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[Noah Smith, 10-4-19, "Economic growth shouldn’t be a death sentence for Earth," Business Standard, ] WL

Among some intellectuals and environmentalists, it's an article of faith that economic growth must be brought to a stop. If we fail to act, we'll use up the planet's resources and growth will suffer a disastrous collapse. For example, British writer George Monbiot has been advancing this point of view for quite some time. In April, he declared: Perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity. The absolute decoupling [of growth from resource use] needed to avert environmental catastrophe…has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion. Monbiot is simply incorrect. There are good reasons, both theoretical and empirical, to believe that economic growth can be decoupled from resource use. For many resources, this is already becoming a reality. In the US, for example, gross domestic product has continued to rise, even though energy use has stayed basically constant: In terms of many other resources, the decoupling is even starker. Even as the US keeps growing, its consumption of many minerals has declined: Perhaps no resource is more precious than fresh water. Here, too, economic growth has coincided with falling resource extraction: Of course, if climate change makes the planet uninhabitable, then decreasing resource use will be for naught. Should the world continues on its current trajectory, this may yet happen. For many countries, growth still means more fossil-fuel use. But for some developed nations, emissions are falling, even accounting for the products they import: These and other examples of resource-growth decoupling can be found in technologist and writer Andrew McAfee's new book, "More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources -- and What Happens Next." McAfee documents how until about 1970, growth and resource use really were inseparable, as humanity spread out across the land and bent the natural world to its will. But in the past half-century, technological progress and the rise of the environmental movement have combined to change the nature of growth, so that developed countries keep getting richer while inflicting less and less harm on the planet. People who take the long view, looking mainly at data from the 19th and early 20th centuries, tend to miss this shift. But how can this decoupling be possible? The answer lies in the nature of economic growth. Economic growth, stated simply, means that the things people pay for do a better job of satisfying their desires. Now, that's not a perfect measure of human happiness and GDP does leave out plenty of important things. But it's also not something that depends on always feeding more of nature's resources into the hungry maw of industrialization. When an economy grows by simply doing more of the same, that's called extensive growth. It entails more resource use. But when an economy does more with less it's called intensive growth. And there are several ways of doing that. One way is to use existing resources more efficiently. A good example is crop rotation, which gives soil time to recover from one crop while another grows. Another example, from McAfee's book, is the production of soda cans using less and less aluminum. Another type of intensive growth is to substitute common resources for rare ones. The soda can example applies here as well; cans were originally made of tin, which is rare, but manufacturers later switched to the more abundant aluminum. The most important example is the transition from fossil fuels, which are in finite supply and degrade the Earth's climate, to abundant energy sources like the sun and wind. The purest form of intensive growth lies purely in the realm of information and ideas. The creation of better stories, games, art, philosophy and so on is a type of growth. Modern video games use much less energy than the arcade games of 30 years ago, but are more entertaining and valuable. With intensive growth, humanity can keep getting richer even as its environmental footprint shrinks. This isn't to say, of course, that green growth is inevitable. Even as advanced nations do more with less, the planet as a whole is still on an unsustainable course. Developing nations continue to use more resources as they lift their citizens out of poverty, and rich countries aren't dematerializing their economies fast enough to cancel out rising resource use in poor ones. If the planet is to be saved, a strong and global environmental movement will be needed in order to force companies and consumers around the world to embrace intensive growth rather than the extensive kind. But it can be done. The doomsayers are wrong; environmental sustainability can coexist just fine with economic growth, as long as it's the right kind.

