December 23, 2023

Weekend Reads: Can the World Quit Oil?; Christmas Tree Growers Must Adapt

We wish you a very happy holiday season and a great 2024! Kick back and catch up with these must-read articles from around the web:  

Climate summit makes ‘historic progress’ — but the world still can’t quit oil (Politico)  Climate talks in Dubai ended with a deal to curb the use of fossil fuels that was both historic and 30 years too late. The two-week conference, held in the oil-rich desert kingdom of the United Arab Emirates and presided over by an oil CEO, brought two competing realities into a painful collision. The planet is overheating, yet humanity remains inextricably reliant on coal, oil and natural gas. The talks ended on Wednesday with a deal among almost 200 countries that committed to “transitioning away from fossil fuels,” notably by speeding up that shift before 2030.

In 2023, organized labor became core to the climate movement (Grist)  2023 was marked by symbiosis between the labor and climate movements. Workers across industries and geographies loudly declared that a world in which their safety and well-being are disregarded is even more dangerous to them and to others in a time of energy transition and climate crisis. After decades of hesitancy, several major unions recognized an urgent need to organize those who will do the hard work of decarbonizing the nation’s economy. It doesn’t hurt that public sympathy, and policy, has grown friendlier toward them.

Florida the only state to turn down millions to lessen emissions, feds say (Tampa Bay Times)  Congress in 2021 provided $6.4 billion to states to curb tailpipe emissions and reduce the effects of climate change. Florida was set to receive $320 million, the third most of any state. The state Department of Transportation began drafting a plan to add trucker parking at rest stops, which staff said could fix the statewide shortage that kept drivers on the road longer, polluting more, as they searched for a place to stop. But last month, the department secretary, Jared Perdue, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation declining participation in the federal program.

'It's time to talk about why deep-sea mining is crucial to the energy transition' (Recharge News)  We are moving from a fossil world to a minerals-based world. By any measure, the mineral sourcing discussion holds profound industrial and geopolitical significance. As a specialist in narrative structure and industrial conversations, three things jump out at me when I look at the current state of the minerals dialogue: 1) we do acknowledge we will need much more, but 2) we don’t talk about where this unfathomable increase should come from, and 3) more specifically the ocean – deep-sea mining – is alarmingly conspicuous by its absence.

As climate warms, that perfect Christmas tree may depend on growers’ ability to adapt (AP News)  Christmas tree breeder Jim Rockis knows what it looks like when one dies long before it can reach a buyer. Rockis farms trees in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where he and other producers often grow their iconic evergreens outside their preferred habitat higher in the mountains. But that can mean planting in soil that’s warmer and wetter — places where a nasty fungal disease called Phytophthora root rot can take hold, sucking moisture away from saplings and causing needles to crisp to burnt orange. “After a while, it just gets to the core of it,” Rockis said. “They just wither away.”

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