projects carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reaching more than 789 parts per million, almost double current levels, leading to a drastically warmer world. The EPA used this projection to argue that the Obama-era fuel economy rules would do little to avert the amount of warming the Trump administration is expecting, so a weaker rule won’t make much of a difference to the global climate.

Similarly, the EPA’s assessment of its own proposal to roll back the Clean Power Plan, the Affordable Clean Energy proposal, found that the United States would face 1,400 additional premature deaths each year due to increases in air pollution under the new rule. The replacement regulation would also serve as a bailout for aging coal power plants, some of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases.

The National Climate Assessment, which is overseen by the White House, makes it even more difficult to argue for these changes since it shows just how dangerous climate change will be if the United States does nothing.

Read The Full Story About The White House Climate Report

Crossbow is an award-winning and record-setting communications firm. We are public affairs and public relations experts who influence public opinion, public policy and business decisions around the world. We’re helping stakeholders tackle some of the most urgent issues of our time. Our headquarters are in Denver, Colorado. We’re opening a new office in Phoenix, Arizona.

Naturalist Opens Climate Change Conference In Poland

Sir David Attenborough has announced the United Nations’ launch of a new campaign enabling people to unite in actions to battle climate change.

In an address to the opening session of United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24) in Katowice, Poland, Sir David Attenborough urged everyone to use the UN’s new ActNow.bot, designed to give people the power and knowledge to take personal action against climate change directly on the Facebook Messenger Platform.

Speaking for “The People’s Seat” initiative, Attenborough called it the result of new activism shaped by people from around the world and collected through social media.

“In the last two weeks, the world’s people have taken part in creating this address, answering polls, creating videos and voicing their opinions. They want you – the decision makers – to act now,” the British broadcaster said. “The people are behind you, supporting you in making tough decisions, but they are also willing to make sacrifices in their daily lives,” Attenborough said.  “To make this even easier, the UN is launching the Act Now bot. Helping people to discover simple everyday actions that they can take, because they recognise that they too must play their part.”

The speech was preceded by a video produced with social media content that people had posted in advance of COP24 using the hashtag #TakeYourSeat

The innovative UN campaign was created with the support of Facebook and advertising company Grey and harnesses advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to engage people in the growing movement to take climate action.

The ActNow.bot is a fully interactive and responsive chat bot, located on the UN’s Facebook page that suggests everyday actions – determined by the user’s interaction with the bot – that can be taken to preserve the environment and logged on the platform to be shared with social media followers to persuade them to take action too. The collective actions will be presented during the Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in New York in September 2019.

“Rising global temperature, record levels of greenhouse emissions, and increasing impacts of climate change require urgent and measurable action on the part of everyone,’’ she said.  “This new social media tool, a Facebook Messenger bot, will help people learn about activities to reduce their carbon footprint, and show—and share with friends – how they are making an impact.  We all need to do things differently.”

The initiative comes as global decision makers are being asked to intensify efforts in the battle against climate change and to agree the implementation guidelines of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.

All this is evolving against a backdrop of conclusive new evidence by UN Environment which found countries need to significantly step up the necessary actions to fulfil the commitments made in Paris.

The Climate Action Bot aims to highlight popular global commitment to reducing climate change, and to stand behind decision makers worldwide in taking actions to preserve our environment. Click here to read the People’s Address delivered by Sir David Attenborough.

For more information, see the relevant Media Fact Sheet. To help promote the campaign, see also the UN’s COP24 digital assets, which are in the public domain.

Crossbow is an award-winning and record-setting communications firm. We are public affairs and public relations experts who influence public opinion, public policy and business decisions around the world. We’re helping stakeholders tackle some of the most urgent issues of our time.

Parts of New South Wales, Australia’s most populated state, and an area of Western Australia, saw record high minimum temperatures of 33 Celsius (91 Fahrenheit) last week.

The maximum is expected to soar to more than 45C (113F) on Wednesday in parts of New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria.

“Avoid physical activity, stay well hydrated – it’s vital at this time,” said Richard Broome, director of environmental health for the New South Wales state government.

For the majority of Australia’s 25 million people who live on the coast, the summer typically means lazing on the beach. But the unusually high temperatures add to a sense of exhaustion for a farm economy already reeling from a year of drought.

“The weather is not good news for summer grain crops such as sorghum,” said Phin Ziebell, agribusiness economist, National Australia Bank. “Many east coast farmers are still reeling from the winter wheat crops, which suffered from recent drought.”

Australia, the world’s fourth-largest wheat exporter, saw production of the grain fall to a 10-year low this year when dry weather wilted crops. With unusually dry pasture, the danger of bushfires looms.

Wildfires burned in parts of Australia’s densely-populated southeast on Saturday, January 5, although weather officials expected falling temperatures to bring relief for Sydney by early afternoon.

One fire in eastern Victoria prompted fire authorities to issue a watch and act warning for residents in 14 different towns. The fire near Rosedale, about 200 km east of Melbourne, burned more than 10,000 hectares and sudden wind changes on Friday created risky conditions for roughly 40 firefighters, an emergency official said.

“They found themselves in a very serious situation and they were shaken,” Andrew Crisp, the state’s emergency management commissioner, told reporters on Saturday.

In the southern island state of Tasmania, a bushfire burned through 15,000 hectares of southwestern wilderness. Both Victoria and Tasmania had sweltered through above average temperatures on Friday, with Melbourne recording a near-record 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 F) and Hobart reaching 40 C (104 F).

Crossbow Communications specializes in issue management and public affairs. It specializes in health and environmental issues, including deforestation, sustainable agriculture, and wildlife conservation. For more information about our Greener Cities initiative, please contact us.

Threats Rising Due To Climate Change, Development

By Michael Kimmelman, New York Times

With climate change, the Java Sea is rising and weather here is becoming more extreme. Earlier this month another freakish storm briefly turned Jakarta’s streets into rivers and brought this vast area of nearly 30 million residents to a virtual halt.

One local climate researcher, Irvan Pulungan, an adviser to the city’s governor, fears that temperatures may rise several degrees Fahrenheit, and the sea level as much as three feet in the region, over the coming century. That, alone, spells potential disaster for this teeming metropolis.

But global warming turned out not to be the only culprit behind the historic floods that overran Rasdiono’s bodega and much of the rest of Jakarta in 2007. The problem, it turned out, was that the city itself is sinking.

In fact, Jakarta is sinking faster than any other big city on the planet, faster, even, than climate change is causing the sea to rise — so surreally fast that rivers sometimes flow upstream, ordinary rains regularly swamp neighborhoods and buildings slowly disappear underground, swallowed by the earth. The main cause: Jakartans are digging illegal wells, drip by drip draining the underground aquifers on which the city rests — like deflating a giant cushion underneath it. About 40 percent of Jakarta now lies below sea level.

Coastal districts, like Muara Baru, near the Blessed Bodega, have sunk as much as 14 feet in recent years. Not long ago I drove around northern Jakarta and saw teenagers fishing in the abandoned shell of a half-submerged factory. The banks of a murky canal lapped at the trestle of a railway bridge, which, until recently, had arched high over it.

Climate change acts here as it does elsewhere, exacerbating scores of other ills. And in Jakarta’s case, a tsunami of human-made troubles — runaway development, a near-total lack of planning, next to no sewers and only a limited network of reliable, piped-in drinking water — poses an imminent threat to the city’s survival.

Sinking buildings, sprawl, polluted air and some of the worst traffic jams in the world are symptoms of other deeply rooted troubles. Distrust of government is a national condition. Conflicts between Islamic extremists and secular Indonesians, Muslims and ethnic Chinese have blocked progress, helped bring down reform-minded leaders and complicated everything that happens here, or doesn’t happen, to stop the city from sinking.

“Nobody here believes in the greater good, because there is so much corruption, so much posturing about serving the public when what gets done only serves private interests,” as Sidney Jones, the director of the local Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, put it. “There is no trust.”

Hydrologists say the city has only a decade to halt its sinking. If it can’t, northern Jakarta, with its millions of residents, will end up underwater, along with much of the nation’s economy. Eventually, barring wholesale change and an infrastructural revolution, Jakarta won’t be able to build walls high enough to hold back the rivers, canals and the rising Java Sea.

And even then, of course, if it does manage to heal its self-inflicted wounds, it still has to cope with all the mounting threats from climate change.

As far the eye can see, 21st-century Jakarta is a smoggy tangle of freeways and skyscrapers. Spread along the northwestern coast of Java, this capital of the nation with the world’s largest Muslim population used to be a soggy, bug-infested trading port for the Hindu kingdom of Sunda before local sultans took it over in 1527.

They named it Jayakarta, Javanese for victorious city.

Dutch colonists arrived a century later, establishing a base for the East India territories. Imagining a tropical Amsterdam, they laid out streets and canals to try to cope with water pouring in from the south, out of the forests and mountains, where rain falls nearly 300 days out of the year. Thirteen rivers feed into the city.

After independence in 1945, the city began to sprawl. Today, it is virtually impossible to walk around. Parks are rarer than Javan rhinos. A trip to the nearest botanical garden requires the better part of a day in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

“Living here, we don’t have other places to go,” said Yudi and Titi, a young professional couple who one recent Sunday had made the roughly hour’s round trip from western Jakarta to the center of the city just to spend a few minutes walking up and down a chaotic, multilane freeway briefly closed to traffic. “Without cars, at least you can breathe for a few minutes,” Titi said.

The most urgent problems are in North Jakarta, a coastal mash-up of ports, nautically themed high-rises, aged fish markets, abject slums, power plants, giant air-conditioned malls and the congested remnants of the colonial Dutch settlement, with its decrepit squares and streets of crumbling warehouses and dusty museums.

Some of the world’s most polluted canals and rivers weave a spider’s web through the area.

It is where the city is sinking fastest.

That’s because, after decades of reckless growth and negligent leadership, crises have lined up here like dominoes.

Jakarta’s developers and others illegally dig untold numbers of wells because water is piped to less than half the population at what published reports say are extortionate costs by private companies awarded government concessions.

The aquifers aren’t being replenished, despite heavy rains and the abundance of rivers, because more than 97 percent of Jakarta is now smothered by concrete and asphalt. Open fields that once absorbed rain have been paved over. Shores of mangroves that used to help relieve swollen rivers and canals during monsoons have been overtaken by shantytowns and apartment towers.

There is always tension between immediate needs and long-term plans. It’s a similar story in other sinking giants like Mexico City. Here, all of the construction, combined with the draining of the aquifers, is causing the rock and sediment on which Jakarta rests to pancake.

Read The Full Story About Jakarta, Indonesia

Crossbow Communications is an international marketing and public affairs firm. It specializes in issue management and public affairs. It’s also promoting sustainable, resilient and livable cities. Please contact Gary Chandler at gary@crossbow1.com to join our network.

Greener Cities Essential

The battle against global warming and climate change will be won or lost in our cities. Cities are the capitals of consumption and power.

To promote greener cities, the Urban Sustainability Framework (USF), launched by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), serves as a guide for cities seeking to enhance their sustainability.