Earth Overshoot Day, "when humanity has used all the biological resources that the Earth regenerates during the entire year", fell on 28 July 2022. In 1971, it fell on 25 December. This acceleration in using biological resources means that humanity is overshooting planetary boundaries. Our ecological crisis is an overshoot crisis, of which anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity losses are symptoms. The full scale "of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms - including humanity - is so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts." We face a “ghastly future.” To avoid this, the degrowth movement is calling for an end to economic growth (as measured by GDP) and shrinkage of the economies of developed countries. Developing countries should use this space in world GDP created by the contraction of developed economies to develop - freed from the unequal and exploitative restrictions imposed by global capitalism. Degrowth advocates do not believe in green growth, the compatibility of continued GDP growth within planetary boundaries, or that technological solutions exist - they reject techno-optimism or any possibility of decoupling between growth and the material footprint of nations. Limitations of Degrowth Degrowthers diagnose a real problem. Unfortunately, the downsizing of western economies is not a solution. At least seven reasons can be highlighted why degrowth is insufficient. Degrowth will not decrease decarbonization Most (63%) of current carbon emissions come from developing countries - where it will only continue to increase in the foreseeable future. The 2022 Emissions Gap Report notes (p. 67) that “virtually the entire future increase in global primary energy demand is expected to occur in these [developing] economies.” Even if western economies are shrunk, they would still be extensive and emit significant carbon. Degrowth will make matters worse Degrowth may be dirty. Global redistribution, as degrowthers envisage, will increase aggregate consumption through a well-known "growth through redistribution" effect. Inequality reduces economic growth, hence the opposite will raise growth. Businesses may substitute more expensive cleaner production techniques for cheaper but more polluting technologies. Governments would also not be able to borrow further to spend on social and basic needs or environmental protection. Degrowth is politically infeasible Because of the endowment effect, people would be unlikely to vote for politicians who propose lowering their levels of GDP per capita, especially in certain countries, at least if it is to fight climate change. A 2022 poll found that only 1% of USA voters listed climate change as the most crucial challenge. And politicians, being generally subject to a status quo bias, would be reluctant to propose such a radical policy. As proponents acknowledge “political parties that have put forward degrowth ideas have received limited support in elections.” Degrowth is expensive Degrowth is not only politically infeasible because voters would not give up their incomes but also because it is a costly way to tackle the ecological crisis. It has been calculated that if the world shrinks GDP per capita by 10% (around US$7,000 billion), it will reduce carbon emissions by about 3.3 gigatons, meaning a cost of US$2,100 per ton of emissions. A recent study published in Nature put the social cost of carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) at US$185 per ton of emissions. Degrowthers want us to pay more than ten times the price. Degrowth policies are disappointing A recent inventory of degrowth policies identified 530 proposals associated with the movement. This proliferation is because the degrowth movement is “multi-faceted". It has become a rally-cry for anyone with a societal and environmental grievance, whether against capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, or utilitarianism. Because of the confusion this proliferation creates, a recent paper prioritized these into an “Iceberg model of degrowth policy proposals." At the top of the iceberg, prominent policies are universal basic income, work-time reductions, job guarantees, maximum income caps, non-for-profit cooperation, eco-villages, and housing cooperatives. None of these are novel and most are, or have already been, implemented - most extensively in market economies. Furthermore, there is no attempt to link these policy proposals to decoupling - how many carbon emissions would they eliminate? How fast? No evidence is provided. Degrowth is irresponsible The lack of evidence on the carbon reduction that the iceberg model of policies will achieve - and achieve soon, as the matter is pressing - is a concern. We would not imagine subjecting human populations to potentially dangerous experimental drugs without rigorously testing their efficacy. Why embrace the "medicine" prescribed by the degrowth movement? Olivier Simar-Casanova described this ethical and moral problem with degrowth clearly: “Global warming is a serious issue, and claiming to respond to it with solutions of uncertain carbon efficiency, which we do not know how to implement in practice, is irresponsible.” The dangers of shackling economies without any evidence as to the likely outcome are that it would leave the world much more exposed and vulnerable to shocks, make the adjustment to a zero-carbon-emitting economy more costly, and raise the risk of conflict by turning the economy into a zero-sum game. Degrowth is hypocritical Degrowth is no solution to the ecological crisis because it is, at its roots, hypocritical. As one commentator put it: “It is one thing to advocate the end of economic growth if you have no actual fear of poverty. If you are struggling to keep yourself warm and fed, on the other hand, the idea of self-denial – still less of shrinking the economy – will have rather less appeal. Degrowth is a middle–class luxury, an indulgence to be conducted from the comfort of your sofa with its electronic foot-raiser […] People who express disgust with consumerism have a tendency to disapprove of other people’s while overlooking their own.” Conclusion Neither degrowth nor the more mainstream green growth approach offer viable solutions for the ecological crisis. Worse, a recent editorial in Nature magazine pointed out that the disagreement between degrowth and green growth “is impeding action. It’s time for researchers to end their debate. The world needs them to focus on the greater goals of stopping catastrophic environmental destruction and improving well-being.” This is a distraction that cannot be afforded because GDP growth and population growth are, in any case, in decline. We do not need a degrowth experiment to slow it down. We live in the Great Stagnation. Society is gradually ossifying, and with it, its supply of innovative science and ideas, which remain, however remotely, our only chance of avoiding the premature curtailment of humanity’s potential.

