The Year Our Climate Crisis Got Even More Real – Mother Jones

Elroy Valadez, firefighter, sets a spot fire near South Lake Tahoe in September 2. Jae C. Hong/AP

This story was first published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

JANUARY

The year began with a Counting the damage after the catastrophic extreme weather events of 2020, from fires to floods. California is the only country that can be seen. More than doubleIts previous wildfire record was more than 4.1 Million acres. NASA concluded that 2020 was the hottest year ever. It was close behind 2016 by the UK Met Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And 2021—the year that would see the crucial UN climate summit held in Glasgow in November—was not showing signs of being much better. Africa experienced its warmest January ever recorded. Malaysia was hit by torrential rainsThis caused the evacuation of 50,000 people to be evacuated and the death of at most six. There were also fears in Turkey that Istanbul would run dry of water. The most severe drought in a decade.

However, there were small steps towards progress on other fronts. Joe Biden became president in just hours. Announced that the US would be rejoining the Paris agreement. StoreDot, an Israeli company, announced that car batteries that could be fully charged in five minutes had been produced in a Chinese factory for the first time.

In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis and we can’t wait any longer. We see it with our own eyes, we feel it, we know it in our bones, and it’s time to act. —Joe Biden

In the UK, there was an unusual plan to reintroduce whitetail eagles to their east. Farmers lead the way, who said they wanted to “inspire people with nature and drive wider nature recovery.”

FEBRUARY

The internationally renowned scientist James Hansen waded into the UK’s row over plans for a new coal mine in Cumbria, saying it showed “contemptuous disregard for the future of young people.” A few days earlier, nine activists had announced that they were in a tunnel under London’s Euston station, dug secretly beneath a tent, in order to protest against the high-speed rail link the UK government was in the process of building.

A historic wave of winter weather hit the eastern US and Texas, with nearly 10 million people without power at the storm’s peak, and Millions without water after pipes burst; it was later assessed to have been the most Winter storms can be very costly event on record.

A remarkable rewilding effort in Indonesia has been conducted 10 orangutans rescued were returned to the wild. Helicopters were used for transporting the critically endangered apes deep in the forest.

Scientists in Madagascar discovered what is believed be the The smallest reptile found on Earth. Brookesia NanaThe nano-chameleon ”Chameleon” is a tiny, 13.5mm long, nano-chameleon.

New York was lit up with news Dolphins were at play in the East River—validation of a long-term clean-up of the river which had cost the city $45 million. Further north, in the Midway Atoll wildlife refuge in the North Pacific, the “oldest wild bird in history,” 70-year-old Wisdom the Laysan albatross, hatched another chick. Wisdom, who was banded by Chandler Robbins in 1956, has lived out many of its partners (albatrosses typically mate for the rest of their lives).

Australia is located on the opposite side of the globe. horrendous floods ravaged the areaMany were forced to flee rising waters of New South Wales, while the insurance industry was facing millions of dollars in claims. The same region was also fighting A mouse plagueThe footage includes horrifying footage of the ground moving during rodents’ rule.

Deb Haaland was the first American woman to be confirmed. indigenous cabinet secretaryShe took over the environment department. The world witnessed a huge increase in renewable energy. China announced that it had built wind farm with a Amazing total capacity of almost 100 GW in 2020—an increase of nearly 60 percent on 2019. Climate Action 100, The launch of the first ever benchmark for tracking corporate progress on climate change, found that only a handful of the big polluters were taking serious action.

A landmark legal decision by the German supreme constitutional court found that the government’s climate protection measures were insufficient to protect future generations. The government promised it would take action on what one of the young activists who had brought the case called “a huge win for the climate movement.” In the UK meanwhile, the coroner who oversaw the sad case of a young girl, Ella Kissi-Debrah, who died after an asthma attack in 2013, Publication of a report which called for the lowering of legally binding maximum levels of particulate air pollution in the UK.

In the US, there is a two-day summit about climate change Promises were made to keep them in lineAll sides, including one from America, to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% by 2030. The country also promised to double its financial aid to assist other countries in achieving their goals. “Is it enough? No,” said John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, who Had previously struck a dealChina to cooperate on climate change. “But it’s the best we can do today and proves we can start to move.”

However, the shifts were made against the backdrop of a worrying development. Scientists concluded thatThe warm Atlantic current, which was linked to abrupt and severe changes in the climate in past, is now at its weakest point in at least 1,600 year. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is the name of this current.