Launched at the ninth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF9) in Kuala Lumpur, this guide supports cities along the sustainability pathway, from creating a vision to identifying financial resources to implement their plans.

The USF lays out six key dimensions of urban sustainability:

• governance and integrated planning,
• fiscal sustainability,
• economic competitiveness,
• environment and resource efficiency,
• low carbon and resilience, and
• social inclusiveness. 

The Framework is a collaboration among cities, organizations, and experts who have contributed to the development of the Framework.

Cities can understand their urban sustainability by using indicators that help track their progress toward sustainability goals.

The USF is part of a larger collaboration for knowledge exchange on sustainable urban planning. Financed by the GEF and led by the World Bank, the Global Platform for Sustainable Cities was launched in March 2016. It was designed to meet the need for an enabling environment – a platform – that allows cities to exchange ideas, share experiences, use analytical tools, and, most importantly, steer investment toward long-term sustainability.

The GPSC assists cities in tapping into cutting-edge knowledge and expertise on topics ranging from urban planning to low-carbon strategy, transit-oriented development, and sustainable financing. Together with various partners in the urban realm, the GPSC is creating a suite of knowledge products and tools that will help cities drive their development agenda. The platform currently includes 28 cities from 11 countries.

An important collaborator joined the platform at WUF9 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the city of Aarhus, Denmark, and the World Bank. Through the MOU, Denmark’s second largest city becomes a knowledge partner of the GPSC.

“We definitely have worthwhile experiences to share with our peers, and likewise hope to learn from others to improve the city’s sustainability,” said Jacob Bundsgaard, Mayor of Aarhus.

GPSC and Aarhus will be collaborating in the following areas:

1. sustainable, integrated planning strategies;
2. low carbon development towards the goal of carbon neutrality;
3. adaptation and resilience; and
4. water management

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Global Warming Gaining Momentum

The start of 2019 has been marked by high impact weather in many parts of the world, including record heat, wildfires and rainfall in South America and Australasia, dangerous and extreme cold in North America, and heavy snowfall in the Alps and Himalayas. Experts say that it will get worse.

Meteorologists are already talking in superlatives as extreme weather patterns have brought cities and towns across the globe to a standstill.

Globally, temperatures were a little over 0.4°C warmer than the average January from 1981-2010, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Australia continued to experience exceptionally hot conditions. Further regions with much above average temperature include the Middle East and eastern Siberia, Mongolia and northeastern China. Regions of below-average temperature were quite widespread over land and over the frozen Arctic Ocean. In Europe, temperatures were close to or just below average, it said.

The Alps experienced much above average snowfall. Along the northern parts of eastern Mediterranean and the northwest of Spain rainfall was much above average, leading to several rivers overflowing and a number of fatalities. Australia, southern Africa and eastern Brazil saw very dry conditions. Madagascar and northern Argentina saw much wetter than average conditions. The latter was severely affected by flooding, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Australasia:Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology announced it had been the country’s hottest January on record. Tasmania had its driest January on record. The unprecedented heat wave that burned its way through the country melted roads, saw infrastructure fail and killed thousands of animals, including herds of wild horses. The month saw a new series of heatwaves unprecedented in their scale and duration. Overall rainfall was 38% below average for January.

Australia saw an unusual extended period of heat waves which began in early December 2018 and continued into January 2019. The city of Adelaide reached a new record 46.6C on 24 January. Other records in South Australia included Whyalla 48.5, Caduna 48.6°C, Port Augusta 49.1°C, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Large fires fuelled by extremely dry and hot conditions have been burning since mid-January in central and southeast Tasmania, the southernmost state of Australia. As of January 28, the Tasmania Fire Service reported 44 fires. The Great Pine Tier fire in the Central Plateau had burned more than 40,000 hectares. The Riveaux Road fire in the south had burned more around 14,000 hectares. News outlets reported smoke from some of the fires was visible as far away as New Zealand, and had a serious impact on air quality. The Tasmania Fire Service issued several emergency warnings to residents to relocate, as dangerous fire conditions and strong wind persist. Many of the fires are in the world heritage area, hitting rare gondwana ecosystems only found in Tasmania which historically do not burn.

Parts of the state of Queensland saw record rainfall late January and early February as a result of a monsoonal drought. The town of Townsville received one year’s rainfall in the space of nine days, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, prompting flooding and the evacuation of hundreds of people. The Bureau said the flood risk will continue into the first week of February.

On 5 February, the Bureau of Meteorology issued yet another flood warning for the Upper Burdekin river in Queensland. “We have done the calculations and the flow moving past Macrossan Bridge is enough to fill about 2.6 Sydney Harbours every day and still increasing.”

Over the past several weeks, the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have warmed in the Tasman Sea with anomalies of +2.0˚C to 4.0˚C. Compared to the exceptional conditions at this time last year, SSTs are even warmer to the north and east of New Zealand and about equally as warm in the Tasman Sea, according to the New Zealand Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. Given that SSTs have been significantly warmer than average for several weeks, marine heatwave conditions are likely now occurring in parts of the Tasman Sea and New Zealand coastal waters, it said. Australia had its hottest month of December on record and its hottest December day (27 December) on record. Marble Bar, in Western Australia, recorded a temperature of 49.3 °C on 27 December.

This followed an extreme heatwave that affected the tropical Queensland coast during late November 2018. Temperatures spiked again in mid-January, topping 45°C in many places in New South Wales and central Australia on 16 January.

Australia’s annual mean temperature has warmed by just over 1 °C since 1910, and summer has warmed by a similar amount. Australia’s annual warming trend is consistent with that observed for the globe, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Heatwaves are becoming more intense, extended and frequent as a result of climate change and this trend is expected to continue.

South America:Extreme weather in the form of heat, drought and precipitation affected widespread parts of South America in January and into February. Intense rainfall caused damage and casualties in Bolivia, Peru and northern Chile in early February, whilst heat records tumbled in southern part of the continent.

Argentina:Temperatures in southern Argentina broke a number of high temperature records on 4 February, when all stations in Patagonia topped 30°C.  The temperature in Perito Moreno reached 38.2°C, and wildfires broke out in Tierra del Fuego. There was the result of an intense anticyclone on the centre-east of the country, driving warm air to all of Patagonia.

Northeast Argentina, and the adjacent parts of Uruguay and Brazil have been hit with extensive flooding, with well above the long-term expected average rainfall. On January 8, the Argentine city of Resistencia recorded 224mm rainfall. This is a new 24-hour rainfall record, much higher than the previous highest of 206mm, recorded in January 1994, according to the national meteorological service, SMN Argentina.

Brazil: January 2019 was hot, following the trend recorded in recent years, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, with heatwaves influencing the weather conditions in much of the country, and new historical records established. In the southeastern part of the country, state capitals have set records in Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais) of 30.9 °C, São Paulo (São Paulo) of 31.9 °C, Vitória (Espirito Santo) of 33.3 °C. In Rio de Janeiro, a temperature of 37.4 °C was considered the second hottest since 1961. The country’s southern, where climatology has milder temperatures, recorded in Curitiba (Paraná) of 30.3 °C considered warmest since 1935 and the same occurred in Florianópolis with a record of 32.5 °C.  In Brasilia, the Federal District, in the country’s Midwest, was considered the third driest January in 57 years of measurements, with a cumulative of 70.9mm.

Chile:Weather extremes were seen throughout Chile, according to Meteo Chile. Rains in the Andes led to damaging flooding as a result of water pouring into the Atacama desert,  normally one of the driest places on Earth, and causing a 60 meter waterfall that had run dry for 10 years to be reactivated by the flooding. In the south, record breaking temperatures have sparked forest fires burning thousands of hectares of land and forcing the government to declare disaster areas. More than 600 forest fires are raging throughout 9,500 hectares of land. Besides high temperatures, low humidity, high winds and drought conditions there is a man-made element to the reason these wildfires are so large.

A weather station in the capital Santiago set a new record of 38.3°C on 26 January.  In other parts of central Chile, temperatures topped 40°C, according to Meteo Chile. Heat gripped Patagonia in February, and for the first time ever, Porvenir and PuertoNatalaes in the southern tip of the country exceeded 30°C. Coyhaique reached a new record of 35.7°C and en Cochrane 36.1°C.  

Paraguay also saw a number of heat records broken. On 23 January, many places saw temperatures of between 36°C and 43°C. Mariscal Estigarribia reached a new record of 44°C. One town, Pedro Juan Caballero, smashed its 1999 record by a massive 2.6°C

Southern Africa:Tropical cyclone Desmond made landfall in Mozambique on 22 January, bringing high winds and causing flooding in the city of Beira and enhancing rainfall in Madagascar and Malawi. 

Mozambique: Cyclone Idai hit the city of Beira hard and the scale of damage is massive, say Red Cross and Red Crescent aid workers who reached the Mozambican city a few days ago.

Jamie LeSueur, who is leading the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) assessment team into Beira, noted, “The situation is terrible. The scale of devastation is enormous. It seems that 90 percent of the area is completely destroyed.”

The Red Cross and Red Crescent team was among the first to arrive in Beira since Cyclone Idai made landfall March 14-15. With Beira’s airport closed and roads cut off due to flooding, the team drove from Maputo, the capital city, before taking a helicopter for the last leg of the journey.

“Almost everything is destroyed. Communication lines have been completely cut and roads have been destroyed. Some affected communities are not accessible,” said LeSueur. “Beira has been severely battered. But we are also hearing that the situation outside the city could be even worse. Yesterday, a large dam burst and cut off the last road to the city.”

Northern Hemisphere:Large parts of North America were gripped by an influx of Arctic air in late January. In southern Minnesota, the wind chill factor pushed readings down to minus 65°F (-53.9°C) on 30 January. The national low temperature record was measured at minus 56 °F (-48.9°C).

The bitterly cold temperatures were caused by the influence of the Polar Vortex. This is a large area of low pressure and cold air surrounding the North Pole, with strong counter-clockwise winds known as the jet stream that trap the cold around the Pole. Disturbances in the jet stream and the intrusion of warmer mid-latitude air masses can alter the structure and the dynamics of the Polar Vortex, sending Arctic air south into middle latitudes and bringing warmer air into the Arctic. This is not a new phenomenon, although there is increasing research into how it is being impacted by climate change.

Colorado and the northern plains states experienced what could be the first bomb cyclone—an extreme weather event that brought a blizzard with hurricane-force winds.

“The cold weather in the eastern United States certainly does not disprove climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

Several record high temperatures were broken or tied across parts of the Eastern US on 4 February, according to the National Weather Service. This included 59°F (15°C) in Buffalo, New York, and 61°F (16°C) in Syracuse, New Jersey.

“In general, and at global level, there has been a decline in new cold temperature records as a result of global warming. But frigid temperatures and snow will continue to be part of our typical weather patterns in the northern hemisphere winter. We need to distinguish between short-term daily weather and long-term climate,“ he said. 

“Arctic has faced warming, which is twice the global average. A large fraction of the snow and ice in the region has melted. Those changes are affecting weather patterns outside the Arctic in the Northern Hemisphere. A part of the cold anomalies at lower latitudes could be linked to the dramatic changes in the Arctic. What happens at the poles does not stay at the poles but influences weather and climate conditions in lower latitudes where hundreds of millions of people live,” he said.