Renewables’ share of the power generation mix worldwide is set to rise from 29% to 35% by 2025, according to the IEA. The share of coal and gas-fired generation will consequently fall, it says. And so will global power-sector CO2 emissions, which are predicted to plateau through to 2025, despite reaching an all-time high in 2022 of about 13.2Gt CO2.

China will account for close to half of the additional renewable generation, followed by the European Union with 15%, the IEA says. This growth is being fuelled by increased government spending on renewables as part of economic recovery plans, the report explains. In the US, alone, the Inflation Reduction Act will provide $370 billion in clean energy investments.

Oil changed the course of history. For example, the British and American navies switched from coal to oil prior to World War I, allowing their ships to go further than coal-fired German ships before refueling. Oil also allowed greater speed at sea and could be moved to boilers by pipe instead of manpower, both clear advantages. During World War II, the United States produced nearly two-thirds of the world’s oil, and its steady supply was crucial to the Allied victory. The German army’s blitzkrieg strategy became impossible when fuel supplies could not keep up, and a lack of fuel took a toll on the Japanese navy.

Natural gas, a fossil fuel that occurs in gaseous form, can be found in underground deposits on its own, but is often present underground with oil. Gas produced with oil was often wasted in the early days of the oil industry, and an old industry saying was that looking for oil and finding gas instead was a quick way to get fired. In more recent times, natural gas has become valued for its clean, even combustion and its usefulness as a feedstock for industrial processes. Nonetheless, because it is in a gaseous form, it requires specific infrastructure to reach customers, and natural gas is still wasted in areas where that infrastructure doesn’t exist.

Finally, those who argue for a wait-and-see approach to climate change — that it’s a waste of money to take large actions today for an uncertain risk far in the future — typically discount these future losses at a high rate. That is, whenever one takes an action that has a future cost or benefit, one must assess the present value of these future costs or benefits.

If a dollar 50 years from now is worth the same as a dollar today, one might be motivated to take strong action to prevent a loss; but if a dollar 50 years from now is worth three cents, one wouldn’t.

Capitalism is an unparalleled vehicle for meeting human needs, improving efficiency, creating jobs, and building wealth. But a narrow conception of capitalism has prevented business from harnessing its full potential to meet society’s broader challenges. The opportunities have been there all along but have been overlooked. Businesses acting as businesses, not as charitable donors, are the most powerful force for addressing the pressing issues we face. The moment for a new conception of capitalism is now; society’s needs are large and growing, while customers, employees, and a new generation of young people are asking business to step up.

The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. It will also reshape capitalism and its relationship to society. Perhaps most important of all, learning how to create shared value is our best chance to legitimize business again.

This study provides new evidence on time varying scale and technique effects of economic growth on the environment. To do so we examine the dynamic effects of economic growth shocks on environmental quality using panel data from Canadian provinces. We break down the total impact of economic growth into scale and technique effects and estimate how the two individual effects manifest over time. We use a new empirical approach that allows us to move away from the homogeneity of impulse responses derived from standard panel VAR techniques. Instead, we estimate pollution response paths that are heterogeneous and depend on the levels of technique and scale in a region.

