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The Solar Industry’s Christmas Miracle

by LeeGetz986282874 Posted on December 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

We all know the hallmarks of the classic business-themed Christmas movie. A good, well-meaning executive faces some tough business fundamentals as the holiday season approaches. Unexpected events deepen the gloom. But just in time for Christmas, a miracle arrives from on high, ensuring peace, prosperity, and happiness for years to come.

It’s a Wonderful Life? Yes. But it’s also the story of solar companies in the past few months. In November, things were looking bleak for the renewable energy sector at large and for solar companies in particular. The sector has been booming since 2009. The price of installing solar panels has come down sharply as scale has risen, new business models have hastened the spread of the technology, and giant companies are entering contracts to buy huge volumes of renewable energy. But none of that would have been possible without 1) the special federal tax breaks and credits for owners of solar panels, and 2) abundant capital seeking returns in a world of extraordinarily low interest rates. And in the second half of 2015, the investment thesis that kept solar stocks burning bright began to dim.

The solar investment tax credit—in which owners of solar-panel systems get a 30 percent tax credit—was always meant to be temporary and is set to expire next year. The Republicans in Congress generally favor fossil fuels over renewables, generally oppose anything President Obama is for, and deny the need to deal with climate change. So as fall settled in, investors began to focus on the fact that by the end of 2016, the solar investment tax credit of 30 percent would fall to 10 percent for commercial systems and disappear entirely for home-based systems.

Another problem: Renewable energy is as much about financial engineering as it is about electrical engineering. For solar to work, investors had to believe that the structures rigged up to build solar would stand up over time. In recent years, energy companies had hived off renewable energy projects into special, publicly traded vehicles—yieldcos—that were supposed to pay dividends. But many of them failed to deliver expected results. Worse, the attractiveness of such fixed-income investments stands in inverse relation to the interest rates available elsewhere. And with the Federal Reserve telegraphing an interest rate increase in December, investors began to flee yieldcos.

Finally, the entire renewable industry depends to a large degree on the zeitgeist. When the world is in a green mood, when it looks like there will be a widespread, coordinated effort to combat climate change, investors get psyched about solar. When it appears that the will for collective action is fading, investors get the blahs. And throughout October and November, it was common to hear observers argue that the much-bruited Paris conference was going to be a bust, that it would deadlock over conflicts between rich and poor nations.

There’s a cruelty and ruthlessness to the markets, which can provide a fire hose of capital on Monday only to shut it off entirely on Tuesday. And that’s what began to happen in November. Stock markets are famously futures markets, and forward-looking investors suddenly didn’t like what they were seeing in the future. The stock of SunEdison, the self-proclaimed “largest global renewable energy development company,” fell from a high of $31.50 in July to a low of $2.86 on Nov. 19—a loss of 91 percent. The stock helped sandbag the performance of well-known hedge fund manager David Einhorn, whose sale of a big chunk of SunEdison stock helped increase the melancholy. Analysts began to question the company’s liquidity, which is poison for a company with lots of debt. SolarCity, the giant rooftop-panel installer founded by Elon Musk and his cousins, saw its stock fall from $62 in May to $25 in early November, a decline of about 59 percent.

Like George Bailey, investors and executives at solar companies were essentially teetering on the bridge outside of town.

And then a series of miracles happened. On December 12, the Paris climate talks concluded with an unexpectedly strong agreement among countries to attempt to limit emissions. The US publicly recommitted to green policies, and a large number of giant, influential global companies signed on to an initiative to get 100 percent of their energy from renewable sources. Investors began to reconsider their pessimism.

Next, Washington delivered—defying the conventional wisdom. Newly installed House Speaker Paul Ryan realized that he’d have to negotiate with congressional Democrats if he wanted to get a budget and tax deal before the end of the year. And as they came to the table, another miracle happened: The Democrats held fast. On December 14, Democrats indicated they would be willing to support the Republican-backed effort to lift the ban on oil exports—but only if the Republicans would consent to measures including a multiyear extension of renewable energy credits. It worked. Last Friday, Congress voted to extend the 30 percent solar investment tax credit through 2019, and then to reduce it to 10 percent through 2022.