Meanwhile, Alaska and large parts of the Arctic have been warmer than average.

In Canada, Ottawa airport received a record 97 cm of snow on 29 January, beating the 1999 record of 93 cm, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. Winter snowstorms and heavy snowfall are also not inconsistent with weather patterns under a changing climate.

Parts of the European Alps saw record snowfalls earlier in January. In Hochfilzen in the Tirol region of Austria, more than 451 centimeters (cm) of snow fell in the first 15 days of January, an event statistically only expected once a century. Other resorts in Tirol also received once-in-a-century snowfalls. Eastern Switzerland received twice as much snow as the long-term average.

The German weather service or Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD, also issued a number of top-level snow and winter weather warnings. Climate projections show that winter precipitation in Germany is expected to be more intense, according to the German Weather Service, DWD. This will necessitate adaptation measures, for instance in regulations for buildings to withstand the weight of snow.

During the month, severe winter storms have hit the eastern Mediterranean and parts of the Middle East, with particularly severe impacts on vulnerable populations including refugees.

A cold front in the third week of January that swept south through the Arabian Peninsula, bringing a widespread dust storm from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, brought heavy rain and precipitation to Pakistan and northwest

India. The Indian Meteorological Department issued warnings on 21 January of heavy or very heavy rain and snow for Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, prompting warnings of avalanches amid an intense cold wave.

The severe flooding in the American Midwest is set to only be a prelude to “unprecedented” levels of flooding across the US in the coming months that will imperil 200 million people, federal government scientists have warned.

Nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 states will have a heightened risk of flooding until May, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) forecast.

Communities living near the Mississippi river, which has received rain and snow levels up to 200% above normal, the lower Ohio river basin, the Tennessee river basin and the Great Lakes are at the greatest risk, NOAA said on Thursday. Vast swaths of the rest of the country may also get mild or moderate flooding, including most of eastern US and parts of California and Nevada.

“The extensive flooding we’ve seen in the past two weeks will continue through May and become more dire and may be exacerbated in the coming weeks as the water flows downstream,” said Ed Clark, director of NOAA’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

The flooding has been fueled by rapid snow melt combined with heavy rainfall that has already inundated much of the Midwest and plains, particularly in Nebraska and Iowa. The torrents of rainfall have not been able to penetrate the frozen ground, causing water to swell rivers and make them break their banks.

Authorities were using boats and large vehicles on Saturday to rescue and evacuate residents in parts of the US Midwest where rainwater and snowmelt has poured over frozen ground, overwhelming creeks and rivers. At least one person was dead.

In eastern Nebraska, rescue efforts were hampered by reports of levee breaches and washouts of bridges and roads, including part of Nebraska Highway 92, leading in and out of southwest Omaha.

Some cities and towns, such as North Bend on the banks of the Platte, were submerged. Others, such as Waterloo and Fremont, were surrounded by floodwaters, stranding residents in virtual islands.

NOAA said that further spring rain, combined with melting snow, will make the flood threat “worse and geographically more widespread”, extending to southern states such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Scientists say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme weather such as storms, floods, droughts and fires, but without extensive study they cannot directly link a single weather event to the changing climate.

According to last year’s US government climate assessment, increasing precipitation has already increased flooding risks in the Midwest, causing widespread damage to property, soil erosion and water quality problems.

“The flooding isn’t only a factor in the Midwest, it’s also on the coasts,” said William Sweet, a coastal flooding expert at NOAA. “There’s a clear climate change signal from the rising seas and the mid-Atlantic area in particular is in the crosshairs. Climate change is here, it’s clear and communities are being flooded far more than they used to be.” Sweet said Noaa expects the mid-Atlantic region, stretching from New Jersey to Virginia, to experience a massive increase in flooding days, up from around 10 days to as many as 130 days a year, by 2050. “The numbers are staggering, some places will be flooding almost every other day,” he said.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Sustainable Cities Now About Resilience

Climate change is already driving mass migration around the globe. Military and security experts believe that climate change will fuel future migration patterns more than any other factor, which represents a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

Last year, the UN analyzed the issue in a report, Groundswell – Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, is the first and most comprehensive study of its kind to focus on the nexus between slow-onset climate change impacts, internal migration patterns and, development in three developing regions of the world: Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.

It finds that unless urgent climate and development action is taken globally and nationally, these three regions together could be dealing with tens of millions of internal climate migrants by 2050.

These are people forced to move from increasingly non-viable areas of their countries due to growing problems like water scarcity, crop failure, sea-level rise and storm surges. These climate migrants would be additional to the millions of people already moving within their countries for economic, social, political or other reasons, the report warns.

“We have a small window now, before the effects of climate change deepen, to prepare the ground for this new reality,” said Kristalina Georgieva, World bank CEO. “Steps cities take to cope with the upward trend of arrivals from rural areas and to improve opportunities for education, training and jobs will pay long-term dividends. It’s also important to help people make good decisions about whether to stay where they are or move to new locations where they are less vulnerable.”

The report recommends key actions nationally and globally, including:

• Cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to reduce climate pressure on people and livelihoods, and to reduce the overall scale of climate migration;
• Transforming development planning to factor in the entire cycle of climate migration (before, during and after migration); and
• Investing in data and analysis to improve understanding of internal climate migration trends and trajectories at the country level.

“Without the right planning and support, people migrating from rural areas into cities could be facing new and even more dangerous risks,” said the report’s team lead Kanta Kumari Rigaud. “We could see increased tensions and conflict as a result of pressure on scarce resources. But that doesn’t have to be the future. While internal climate migration is becoming a reality, it won’t be a crisis if we plan for it now.”

For more than a decade, U.S. national security agencies of the federal government have repeatedly recognized climate change as a national security threat. Since 2010, the Department of Defense has published at least 35 products explicitly addressing the threat of climate change. The intelligence community has produced at least a dozen more.

These national security reports, and related comments by prominent military officials, reflect a consensus among national security stakeholders that climate change is a critical national security issue. The consensus continues in the Trump administration even though the president himself remains skeptical of climate change. 

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan agency that analyzes and audits federal policy to ensure its efficiency and cost-effectiveness, isn’t going to let the topic go unaddressed.

In a report to Congress last week, the GAO criticized the manner in which the Trump administration has sought to remove any acknowledgement of climate change from our foreign policy and diplomatic strategies, keeping experts in the dark about an issue that’s growing only more urgent as a shifting climate—and all that comes with it—displaces millions of people and disrupts societies across the globe.

In the European Union, where the stresses and strains associated with processing large numbers of migrants have already reached crisis proportions, experts predict that the annual stream of those seeking safety within its borders will triple by the end of the century due to climate-related migration. And a 2018 World Bank Group report estimates that the impacts of climate change in three of the world’s most densely populated developing regions—sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—could result in the displacement and internal migration of more than 140 million people before 2050. That many people on the move could easily lead to massive political and economic strife.

President Obama formally observed the relationship between climate change, migration, and instability in a 2016 Presidential Memorandum, “Climate Change and National Security.” That memo directed federal departments and agencies “to perform certain functions to ensure that climate change-related impacts are fully considered in the development of national security doctrine, policies, and plans.” It also established a Climate and National Security Working Group, made up of representatives from the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and many others, whose purpose was to study the issue and make informed recommendations to the national security and intelligence communities.

According to Steve Trent of the Environmental Justice Foundation, an organization based in the United Kingdom that advocates for environmental causes through a human rights lens, climate change “is the unpredictable ingredient that, when added to existing social, economic, and political tensions, has the potential to ignite violence and conflict with disastrous consequences.” Policymakers and business leaders, he says, need to make it a top priority. In the United States, our own military leaders and foreign-policy experts agree, which is why they’ve worked over the years to incorporate an understanding of climate change and its geopolitical ramifications into our statecraft.

Meanwhile, new stories continue to come out every day—in Bangladesh, in Syria, in Mexico and Central America—that confirm the worst fears of security experts and foreign aid workers and reveal the administration’s blasé attitude for what it actually is: a willful ignorance of the facts, mixed with an utter contempt for those who put facts before ideology.

The worsening impacts of climate change in these three densely populated regions of the world could see over 140 million people move within their countries’ borders by 2050, creating a looming human crisis and threatening the development process, a new World Bank Group report finds

But with concerted action – including global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and robust development planning at the country level – this worst-case scenario of over 140m could be dramatically reduced, by as much as 80 percent, or more than 100 million people.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Businesses Leading Cities Toward Resiliency

Floods. Droughts. Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Heat waves. Energy shortages and food shortages. Climate change is impacting every region of the globe.

Extreme weather is taking an extreme toll on cities, communities and businesses around the world. The battle against global warming and climate change isn’t just about energy efficiency, it’s also about resilience and survival for millions of people.

The safety of family and employees is always the first priority in any emergency aversion or response scenario. Business leaders must do their part to avert crisis situations. They also must be ready to help restore infrastructure after storms. Others are being forced to move completely as part of risk aversion and mitigation.

Keeping critical technology and business processes running throughout extreme weather events can help minimize damage and loss of life. Success or failure during and after these extreme weather events can have personal, financial, legal, and reputational impacts for businesses and government entities alike.

Prepare For Extreme Weather Events:

1. Risk Management: Get your insurance company involved in updated assessments. They are rapidly becoming experts on climate-related risks and losses;
2. Build Crisis Team: Crisis aversion is priority one. A collaborative vision can help spot weaknesses and overall vulnerabilities within organizations and entire communities. Conduct a risk assessment and prioritize an action plan that focuses on crisis aversion and crisis response.
3. Assess Infrastructure: Take a full inventory of internal infrastructure so that both physical and digital infrastructure is secured. If a data center or office is located in a place that has been damaged by flooding in the past, these facilities must be reinforced or moved. Are water and power supplies vulnerable? Do we need new sources or backup plans? Losing power can destroy assets and threaten lives;
4. Evacuation Plans: Do you have multiple escape routes from buildings and properties? Do you have safe zones within buildings? Is it common knowledge among employees and other stakeholders?;
5. Communicate: Your entire organization, from the C-suite to the field technician, should understand their role in the company’s crisis communications and disaster recovery. Train to get people out of harm’s way as quickly as possible. Train to summon for assistance from first responders. Train to empower stakeholders. Other messages should be ready to help minimize damage to stakeholders and property. Training pays dividends;
6. Leadership: Before business leaders can prepare their clients for storm readiness, they should take the proper steps to secure and manage their own organization. Industry leadership pays dividends and minimizes losses. It also can put your organization in a position to capitalize on recovery efforts;
7. Automate and Orchestrate: Companies should embrace automation and orchestration of the recovery processes, which sets pre-determined plans to retrieve critical data in the event of a disaster. More enterprises are using cost-effective, hybrid IT environments to manage hardware and software across different vendors and geographies. Without automation though, a manual recovery plan can take time away from experts that could be used to focus on more high-level duties;
8. What Else? Who and what are vulnerable? Brace for the worst and hope for the best, but failure to plan for a crisis is planning to fail; and
9. Train: Constantly test your infrastructure and your overall crisis response plan in the days and months before an actual incident.