Our study yields several important findings. We contribute to the recent literature which conceptualizes the net growth impact on the environment as the sum of scale, technique and composition effects. While previous work has focused on a static accounting of growth effects, we provide empirical evidence that scale and technique effects and, therefore, the net effect of growth on the environment can change over time. For the case of Canada, we find that scale effects typically dominate over technique effects and that the net negative effect on the environment worsens over time. Although, the dynamic effects are short-lived and die out within 3–4 years following a growth shock. Given our estimates of the magnitude of scale effects, it is unsurprising that decision-makers in Canada have been unable to introduce sufficiently stringent measures that would improve environmental quality at the expense of economic growth. Our results also suggest that, compared to less developed and isolated regions, economic growth in developed regions is more decoupled from environmental damage both due to the presence of larger technique effects and smaller scale effects. The bulk of the literature on economic growth and environmental quality has relied on the EKC approach which combines the influence of all explanatory variables into one single measure (income) and, therefore, yields limited policy implications. Our results show that a naive view of EKC is that the role of government is simply to encourage growth; a deeper view of the EKC is that underlying mechanisms such as the scale of economic activity and endogenous policy responses are at work.

There is a growing understanding that the deepening crises facing the world come from trends in our societies and economies that are becoming unsustainable. We must tackle the basic structural problems at their source.

The challenge is to recover and rebuild in a way that creates sustained economic growth and transforms our economies while tackling the social and ecological stresses caused by our current economic models. It is also clear that there is now a new and feasible approach to development across the world, which is much more attractive than the dirty and destructive paths of the past. But the world must invest and act quickly to get there.

Ensuring a sustainable future will require massive investment. For example, the International Energy Agency estimates that net-zero emissions might require investments of almost $5 trillion each year by 2030, and $4.5 trillion per year by 2050.2 The annual bill equates to about half of global corporate profits in 2019, or about one and a half times the annual increase in public debt over the preceding 15 years. Additional investments needed for decarbonization in agriculture, transportation, and other sectors could nearly double the bill. While many of these investments would produce a return, their financing or pricing is not yet set up.

And that’s just the start: as we explain in this article, even if the global economy were to get these three goals notionally right, there are contingencies among them that, if left unresolved, could wreck any progress made.

As representatives from 196 countries gather in Paris this December to negotiate a universal climate treaty, they should keep in mind that richer is more climate-friendly, especially for developing countries. Why? Because faster growth means higher incomes, which correlate with lower population growth. Greater wealth also means higher agricultural productivity, freeing up land for forests to grow as well as speedier progress toward developing and deploying cheaper non–fossil fuel energy technologies. These trends can act synergistically to ameliorate man-made climate change.

As economic growth increases incomes, fertility tends to fall toward, and even below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Some demographers argue that world population could peak at around nine billion by the middle of this century and then begin declining. Lower population growth means less demand for energy and other resources than there would otherwise have been. According to the latest World Bank data on 212 national jurisdictions, 85 countries are currently at or below the replacement rate, including Japan, China, Russia, Brazil the U.S. and all of Europe. Total fertility rates in large developing countries like India, Bangladesh and Mexico are also near the replacement rate.

Washington (December 7, 2022) - Today, during National Corals Week, Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) joined Senator Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Representative Ed Case (D-Hawaii) in introducing the Coral Reef Sustainability Through Innovation Act of 2022, bipartisan, bicameral legislation to help protect coral reef ecosystems in Hawaii and across the nation from increasing threats such as climate change, pollution, and direct damage from humans. The legislation directs the federal agencies that are members of the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force to establish, individually or with one or more other agencies, a coral health prize competition to spur innovative solutions to preserve, sustain, and restore coral reef ecosystems at no additional cost to taxpayers. The text of the bill is also included in the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released earlier today.