That move instantly made the US solar industry viable for another six years. Investors were elated. SolarCity’s stock popped as details of the budget agreement began to emerge and then soared on its announcement. By Friday, the stock was above $56, up about 117 percent from its November low. SunEdison’s stock closed on Friday at $6.51, up 127 percent in a month. The Guggenheim Solar ETF is up about 30 percent from Nov. 19 through last Friday.

God bless us, everyone.

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The Solar Industry’s Christmas Miracle

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The Republican Primary Just Got a Little Less Sane

by KatricePurdy Posted on December 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Elephant: Jeff Cameron Collingwood/Shutterstock; gif by James West/Climate Desk

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham suspended his presidential campaign on Monday. And just like that, the Republican nomination battle got a little less sane when it comes to climate change.

You might be wondering how that’s even possible. After all, the leading Republican candidate—Donald Trump—thinks global warming is a “hoax.” Ted Cruz insists the planet hasn’t warmed in 18 years. Marco Rubio says he doesn’t believe “that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” Ben Carson argues that there’s “no overwhelming science” that people are altering the climate. And Jeb Bush once described himself as a climate “skeptic.”

Graham had a very different view. “You don’t have to believe that climate change is real,” he said during a GOP debate in October. “I have been to the Antarctic. I have been to Alaska. I am not a scientist, and I’ve got the grades to prove it. But I’ve talked to the climatologists of the world, and 90 percent of them are telling me the greenhouse gas effect is real, that we’re heating up the planet.”

Graham has also worked for actual climate action. He once helped draft a cap-and-trade bill designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions (though he eventually abandoned his own legislation.) More recently, however, Graham opposed President Barack Obama’s signature EPA regulations that limit power plant emissions. And climate action was in no way central to his campaign for the White House. Instead, he focused largely on hawkish foreign policy proposals and on calling Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.”

Still, Graham has been one of the few Republicans with a national platform to articulate a conservative view on climate change that acknowledges both the scientific realities and the obvious need for action. “I just want a solution that would be good for the economy, that doesn’t destroy it,” he said during that debate.

Graham’s campaign had been struggling to gain traction. He was averaging just 0.5 percent in the polls, according to Real Clear Politics. He never made it onto the main stage of a GOP debate, and he was even excluded from one of the undercard debates. Now, Graham’s few supporters will have to find a new candidate. If they are looking for someone who has a reasonable position on the climate issue, their choices will be pretty limited. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and businesswoman Carly Fiorina all seem to accept the science these days, but they don’t want to do much about the problem.

That leaves former New York Gov. George Pataki, who spearheaded the creation of a regional cap-and-trade system and has blasted the climate change denial that dominates his party. He’s currently polling at 0.2 percent.

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The Republican Primary Just Got a Little Less Sane

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Can the Paris Climate Deal Save This Tiny Pacific Island?

by Jana9324cuf Posted on December 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

You’ve probably never heard of Nauru. But you might want to learn its name. It may not be around much longer.

Nauru is a speck in the South Pacific. It’s the tiniest island nation and the third smallest nation in the world. At roughly 8 square miles and with just over 10,000 residents, Nauru isn’t exactly a political heavyweight on the world stage. But Nauru is sinking, drying out, and generally in peril due to the ever-accelerating effects of climate change. And it may spark a debate at the Paris climate talks currently underway about what to do with populations on the verge of becoming climate refugees with literally nowhere to go.

Nauru is not your typical drowning-island scenario. What used to be a Pacific island oasis is now, by many accounts, a physical example of how quickly paradise can be destroyed. In the early 1900s, a German company began strip-mining the interior of the island for phosphate, the main component of agricultural fertilizer. Then came Japan, which occupied the country during World War II, and continued the phosphate mining. The U.S. bombed Japan’s airstrip on Nauru in 1943, preventing food supplies from entering the island. Less than a year later, Japan deported 1,200 Nauruans to work as forced laborers on a nearby island—only 737 of them survived the ordeal to be repatriated after the war just three years later. After the war, Australia took control of the country, and phosphate mining resumed as an Australian enterprise, before mining rights were transferred to Nauru when the nation became independent in 1968.