Continually audit your organization and your community for emerging and overlooked vulnerabilities. Vision and leadership are more important now than ever.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Trees Defend Cities, Citizens From Extreme Weather

By Linh Anh Cat, Forbes

A new study demonstrates that urban trees saves money and lives. Trees reduce deaths, injuries and electricity consumption for air-conditioning. Trees also promote wellness.

High air temperatures are a significant public health threat, killing an estimated 12,000 people annually worldwide in a typical year, with one heat wave in Europe in 2003 estimated to have killed more than 70,000 people. Higher air temperatures increase mortality and morbidity by causing heat stroke and exhaustion, as well as by exacerbating existing cardiovascular, pulmonary, and renal diseases. Higher air temperatures also increase the need for indoor cooling, with temperature spikes being associated with a significant rise in electricity use. Climate change is projected to increase average air temperatures, as well as the frequency and severity of heat waves, thus potentially leading to large increases in mortality and electricity demand. Cities are increasingly focused on strategies that can minimize the impact of high air temperature on both their residents’ health and the demands on electric utilities.

High air temperatures in the summer as well as heat waves threaten those with existing health conditions, especially those with cardiovascular, pulmonary, and renal conditions. Spikes in temperature cause electricity demand to rise in tandem, which puts increasing loads on the electrical grid during the day. One way to reduce heat-related injury and death, as well as smooth out electricity usage, is urban tree cover. Trees provide shade and cool down the air around them through evapotranspiration, a process trees use to move water through their branches.

Researchers from the Nature Conservancy, NASA, and Stanford University examined urban tree cover in 97 cities across the U.S. and applied their findings across the entire U.S. urban population.

Their study is one of the most comprehensive studies on the impact of heat in cities, especially since they quantified the connection to human health and electrical demand across a large dataset.

In the past, urban tree cover prevented more heat-related mortality, when air-conditioning was not common in U.S. households. However, as we rely more on air-conditioning, electricity costs have gone up. The researchers decided to capture costs saved by urban tree cover from reduced electricity consumption as well as mortality and morbidity from heat-related health problems.

Within the 97 cities that were studied, each person saved about $21 to 49 each year from the presence of tree cover. When the researchers applied their results across urban populations in the U.S., the total amount saved in “heat-reduction services” by urban trees is estimated at $5.3 to 12.1 billion each year.

The temperature of buildings and pavement can be up to 10 to 20 degrees Celsius cooler on a summer day thanks to shade from trees. Changes in air temperature are more modest at 0.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius, but this is still enough to significantly reduce impacts on people and the electrical grid. Cities with forests in their larger parks have seen air temperatures reduced by up to 5 degrees Celsius. This cooling effect is found downwind up to several hundred meters away (a few city blocks).

Unfortunately, the value of tree cover for reducing heat-related mortality seems to have declined significantly in recent decades.

It’s worth noting that urban tree cover likely benefits those with a higher socioeconomic status. Urban areas that are poor have less tree cover are suffering more from heat waves. Among other changes, increasing urban tree cover in these areas could save many more lives and prevent expensive hospital visits for those who cannot afford it.

Read the original article in Forbes about urban forests and public health.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Developing Global Programs To Promote Resiliency

Climate change is gaining momentum as global warming heats up. The impact on nations, cities, farms and ecosystems is rising fast. People are growing increasingly frustrated with elected officials who refuse to prevent and prepare for the consequences of inaction.

A PR firm in Phoenix, Arizona has developed two global programs that can make a difference today. One promotes forest conservation, reforestation and urban forestry. The second program promotes sustainable and resilient cities. The company seeks allies and sponsors to help make them a reality.

“The conversation about climate action involves much more than fossil fuels,” says Gary Chandler, president of Crossbow Communications. “Deforestation, sustainable cities, sustainable agriculture and biodiversity are issues that demand attention. If our ecosystems fail, we fail.”

Deforestation generates about 20 percent of greenhouse gasses, which contribute to global warming and climate change. Deforestation also cripples our planet’s ability to filter carbon dioxide from our air. Destroying these carbon sinks also threatens entire watersheds, endangered species and endangered cultures.

Global tree cover loss reached a record 29.7 million hectares (73.4 million acres) in 2016 and it continued at the same pace through 2017. Much of the loss is happening in tropical rainforests, which are vital hotspots for biodiversity, including many endangered species.

The annual loss of forests now covers an area about the size of New Zealand. Forest fires contributed to the recent spike. Deforestation due to agriculture, logging, and mining continue to drive global tree cover loss.

Energy conservation, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture are all part of the solution to humanity’s contribution to global warming and climate change, but we need proven carbon capture strategies to help restore balance to our atmosphere. We need forests more than ever.

To tackle those issues and more, Chandler has developed Sacred Seedlings, a program that promotes forest conservation, reforestation, sustainable agriculture and wildlife conservation. The company already has a foothold across Africa. Chandler is working with NGOs across Burundi, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. They have 16 comprehensive projects planned and ready.

“With our help, they can put their plans and programs into action,” Chandler said. “They need sponsors, donors and volunteers for maximum impact.”

Secondly, Chandler has developed a program called Greener Cities, which promotes sustainable and resilient cities.

As Chandler explains, cities around the world are home to about 50 percent of the world’s population. They generate 80 percent of our planet’s greenhouse gases – the primary human contributor to climate change. Meanwhile, many communities are bracing for the increasing threats of fires, droughts, floods, severe weather, population displacement, and others. Community leaders and citizens around the world must be informed, motivated and empowered to become part of the solution.

Unfortunately, few local communities have the ability to engage their citizens in developing a common vision around this issue. Some need guidance on a collaborative process to achieve consensus. Others need help outlining the spectrum of actions that they can take to cut pollution, save energy, conserve water and promote health and sustainability. Other communities around the world already are in contingency mode and need help mitigating the impacts of climate change on their homes and businesses.

Many community leaders need coaching to bring all stakeholder groups to the table to discuss opportunities, threats, resources, and priorities. As communities begin planning, they need comprehensive guidance regarding the full range of possible actions to consider in their plans. Many communities are limiting their sustainability visions to the energy efficiency of city buildings and vehicle fleets. They need to learn from other cities that have embraced a broader spectrum of possible actions such as investments, tax policies, water use, tree management, open space, expanded recycling efforts, and many others.

The concept of sustainable living is not new, but it is experiencing growing interest again because of rising energy costs, depleted natural resources, polluted natural resources, population growth, and concerns about climate change and diminishing resources. At the local level, comprehensive and collaborative visioning and planning efforts, followed by numerous actions, will be a key to success. Civic leaders need guidance and resources to engage all stakeholders. They need role models, case studies, networks, mentors, financial assistance, and incentives to help them exchange experiences and resources. These resources and processes can help minimize civic gridlock and promote rapid progress in our race for sustainability for future generations.

The results of a recent survey conducted by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), the first of its kind, measures how and to what extent local governments are acting to promote sustainability. It indicates that most city leaders need help on many levels to develop successful sustainability plans.

“Sustainability has emerged as a major public policy issue facing countries throughout the world,” writes James H. Svara, director of the Center for Urban Innovation and Professor in the School of Public Affairs. “Sustainability requires a broad range of actions that must include contributions from all levels of government, from all sectors of the economy, and from all of the citizenry. City and county governments are uniquely positioned to make a significant contribution to the effort. They are directly involved in providing or regulating many of the human activities that affect resource use, promote economic development, and affect the protection and inclusion of persons from all economic levels and racial and ethnic groups.

Crossbow has sponsorship packages available for cities, corporations and NGOs, Chandler said. For more information, contact him at gary@crossbowcommunications.com

Crossbow Communications is one of the leading public relations and public affairs firms in the United States. We have influenced public opinion and public policy around the world for more than 30 years. Today, we are tackling some of the most urgent issues of our time, including vital health and environmental challenges. The company has offices in Denver, Colorado and Phoenix, Arizona.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Ashoka Resilience Challenge Spots Innovators

What will the cities of tomorrow look like? How will they adapt and evolve? How will we effectively manage and respond to physical, economic and social risks? QBE and Ashoka are hosting the Urban Resilience Challenge – a national social innovation competition that will uncover and fund tech-based innovations that will drive resiliency in cities. 

Across the United States, cities are at the forefront of our nation’s growth and are hubs of innovation, technology, and commerce. At the same time, urban areas face growing vulnerabilities and chronic stressors from economic shifts, changing demographics, and natural disasters. Cities are complex and challenging entities, and their success relies on developing resilience to withstand these threats.

Recognizing the urgent need to build urban resilience, QBE North America and Ashoka are embarking on a unique collaboration to seek out and support innovators across the United States whose ventures contribute to building thriving, resilient cities that can effectively manage and respond to physical, economic, and social threats. Together, we’re launching the QBE and Ashoka Urban Resilience Challenge—a nation-wide social innovation competition seeking entrepreneurs leveraging technology to transform city ecosystems. 

The QBE and Ashoka Urban Resilience Challenge will recognize and support transformative for-profit tech innovations that are impacting policy and the broader urban ecosystem. Applicants can apply to one of the following thematic tracks: The Built Environment (infrastructure), Sustainable Economies, Food/Water/Waste, and Public Health and Safety. 

The QBE and Ashoka Urban Resilience Challenge will provide a select number of early entrants with access to mentorship/coaching opportunities provided by the QBE and Ashoka team of thought leaders.  Ten finalists will receive an all-expense paid trip to New York City to pitch their ventures, receive on-site feedback and mentoring from QBE and Ashoka’s notable network of employees, investors, and thought leaders, and compete for two cash prizes of  $75,000 (Urban Champion) and $25,000 (Urban Pioneer).

For example, SensCity’s founders—five urbanites living in cities around the world—have seen destructive climate change first-hand, from deadly Australian heatwaves to post-hurricane New York City. Now they’ve set out to revolutionize the way cities prepare by providing key data to developers and environmental consultants. Their software, currently piloted in the city of Bendigo, helps governments and organizations gauge how urban environments are reacting to climate impacts, whether current programs are working, and determine future risk.

Elsewhere, Biocellection co-founders Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao have created a market-based solution to the plastic problem that’s both scalable and sustainable. Rather than downcycling plastic waste or using it to make fuel — which creates inferior products or further pollution—Biocellection molecularly recycles it, transforming plastic waste into virgin-quality engineering plastics. With high profit margins due to more valuable upcycled products, Biocellection is growing fast and helping to create an exciting market for plastic waste.

Plastic waste is a huge problem, so the founders of Arqlite designed a scaled-up solution to match. Arqlite uses a unique process to upcycle plastics— the kind that cannot be currently recycled—in its Argentina facility to make a brand-new commodity product: Arqlite light gravel. Ideal for construction, the gravel’s light weight and superior insulation provides companies with an effective, cost-efficient product. With over 500 tons of Arqlite gravel produced—and more products to come—the company seeks to solve the problem of plastic pollution.