China has huge sandstorms The skies have changed over Beijing Yellow for many days, while Cyclone Seroja brought heavy rain and strong winds to Western Australia, with some locations seeing their highest ever daily rainfall.

May

A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch ShellThe unprecedented ruling will have profound implications for the energy industry as well as other polluting multinationals. It will require the country to reduce its global carbon emission by 45 percent by 2030. The landmark report Net Zero by 2050 was published by the International Energy Agency. It stated that development and exploitation are interrelated. of new oil and gas fields would have to stop this year, and no new coal-fired power stations could be built if the world wanted to stay within safe limits of global heating and meet the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

During this time, the Australian federal court ruled that the environment minister was guilty. Sussan Ley had a duty to care to protect young people from the climate crisis, in what lawyers said was “the first time in the world” such a duty of care had been recognized.

France’s minister of ecological transition delighted and shocked people with the announcement of a new climate law Would omit meat from the menu once a week in schools.

Turkey was hit by “sea snot”—a blanket of mucus-like stuff that was silting up the coasts, created as a result of warm temperatures and agricultural run-off that encouraged phytoplankton to grow. California was the exception. Rainy season: short and lateThe governor declared an Impending drought emergency in 41 of 58 counties.

June

The west coast was hit with one of the most intense and destructive heatwaves that North America has ever seen. It lasted for more than a month. Caused by what meteorologists called a “dome of high pressure,” the heatwave extended from California—worsening the drought even as the first wildfires of the season began—all the way up to Canada, where temperatures rose up to 121.3 F, shattering all previous records. “This is the beginning of a permanent emergency,” Governor of Washington State said.

There are also other parts of the globe It was scorching!. Europe and Asia had their second-warmest Junes, while Africa was the warmest.

However, efforts to fight back were not stopped. Poland declared that it would shut down Bełchatów, Europe’s most polluting power plant (although only in 2036). The City of London stated it would be Making a heat network and drilling boreholes for one of the UK’s largest low-carbon heating systems.

After the MV X-Press Pearl, Sri Lanka was prepared for disaster. Ships carrying toxic chemicalsThe sank after it caught fire off the coast. In the meantime China was fixing on a herd of elephants that had trekked 300 miles into the city of Kunming.

July

The average global surface temperature in July was The hottest since recordsThe first recorded temperature was 130 F in Death Valley, California in 1880.

As the US heatwaves grew worsened and droughts worsened America, India, China, Europe were being affected by catastrophic floods. Torrential downpours on India’s west coast led to 115 deaths, while Henan province in China saw a year’s worth of rain—604 mm—in a single day. Horrifying videos showed the waters rising in subways, while hundreds of thousands were forced to evacuate. When it became clear that there was a sewage backup, Germany saw rows break out. Flood early warning system had failed to work, after torrents of rainwater tore through villages and towns, leaving more than a hundred people dead.

Nevertheless, the Australian government continued to function. To resist attempts to have the Great Barrier Reef declared “in danger,” with local politicians saying they feared for the impact the declaration would have on jobs. In the UK, the water company Southern Water was fined a record £90 million (about $121 million) after a six-year investigation found evidence that it had deliberately poured untreated sewage into the sea in order to avoid the cost of upgrading infrastructure.

To top off a dark month for the planet: New data was shownResearchers found that Greenland’s melting was rapid, with enough ice disappearing in a single day to cover Florida in 5cm of water.

August

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave the world its most dire warning yet. Climate change was unambiguously identified caused by human activities, and warning that some of the impacts were now inevitable and “irreversible”.

Wildfires erupted in the face of increasing heat. The Mediterranean, where the Greek prime minister described them as the country’s “greatest ecological disaster in decades,” and across more than 9 million hectares of forests in Siberia.

Japan was hit by floods, landslides and other natural disasters. Where more than a Million people were evacuated from their homes, and also Turkey, Colombia, and Tennessee in America, where a record-breaking deluge swept through homes and roads. Rain fell at the highest point on the Greenland Ice Sheet This is the first time. on record.

A Swedish company shipped the world’s first customer delivery of “green steel”—made without using coal—as solar power outstripped coal in Australia for the first-time when, for a fleeting moment, more electricity was generated by solar power.

Extinction Rebellion in the UK reacted to the news by blocking London Bridge and Oxford Circus and pouring red paint into entrances at the City of London. They also locked themselves outside the Science Museum due to its sponsorship deal with Shell.

