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The Graphic Truth: The Earth is getting hotter, and it’s our fault
Happy Earth Day! Activism on behalf of the Big Blue Marble is heating up — but, sadly, so is the planet itself.
Earth — so hot right now. The Earth’s surface temperature is rising thanks to human activities like burning fossil fuels, which adds heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In other words, global warming, a central aspect of climate change, is getting worse.
Last year was the hottest on record, and the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the past decade. Earth also just saw its hottest March on record, and it was the 10th month in a row to set a global heat record.
We’re already experiencing the rippling consequences of climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
Are governments doing enough to address these problems? Is climate change one of your biggest concerns? Share your thoughts with us
Earth Day 2023: Show me the money
The theme of this year's Earth Day on Saturday is "Invest in Climate." One of the key messages is that "businesses, governments, and civil society are equally responsible for taking action against the climate crisis." But they are not equally motivated.
Businesses invest for profit. Governments spend to achieve political goals. And civil society's pockets are ... empty.
Meanwhile, roughly $5 trillion is needed to help the planet transition to clean energy by the end of the decade. Most of that money would go to the developing world, which is historically less responsible for polluting the planet but disproportionately suffers the impacts of climate change.
Yet the official statement doesn't even mention climate finance. Why?
Earth Day is all about climate activism. Governments are mostly an afterthought — unless to portray them "in a negative light and called out for their perceived lack of efforts to adequately invest in — and ultimately save — the planet," says Eurasia Group analyst Franck Gbaguidi.
Developing nations have long been telling wealthy ones: You need to cough up the cash for us to go green because you're mostly responsible for global warming. Rich countries have been like: Yeah you're right, but I have other spending priorities right now, so lemme dig up some coins from my sofa cushions.
For the Global South, though, the Western response to Russia's war in Ukraine demonstrated that wealthy nations can in fact mobilize immense financing virtually overnight — when it's in their political interest.
Developing countries are fed up. They are feeling the impacts of climate change more acutely than wealthy nations, which broke a 2009 promise to channel $100 billion annually of climate finance to the Global South by 2020. What's more, developing nations are now struggling even more economically under a pile of COVID-fueled debt and higher interest rates, which raises the cost of servicing that debt.
Still, there's growing chatter that 2023 might be a pivotal year. For one thing, the developing world now has a media-savvy champion in Mia Mottley.
The feisty Barbados PM, who became a global climate icon with a breakout speech at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, spearheads the Bridgetown Initiative. This group pushes global institutions like the World Bank to adopt new policies, such as loan disaster clauses that allow a government to temporarily stop paying its loans without penalty following an extreme weather event.
For another, the World Bank itself will soon have a new boss in former Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, who says he wants to double down on climate finance by mobilizing more private-sector funds. But how?
One idea is for the World Bank to act as an insurance agent for private investment in climate projects in the developing world, which can be risky and expensive. Basically, private lenders and the World Bank would join forces and pool their money, but the institution would pick up most of the tab if the project went south.
Expect the climate finance convo to heat up as we get closer to the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai in late November. You might recall that last year's COP27 in Egypt wrapped with a vague pledge by rich nations to bankroll a climate reparations fund for the developing world.
That's no surprise, given that the issue has become a much bigger priority for developing economies and a much less pressing topic for rich countries than in 2021, when net-zero emissions commitments were a dime a dozen.
But the stakes will be even higher at COP28, hosted by the UAE, a mega-rich petrostate that’ll side with the cash-strapped Global South. Huh? The Emiratis are investing heavily in green power and want to fight the bad optics of emceeing as a fossil fuel producer.
"Failure to show concrete progress [on the reparations fund] will deepen the divide between industrialized and emerging markets, exacerbate the geopolitical fragmentation of the world, and potentially delay concrete actions to stop global warming," says Gbaguidi.
Climate activists march from the White House to the US Capitol.
(Un)happy Earth Day?
Usually, the run-up to Earth Day features a steady drumbeat of governments pledging more climate action, the UN telling us it’s (almost) too late to save the planet, and developing countries bickering with wealthy ones over who's most responsible for cutting emissions. On April 23, everyone moves on, and the momentum dies until it picks up again weeks before the annual COP summit in the fall.
Not this year.
Russia's war in Ukraine has upended the global political conversation on climate. Google "how will the war affect climate" and you'll find a plethora of doomsday scenarios, depending on how long the war drags on. But since no one knows the answer to that question, let's focus on how governments have changed their tune on climate since the invasion began.
In the US, the Biden administration has done a big energy policy U-turn by resuming oil and gas leases on federal land. EU member states are scrambling to figure out how to accelerate their plans to wean themselves off Russian oil and natural gas and still meet the bloc’s 2050 deadline to achieve net zero emissions.
High energy prices might delay India's plans to ditch fossil fuels. We haven't heard much from China, but perhaps these days Xi Jinping is too preoccupied with playing whack-a-mole with COVID-19 while the economy slows down to pay much attention to climate despite being the world’s top polluter.
What does this all mean? For one thing, the world runs mainly on fossil fuels, and we are still far away from the point at which renewables might be able to replace a lot of oil and gas that’s suddenly knocked off the market. For another, high energy prices are forcing even those with ambitious climate goals to temper their expectations (like the EU is doing now with nuclear power).
But there’s also a more optimistic take.
The war has demonstrated that perhaps we depend too much on Russian oil and gas — and fossil fuels in general. Governments that are now planning ahead to use more renewables in the future will be less affected by similar energy price hikes. The more European countries that go green, the less leverage Vladimir Putin will have with them next time he stirs up trouble.
And the planet will benefit too.
A history of Earth Day and the climate movement: river on fire
Ian Bremmer explains how a fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, in the summer of 1969, set the conservation movement ablaze in the United States. A TIME Magazine article about the fire led to the Clean Water Act, creation of the EPA, and the first Earth Day—April 22, 1970. Over 50 years later, citizens of the world agree that climate change is a global emergency. But how can nations come together to find solutions that are truly attainable?
Watch the GZERO World episode: Can We Fix the Planet the Same Way We Broke It?
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