Meanwhile, four billion people currently experience severe water scarcity, yet the manufacturing industry continues to consume massive amounts of water to make tech products. The Exergy team invented a solution that purifies and recycles water at the point of use, bringing it back into the production process and minimizing treatment costs. The process recycles 90% of the high purity water used in high-tech manufacturing. Exergy aspires to shift the paradigm to a new, circular approach, where resources stay clean as they’re continually purified and reused. 

Our current energy grid is underutilized 99% of the time— and it’s not friendly to clean energy. That’s why Omega Grid is pioneering a bold sustainable energy system, using local energy markets as an alternative to the traditional grid. The software, which uses blockchain architecture and avoids expensive, centralized infrastructure, determines the best design for local grids, paving the way towards a sustainably-powered future.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Public, Private Commitments Announced

Major announcements by government and private sector leaders at the United Nations Climate Action Summit boosted climate action momentum, and demonstrated growing recognition that the pace of climate action must be rapidly accelerated. More than 65 countries and major sub-national economies such as California committed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, while 70 countries announced they will either boost their national action plans by 2020 or have started the process of doing so. Over 100 business leaders delivered concrete actions to align with the Paris Agreement targets, and speed up the transition from the grey to green economy, including asset-owners holding over $2 trillion in assets and leading companies with combined value also over $2 trillion.

Many countries and more than 100 cities – including many of the world’s largest – announced significant and concrete new steps to combat the climate crisis. Many smaller countries, including Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries, were among those who made the biggest pledges, despite the fact the they have contributed the least to the problem. UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in closing the Summit, said:

“You have delivered a boost in momentum, cooperation and ambition. But we have a long way to go.” “We need more concrete plans, more ambition from more countries and more businesses. We need all financial institutions, public and private, to choose, once and for all, the green economy.” Youth leaders including Greta Thunberg drove home the urgency of greater action by leaders, and their determination to hold leaders to account. Among the major announcements today:

• France announced that it would not enter into any trade agreement with countries that have policies counter to the Paris Agreement.

• Germany committed to carbon neutrality by 2050

• 12 countries today made financial commitments to the Green Climate Fund, the official financial mechanism to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change. This is in addition to recent announcements from Norway, Germany, France and the United Kingdom who have recently doubled their present contributions.

• The United Kingdom today made a major additional contribution, doubling its overall international climate finance to L11.6 billion for the period from 2020 to 2025

• India pledged to increase renewable energy capacity to 175gw by 2022 and committed to further increasing to 450GW, and announced that 80 countries have joined the International Solar Alliance.

• China said it would pursue a path of high quality growth and low-carbon development, and announced a partnership that could potentially unlock up to 12 billion tons of global emissions reductions and removals annually through nature-based solutions.

• The European Union announced at least 25% of the next EU budget will be devoted to climaterelated activities.

• The Russian Federation announced that they will ratify the Paris Agreement, bringing the total number of countries that have joined the Agreement to 187.

• Pakistan said it would plant more than 10 billion trees over the next five years. On unprecedented levels of private sector action:

• A group of the world’s largest asset-owners — responsible for directing more than $2 trillion in investments — committed to move to carbon-neutral investment portfolios by 2050.

• 87 major companies with a combined market capitalization of over US$ 2.3 trillion pledged to reduce emissions and align their businesses with what scientists say is needed to limit the worst impacts of climate change—a 1.5°C future.

• 130 banks – one-third of the global banking sector – signed up to align their businesses with the Paris agreement goals On transitioning from brown to green energy:

• Michael Bloomberg will increase the funding and geographic spread of his coal phase out efforts to 30 countries. Already, his work has helped to close 297 out of 530 coal plants in the US. • Countries, including France and New Zealand, announced that they will not allow oil or gas exploration on their lands or off-shore waters.

• Heads of State from Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, and Slovakia, are among those that announced that they will work to phase out coal. The Republic of Korea announced it would shut down four coal-fired power plants, and six more will be closed by 2022, as well as the doubling of its contribution to the Green Climate Fund.

• The Summit also delivered critical platforms for improving energy efficiency and reducing the growing energy needs for cooling, with the “Three Percent Club” coalition working to drive a three percent annual global increase in energy efficiency and the Cool Coalition setting ambitious national cooling targets for its members with the potential to deliver up to 1 degree on the pathway to a 2050 net zero carbon world. On scaling up financing and unlocking barriers to funds:

• Many countries announced new contributions to the Green Climate Fund, the official financial mechanism to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change, with several countries, including France, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom, announcing that they would double their present contributions. • Further, the Climate Investment Platform was officially announced today. It will seek to directly mobilize US$ 1 trillion in clean energy investment by 2025 in 20 Least Developed Countries in its first year.

• Summit initiatives were designed to ensure the actions undertaken would be fair for all, supporting jobs and clear air for better health, and protect the most vulnerable, as well as new initiatives on adaptation, agriculture and early warning systems that will protect 500 million additional people against the impacts of climate change.

New initiatives announced today have been designed to be scaled up to deliver impact at the global scale needed. The Secretary-General urged governments, businesses and people everywhere to join the initiatives announced at the Summit, and promised to “keep pushing” for greater ambition and action. The Secretary-General committed the UN system to support implementation of plans presented at the Summit, with an initial report to be delivered at COP25 in Santiago, Chile.

The UN Youth Climate Summit was a platform for young climate action leaders to showcase their solutions at the United Nations and to meaningfully engage with decision-makers on the defining issue of our time.

This historic event took place on Saturday, September 21 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York prior to the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit on Monday, September 23.

The Youth Climate Action Summit brought youth climate champions together from more than 140 countries and territories to share their solutions on the global stage, and deliver a clear message to world leaders: we need to act now to address climate change. The event gave voice to the demands of young people for far swifter action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Floods, Droughts Fueling Changes In Food Production, Prices

By Daisy Simmons, Yale Climate Connections

Food may be a universal language — but in these record-breaking hot days, so too is climate change. With July clocking in as the hottest month on Earth in recorded history and extreme weather ramping up globally, farmers are facing the brunt of climate change in croplands and pastures around the world.

Here in the U.S., for instance, climate impacts like more downpours make it harder to avert flooding and erosion on farms across the Midwest. California farmers, on the other hand, must find ways to stay productive despite increasing drought and wildfire risks.

It all amounts to far more than anecdotal inconvenience: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth National Climate Assessment report projects that warming temperatures, severe heat, drought, wildfire, and major storms will “increasingly disrupt agricultural productivity,” threatening not only farmers’ livelihoods but also food security, quality, and price stability.

If these anticipated effects sound extreme, so too are the causes.

Five Climate Impacts Affecting Food Production Now

Climate change poses not just one but a whole slew of challenges to farmers – and to the larger communities that depend on them for food. From erratic precipitation to changing seasons, consider just these five key climatic changes and how they stand to affect food availability now and in the future:

1) More extreme weather can harm livestock and crops. Major storms have always devastated farms, whether from damaging winds during a storm, or erosion and landslides that can rear up even as the storm subsides. But now they’re becoming even more common. In spring 2018, for example, unusually heavy rain and snow storms caused massive flooding across the U.S. Midwest, leaving some areas 10 feet deep in sand. In Nebraska alone, farmers lost an estimated $440 million of cattle. As a result of these flooding conditions, many farmers had to delay spring planting. Delays in commodity crops like corn and soybeans aren’t just stressful for farmers, either – they could lead to food price volatility and even potential food insecurity.

2) Water scarcity across the U.S. Southwest makes it more expensive and difficult to sustain crops and livestock. Drought is in the long-term outlook across the U.S. West, with declining snowpack making it more challenging to keep reservoirs full through summer. Lack of adequate water can easily damage or destroy crops, dry up soil, and threaten livelihoods. Between 2014-2016, for example, California endured an estimated $3.8 billion of direct statewide economic losses to agriculture as a result of drought.

3) Seasons aren’t what they used to be. Growing seasons are starting earlier and getting hotter in a warming climate. A longer growing season, over time, could theoretically have some advantages, but it also presents more obstacles in the short term, such as an uptick in pest populations is possible, with more generations possible per year. Early spring onset can also cause crops to grow before the soil holds enough water and nutrients, or to ruin fruit crops that bud early and then experience later spring frost. Plus, warmer winters can affect other farming practices like grain storage.

4) Wildfire can devastate farms – even when the flames don’t actually reach them. Ranchers across the West have recently seen major losses as a result of worsening fire seasons, from outright loss of life to charred grazing lands and decimated hay stocks. What’s more, “secondary impacts” abound, from a smoky taint that can ruin wine, to the ordeal of keeping a farm operational when fires are raging nearby and evacuation orders seem just around the corner. All this also causes costs to mount given that the respiratory dangers of laboring in smoky, excessively hot conditions can force farms to send workers home in the height of harvest season.

5) Warmer weather and rising CO2 levels adversely affect food supply, safety and quality. According to a 2019 IPCC land use report, between 25 and 30 percent of the food produced worldwide is wasted, not all of it for the same reasons. In developed countries, for instance, consumers, sometimes seemingly with abandon, simply discard what they see as “excess” or “surplus” food. In developing countries, much of the waste is brought about by a lack of refrigeration as products go bad between producers and consumers. The IPCC report estimates that food waste costs about $1 trillion per year and accounts for about 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from food systems. Meanwhile, some two-billion humans worldwide are overweight or obese even as nearly one billion are undernourished, highlighting the inefficiencies and inequities in food distribution.

In addition, rising temperatures can alter exposures to some pathogens and toxins. Consider: Salmonella, Campylobacter, Vibrio parahaemolyticus in raw oysters, and mycotoxigenic fungi, which can all potentially thrive in warmer environments. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also can decrease dietary iron, zinc, protein, and other macro- and micronutrients in certain crops.

Now for the elephant still in the room: Food production isn’t just being affected by climate change – it’s actively contributing to climate change, too. According to IPCC’s land use report, agriculture and other land uses comprise more than one-fifth of global CO2 emissions, creating a vicious cycle.

The July IPCC report cited above lists various adaptation and mitigation measures that could help reduce the adverse impacts of food and dietary preferences on climate change. The suggestions address more sustainable food production and diets (more plant-based, less meat-based); improved forestry management (including reducing deforestation and increasing reforestation); agricultural carbon sequestration, including no-till farming practices; and reducing food waste.

And it warns that delaying action will be costly:Deferral of [greenhouse gas] emissions reductions from all sectors implies trade-offs including irreversible loss in land ecosystem functions and services required for food, health, habitable settlements and production, leading to increasingly significant economic impacts on many countries in many regions of the world.

So, what can individuals do to help avert some of the worsening impacts of climate on food supply? There in fact are a number of ways to help support climate-friendlier food production.

Improving soil health, on a large-scale, is one key way forward. Nutrient-rich soil stores carbon better than degraded, overworked soil. Plus, healthy soil helps farms stay productive – a win-win. Consumers can boost these efforts, by supporting farmers and ranchers who engage in sustainable practices like cover cropping and composting.

Reducing meat consumption is another way to reduce the climate impact of food production, given that a livestock farm is like a methane factory, contributing an estimated 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Meatless Mondays, “flexitarian” diets, and the rise of faux-meat brands are all testimony to the growing efforts aimed at reducing meat consumption.