“Coral reefs are vital to Hawaii’s environment, providing a rich habitat for marine life while helping to protect our coastlines and prevent flooding,” said Senator Hirono. “Decades of pollution and ocean warming caused by climate change have left corals in Hawaii and around the world at risk of extinction. As we work to protect and restore coral reef ecosystems, this legislation will help incentivize innovation and inspire creative solutions to protect coral reefs, at no cost to taxpayers. I’ll continue fighting to protect Hawaii’s coral reefs and all of our natural resources for generations to come.”

Across the U.S., wastewater treatment plants are looking for cost-efficient solutions to meet new state and federal water quality requirements. This includes lower thresholds for the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous that can be discharged into rivers and lakes.

All organisms need nitrogen and phosphorous to grow. But high concentrations of these nutrients in waterbodies can cause certain types of algae to grow faster than normal. “Harmful algal blooms” create dead zones and some species of algae also release toxins that can sicken or kill wildlife, pets and people.

“Understanding where these dead zones are and how they may change over time is the first crucial step to mitigating these critical problems. But it is not easy by using traditional methods, especially for large-scale monitoring efforts,” said Yingjie Li, who did the work while a PhD student at MSU’s Center for System Integration and Sustainability (CSIS). He currently is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. Dead zones – technically known as hypoxia -- are water bodies degraded to the point where aquatic life cannot survive because of low oxygen levels. They’re a problem mainly in coastal areas where fertilizer runoff feeds algae blooms, which then die, sink to the water’s bottom and decay. That decay eats up oxygen dissolved in the water, suffocating living life, such as fish and other organisms that make up vibrant living waters.

Dead zones can be hard to identify and track and usually have been observed by water samples. But as reported in Remote Sensing of the Environment, scientists have figure out a novel way to use satellite views to understand what’s happening deep below the ocean’s surface. They used the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi River as a demonstration site.

Recovery Technology”; ; Accessed 7-2-23; SD]

The recovery of phosphorus (P) from waste streams in specific industrial processes could really contribute to a more sustainable P supply chain, which is considered critical due to its high-risk economic relevance and to negative impacts on the environment. Although more than 30 types of P recovery technologies are already available, their full-scale implementation is not widespread. To make solutions for P recovery in the industrial sector mainstream, it is necessary to change the perception of companies that own flows rich in P, often considered an issue. The lack of decision-making tools and methodologies to identify the optimal solution for specific cases limits the diffusion of P recovery technologies. To unlock this situation, this paper proposes an integrated industry-oriented methodology to facilitate knowledge transfer from the scientific community to the industrial sector, supporting companies in the evaluation of technical, economic, environmental and social benefits/risks of P recovery. The methodology, applied to an Italian case study, uses both innovative and consolidated tools to provide quantitative information at the firm level to investigate a closed P loop: starting from mapping P flows in the industrial process, the methodology guides companies in the choice of the most suitable option for its business strategy, providing data to evaluate the economic feasibility of the investment and some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to assess and monitor their efficiency in managing P. The methodology can be replicated in other contexts by both companies and consultants to explore and disseminate the opportunity to recover and reuse P from industries. The evaluation of the selected KPIs can be integrated into scientific analyses to compare solutions and to accelerate the shift from pilot to full-scale implementation of promising technologies. Finally, it can be used as an exercise for the training of new professionals in the P management sector.

Phosphorus is an essential ingredient in thousands of products, including herbicides, lithium-ion batteries, and even soft drinks. Most of this phosphorus comes from an energy-intensive process that contributes significantly to global carbon emissions.

In an effort to reduce that carbon footprint, MIT chemists have devised an alternative way to generate white phosphorus, a critical intermediate in the manufacture of those phosphorus-containing products. Their approach, which uses electricity to speed up a key chemical reaction, could reduce the carbon emissions of the process by half or even more, the researchers say.