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For more than three decades after that, Nauruans enjoyed the second highest per-capita GDP of any nation in the world. Western food arrived on the island, where topsoil is scant and little food is grown locally. Now, “instant noodles, soda and anything in a tin” are the staple foods on Nauru, according to NPR. Rates of Type 2 diabetes are high, and until recently, Nauru held the title of the nation with the highest obesity rate. Nearly 40 percent of Nauruan men are obese, four times the global average.

But in the early 2000s, the phosphate ran out. By that time, 80 percent of the sland’s land area had been strip-mined. In a This American Life report from 2002, journalist Jack Hitt described peering into the interior of the island as “one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen.”

“Almost all of Nauru is missing, picked clean, right down to the coral skeleton supporting the island…it’s all blindingly white,” he said.

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Today, almost all of Nauru’s economy is based on foreign assistance and income generated by a controversial Australian detention center, sometimes referred to “Australia’s Guantanamo,” used to detain refugees seeking asylum in Australia. Refugees from Syria, Iraq, and other war-torn nations have been held there for years under what critics say are harsh conditions; the center has sparked a human rights debate in Australia.

Meanwhile, the complete destruction of the island’s interior has severely limited Nauruans’ ability to adapt in the face of climate change. People can only live on a thin strip around the perimeter, which means, unlike many other island nations, there’s nowhere to move to even temporarily avoid sea level rise, explains Koko Warner, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report and an expert on climate change-related human migration. According to a survey of Nauruans she and colleague Andrea Milan recently conducted for United Nations University, 40 percent of households on the island say they’ve already experienced sea level rise in the last ten years.

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Nauruans’ precarious coastal living makes them uniquely vulnerable to extreme storms, which scientists predict climate change will make make more severe in the region. “A one-degree change in the path of the cyclone could make all the difference,” Warner says.

Nauru’s other big problem is drought. The country has no clean groundwater nor does it have any lakes or rivers to supply freshwater, according to Warner and Milan’s report. The rainy seasons have become irregular, and more than half of Nauruans say they’re concerned about drought.

What does that mean for the future of Nauru? “In the coming five-to- 10 years, barring a massive cyclone, life will probably continue more or less the same. But pushing beyond 10 years, real uncertainty arises,” Warner says. One thing is certain: Without freshwater stores, and without the ability to migrate within their own country, Nauruans will have to go somewhere; 30 percent of the island’s population, according to Warner’s survey, say they’d likely migrate if drought, sea level rise, and flooding worsens.

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Already, the neighboring island nation of Kiribati has leased land on Fiji in anticipation that its residents will become climate change refugees. Nauru hasn’t followed in Kiribati’s footsteps—and only one quarter of Nauruans say they have the financial means to make migration possible themselves.

“Without improved access to international migration, some Nauruans will be ‘trapped’ by worsening environmental conditions, declining well-being and no opportunity to either migrate or generate income necessary for adapting,” Warner and Milan wrote. There must be a way, Warner says, for a country to learn how to best make migration possible, and there must be an international structure in place for such a country to seek funding for it.

But the impact of a warming planet on human migration needs were, until recently, largely absent from international climate change talks, Warner says. Now, nations are beginning to pay attention: The European Commission’s webpage for the Paris climate talks, for example, calls it a “crisis in the making,” noting that the “greatest single impact” of climate change “could be on human migration, with millions of people displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and agricultural disruption.”

It remains to be seen if the final document to come out of the Paris talks—expected to emerge Saturday—will include language that addresses migration, but Warner is hopeful. “‘Human mobility,'” she says. “The words need to be in there.”

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Can the Paris Climate Deal Save This Tiny Pacific Island?

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America Is the Biggest Problem at the Climate Talks

by CindiChristianso Posted on December 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

From reading reports in the press—and hearing complaints from Republicans always looking for an excuse to do nothing about climate change—you might get the sense that developing countries are the impediment to reaching a strong climate agreement in Paris. Traditionally the subject of such handwringing was China, but as it has grown richer it has become more proactive about fighting climate change, so the new scapegoat is India.

On Monday, a New York Times headline declared that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “could make or break Obama’s climate legacy,” while a Wall Street Journal headline said that India is “a focus of the Paris climate talks.” The Times wrote, “Indian negotiators have publicly staked out an uncompromising position.”

