Refugia Newsletter #79

Global energy transition, US elections, managed retreat, and a township refugium

Refugia News

We’ve had gorgeously sunny and dry weather here in Michigan—very unusual for this time of year. I offer you a weather report simply so that I can boast once again about our electricity bill last month: $15.37. Our heat pump is amazing. That tiny amount isn’t even for actual energy: it’s all grid fees.

We’ve had temperatures ranging from the 30sF at night to the high 70s during the day for weeks, and the heat pump moves from heating to cooling as needed, seemingly effortlessly. Keep in mind, we have rooftop solar, so the sunny weather means we generate a lot of our own power—but we also plug in two electric cars. So… wow!

When I next write to you, for my Nov. 9 newsletter, the US election will be over. At least, November 5th will be behind us. Most of my readers live in the US, so you are well aware of what’s at stake and how much anxiety this election is causing us, not only concerning the outcomes but concerning the process and aftermath. I hope you are finding ways to take useful action in getting out the vote and protecting the democratic process. (I worked through ActivateAmerica to write postcards to Ohio voters in key districts.) As you vote yourself and encourage others to do so, remember that down-ballot races are crucial, too.

I also hope you have a trusted community, perhaps a faith community, where you can receive whatever spiritual care you need, both now and in the coming months. I know that finding a supportive community can be fraught. I hope you’re OK.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you are very likely a climate voter, and you are well aware that we have a stark choice between candidates this time: either the US will create a devastating drag on the global transition to a just and sustainable future (under Trump), OR we have a chance to be even better leaders in that transition (under Harris). I won’t belabor this point, since I’ve covered this before, but in case you want a couple further analyses for yourself or acquaintances, here are two.

First, a short piece by Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. and Jeremy Symons subtitled “Five Reasons Why the 2024 Elections Will be a Climate and Environmental Justice Tipping Point.” Note that the tipping point could go either way, depending on who wins. Emily Atkin of Heated also has a very fair assessment of some possible outcomes for energy transition under each potential administration.

As you know, I read a LOT of climate news from a range of reliable sources. I assure you, no one is suggesting that a Trump presidency will be fine for climate. It won’t. We have a much, much more hopeful opportunity to address the climate crisis productively under Harris. There is just no question.

So we wait, work, and pray. Meanwhile, husband Ron and I are starting work in earnest on the sequel to Refugia Faith, tentatively titled Refugia Church. We’re reading, planning, drafting, and talking to lots of people.

Here’s a request for you: if you know of churches or other gospel communities doing great work on climate, particularly innovative work, would you send me a note? You can use the comments on this newsletter. We are gathering as many great examples as we can, and we would love your suggestions. I have learned that such communities are everywhere, if you start looking. Thanks!

My front yard native planting continues to attract pollinators, even this late in the season. The late-blooming asters and goldenrod are still busy with bees, while the birds absolutely adore the dried plants, now filled with nourishing seeds.

This Week in Climate News

Time for a progress check on global energy transition. As usual, great news and grim news. We’re making huge progress! But it isn’t enough—yet.

First, the great news. Canary Media’s Eric Wesoff reports that the US has quadrupled solar capacity since the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022:

Generous incentives in the Biden administration’s landmark climate law have driven solar-module manufacturing capacity to more than 31 gigawatts. That’s a stark change from August 2021, one year before the IRA became law, when the country could produce just 8.3 gigawatts. The U.S. installed 32.4 gigawatts of solar in 2023, a figure expected to climb even higher this year, meaning the country’s solar manufacturing capacity is now close to matching its pace of solar deployment.

The US is working to create an end-to-end supply chain, though at the moment, we are still depending on imported components and processes. That’s changing rapidly as businesses and private investors take advantage of incentives in the IRA.

That’s the US. But the global picture is exciting, too. Analysts at UK think tank Ember are estimating that by the end of 2024, the world will install 29% more solar than just last year. Note the upward sweep of that top line.

In fact, while solar provides only 5.5% of global energy now, it is on track to overtake everything else. The folks at Carbon Brief wrote up a helpful analysis of the deeply wonky new International Energy Agency’s report:

The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook 2024 shows solar overtaking nuclear, wind, hydro, gas and, finally, coal, to become the world’s single-largest source of electricity by 2033.

Here’s the graphic that helps visualize their conclusions:

Zoë Schlanger of The Atlantic covered this story as well. She writes:

Last year, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, in Dubai, 132 countries and the European Union pledged to triple the world’s renewable-energy capacity by 2030. According to Bahar, it’s the only promise of the many made in Dubai that’s likely to even be close to fulfilled: The world is on track to add 2.7 times its renewable capacity by then, and 80 percent of that increase will come from solar. To make use of all this growth, the world will have to add much more storage and transmission capacity, neither of which are keeping up with solar’s pace.

So there’s work to do, of course. And that brings us to this report, describing the grim news: the “emissions gap” remains. In other words, current commitments by governments across the globe will not yet get us to our Paris Agreement goals. A report out from the UN this week (in preparation for COP29 next month in Azerbaijan) outlines the challenge:

Cuts of 42 per cent [in greenhouse gas emissions] are needed by 2030 and 57 per cent by 2035 to get on track for 1.5°C. 