The two most urgent and interlinked environmental challenges humanity faces are climate change and biodiversity loss. We are entering a pivotal decade for both the international biodiversity and climate change agendas with the sharpening of ambitious strategies and targets by the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Within their respective Conventions, the biodiversity and climate interlinked challenges have largely been addressed separately. There is evidence that conservation actions that halt, slow or reverse biodiversity loss can simultaneously slow anthropogenic mediated climate change significantly. This review highlights conservation actions which have the largest potential for mitigation of climate change. We note that conservation actions have mainly synergistic benefits and few antagonistic trade-offs with climate change mitigation. Specifically, we identify direct co-benefits in 14 out of the 21 action targets of the draft post-2020 global biodiversity framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity, notwithstanding the many indirect links that can also support both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. These relationships are context and scale-dependent; therefore, we showcase examples of local biodiversity conservation actions that can be incentivized, guided and prioritized by global objectives and targets. The close interlinkages between biodiversity, climate change mitigation, other nature's contributions to people and good quality of life are seldom as integrated as they should be in management and policy. This review aims to re-emphasize the vital relationships between biodiversity conservation actions and climate change mitigation in a timely manner, in support to major Conferences of Parties that are about to negotiate strategic frameworks and international goals for the decades to come.

The main challenge of conserving and improving soil health is guaranteeing its long-term productivity and environmental sustainability. As was reviewed, CA systems can be implemented to minimize negative socioeconomic and environmental consequences associated with soil degradation by enhancing soil health and promoting the sustainability and multifunctionality of agroecosystems.

To meet the global challenges of food security and environmental conservation, CA has been identified as one of the technological options for a sustainable intensification of agriculture. CA systems have clear advantages over conventional agricultural systems in improving soil health and the efficient use of natural resources, reducing the environmental impacts of agricultural activities, saving inputs, reducing the cost of production, etc.

That might mean new tools. Farm equipment suppliers such as John Deere are now introducing "no-till machinery" - farm equipment that is designed to cause minimum disturbance to the soil.

These include seed planters that drop seeds into small holes rather than using a big blade to dig a long trench.

[Judith Magyar, 9-30-22, "SAP BrandVoice: Can This Carbon Capture Technology Help Create Negative Emissions?," Forbes, ] WL

Imagine making gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel that doesn’t create additional emissions simply by sucking carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere and combining it with hydrogen from water. Luckily, it’s already happening with technology called direct air capture (DAC), driven by Occidental’s Low Carbon Venture Businesses. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), every year the world burns enough fossil fuels to add close to 40 billion tonnes of CO2. Keeping global warming to less than 2°C, the international target to avoid the most dangerous impacts, will require negative emissions, which involves taking lots of CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it permanently. In this case, “lots” means a huge volume of CO2, in fact, a stadium full, every seven seconds for the next thirty years. Occidental, also known as Oxy, is exceling at this task. After 100 years in the business of fossil fuels, it is now getting ready for the next 100 years in the business of creating a low-carbon future. “We have the carbon management expertise, a strong record of delivering major projects, and the infrastructure to propel a low-carbon future,” said Cari Brueckner, IT Director – Oxy Chemicals and Marketing Systems, at the Conference for Energy, presented by SAP and TAC Events, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. “We have strong global operations and experienced employees who are driven to develop solutions to help the world achieve net zero.” Negative emissions To help tackle climate change through carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) the company created 1PointFive, a multisolution platform that aims to help curb global temperature rise to 1.5°C by 2050. It will do so by commercializing Carbon Engineering's Direct Air Capture technology alongside other CCUS solutions at an industrial scale. Experts believe carbon capture can achieve 14% of the global greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed by 2050. It viewed as a practical way to achieve deep decarbonization in the industrial sector because it can reduce emissions from large stationary sources, essentially power stations and large industrial plants, in a variety of ways. Oxy, an international energy company with assets in the United States, the Middle East, and North Africa, is one of the largest oil producers in the United States. It is now leveraging its expertise in carbon management and storage to help achieve net zero and accelerate progress on global climate goals of the Paris Agreement. “Our Oxy Low Carbon Ventures subsidiary is advancing leading-edge technologies and business solutions that economically grow our business while reducing emissions,” said Brueckner. “We are committed to using our global leadership in carbon management to advance a lower-carbon world.” At Oxy, net zero means facilitating the reduction, capture, removal, and storage of at least the same quantity of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are emitted directly by its operations (Scope 1), that are generated by others to create the power it purchases (Scope 2), and generated by customers and consumers using the products they sell (Scope 3). This requires a new, circular model of doing business that begins by reducing emissions through greater operational efficiency and state-of-the-art technology. Reduction is followed by reusing and recycling CO2 with technologies and partnerships that use captured CO2 to enhance existing products and produce new low-carbon or zero-emissions products. And finally, it’s about removing existing CO2 from the atmosphere in significant amounts for use and safe, permanent sequestration by developing and deploying innovative capture technologies and market mechanisms at commercial scale to further the goals of the Paris Agreement. Digital transformation Greater operational efficiency requires the right digital backbone. Oxy decided to accelerate its digital transformation with SAP S/4HANA and Accenture in 2019. According to energy experts like Brueckner, the energy industry is one of the most data-intensive industries on the planet. Data and technology are the enabling force behind business processes at every level of operations. A lot of digital innovation is focused on ensuring that the company's decisions, at all levels, extract the full value of this data. The implementation of SAP S/4HANA helped free up significant resources formerly buried in manual processes. Teams have become more agile and positioned to make better decisions. And many teams at Oxy are leveraging SAP S/4HANA as their foundation to more quickly implement other industry-specific technologies for their functions. “Our mission to produce vital energy to sustain people and the planet is only possible with visionary technologies,” said Brueckner, concluding that the company’s commitment to reduce its emissions across its energy and chemical operations will certainly help advance global sustainability.