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America Is the Biggest Problem at the Climate Talks

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A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

by GayAbdullah Posted on November 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, roughly 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists will descend on an airport in the northern Paris suburbs for the biggest meeting on climate change since at least 2009—or maybe ever. The summit is organized by the United Nations and is primarily aimed at producing an agreement that will serve as the world’s blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of global warming. This is a major milestone in the climate change saga, and it has been in the works for years. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s going on at this summit, exactly? At the heart of the summit are the core negotiations, which are off-limits to the public and journalists. Like any high-stakes diplomatic summit, representatives of national governments will sit in a big room and parse through pages of text, word by word. The final document will actually be a jigsaw puzzle of two separate pieces. The most important part is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These are commitments made individually by each country about how they plan to reduce their carbon footprints. The United States, for example, has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Nearly every country on Earth has submitted an INDC, together covering about 95 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. (You can explore them in detail here.) The video above, from Climate Desk partner Grist, has a good rundown of how this all really works.

The INDCs will be plugged in to a core agreement, the final text of which will be hammered out during the negotiations. It will likely include language about how wealthy nations should help pay for poor nations’ efforts to adapt to climate change; how countries should revise and strengthen their commitments over time; and how countries can critically evaluate each other’s commitments. While the INDCs are unlikely to be legally binding (that is, a country could change its commitment without international repercussions), certain elements of the core agreement may be binding. There’s some disagreement between the United States and Europe over what the exact legal status of this document will be. A formal treaty would need the approval of the Republican-controlled US Senate, which is almost certainly impossible. It’s more likely that President Barack Obama will sign off on the document as an “executive agreement,” which doesn’t need to go through Congress.

Meanwhile, outside the negotiating room, thousands of business leaders, state and local officials, activists, scientists, and others will carry out a dizzying array of side events, press conferences, workshops, etc. It’s basically going to be a giant party for the world’s climate nerds.

But what about the terrorist attacks in Paris? Of course, all of this will be happening while the French capital is still reeling from the bombings and shootings that left 129 dead on November 13. Shortly after the attacks, French officials affirmed that the summit would still happen. But it will be tightly controlled, with loads of additional security measures. As my colleague James West has reported, many of the major rallies and marches that activists had planned will be canceled at the behest of French authorities. So the festive aspects of the summit are likely to be toned way down, with attention focused just on the formal events needed to complete the agreement. The summit could also direct a lot of attention to the links between climate change, terrorism, and national security.

Is this actually going to stop climate change? Short answer, no. The latest estimate is that the INDCs on the table will limit global warming to about 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. As I wrote in October, “That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would happen if the world continued on its present course.” No one expects that this summit will be the end of the battle to stop climate change. As technology improves and countries get more confident in their ability to curb greenhouses gases, they’ll be able to step up their action over time. That’s why it’s essential for the agreement to include a requirement for countries to do so. In any case, even if the whole world stopped burning all fossil fuels right now, warming from existing greenhouse gas emissions would continue for decades, so adaptation is also a crucial part of the agreement.

Some environmentalists have criticized that incremental approach as not urgent enough, given the scale of the problem. They could be right. But the fact is that right now, there’s no international agreement at all. The Paris talks will lay an essential groundwork for solving this problem over the next couple of decades. And there’s a pretty good chance the talks will be successful. At the last major climate summit, in 2009 in Copenhagen, negotiations crumbled because officials couldn’t agree on a set of global greenhouse gas limits that would hold most countries to the same standard despite differences in their resources and needs. That’s why, this time around, the approach is bottom-up: Because countries have already worked out their INDCs, there’s no ambiguity about what they’re willing to do and no need to agree on every detail.

Meanwhile, the mere existence of the talks has already spurred a wave of new investment in clean energy, new commitments from cities and states around the globe, and other actions that aren’t part of the core agreement. And the international peer pressure around the INDCs has already made it clear that simply ignoring climate change isn’t a realistic geopolitical option, even for countries like Russia or the oil-producing Gulf states. That’s a significant change from what would be happening in the absence of the talks. In other words, it’s safe to say that the Paris summit has already been somewhat successful, and now we have the opportunity to see how far that success can go.

