Overnight Equilibrium/Sustainability — Animals ‘shape-shift’ to cope with climate change

Today is Wednesday. Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. Subscribe here: digital-staging.thehill.com/newsletter-signup. 

Climate change has been so tough on the global animal population that some birds and small mammals are resorting to “shape-shifting,” according to The Conversation. 

No, these animals are neither consuming Harry Potter’s Polyjuice Potion nor engaging in any other mode of mythological sorcery. Rather, species are altering the size of their ears, tails, beaks and other appendages in an evolutionary effort to cool their bodies down more quickly, a team of scientists from Australia’s Deakin University has found. 

The most documented examples of shape-shifting involves birds: Beak sizes of gang-gang cockatoos and red-rumped parrots have increased between 4 and 10 percent since 1871, according to the scientists. But mammals are also changing — the wing size of the great roundleaf bat, for example, has increased by 1.64 percent since 1950, the team determined. 

“The pattern is widespread, and suggests climate warming may result in fundamental changes to animal form,” the researchers wrote. 

Today we’ll look at some such fundamental changes that humans need to make to combat the climate crisis, according to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. And then we’ll explore a pitch by the oilfield services industry to recast itself for the transition off fossil fuels.

For Equilibrium, we are Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Please send tips or comments to Saul at selbein@digital-staging.thehill.com or Sharon at sudasin@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @saul_elbein and @sharonudasin. 

Let’s get to it.

Kerry says world is ‘doomed’ unless 20 nations take climate action 

President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry says that unless the world’s top 20 worst emitters do not take “bold action” to tackle the climate crisis, the global environment will reach a point of no return.

“There are 20 countries that are responsible for about 80 percent of all the emissions in the world, and if those countries are not doing enough, the rest of the world is doomed by their actions — or lack of actions, as the case may be,” he said on Wednesday. 

Kerry was addressing participants in a high-level dialogue with Latin American leaders, who gathered to express their commitments on climate action ahead of this fall’s COP-26 United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow.

Strengthening renewables in the Americas: Praising the “entrepreneurial spirit” of Latin American countries, Kerry pledged that the Biden administration would boost U.S. financial assistance for renewable energy initiatives across the Americas.

“Today, I’m able to announce that we have plans to scale up our assistance for the renewable energy for Latin America and the Caribbean — a regional effort led by President Duque of Colombia — in order to increase renewable energy capacity to at least 70 percent across the region by 2030,” Kerry said.

How does the U.S. plan to do this? By not only scaling up investments in Latin American and Caribbean renewable energy projects, but also mobilizing public finance to help reduce emissions from forests and restore ecosystems in the region, according to Kerry.

The administration, he explained, is working with six major U.S. banks that have collectively promised an investment floor of $4.16 trillion in global climate adaptation efforts over the next decade. These funds will supplement those of asset managers, private investors and philanthropists, he added. 

“We have the ability to put finance on the table,” Kerry said. “What we need is the political decisions made in order to make this happen.”

REACHING A ‘TIPPING POINT’

Beyond making pledges: Kerry, arguing that many corners of the globe — including the Arctic, the Antarctic and the world’s coral reefs — have already reached a “tipping point” that is “irreversible,” called for countries not only to make pledges but also “to accelerate the implementation of those actions.”

“This is the moment,” he said. “We need the major economies, the 20 nations that constitute the 80 percent, to step up, and we need to lay out clear plans for what we will do.”

According to the intergovernmental International Energy Agency, the top 20 emitters as of 2018 were China, the U.S., India, Russia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Iran, Canada, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, Turkey, the U.K., Italy, Poland and France. 

‘Simple mathematics and physics’: Looking back at the 2015 U.N. Climate Conference in Paris, Kerry argued that country commitments to hold the temperature increase “well below 2 degrees” are inadequate and that 1.5 degrees must be the target. Nonetheless, he continued, only 55 percent of global economies have committed to taking measures that would help facilitate this goal at Biden’s Leaders’ Climate Summit in April, he said. 

Even if each country met the individual commitments made in the Obama-era Paris climate accord, Kerry explained, the temperature increase would “still be well over 3 degrees.”

“It is not a matter of politics, it is not a matter of ideology — it is simple mathematics and physics,” he added. 

Click here to read the full story.

 

The oil industry wants your clean energy dollars

The oilfield services industry — the industry that provides everything from drilling pads to fracking rigs — is trying to rebrand itself for the era of clean energy. 

“They’re becoming energy agnostic,” Leslie Beyer of the Energy Workforce and Technology Council told Equilibrium.

The question is whether this is simply public relations — or a serious business push.

First steps: Oilfield services are the businesses that assist the actual oil and gas companies with everything involved in pulling oil out of the ground, from road construction to building offshore drilling platforms.