[James Temple, 7-1-2022, "The US government is developing a solar geoengineering research plan," MIT Technology Review, ] WL

But as the threat of climate change grows and major nations fail to make rapid progress on emissions, more researchers, universities, and nations are seriously exploring the potential effects of these approaches. A handful of prominent scientific groups, in turn, have called for stricter standards to guide that work, more money to do it, or both. That includes the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which last year recommended setting up a US solar geoengineering research program with an initial investment of $100 million to $200 million over five years. Proponents of geoengineering research, while stressing that cutting emissions must remain the highest priority, say we should explore these possibilities because they may meaningfully reduce the dangers of climate change. They note that as heat waves, droughts, famines, wildfires, and other extreme events become more common or severe, these sorts of climate interventions may be among the few means available to rapidly ease widespread human suffering or ecological calamities. Setting standards In a statement, the Office of Science and Technology Policy confirmed that it has created an interagency working group, as called for under the federal funding bill. It includes representatives of 10 research and mission agencies, including NOAA, NASA, and the Department of Energy. The group is soliciting input from groups and individuals, and it has already agreed upon an outline for the five-year plan and begun writing it. It plans to complete a draft by the end of July, which will be reviewed by the Subcommittee on Global Change Research and other federal offices in time to meet the mid-September deadline spelled out in the appropriations act. It’s not clear yet whether the plan will recommend increasing public funding, but it could, especially if the working group hews closely to the National Academies’ recommendations. So far, little federal money has gone toward research on this subject. NOAA has now provided around $22 million to projects related to geoengineering over the last three fiscal years, in accordance with earlier spending bills, as MIT Technology Review first reported. Most went to efforts within the agency, though a number of grants this year were provided to academic groups. That represents nearly the entirety of US federal funding that is known to have gone to research explicitly related to solar geoengineering to date. It’s standard for federal science bodies, like the National Science Foundation, to review the ethics, impacts, and public disclosures of the research projects it funds. But such a structure has mostly been lacking in solar geoengineering research in the US—in part, again, because the government has funded relatively little work so far. That vacuum has led researchers to look elsewhere for money and oversight. Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, which has been working toward a small-scale stratospheric balloon experiment for years, has raised money from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Bill Gates, and others. The university also set up an independent advisory committee for that experiment, which unexpectedly recommended that the team halt a planned flight in Sweden early last year. Another active group has been the nonprofit SilverLining, which has provided research grants to teams at the University of Washington, Cornell, Rutgers, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. It has raised funds from the Pritzker Innovation Fund, the Moore Foundation, the Grantham Foundation and wealthy individuals including Chris and Crystal Sacca, among others. The National Academies report, published in early 2021, likely offers a preview of key issues the interagency working group is grappling with. The authors stressed that a federal research program should be developed in coordination with other countries, that it should focus on building knowledge rather than aiming at deployment, and that it should represent only a minor part of overall federal climate research efforts. The report also highlighted the need for a strong set of rules to govern research in this field, such as a code of conduct, a registry for projects, and clear standards for engaging with the public and stakeholders. Those stakeholders include communities in the Global South that could be most affected by climate change or geoengineering interventions, it noted. The authors added that outdoor experiments that involve releasing substances should be