So everything is peaches and cream? Not quite. There are some big remaining questions about how much money the United States and other wealthy countries will commit to help island nations, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and other places that are highly vulnerable to global warming. The international community is still far short of its goal of raising $100 billion annually by 2020 to fund adaptation. The legal status of the agreement remains unclear. We don’t know whether countries can agree on a long-term target date (say, 2100) to fully cease all greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s unclear how much tension there will be between juggernauts such as the United States, China, and the 43-country-strong negotiating bloc of highly vulnerable developing nations.

At Climate Desk, we’ll have an eye on all these questions, and more—both from the ground in Paris and from our newsrooms in the United States. So stay tuned.

This story has been revised.

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A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

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China Is Absolutely Destroying the US on Clean Energy

by NormanCombs79 Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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When world leaders convene on Monday in Paris for two weeks of high-stakes climate negotiations, one of the top items on the agenda will be how developing nations should prepare for and help to slow global warming. Opponents to President Barack Obama’s climate agenda, such as GOP presidential contender Marco Rubio, like to argue that anything the United States does to curb greenhouse gas emissions will be pointless because countries like India and China aren’t doing the same.

But new data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that this argument is just hot air: For the first time ever, over the last year the majority of global investment in clean energy projects was spent in developing countries. In fact, clean energy investment in China alone outpaced that in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France combined, BNEF found. Across 55 major non-OECD countries, including India, Brazil, China, and Kenya, clean energy investment reached $126 billion in 2014, a record high and 39 percent higher than 2013 levels.

The chart below shows how that level of investment is opening up a market for wind, solar, and other clean energy projects in non-OECD countries that is now larger than the market in the traditional strongholds of the United States and Europe. In other words, the very countries Rubio likes to malign as laggards are actually leading the charge.

BNEF

That trend is likely to continue for decades to come, BNEF found. Check out their projection for growth through 2040:

BNEF

These numbers add up to a big deal for the climate, because they show that countries in Africa and Southeast Asia that still lack reliable electricity for millions of people are solving that problem, and growing their economies, without relying on dirty fossil fuels. China, to be clear, is still the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and it doesn’t plan to peak its emissions until 2030. But its early commitment to clean energy means it can continue its rapid rate of growth with far less pollution than it would produce otherwise.

The BNEF report is just the most recent good sign for the clean energy business. Big corporations in the United States are signing contracts for a record amount of clean energy for their data centers, warehouses, and other facilities. And the Paris talks are likely to send a jolt through the industry, as countries around the world redouble their commitments to get more of their power from renewable sources.

Stay tuned for more news on this front as the talks unfold over the coming weeks.

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China Is Absolutely Destroying the US on Clean Energy

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Egypt’s Nile River Delta Is Sinking Into the Sea

by TamieLawyer Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Abdullah Salam walks up and down his narrow plot, tossing fistfuls of wheat seeds with a light flick of his wrist as the soil squishes beneath his bare feet. “Elhamdullillah,” he says—praise God—a strong rain just came through and softened the ground. A month ago, this earth was as hard as asphalt.

These days, it feels to Salam like his soil is fighting him. It’s quick to dry out, turning hard and gray. The seeds don’t seem to like it: No matter how much money he spends on fertilizers, he’s getting slightly lower yields every harvest. And no matter how much he irrigates the land, it’s always thirsty. Always.

But there’s nothing to be done about it, and there’s no one to complain to here in Kafr el-Sheikh, in the center of Egypt’s Nile Delta, so Salam carries on planting. He, his wife and his 15-year-old son, Mohammed, scatter the wheat seeds around his 2-acre field. Their neighbor then drives his tractor through it, tilling the soil and pushing the seeds deep into the ground. Once that’s done, they all have tea and wait.

“The harvest will be in five or six months, inshallah God willing,” Salam says. “One acre used to yield 18 or 20 ardab worth about $1,000. But now we’ll probably only get 10.” Salam will sell half of that at market for about $250, and the other half his wife will mill into flour and bake into bread. But it’s nearly impossible to make such a small amount of flour stretch until the next harvest, she says.

This land, where the Nile spreads out to meet the sea, once grew enough wheat to feed everyone from Cairo to Rome—the breadbasket of the world, they called it. Today, the delta barely feeds the farmers who cultivate it. Salam blames his diminishing returns on rising fertilizer prices and bad luck.