That puts them in a slightly better position than, say, ExxonMobil to transition into the age of clean energy, said Tyson Slocum, who runs the energy program at Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. The services companies like Haliburton weren’t as politically involved in pushing climate denial, Slocum said, and “they don’t have capital investment tied up to [fossil fuel] production.”

That’s what Beyer says they want to do: “A company that’s been engaged in hydraulic fracturing is uniquely suited for geothermal” energy, Beyer said. “Or you could have offshore wind, in the case of a rig company.”

She also pointed to work that the industry has done in cleaning up methane leaks from natural gas drilling.

This is what investors want to hear: Jeff McDermott of Greentech Capital Advisors — which consults on clean-energy mergers and acquisitions — says the energy transition is impossible without the active participation of oil and gas companies. 

“They have an essential role,” he said, attributing this importance to their expertise in wide arrays of technology and manufacturing. He argued that these skill sets could be adapted to products like green hydrogen and bioplastics, envisioning a world in which Shell or Chevron — and their contractors — would follow the lead of NextEra or Orsted to become “green supermajors.”

HOW GREEN DO ENERGY SERVICES WANT TO BE?

A looming choice: With the U.S. continuing to produce about 11 million barrels of oil a day, according to the Energy Information Agency, Slocum of Public Citizen welcomed any emissions cuts the industry can offer.

But the oil and gas industry has a decadesold pattern of fighting regulations and then — if those regulations are imposed — using them to their advantage as a public relations strategy, Slocum explained. This occurs through tactics like boasting about subsequent emissions reductions and then using those cuts to lobby for further American oil production and subsidies that squeeze out renewables.

Incumbents v. disruptors: “It’s not the first time an incumbent industry has been faced with the dilemma of a disruptive technology,” Slocum said. “Well, renewables are the disruptors, oil and gas are the incumbent.” 

Oil and gas must choose whether to “embrace the disruptive technology” by integrating it into their business models, or oppose it with their “accumulated years of political and economic capital to erect artificial barriers to slow or stop the technological disruption from deploying,” according to Slocum.

A choice: So far, Slocum said, the oil industry has overwhelmingly done the latter. McDermott, from Greentech Capital Advisors, noted that this choice has put them in a precarious position: The faster that decarbonization happens, the likelier their assets are to end up “stranded” in technology no one wants — which means they have incentive to slow the transition as well as to jump on board.

A roadmap to success: Still, Slocum said, there is a pathway to transition, if the oil industry wants it: the car industry, which finally embraced electric vehicles after its disruption by Tesla. Under that assault, he explained, “they disrupted themselves.”

“It’s a remarkable moment — and a teachable one for oil and gas,” Slocum said. “Making yourself relevant for the net-zero transition can’t be led by the PR team. It has to be led by the core initiatives of how the CEO and management are directing capital.”

Wednesday Warnings

In which we look at words of caution driving people to action and others that are being ignored. 

Biden calls ‘code red’ on climate during NYC, NJ tour

• President Biden warned that Hurricane Ida’s destructive impacts were evidence of a world “in peril” from climate change and stressed a need for drastic action during a visit to New York City and New Jersey on Tuesday, The New York Times reported. 
• “They all tell us this is code red,” he said at a stop in Queens. 
• Biden’s trip served to demonstrate his commitment to a federal government storm response, as well as promote his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan. During the trip, the administration also sent Congress a request for $14 billion to help with recovery from natural disasters that occurred before Ida, The Hill reported.

Northeast braces for more severe weather, floods, tornadoes

• Just a week after Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on the Northeast, the region is bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Larry, which was “churning near Bermuda” as of Wednesday morning, the New York Post reported. 
• The National Weather Service warned of severe thunderstorms and flash flooding beginning late Wednesday, with tornadoes in store for parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania — which collectively battled seven tornadoes during last week’s storm, according to the Post. 
• Meteorologists have confirmed more tornadoes in the last three years than in the entire past few decades of record-keeping in the Philadelphia and New Jersey areas, NBC10 Philadelphia reported.

‘Warning fatigue’: when sending a message may not be enough 

• When Ida swamped New York and New Jersey last week, the National Weather Service sent out four warnings urging people to “stay out of rising floodwaters,” The Associated Press (AP) reported. 
• Despite that, almost three dozen people drowned in basement apartments and roadways, leading experts to wonder if people suffered from “warning fatigue” that made them feel “too inundated with information to take the threat seriously.”
• But the threat may have also been so new that no one knew what to do, Irwin Redlener of Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness told the AP.
• “If we have warnings that we’re going to see very severe, rapid rainfall with flash flooding, what is it that we actually want people to do?” he asked. “Do we want them to go to shelters? If so, do we have shelters for them to go?”

Please visit The Hill’s sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you on Thursday.