In addition to consumer actions, there are interesting new ways forward on the industry side. Manure digesters, for one, can convert methane from manure into electricity. And seaweed is gaining scientific interest for its potential in making cattle burp less often.

Policy efforts will likely be key also. California for its part has goals to direct some cap-and-trade funding to build compost facilities, and incentivize methane reduction in dairies.

The challenges ahead are steep. But so too are the opportunities to adapt to new realities and reduce assorted diverse impacts. According to Project Drawdown, three of the top 10 best climate solutions have something to do with food, from reducing food waste (3) and choosing a plant-rich diet (4) to silvopasturing (9), which integrates trees and pasture into a single ecosystem.

It isn’t always easy to make such changes. What is getting easier, though, is to see that the world’s collective appetite for fossil fuels is having a negative impact on real food and on dietary options.

And the option of inaction on something so fundamental? Through their food-purchasing and dietary preferences, Americans increasingly, albeit perhaps only gradually, are showing that they are increasingly wary about swallowing that one.

Read The Original Story in Yale Climate Connections.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Cities Fueling Global Warming

Towns and cities in the world’s developing countries are growing on an unprecedented scale. Ten years ago, an estimated 40 percent of the developing world’s population – or 2 billion people – lived in urban areas. Since then, their numbers have expanded almost twice as fast as total population growth, to more than 2.5 billion. That is the equivalent to almost five new cities the size of Beijing, every 12 months. By 2025, more than half the developing world’s population – 3.5 billion people – will be urban.

While urbanization in Europe and North America took centuries, spurred on by industrialization and steady increases in per capita income, in the developing world it will occur in the space of two or three generations. In many developing countries, urban growth is being driven not by economic opportunity but by high birth rates and a mass influx of rural people seeking to escape hunger, poverty and insecurity.

Most of the world’s fastest growing cities are found in low-income countries of Asia and Africa with young populations. Over the next 10 years, the current number of urban dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow by almost 45 percent, from 320 million to 460 million. Kinshasa, capital of one of the world’s poorest countries, is now the world’s fastest growing future megacity. By 2025, the urban population of least-developed countries in Asia will have grown from 90 million to a projected 150 million, and Dhaka is expected to be the world’s fifth largest city, with 21 million inhabitants.

Urbanization in low-income countries is accompanied by high levels of poverty, unemployment and food insecurity. Worldwide, an estimated one billion people live in crowded slums, without access to basic health, water and sanitation services. Around 30 percent of the developing world’s urban population – 770 million people – are unemployed or “working poor”, with incomes below official poverty lines.

Those urban poor spend most of their income just to feed themselves. Yet their children suffer levels of malnutrition that are often as high as those found in rural areas. To survive, millions of slum dwellers have resorted to growing their own food on every piece of available land: in backyards, along rivers, roads and railways, and under power lines.

The growth of urban slums outpaces urban growth by a wide margin. By 2020, the proportion of the urban population living in poverty could reach 45 percent, or 1.4 billion people. By then, 85 percent of poor people in Latin America, and almost half of those in Africa and Asia, will be concentrated in towns and cities.

That prospect has been described as “the new population bomb” and a nightmare for governance: sprawling, degraded and impoverished cities with large, vulnerable populations that are socially excluded, young and unemployed.

Greener Cities Offer Hope

A brighter future for the world’s developing cities is both imperative and possible. Historically, cities have been places not of misery and despair but of opportunity – for economies of scale, employment and improved living standards, especially for rural people seeking a better life. They have served as engines of social progress and national economic development.

Creating the conditions to realize that potential – in Kinshasa, Dhaka and other growing towns and cities across the developing world – is crucial now and will be more so in the decades ahead. The challenge is to steer urbanization from its current, unsustainable path, towards sustainable, greener cities that offer their inhabitants choice, opportunity and hope.

The concept of green cities–designed for resilience, self-reliance, and social, economic and environmental sustainability — is usually associated with urban planning in more developed countries. It suggests high-tech eco-architecture, bicycle greenways and zero-waste, “closed loop” industries.

However, it has a special application, and significantly different social and economic dimensions, in low-income developing countries. There, the core principles of greener cities can guide urban development that ensures food security, decent work and income, a clean environment and good governance for all citizens.

A starting point for growing greener cities is to recognize and integrate into urban policy and planning many of the creative solutions that the urban poor themselves have developed to strengthen their communities and improve their lives. One of those solutions – and an essential feature of green city planning in developed, and a growing number of developing, countries – is urban and peri-urban horticulture.

Urban and peri-urban horticulture (or UPH) is the cultivation of a wide range of crops – including fruit, vegetables, roots, tubers and ornamental plants – within cities and towns and in their surrounding areas. It is estimated that 130 million urban residents in Africa and 230 million in Latin America engage in agriculture, mainly horticulture, to provide food for their families or to earn income from sales.

While the urban poor, particularly those arriving from rural areas, have long practiced horticulture as a livelihood and survival strategy, in many countries the sector is still largely informal, usually precarious and sometimes illegal. But that is changing rapidly.

Over the past decade, governments in 20 countries have sought FAO’s assistance in removing barriers and providing incentives, inputs and training to low-income “city farmers”, from the burgeoning metropolises of West and Central Africa to the low-income barrios of Managua, Caracas and Bogotá.

Through multidisciplinary projects, FAO has helped governments and city administrations to optimize policies, institutional frameworks and support services for UPH, and to improve horticultural production systems. It has promoted irrigated commercial market gardening on urban peripheries, simple hydroponic micro-gardens in slum areas, and green rooftops in densely populated city centers.

The FAO program, and similar initiatives by partner organizations, have demonstrated how horticulture helps empower the urban poor, and contributes to their food security and nutrition. But it can also help grow greener cities that are better able to cope with social and environmental challenges, from slum improvement and management of urban wastes to job creation and community development.

Read More About Greener Cities.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Higher Tides, Declining Tax Base Drowning Cities

By Nicholas Kusnetz, Inside Climate News

High-tide flooding is eating away at the coastal property tax base just when communities need it most to adapt to climate change and repair the damage.

Rising seas have already eroded coastal property values from Maine to Mississippi by billions of dollars over the past decade as buyers pay less for homes in neighborhoods where high-tide flooding is creeping in, a new report shows.

The loss in property values points to a compound problem for coastal communities: Just as accelerating sea level rise forces governments to build flood walls and repair infrastructure more often, it may also eat away at the property tax base that provides many cities’ primary revenue stream for funding that very work.

“This is a real negative feedback loop,” said Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If they don’t start to recognize these issues and reports like this and open their eyes to what is definitely happening, they’re going to find themselves in pretty dire straits.”

The analysis, published Wednesday by First Street Foundation, estimates that property value losses from coastal flooding in 17 states were nearly $16 billion from 2005 to 2017. Florida, New Jersey, New York and South Carolina each saw more than $1 billion in losses.

“This isn’t a forward-facing issue,” said Jeremy Porter, a lecturer at Columbia University, consultant at First Street and an author of the report. “It’s something that’s been occurring. It’s something that’s affecting people’s homes now.”

Climate change is accelerating sea level rise and has driven a rapid increase in the frequency of coastal flooding on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts in recent decades. Residents and local businesses are already feeling the costs.

As the problem has worsened, advocacy groups and some financial institutions have begun warning about the potential for cascading economic impacts from rising seas.

In 2016, Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage company, warned that sea level rise would eventually destroy billions of dollars worth of property. Homes represent many Americans’ largest asset, it noted, and the inevitable decline in coastal property value could ripple throughout local economies. Homeowners might decide to stop paying off their mortgages if their home values drop below the balance they owe the bank.

While these economic losses might happen gradually, the Freddie Mac report said, “they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.”

The credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service warned local governments in 2017 that they could face lower ratings if they fail to adapt to climate change, a decision that would raise the cost of borrowing money through bonds.

“What they essentially laid out was, when you have a disaster and that affects your property tax revenues, that’s going to affect your credit rating,” Moore said. “If you haven’t put the measures in place to weather that storm, you’re going to get impacted right at the moment when you need to borrow.”

The First Street report shows that these effects may already be occurring.

While some groups have estimated the value of property at risk in the future, Porter said the new report is the first to provide specific data over such a broad area about the effects on real estate that have already happened.

Porter and Steven McAlpine combined tide gauge data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with elevation data from the United States Geological Survey to map tidal flooding parcel by parcel. They then compared sales of similar homes in areas at risk of flooding to homes in dry neighborhoods.

While they found that prices generally increased, even in neighborhoods with recurrent flooding, property values in areas with nuisance flooding were rising much more slowly. That difference accounts for their total estimated loss in value.

The greatest loss from 2005 to 2017 was in Ocean City, New Jersey, a resort town that saw a loss in property value of about $500 million, the analysis estimated. Miami Beach, Florida, was second, with more than $300 million in home value wiped out.

What Cities Can Do

The rankings skew toward prosperous, densely populated areas, Porter said, because they’re based on value. But a tool on the organization’s website shows that many working class communities are getting hit too, even if it doesn’t translate into as large a dollar figure.

Chesapeake, Virginia, for example, has nearly as many at-risk homes as Ocean City but lost a fraction of the total value. Porter said these losses can be more devastating if they represent a larger proportion of a family’s wealth, or of a town’s total tax revenue.

While governments and residents are already incurring these costs, Moore said there’s a lot they could do to soften the blow.

Towns need to reorient their planning and revenue to discourage coastal development and ease their reliance on the taxes it generates, he said. On the federal level, Moore said, Congress should require that flood risks are disclosed as part of home sales, and that federal flood maps reflect future risks caused by rising seas.

While communities try to adapt to the rising risks and damage from climate change, an increasing number of cities are also taking steps to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving global warming.

Matthew Eby, First Street’s executive director, said it’s clear from their research that the costs of failing to act are piling up. “We’re going to have a much different conversation over the next five, 10, 15 years about what’s actually happening,” he said. “We’re hoping that this is that market indicator that people can start paying attention to, so that we can react.”

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Trees Promote Health and Climate Mitigation

By Isabella Kaminski, The Developer

Governments love a good tree-planting scheme, because they’re popular and always hit the headlines. The latest source of funding, announced by former environment secretary Michael Gove in May, is a £10m pot available to councils, charities and individuals to plant 130,000 trees in towns and cities across England.

The money is certainly welcome. The UK has just 13% overall woodland cover – very low compared with most other European countries – and has made little progress in increasing it in recent years. The latest figures from Forest Research show only 1,420 hectares were planted in England in the year to March 2019, against the government’s 5,000-hectare target, with smaller areas in Wales and Northern Ireland. Only Scotland met its goal, planting about 11,200 hectares last year.

But critics point out that, while 130,000 trees might sound a lot, it is only a drop in the metaphorical ocean. According to a recent Committee on Climate Change report, which emphasises the crucial role trees play in tackling climate change by storing carbon, we should be planting 30,000 hectares of woodland each year – equivalent to around 1.5 billion trees by 2050.

Sharon Hosegood, chartered arboriculturist and consultant, says £10m is a good start “but it’s obviously not enough. [There] needs to be a collaborative approach by the government, local government, developers and private individuals to pull together because we desperately need more trees”.