But it’s not bad luck—it’s the sea. It’s warming, rising and expanding onto the low-lying, delta lands and seeping into the water that feeds them. By the end of the century, 60 percent of the delta region—including Salam’s field—will be so saturated with salt as to be barely farmable. As much as 20 percent of this once-fertile land will be covered in water. When this happens, two-thirds of Egypt’s food will drown and two-thirds of the country’s population will be left homeless and hungry.

The Salt Shakedown

Sadek Mahmoud has been working the plot next to Salam’s for 65 years. He remembers when the Nile used to flood his irrigation canals every year with clear, nutrient-rich water. “I used to drink from the Nile right here. And I never ever got sick,” Mahmoud says.

For centuries, farmers relied solely on the Nile to water their cropland, digging a complex network of irrigation canals to connect the entire delta region to the river and its tributaries. But as Egypt’s population has soared, so has its water consumption; and as factories, power plants and megacities have emerged along the Nile’s banks, the clear, rich water of Mahmoud’s youth has been fouled by all manner of human, chemical and industrial waste. Nowadays, by the time the Nile reaches Salam and Mahmoud’s fields, it has been reduced to a brown, toxic trickle.

To compensate, the farmers in the area have dug a well. Salam and Mahmoud, along with about a dozen of their neighbors, take turns running a fuel-powered pump to flood their respective irrigation canals with water from the Nile Delta aquifer, a massive underground reservoir, spanning from Cairo to the Mediterranean Sea. On the surface, this seems like a good solution to the delta’s water shortage problem, but this sort of pumping is accelerating the region’s demise, according to Badr Mabrouk, a hydrology professor at Zagazig University. “When you draw the water up from the deep aquifers, it creates pressure and it draws the sea in,” Mabrouk said.

Rising sea levels had already put the Nile Delta aquifer in peril before farmers began deep-well pumping, Mabrouk explained, but they have made it worse. The way coastal aquifers work is that they meet and hold back the sea underground at a point called the transition zone: The higher density saltwater sinks and gets pulled back toward the ocean and the freshwater remains on top. As long as sea levels—and aquifer levels—remain stable, this meeting point doesn’t move.

But if either the sea rises or the fresh water recedes, this point moves farther inland: The sea advances underground. In the case of the Nile Delta, both are happening and they’re happening quickly, Mabrouk said. As the ocean warms and its waters expand, sea levels in Egypt are rising, and the land is sinking at a rate of 0.1 inches per year as a result, according to the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa Program. Meanwhile, excessive pumping is draining the aquifer faster than rainfall can refill it.

Massive cement tetrapods lie along the beach in Baltim, on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. The huge blocks are a stopgap to prevent erosion, but the sea is steadily overtaking them. The first stages of this wall have been almost completely overtaken by sand; only their moss-covered tops remain visible. Without action, the other rows will soon disappear as well. Nicholas Linn for Newsweek

Climate scientists and geologists have been warning of the danger of saltwater intrusion in Egypt’s Delta for decades. But in a country riven with political upheaval and economic insecurity, the environment has never been the government’s priority—and still isn’t, according to Hassan Husseiny, a water management specialist for the American University in Cairo’s Research Institute for Sustainable Environment. “Studies say climate change could begin to have a real effect after 20 years,” Husseiny says. “The government doesn’t look that far ahead.”

But up in the northern Delta region, sea-level rise is no longer a matter of looking ahead: On a daily basis, the sea is pounding away at the populous cities of Alexandria, Damietta and Port Said. If the sea rises by even 20 inches (which a 2014 National Climate Assessment projects will likely occur by 2100) 30 percent of Alexandria, a city of 5 million, will be inundated.

In the popular coastal resort town of Baltim, about 30 miles north of Kafr el-Sheikh, mango farmer Mossad Abu Ghali has seen the sea advancing. “I remember when they had to build a new boardwalk because the old one got ruined by the sea,” Abu Ghali says. “That was a long time ago though. Inshallah, the sea is not advancing anymore.” Baltim built a seawall in 1992 out of large, concrete tetrapod blocks. This has slowed—but not stopped—the sea’s advance. This type of structure, known as a revetment, has an average life span of 30 to 50 years. Already the wall is half-buried in sand.

