Climate Fwd: A week of climate action and inaction

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SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

Welcome to the Climate Fwd: newsletter. The New York Times climate team emails readers once a week with stories and insights about climate change. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. (And find the website version of this week's letter here.)

Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Lucas Jackson/Reuters, Saul Loeb/AFP — Getty Images

By Somini Sengupta

I've covered more speeches over the course of seven United Nations General Assemblies than I can remember. Never have I heard someone speak with such force, such rage, as Greta Thunberg on Monday. She accused the presidents and prime ministers in the room of selling "fairy tales" rather than taking urgent action to avert catastrophic climate change.

Her statement, at special climate summit organized by Secretary General António Guterres, reflected the demands of youth protesters who want big, rich countries and companies to pivot the global economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels.

Just a few days before, on Friday, young people took to the streets en masse in cities big and small, rich and poor. Organizers estimated a global turnout of 4 million, and protests are expected to continue in the coming weeks.

We tracked down young organizers in seven countries to hear what drives them. They spoke not only about how they viewed the risks to their future but how they saw the effects of climate change already in their communities. As a parent, I was most struck by hearing how terrified they were.

Mr. Guterres's climate summit was conceived with a bold call for world leaders to stop building new coal projects — particularly with taxpayer money. Yet some of the biggest champions of coal had a place on the General Assembly stage, along with other fossil fuel promoters.

The summit was intended to showcase countries and companies that are making concrete commitments. But little came from the biggest emitters. China did not say, as many had hoped, that it would reduce its emissions faster. India said nothing about its still-growing pipeline of coal projects. The United States did not speak at all, though President Trump showed up briefly, drawing an icy glare from Ms. Thunberg, who watched him walked past her in the hallway, according to a video that blew up on Twitter.

That gap between the activists and world leaders, it seems, is still wide.

Tyler Varsell

By Susan Shain

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about solar panels. They're a great way to reduce your carbon footprint, but what if you can't afford them? Or what if your landlord likes your building's roof just the way it is? Between half and three-quarters of Americans, according to a report from Wood Mackenzie, can't install solar panels for various reasons: They rent, their roof is shaded, or they can't afford it.

If you can't, or don't want to, install solar panels, there are other options to support solar energy. One is to participate in a community solar project. Although there's a wide range of program models, they all involve "buying into a bigger project and lowering your electric bill," said Nathanael Greene, senior renewable energy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In New York, many community solar projects are subscription based. You subscribe to a certain number of panels at a large array, or solar farm, near you. Those panels send power into the grid, and at the end of the month, you receive two bills: one from the solar farm, and one from your utility company. The bill from your utility includes a credit for the amount of electricity generated by your panels.

Most people see savings of about 10 percent to 15 percent on their electric bills, said Jeff Cramer, executive director of the Coalition for Community Solar Access. And, unlike with rooftop solar, there's no upfront cost.

Sound too good to be true? The catch is that community solar is still in its infancy. While most states have at least one project online, only 19 states and the District of Columbia have enacted community solar legislation, and a smaller number have statewide programs up and running. In total, Mr. Cramer estimated that fewer than 10 percent of Americans have access to community solar.

The easiest way to see if you're one of the lucky few is to search online for solar farms in your region, or find out if your state has a database like New York. If you happen upon a project with space, Steph Speirs, co-founder of community solar organization Solstice, advised examining the contract duration, cancellation fees and projected savings before signing up.

Or, if you're a property owner or community organizer, you could try to start your own solar project, perhaps seeking help from nonprofit groups like Groundswell and GRID Alternatives.

"Finding ways to get the cleanest electricity is critical to fighting the climate crisis," Mr. Greene said. "The money we spend on our electricity should try to move the whole system toward a cleaner mix."

By Christopher Flavelle

Anyone seeking signs of hope during climate week may have felt some relief on Sunday, when dozens of large companies pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. But a closer look shows that promise to be looser than it might seem.

The pledge gives each company two years to submit to the United Nations and its partners a target for reducing emissions. The pace of cuts is largely discretionary: The organizers want average annual reductions of 4.2 percent each year, but signatories can take as long as 15 years to reach that point. The only fixed number is net-zero emissions by 2050.

At many of the companies that signed this week's pledge, greenhouse gas emissions appear to be moving in the wrong direction. According to data from CDP, a British-based nonprofit group that collects environmental data from companies around the world and is one of the organizers of the pledge, emissions reported by some signatories have increased by 50 percent or more since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

When contacted by The New York Times, many of those companies noted that there are different ways to measure emissions. That's true, and those accounting choices can often make the difference between reporting an increase and a decrease. And methodologies change over time, making it difficult for those outside companies to track their progress.

Finally, there is no legal requirement that companies keep their word. Lise Kingo, head of the United Nations Global Compact, which helped coordinate the pledge, said she was confident they would nonetheless carry through.

"No sensible company would make such a commitment without having an honest intention to honor it," Ms. Kingo said. "The reputational downside of just ignoring this commitment would be so big."

Yet companies have ignored such commitments before. At the United Nations climate summit five years ago, a similar coalition of companies agreed to eliminate deforestation from their supply chains by 2020, in what became known as the New York Declaration on Forests. It's clear now that the effort will be a failure, according to Bruno Sarda, the North America head of CDP.

"There's only a fraction of companies that have demonstrated enough progress toward these targets to have any chance of hitting them," Mr. Sarda said. Some of the same companies that signed the deforestation pledge also signed this week's pledge to reduce emissions.

Still, he said he hoped this time would be different: As climate change gets worse, so does the risk to businesses that do nothing. "The motivation seems to be sincere," Mr. Sarda said. "The proof will be in the pudding."

Greetings! A couple of readers wrote last week to point out a detail in our item on green energy providers that wasn't quite right. We said that Oregon had a deregulated energy market. Well, it does. But only partly deregulated. That means that, while electricity choice is available to some commercial and industrial consumers, it's not available to residential customers. We should've put more energy into checking. Have a great week.

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