This isn’t a rural issue. Dan Raven-Ellison, who has campaigned to make London a National Park City, says the capital already has nearly as many trees as people, covering 21% of its area, but would like to see many more.

Trees have multiple benefits. Many of these can be quantified through a tool called a tool called i-Tree, which gives a detailed picture of the value of green infrastructure in cities such as London and Manchester.

As well as storing carbon, trees help counter the ‘urban heat island’ effect, whereby cities are warmer than rural areas. Wide-canopied trees provide physical shade and cooling in summer and warming in winter, which reduces the amount of energy needed for heating and air conditioning. This effect is more pronounced during heatwaves as the climate warms.

They also demonstrably improve air quality; large-leaved species in particular help reduce fine particulate pollution (PM_2.5). They boost biodiversity by providing homes for wildlife, reduce the risk of flooding by slowing down surface water runoff and improve soil health.

There is growing evidence that trees and other green spaces improve people’s physical and mental health; a recent study found that a two-hour ‘dose’ of nature once a week significantly boosts well-being. And while money doesn’t grow on trees they do have measurable economic benefits, boosting local house prices and encouraging trade by sprucing the area up.

“They calm us down, they clean the air, they make us money,” summarises Hosegood. And mature trees do all these things better.

Hosegood says developers and councils are increasingly recognising these benefits. “In my work for a London local authority housing department there’s a really good tree population and the landscaping has been greatly enhanced as part of privately funded development.”

While money doesn’t grow on trees they do have measurable economic benefits, boosting local house prices

Part of the battle to increase the number of city trees is not to cut existing ones down. There are already significant barriers in place to doing this, with many trees protected by Tree Preservation Orders or within wider conservation areas.

Developers are restricted in what they can fell. Part of Hosegood’s job involves assessing the state of existing trees on a development site, which is a statutory part of most planning applications. She looks at “how big they are, how healthy they are and what their role is in the landscape”, in line with British Standard (BS) 5837.

“It’s much better to get in early, preferably before the developer has bought the land, so we can work with the team – architects, landscape architects and engineers – to create a design that retains the best trees on site,” says Hosegood. “There’s always going to be some tree loss – that’s inevitable – but if we can have a design that tries to keep the best trees and can mitigate the tree loss, that’s really important.”

Greater Manchester’s City of Trees project has already planted half a million trees

Planting new trees is a whole different challenge and everyone agrees that there is no single correct way to do it. Greater Manchester’s City of Trees project, which aims to grow the local tree population by at least three million within the next generation, has already planted half a million trees in a variety of locations; from large plots of urban woodland on the city’s outskirts to pocket parks tucked between housing estates, to trees sprouting out of pavements.

Each type of planting has its own advantages and challenges. Parkland or woodland settings require considerably more land but once planted provide a more naturalistic landscape and may need less maintenance. Hard city landscapes also hugely benefit from greening, says Sarah Nurton, marketing and communications manager at City of Trees, but are particularly difficult to plant in.

Councils, highways organisations and nearby shopkeepers may need to be consulted about street trees, pavements must be wide enough to accommodate both the tree and passing foot traffic (including wheelchairs and buggies), and parking and entranceways cannot be obstructed. Meanwhile, some councils are concerned about insurance claims from subsidence caused by tree roots. “It is quite an expensive, time-consuming process and that’s before you even get to digging up pavements and getting a tree in,” says Nurton.

An important decision that developers and others must make is which species to plant. The Trees and Design Action Group (TDAG) produces a helpful free guide on this which is available online.

While there has been a move back towards native broadleaf trees such as oak in rural woodland, experts say these are not necessarily the best option in cities. Some woodland trees simply cannot be planted in urban locations. David Elliott, chief executive of tree planting charity Trees for Cities, says beech trees, for example, have very shallow roots that extend outwards, making them unsuitable for hard landscapes.

Meanwhile many native species are currently affected by serious pests and diseases, such as oak processionary moth and ash dieback disease. “The pool of our native species, which isn’t that big anyway, is drastically reduced,” says Elliott. “In order for trees to thrive and do well, to be healthy and resilient, the industry believes that you need to have a wide range of species.”

Hosegood stresses that large-canopied trees are still important to maximise shade. “There was a tendency until recently for landscaping schemes to use smaller species trees with a smaller canopy because it was deemed safer and wouldn’t give any trouble. There were fewer maintenance problems and it was cheaper. But there’s been a lot of lost opportunities. We need large trees where the space allows – things like London plane – but actually we need to be looking beyond our normal native trees because of climate change.”

Changing climatic conditions means cities are becoming wetter during some parts of the year and drier and hotter at others. Nurton says City of Trees is considering which trees will survive the next 50 years and notes that some species are already being planted that would not have survived several decades ago. Paulownia – also known as the foxglove tree – is native to central and western China and can be killed by harsh winters but has thrived on St Peter’s Square in Manchester city centre. “It’s about making our trees and woods more resilient for the future,” says Nurton.

Another important consideration is what to plant trees in, because cities are bursting with buried infrastructure such as telecommunications cables, gas and water pipes and old building foundations.

“Developers need to think not just about the above-ground space but invest money in the below-ground space,” says Hosegood. “What we’ve found in the past is that trees are sometimes just plonked in a hand-dug pit in the ground and left to get on with it. In a rural area that’s absolutely fine. But in cities we have such competition for space underneath the ground [that] specialist tree pits are incredibly important.”

A number of specialist suppliers sell modular systems that allow roots to flourish beneath hard surfaces and can maximise the water retention benefits of tree planting.

Julian Tollast, head of masterplanning and design at property development firm Quintain, which has won awards for its tree design at Wembley Park, says specialised technology is expensive but helps trees thrive, especially in the early years. Although Quintain generally favours watering trees manually with a hosepipe because “you know exactly what has been delivered”, it has installed automatic irrigation systems underground in some areas.

Hosegood adds that, where possible, developers could plant several trees in one big pit rather than individually.

“You have a bigger soil volume for all the trees to exploit together. It’s much better for surface water attenuation. It has a better visual impact and it’s better ecologically as well because it’s a more viable habitat for creepy crawlies etc. It seems like a cost… but I say it’s really important because it’ll make their development really shine when people go back.”

Then there is the matter of long-term care. Hosegood says it is helpful when planning permission includes maintenance conditions specifying how trees are to be looked after for a fixed period, often five years. This is usually done by a maintenance company, contracted by the council or the developer itself.

At Wembley Park, however, Quintain remains responsible for the site. “We took a long-term stewardship of the landscape we’re creating,” says Tollast, “which really helps because I can chat to my colleague, learn from the last area of landscape we did on the challenges or otherwise we’ve had of maintaining that and make sure we put those lessons learned back into the next phase of the project.”

The new requirement for developers in England to show that projects have a ‘net gain’ for biodiversity will encourage more tree planting.

Trees for Cities looks after its new street trees for three years after they are handed over to the landowner – usually the local authority. Elliott says most trees aged between three and 20 years do not require a lot of work. “Then when they’re bigger you start to need to do pruning or pollarding or take them down if they’re starting to die off,” he says.

Progressive developers are even involving the public in the installation and long-term care of their trees. Elliott of Trees for Cities, which relies on a mostly voluntary workforce to create its urban woodlands, community orchards, leafy parks and street greenery, says local communities that plant trees “will take more ownership and care for them”.

Hosegood says getting communities involved is also “an opportunity for developers to show they’re different from their competitors and to show their green credentials”. Having children plant trees on a construction site is “tremendous education and it’s great for PR”, while making community groups responsible for longer-term management of nearby woodland is “a mechanism for the new people who are moving in to get to know each other.”

It is also important because trees can be an emotive subject. Protests erupted in Sheffield in 2016 when contractor Amey started felling street trees as part of a 25-year private finance initiative contract with the city council.

For Elliott, a good tree-planting project is one that maximises its benefits, so he welcomes the fact that the Urban Tree Challenge Fund prioritises social factors as well as environmental ones.

Nurton, who often works with social housing providers, says they are particularly enthusiastic about the idea of greening patches of land that might have attracted anti-social behaviour. “If we can bring that woodland back into use for the community, we might twin it with a local school. They use it as an outdoor classroom so it’s much less likely to get fly-tipped and people see it as an asset rather than an eyesore. They really see the value of that.”

Elliott thinks there is still a lack of consistency in how green infrastructure is approached in different areas and says it is not completely embedded in the wider planning and development sector. “But there is a rapidly increasing [realisation] of the value of green in urban development. It is being taken much more seriously.”

He hopes that a new requirement for developers in England to show that projects have a positive impact or ‘net gain’ for biodiversity will improve things further.

Nurton agrees. “When it comes to costs… it can be hard to prioritise green space and trees within developments, which we completely understand. But I think it’s becoming more and more integral now for developers to ensure that it’s one of the strands.

“It’s not just about building flats; it’s about creating environments people want to be in.”

Sacred Seedlings is a global initiative to support forest conservation, reforestation, urban forestry, carbon capture, sustainable agriculture and wildlife conservation. Sustainable land management is critical to the survival of entire ecosystems.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Employees Hold Amazon Accountable For Change

The battle against climate change suddenly has a new champion amidst a stunning leadership crisis. Better late than never.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has emerged from the back of the pack to take the lead where other capitalists have been afraid to lead or follow. The world’s richest man committed $10 billion of his personal fortune to set up the new Bezos Earth Fund, which would support “scientists, activists, NGOs—any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world.”

The announcement is light on details, but climate experts say it’s a massive investment and a tremendous opportunity that could give the warming planet a fighting chance. Hopefully, it will fund solutions, not meaningless studies and smokescreens.

Ten billion dollars is an unfathomable amount of money for climate change research and activism. It dwarfs the $4 billion that 29 philanthropic organizations pledged to fighting climate change in 2018, in what was called the largest investment of its kind at the time. It’s so much money that it will likely be difficult to spend on existing researchers and organizations, as The Atlantic noted.

“It will shape the whole nature of the climate movement,” says Robert J. Brulle, a professor emeritus at Drexel University studying politics and the environment. “There’s going to be this mad rush of cash.”

Brulle’s research on spending by opponents of the climate movement helps put the Bezos Earth Fund into perspective. From 2000 to 2016, he found, electric utilities, fossil fuel companies, and the transportation sector collectively spent over $1.2 billion on climate change lobbying. Another study found that from 1986 to 2015, five of the largest fossil fuel firms together spent at least $3.6 billion on corporate promotion advertisements in the US.

It’s not just the amount that matters, but how Bezos team invest the money. As CEO of Amazon, Bezos hasn’t exactly led the charge on progressive corporate policies around climate change and the environment. The company has been criticized for years by environmental groups like Greenpeace over its business practices and lack of transparency; the nonprofit CDP told Bloomberg News last year that it was one of the biggest carbon emitters in the world outside the fossil fuel industry.

Thousands of Bezos’ own workers affiliated with the group Amazon Employees For Climate Justice have pushed for the company to do more to mitigate its enormous impact on the environment, including by staging a walkout.