All along the coast, cities and towns like Baltim have constructed sea walls to try and hold back the water, but even with these measures in place, Husseiny predicted that no fewer than 10 million people would be displaced in the next 30 years.

The Delta’s Eleventh Hour

In 1972, Egypt launched the Coastal Research Institute (CORI) to “monitor and protect” the Egyptian coast, but to date, its work has focused far more on monitoring than protecting. “There has yet to be any action taken in the delta that I know of,” Husseiny said. “There have been conferences and meetings and discussions but no action.”

The institute’s current flagship program is a joint venture started in 2009 with the United Nations Development Program and Global Environment Facility. The project is to create “integrated coastal zone management systems” on Egypt’s coasts by building sea barriers out of natural materials. Six years and $4 million later, they have managed to “select a pilot site,” design an “adaptation technique” and solicit bids from contractors to work on a pilot site—but have yet to build a single sea barrier.

Aymen el-Gamal, CORI’s deputy director, works out of an office less than half a mile from the sea, and he doesn’t deny the sea levels are rising. But, he says, there is little use in trying to predict the rate at which it will rise—and there’s no sense in planning more than one or two years ahead. Most existing models are just alarmist and unhelpful, el-Gamal says. He’s also unconvinced human-induced climate change is real. “The Earth is very clever. It can take in energy and emit it,” el-Gamal says. “There are those who say there is the greenhouse effect and the ozone—no, the Earth is bigger than all of this.” His smile is confident and kind. “So the climate change from my point of view is a normal phenomenon.” Which is why he sees his role as one of simply monitoring sea-level rise and adapting to the data as it comes in.

For farmers like Salam, Mahmoud and Abu Ghali, however, that won’t work. The hour is late for the delta. “The land is slowly, slowly running out of time,” Mabrouk said. Egypt’s primary food source is sinking into the sea while its government—and the international community—watches on.

Global leaders are gearing up for the landmark COP21 climate change summit in Paris, where they are hoping to reach consensus on a new set of regulations for greenhouse gas emissions to replace the current Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2020. But even the most aggressive of global reforms won’t do a thing to save Egypt’s Nile Delta. Even if global leaders succeed in their goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels (an ambitious goal to begin with), the seas are expected to continue rising for decades to come, according to a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Land loss and damage from climate change are on the agenda for the summit, but it’s unlikely that Egypt’s case will be discussed specifically. Ultimately, the United Nations Framework for Climate Change has left it to individual countries to develop their own National Adaptation Plans. Egypt’s prime minister formed a National Committee on Climate Change in July to draft an up-to-date national strategy for combatting the problem, but a copy of this strategy has not been made public (if indeed it has been fully drafted).

In the meantime, there has been little if any international pressure on Egypt to update its national strategy expediently. All international critiques of Egypt tend to focus on the country’s national security problems, human rights abuses and poor democratic governance. As long as climate change remains a second-tier issue for the international community, the Egyptian state—and its people—will also regard it as one.

Even Abu Ghali, whose mango trees could be floating in saltwater within his lifetime, believes tackling climate change should come second to tightening security and restoring the economy. He has full confidence his president will help him in due time. “The government is under a lot of pressure,” Abu Ghali says. “We can’t expect everything to come all at once. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi needs to first give jobs to people who need them. Later, he will help us.” Inshallah.

Partial funding for this piece was provided by the Earth Journalism Network.

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Egypt’s Nile River Delta Is Sinking Into the Sea

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France Scrambles to Secure Upcoming Climate Talks After Deadly Attacks

by EvanGenders Posted on November 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, just a day after terrorist attacks in Paris left at least 129 people dead and hundreds more injured, the French government vowed to forge ahead with a long-scheduled international summit on climate change.

The summit, which is scheduled to start in just two weeks, will take place at an airport in the northern suburbs of Paris, not far from the stadium that was the site of multiple bombings on Friday. There, world leaders plan to hash out final details of the most wide-reaching international agreement ever to combat climate change. White House officials confirmed to Politico that President Barack Obama still intends to attend the talks, as scheduled prior to the attacks. Dozens of other heads of state are expected to be there as well.

“The summit will go ahead with reinforced security measures,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. “This is an absolutely necessary step in the battle against climate change and of course it will take place.”