September

“Blah blah blah”Greta Thunberg described the global leaders’ promises to address climate change as “the promises made by the world’s leaders.” She pointed out that carbon emissions are still on track for rising 16 percent by 2030. Cop26 was nearing, and politicians around the world were feeling more pressure to improve their offers, following the summer of record-breaking floods, heatwaves, and fires. A US/EU deal Reduced methane emissions seemed like a positive contribution.

A new protest movement was launched in the UK. as Insulate Britain demonstrators began sitting on motorways to demand climate action in the form of insulation for the country’s housing stock. As preparations for the event accelerated in Scotland, One man built an Ark on a hillside, telling the planning committee when it asked if it was a permanent structure: “It’s not permanent in the same way that humanity won’t be if we don’t take action on the climate.”

A new dataset revealed that the wildfires themselves were causing the fires, which was a cruel irony. Record-breaking news amounts of carbon dioxide. During this time, the world was experiencing an energy crisis. In Europe, gas prices were at record highs and there was pressure on. Electricity and coal supplies in China.

October

China Kunming hosted the Kunming Conference on biodiversity and announcement of a $233 Million fund to protect biodiversity in developing nations.

To coordinate the relationship between nature and man, we will use the example of the creation of an ecological civilisation. —Xi Jinping

Just days before Cop26, Australia, a country most known for its opposition to climate action, published its plan on how it would reduce carbon emissions. it was called “a scam” It does not include any modeling or detail.

However, there were signs of change elsewhere, with a number of plans being announced at the Summit of the Middle East Green Initiative, led by the United Arab Emirates which will be hosting Cop28 in two years’ time.

The Tesla was the first electric vehicle. First ever battery powered car to top Europe’s sales chart. The UK government was forced to take a Near rebellion to U.-turn and place a duty on water companies to reduce sewage discharges.

One senator in the US gained international notoriety: Joe Manchin (a conservative Democrat). He was resisting his party’s demands for massive cuts to President Biden’s climate change plans. It looked for a moment like Biden would have had to travel to Cop26 with no legislative progress at home.

NOVEMBER

Cop26 was under way at last, after two years of pandemic, delays, worries, criticisms and negotiations. The first two days saw world leaders gather and were exhorted by David Attenborough to be “motivated by hope rather than fear.” Biden would at least see his infrastructure bill passed, but the UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, put a dampener on events by making his speech and then hopping into a private jet to make the short journey to London.

The first week was filled with deals methane, deforestationThe ambition to – coal Keep it to 1.5 C warming and finance, with hundreds of the world’s biggest banks and pension funds with assets worth $130 trillion committing themselves to limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

By the end of the second week of hard negotiation, the summit’s president, Alok Sharma, had cajoled countries into a deal including a ratchet mechanism that asked every country to upgrade its emission reduction plans in time for the next Cop in Egypt in a year’s time, and each year thereafter. Many were disappointed that the deal did NOT include the loss and damage mechanism that most countries had requested, to help developing nations pay for the effects of the climate crisis.

Beyond the summit British Columbia is hit by rainstorms in Canada, earlier battered by the summer’s heatwaves, broke up roads and led to a state of emergency.

One of the most rare animals in the world was spotted out in the oceans: the octopus. Mythical white Sperm WhaleThe waters off Jamaica are home to the elusive, which can be seen rising for a second.

December

In the middle of the year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced the abolition of the Month it hadRecognized a new Arctic temperature record: Verkhoyansk in Russia had reached an all-time high 100.4 F in the summer 2020.

Floods devastated Queensland, Australia with up to 180mm rain Some people fall in 24 hours parts of the state. Storm Arwen, Storm Barra and Storm Arwen both struck the UK. Heavy rains Fallen in IraqThis can lead to severe flooding and displacement. Tornadoes also ravaged North America, with at most 70 deaths in Kentucky. What was described as the “most devastating tornado event” in the state’s history, only to be followed, by the end of the month, by Record-breaking temperatures and snowfall.

EO Wilson, who was killed December 26He had warned many times that humans couldn’t continue to use the resources and land of the planet the way they did. The biologist was often caught up in controversy during his career. Nevertheless, his warning that “we live in a delusional state” if we do not understand the burden that the western way of life imposes on Earth, rings true even now.

If all humanity were to vanish, the world would revert to the rich equilibrium it was 10,000 years ago. The environment would be destroyed if all insects vanished. —EO Wilson