Since 1995, countries bound by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have held climate change summits every year and formulated a series of action plans, authorizations, protocols, and agreements. However, the content of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is still rising, and the world is changing. Warm is also continuing. Even so, people still advertised them as the world’s last chance. On October 31, the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Glasgow, UK. Countries will make new commitments to further reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. After all, if the economic activities on the planet are mainly driven by coal, oil, and natural gas, the dream of allowing 8 billion people to live a materially comfortable life will certainly not be realized. Therefore, in the long run, the only way to maintain growth is to abandon fossil fuels, which requires Asian countries to give up much more emissions than developed countries in the future. But they believe that those countries that are more responsible for historical emissions should do more. The multilateral institutions established for the fair sharing of costs among countries are unreliable because they are subject to the principle of consensus. In this case, it is feasible for Europe and other willing countries to act boldly and quickly and provide more funds for the decarbonization of developing countries.
Earth collapses-how can we stop this?
[Germany] “Ding Spiegel” October 30
Every wind turbine hides dirty secrets. It converts flowing air into electricity cleanly and efficiently, but almost no one knows that its material comes from the plunder of nature. Wind turbines are composed of cement, sand, steel, zinc, aluminum, and large amounts of copper. In order to extract so much copper, miners must move nearly 50,000 tons of soil and rocks. This is a paradoxical logic: wind turbines, electric cars and solar modules are supposed to save the planet, but their production must first plunder nature. They all contain precious raw materials, especially some poor countries destroy nature in order to obtain these materials. At the World Climate Conference in Glasgow, delegates will pay attention to this dilemma. The good news is that from a geological point of view, metals are not lacking. On the other hand, mining costs are getting higher and higher, and ore quality and raw material content are declining. Scarce supply is accompanied by extremely increased demand, and resource prices have skyrocketed. The contradiction between the ambition to protect the climate and the supply of resources is imminent. Recycling is a relatively clean solution that can alleviate the scarcity of resources. The energy required to recover and collect the metal on the circuit board is only one twentieth of the energy required to extract the metal from mining. This can also reduce dependence on resource-producing countries. However, there is still potential to be developed in this area, and used mobile phones, TVs and refrigerators generate more and more e-waste. Many valuable raw materials are eventually thrown into the garbage dump instead of the recycling station. In Germany, the collection rate of electronic waste is only 44%, and it is less than one-fifth in the world.
Is oat milk environmentally friendly?
[America] “Fortune” October/November
Oatly is a Swedish oat milk brand that was born in the laboratory of Lund University, Sweden in the 1990s. The original intention was to make lactose intolerant people drink milk, but it has not been able to expand much of the market until it caught up with the environmental boom. It stands out through a series of weird and blurt out advertising slogans, constantly reminding consumers that oat milk is more environmentally friendly than milk. In May 2021, Oatly went public on the Nasdaq. Two months later, it was attacked by a short-sale report. It was accused of not fulfilling the green promise it had been promoting because the company produced it in a factory in New Jersey. Unusually high concentrations of wastewater, and selling oat milk from Sweden to remote Asian regions, will also generate a lot of carbon emissions. Oatly declined to be interviewed, only claiming that the report was “false and misleading”, but some people on Wall Street have shaken up the claim that Oatly is “washing green”-marketing itself is actually more environmentally friendly than it is-also It has resonated. This raises a question: How do investors know whether a company is truly “green”? In fact, this is difficult, because the government’s efforts at the regulatory level are still in its infancy. People have to ask the relevant rating agencies for help, but they are faced with the problem of inconsistent standards.