Christiana Figueres, who chairs the UN agency overseeing the talks, released a similar statement on Twitter:

Even prior to the attacks, 30,000 French police officers were scheduled to secure the event, according to Radio France International. More than 10,000 diplomats, non-governmental organization employees, and journalists are expected to attend the summit. Specific new security measures have not yet been made public, but Politico quoted an unnamed French official who said participants should expect “extremely tightened security” following the attacks.

Paul Bledsoe, a former climate advisor to President Bill Clinton, also told Politico that the attacks could actually improve the odds that the talks reach a successful outcome.

“The resolve of world leaders is going to be redoubled to gain an agreement and show that they can deliver for populations around the world. The likelihood for a successful agreement has only increased because of these attacks,” Bledsoe said.

On Thursday, just a day before the attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to butt heads with his French counterpart over what the exact legal status of the agreement will be. Other questions remain as well, such as how wealthy, heavily polluting countries such as the United States will help developing nations pay for climate change adaptation. But overall, the Paris talks are expected to yield a better outcome than the last major climate summit, in Copenhagen in 2009, which failed to produce any meaningful action to curb greenhouse gas emissions or prepare for the impacts of global warming.

Meanwhile, on Monday French officials said they would block a series of rallies and side events that were scheduled to take place outside the main negotiations. Environmental groups are scrambling to work out how to change their plans following the attack. Several groups involved in organizing protests and rallies that were intended to coicide with the Paris talks confirmed to Mother Jones that a hastily arranged meeting to hash out a plan will take place on Monday evening, Paris time. Will Davies, a spokesman for Avaaz, one of the main advocacy groups involved, said that despite the flurry of activity, plans for global marches in cities other than Paris were still going ahead as scheduled.

Stay tuned for more updates on this story.

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France Scrambles to Secure Upcoming Climate Talks After Deadly Attacks

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This Chart Shows Which Countries Are the Most Screwed by Climate Change

by SiobhanSez Posted on November 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Verisk Maplecroft

One of the cruel ironies of climate change is that its impacts tend to fall hardest on the countries least equipped to manage them.

When drought or sea level rise strike the United States, communities at least have access to federal aid, top scientific expertise, public investment in expensive climate-ready infrastructure, and the like. But some of the most extreme effects of global warming are headed for developing countries—drought wiping out crops in East Africa, or catastrophic hurricanes pounding Southeast Asia—that don’t have access to those resources.

New research from Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consultancy, paints a pictures of where vulnerability to climate change is most pressing. Their analysis drew on three criteria: exposure to extreme events, based on the latest meteorological science; sensitivity to impacts (i.e., does a country have other sources of income and food supply if agriculture takes a hit?); and adaptive capacity—are the country’s government and social institutions prepared to work under adverse climate conditions and help citizens adapt to them?

Unsurprisingly, Africa and Southeast Asia ranked the lowest, while Scandinavian countries ranked the highest. (While definitely at risk from sea level rise, countries such as Norway and Sweden have rich, highly functional governments to manage adaptation.) The major global climate talks in Paris are coming up in just a couple weeks; the chart above makes it clear why it’s so important for big players like the US and China to work closely with delegations from developing countries on solutions that will provide immediate support and relief.

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This Chart Shows Which Countries Are the Most Screwed by Climate Change

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We Can Stop Pretending Any of the 2016 Republicans Believe in Science

by UlrikeSteffen Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in The New Republic, and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Rand Paul was having a decent night in the fourth Republican debate Tuesday, until he fielded a question about climate change. With his answer, he disappointed those who thought he might deliver reality-based comments.

Paul, like the rest of the GOP candidates, wants to repeal President Barack Obama’s legacy-making Clean Power Plan reining in carbon emissions from the power sector. On Tuesday, Paul firmly aligned himself with the science-denier camp. “While I do think man may have a role in our climate, I think nature also has a role,” Paul said. “The planet is 4.5 billion years old. We’ve been through geologic age after geologic age. We’ve had times when the temperature’s been warmer. We’ve had times when the temperature’s been colder. We’ve had times when carbon in the atmosphere has been higher. So I think we need to look before we leap.”

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We Can Stop Pretending Any of the 2016 Republicans Believe in Science

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