considered only if they promise to provide knowledge or observations that couldn’t be achieved through lab work, modeling, or similar means. They also recommended creating a permitting system and conducting assessments of the potential environmental impacts of such work. Last month, the American Geophysical Union, a prominent group of climate and planetary scientists, also announced it was creating an advisory board to work with other global organizations to “develop an ethical framework to guide the research and possible deployment of climate change intervention measures.” That included solar geoengineering as well as methods for removing greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Establishing the baseline To date, NOAA has mainly funded modeling, monitoring, and lab research focused on establishing a better understanding of the baseline composition of the atmosphere, using high-altitude balloons, aircraft, and other tools, says Gregory Frost, a supervisory research chemist and program manager for NOAA Earth’s Radiation Budget initiative, which oversees these projects. These efforts can help researchers understand how conditions shift when the atmosphere is altered by natural events that disperse particles, like volcanic eruptions, and may allow them to simulate the impacts of deliberate interventions more precisely. As NOAA puts additional monitoring efforts into place around the world, it could also provide a de facto early warning system in the event that some nation or other actor moves ahead with large-scale geoengineering, Frost says. Several funded projects are also using models to evaluate the feasibility and potential effects of altering marine-layer clouds. Earlier work has indicated that blowing tiny salt particles toward those coastal clouds could make them more reflective and longer lasting, casting back a significant amount of heat if it were done up and down global coastlines. Frost stresses that the federal government is not conducting or funding any efforts that involve the release of particles into the environment. He adds that most of the work pulls double duty as basic science that improves our understanding of how the atmosphere works and what effect particles from wildfires, volcanoes, rocket emissions, pollution, dust storms, or other sources play. All of that can improve climate modeling, weather forecasting, and predictions of what would happen if any nations moved ahead with climate interventions. ‘Greater diversity of ideas’ It’s not yet clear what the interagency group’s recommendations will be, or who they have consulted or will consult in preparing it. Shuchi Talati, an expert on geoengineering governance who serves on the Harvard balloon research project’s advisory committee, says she hopes that any US research agenda would be developed and implemented in careful coordination with other nations around the world, given the global nature of geoengineering and the potential for varied effects. It’s also crucial to ensure that one nation doesn’t have excessive or unilateral control over the field, she says. There is already geoengineering research underway in other nations. European scientists have explored a variety of potential approaches. The Chinese government has funded modeling efforts at several institutions. And the DECIMALS Fund, operated under the UK-based Degrees Initiative, has given nearly $1 million in grants to help scientists in developing countries model the effects of solar geoengineering. A specific goal of that program is to help researchers in parts of the world particularly vulnerable to climate change “play a greater role in evaluation and discussion” of solar geoengineering. The projects include efforts to assess the potential impact of climate interventions on dust storms in the Middle East, droughts in South Africa, water and food security in Bangladesh, and cholera in South Asia, according to the program’s site. Talati says the US report should also carefully consider the sets of rules that should apply to research and experiments in this field, particularly in terms of how to build meaningful engagement with vulnerable communities and ensure that researchers are being transparent about the work. In addition, the research agenda should draw on the expertise and perspective of a broad array of experts, including not just scientists and technical experts but sociologists, economists, and political scientists, she says. To achieve legitimacy, the geoengineering field “needs to be much larger, more open, and include a greater diversity of ideas in how we consider these types of approaches,” she says.