In that context, it’s easy to see Bezos’ commitment as a shrewd political move meant to pacify his workforce, or atonement for the environmental sins that made him the richest man in the world—a rank he would still hold even minus the $10 billion. Bezos had previously given relatively little of his fortune to charity, choosing instead to spend on efforts like Blue Origin, his space travel company. With one pledge, the CEO immediately joins the philanthropic ranks of tech titans like Bill Gates, who has donated over $45 billion through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It’s not clear if Bezos will be willing to fight the fossil fuel industry directly, which Amazon counts as an important customer. When Bezos announced an ambitious new plan for his company to reduce its carbon footprint in September, the CEO said Amazon’s cloud computing division would nonetheless continue working with oil and gas providers.

“Anyone who’s serious about taking on climate change has to be serious about taking on the fossil fuel industry, because they’re the ones blocking progress,” says Bill McKibben, a prominent environmentalist and the founder of the climate change organization 350.org. For the Amazon CEO to directly oppose his counterparts in another industry, McKibben adds, “That would require a kind of class betrayal on Bezos’ part—it will be interesting to see if he’s capable of it.”

Environmental experts have suggested that the Bezos Earth Fund should invest quickly in solutions that already exist today. Millions of natural gas furnaces across the country could be replaced with energy-efficient heat pumps, for example, or harmful gas leaks could be plugged. Forest conservation and reforestation also are easy steps that are part of the answer. Ending government subsidies to oil companies can level the playing field for alternative energy supplies. Where there is a will, there is a way forward. Answers begin with the truth and obstruction isn’t an option.

“If Bezos could focus $10 billion on critical technologies that are available right now, he could make them scale, he could make them cheap, he could make them widespread,” notes Foley. “Now is better than new.”

Leah Stokes, a professor studying climate and environmental politics at UC Santa Barbara, hopes Bezos uses the funds to strategically involve governments, which Amazon would benefit from too. New public infrastructure projects could help to optimize its logistics networks for delivering packages, for example. There are also plenty of more fundamental benefits. “If you think about these big Silicon Valley companies, they’re all on the coast,” says Stokes. “They’re all going to be affected by sea level rise, that’s not going to be good for their corporations.”

Even as Bezos funds his initiative, Amazon has a strong interest in shaping the climate debate, so that whatever government response eventually emerges doesn’t injure its business. (To cover its right flank, last year the company co-sponsored the annual gala of a climate-denying think tank.) After all, Amazon’s constellation of servers has a massive carbon footprint, about the same as that of a wealthy European nation; the company is transforming global patterns of consumption, so that cheap goods can almost instantaneously arrive at any doorstep. Even if Amazon aims to slash its own emissions, it’s creating an economy that seems likely to undermine its stated goal of carbon neutrality. A reasonable debate about planetary future would at least question the wisdom of the same-day delivery of plastic tchotchkes made in China. Then there are the policies that permit companies, like Amazon, to pay virtually nothing in taxes—revenue that would ideally fund, say, a Green New Deal. It hardly seems likely that the Bezos Earth Foundation will seek to erode the very basis of the fortune that funds it.

A skeptical response to the Bezos Earth Fund doesn’t preclude the hope that it will do real good. Michael Bloomberg’s climate philanthropy has played an important role in shutting down coal-fired power plants. And unlike Obama-era policy, Bloomberg’s efforts have proved difficult for the Trump administration to roll back. Perhaps Bezos will find similarly effective vehicles for injecting his money. Given the influence of the Koch brothers and the rest of the fossil-fuel industry, the political fight over climate policy is in desperate need of a bottomless benefactor.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.

Greener Cities Are Resilient, Responsible

By Katy Aranoff, The New Republic

The global economy is headed for a recession thanks to the coronavirus. A new poll finds that nearly one in five workers in the United States has already faced layoff or a loss of hours because of the pandemic. Among workers making less than $50,000 a year, that figure jumps to one in four. Jobless claims in Colorado have increased seventeenfold since last Monday. Thanks to the coronavirus and the shutdowns needed to fight it, people across professions now face months of lost wages: bartenders, musicians, bouncers, baristas, blackjack dealers, home health aides, waitstaff, retail workers, and flight attendants, to name just a few. Teachers working in public schools, whose funding depends on local tax bases, will also face harsh cutbacks as unemployment skyrockets. A recovery package could simply—and probably unsuccessfully—try to get the economy back up to where it was before the Covid-19 shutdowns took hold, complete with its decades of wage stagnation, exploding carbon emissions, and staggering inequality. It could build a carbon-neutral, significantly stronger and fairer society—and put millions to work doing it.

Politicians have floated several commonsense short-term solutions—many of them originating with various social movements: paid leave; direct cash payments of $1,000 or more to American adults, possibly every month while the outbreak lasts; a moratorium on rent and utility payments—or at the very least on evictions and shut-offs. But as what may prove to be a deep and painful recession lasting far beyond the coronavirus sets in, more than quick cash and temporary relief will be needed. A breaking wave of corporate bankruptcies—an event the Fed is now scrambling to contain—could leave hundreds of thousands more unemployed in its wake. Helpfully, the magnitude of the Covid-19 threat has broken open the idea that deficits are more important than meeting pressing public health and economic challenges.

Steve Mnuchin told reporters on Tuesday, “This is not the time to worry about” the deficit, floating a stimulus that could add up to more than $1 trillion—a size Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers, balked at a decade ago.

As the hardly radical New York Times editorial board wrote yesterday, the government could train America’s newly unemployed to sanitize hospital equipment or to deliver food to the elderly and the immune-compromised. Child care for hospital workers on the front lines is desperately needed. Through a new public works program, corps of people could implement infection control in nursing homes and other high-risk facilities—or teach workers of all kinds how best to protect themselves. There could even be a network of individuals tasked with making phone calls to combat loneliness for people in nursing homes and prisons while they’re unable to receive visitors.

Before the immediate mobilization around World War II, the years leading up to it saw federal jobs programs employ millions in work the private sector simply didn’t see as important enough to create. The Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration paid some 12.5 million people to do everything from planting trees to building bridges to writing plays. Full employment was an animating demand of social movements through much of the postwar era, which led to it being featured in the Democratic Party platform until 1980.

In more recent years, progressive economists anda number of current and former Democratic presidential candidates have backed the idea of a federal job guarantee consistent with a Green New Deal: The U.S. government would permanently become the country’s employer of last resort through a program that’s always in place but kicks into high gear during an economic downturn and then shrinks when people find work elsewhere in the public or private sector. One possible benefit to such a program is that it could provide an alternative to low-paid work bound up in carbon-intensive supply chains like those at McDonald’s and Walmart—currently the only employment on offer in many communities around the country. It could put people to work doing tasks the country urgently needs—including those that actively fight climate change and its impacts, instead of simply spewing carbon into the atmosphere. It’d be popular, too: 70 percent of voters support the idea of a federal job guarantee.

“They must be meaningful jobs,” said Coretta Scott King, a dogged job-guarantee advocate, when asked what government-provisioned work might entail in an interview tweeted out this week by historian David Stein, “in areas where there are human needs and in areas of education, medical care, housing. Those areas where there is a great shortage in terms of meeting people’s needs.”

As in the last recession, there’s a particular benefit to so-called “shovel-ready” projects—ones that can put people to work immediately. While it’s sorely needed, big infrastructure build-outs can now take months or even years to get off the ground, requiring regulatory approvals and bidding processes. Any major new direct-hire program would still take some time and careful planning to set up, but there’s plenty of work that could be done virtually right away. Much of it wouldn’t involve any shovels at all.

Researchers at the Bard College Levy Institute have proposed that the Department of Labor could make use of its already-existing American Jobs Centers around the country, which can compile repositories of available work that fulfill the desired set of criteria. “Municipalities, in cooperation with community groups, conduct assessment surveys, cataloging community needs and available resources,” Pavlina Tcherneva, author of the report, wrote in 2018, while the Labor Department itself would make “‘requests for proposals’ indicating that it will fund employment initiatives by community groups, nonprofits, social entrepreneurial ventures, and the unemployed themselves for projects that serve the public purpose,” with an eye toward not displacing existing employment. Much of this work would be green, and—in addition to any sort of bigger public works—could bolster the social infrastructure key to a more resilient and lower-carbon society. And that could start right away.

As The New York Times suggests, direct federal hiring could employ people to make phone calls to the elderly, checking in on people who might go days or even weeks at a time without talking to anyone at all. While for the duration of the pandemic this would have to be over the phone, once it’s safe these conversations could become regular visits, helping to meet the crisis of care head-on alongside federally supported universal childcare.

In cities, the formerly jobless could get to work making coastlines more resilient against future storms and floods. Tending community gardens in dense city areas could help alleviate the urban heat-island effect. And federally hired workers in the South could plant mangrove trees along the water, protecting against erosion as they suck up carbon dioxide, as part of a broader push to plant those Trillion Trees the Trump administration seems so keen on. Workers in the Permian Basin could clean up and reclaim decommissioned rig sites as nature preserves. There’s a multitude of ways we could employ workers to make agriculture more resilient to increasing temperature fluctuations—while simultaneously making it emit less, or even turning it into a carbon sink.

After months of Covid-19-induced isolation, bingeing Netflix and endlessly scrolling through social media, people are likely going to want to go out to be outside and among other people. Leisure was one of the biggest line items of New Deal spending programs, which sponsored everything from trails to hunting lodges and public beaches. Revivals of the WPA’s Federal Theater Project, Federal Writers’ Project, and Federal Art Project could give well-paid and steady jobs to performers who’ve spent months out of work due to coronavirus shutdowns, producing a new generation of plays, books, and even travel guides for all 50 states. Writers could be paid, as Zora Neale Hurston was, to collect oral histories to be archived in the Library of Congress. Direct-hire workers could plan music festivals in public parks around the country, with booths for local small businesses to sell craft beer and finger food sourced from farms in the area.

This isn’t an exhaustive list. It’s also not mutually exclusive with federal support for trade schools and graduate degrees to work in the clean energy sector, or union apprenticeship programs that can train a new generation of workers—including those transitioning out of jobs in the extractive sector—to electrify buildings and make them more energy-efficient. A wide-ranging federal green job guarantee has a number of potential benefits beyond the obvious: For example, by paying workers fairly, such jobs could establish a wage floor at $15 or $20 an hour—against which the private sector would have to compete. It could also institute a four-day workweek, which a growing body of evidence suggests would drastically slash emissions by cutting commutes and reducing the energy load from lighting and heating offices, with many benefits for both the climate and the way people live and consume.

Thinking creatively in such a dire crisis—about silver linings and opportunities—can feel inappropriate, even irresponsible. But the American right has already come up with a variety of stimulus ideas to funnel money to its allies. As evidenced by proposals underway to prop up the fossil fuel industry, the choice right now is between crisis responses that double down on the dangerous policies of the past few decades or those that help shift society and the economy in a better direction. How lawmakers respond to Covid-19 and its economic fallout could either protect the next century from the persistent crises threatened by rising temperatures, or make them far worse.

Greener Cities is a division of Crossbow Communications. We are developing Greener Cities as a resource for sustainable and resilient cities and communities around the world. We seek best practices, case studies, significant announcements and collaboration.