A failure to increase ambition in these new NDCs and start delivering immediately would put the world on course for a temperature increase of 2.6-3.1°C over the course of this century. This would bring debilitating impacts to people, planet and economies. 

It remains technically possible to get on a 1.5°C pathway, with solar, wind and forests holding real promise for sweeping and fast emissions cuts. To deliver on this potential, sufficiently strong NDCs [Nationally Determined Contributions] would need to be backed urgently by a whole-of-government approach, measures that maximize socioeconomic and environmental co-benefits, enhanced international collaboration that includes reform of the global financial architecture, strong private sector action and a minimum six-fold increase in mitigation investment. G20 nations, particularly the largest-emitting members, would need to do the heavy lifting. 

And that is why the US election is so important around the world.

Fortunately, people around the world do want change. And they want their governments to help. As Katharine Hayhoe reported in her newsletter, the UN recently undertook a huge survey of 73,000 people in 77 countries. Hayhoe summarizes:

They found that 80 percent of respondents want their governments to do more to act on climate change. 72 percent said they want a swift transition away from fossil fuels. And 56 percent of those surveyed said they think about climate change “daily or weekly.”

“The survey results – unprecedented in their coverage – reveal a level of consensus that is truly astonishing. We urge leaders and policymakers to take note. This is an issue that almost everyone, everywhere, can agree on,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner.

Because I work with young people, I was really struck by this paper, recently published in The Lancet Planetary Health. It’s a big survey on climate emotions among US youth ages 16-25. As you can imagine, the results suggest that young people are, to put it frankly, freaked out and discouraged. The authors’ main conclusion: “Climate change is causing widespread distress among US youth and affecting their beliefs and plans for the future. These effects may intensify, across the political spectrum, as exposure to climate-related severe weather events increases.”

Take a look at this graphic—the more red, the more worried. Overall, 85% are at least moderately worried.

Source: Graphical appendix for "Climate emotions, thoughts, and plans among US adolescents and young adults: a cross-sectional descriptive survey and analysis by political party identification and self-reported exposure to severe weather events." [Lewandowski, R.E, Clayton, S.D., Olbrich, L., Sakshaug, J.W., Wray, B. et al, (2024) The Lancet Planetary Health, 11 (8)]

In light of all of these stories taken together, I found encouragement in this news, reported by the good people at Fix the News. They are summarizing this article in The Economist, on how elections are going around the world this year:

Sixty-seven countries with a total population of about 3.4 billion people have already held national elections this year. Another 440 million people will have their say before the end of 2024. With almost 90% of votes around the world cast and tallied, what's evident so far?

• Democracy has proved to be pretty resilient.

• Voter turnout has risen for the first time in two decades, signalling engagement by citizens in the political process.

• Efforts to undermine elections have mostly failed, and disinformation campaigns haven't made much of an impact.

• Voters have held leaders accountable, with a swing against incumbents in well over half of the democratic elections held so far this year.

Not a reason to become complacent in the US, but still: I find this encouraging.

Deeper Dive

In the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, I’ve been on the lookout for news about “managed retreat.” That’s the term of art for when whole communities move out of danger zones in a planned and coordinated way. As you can imagine, this is complicated.

Daniel Shailer of Inside Climate News wrote about what’s happening in some South Carolina communities—the state actually has a managed retreat scheme going. Shailer first presents one woman’s story, that of Melissa Krupa:

Krupa’s new home had its first big flood in 2015. Three years later Hurricane Florence swept five feet of water through her living room. Krupa became the vanguard of a group of locals asking to be bought out: for the state to help them relocate out of harm’s way, and to demolish their homes so that absorbent green space could slow the roll of future flood water for others still living nearby. Krupa had found her dream home, then spent six years begging the government to destroy it. This July, her wish came true.

Krupa’s home, flooded in February 2021. Photo credit: Melissa Krupa. Source.

The rest of the article follows Krupa but also describes the larger context. The basic idea behind managed retreat is that people are compensated fairly for the value of their property, and then whole communities move out so that the area can then be rewilded—better for flooding mitigation and better for people who no longer live in an ever-worsening flood plain.

However, even if people are willing to leave their homes and communities—which they’re often not—what can happen is that homeowners sell quickly to a realtor, who then flips and/or resells the home to someone else, without disclosing all the relevant information about the property’s flood risk. The realtors make a quick buck on someone else’s risk, in other words. It’s a fascinating article and worth reading.

Meanwhile, the UK is experimenting with flood management that involves, well, giving up in order to win, you might say. One experiment, on the Somerset coast in Southwest England is about working with nature:

Rather than attempting to resist the sea, the land was given back to it. It was, in the words of Alys Laver, the conservationist who oversees the site, a “giant science experiment.”

A decade on, its results might offer a blueprint for how some parts of Britain — and the rest of the world — might adapt to the reality of climate change.

The re-engineered marsh in Somerset, England. Photo credit: Andrew Testa

This land had been drained centuries ago to use for farming and grazing, but frequest flooding has prompted a new plan:

The idea was to turn what had been farmland into salt marsh, an ancient ecosystem that soaks up water as the tide comes in and releases it as the sea retreats.

This salt marsh does require some management, but mostly it just does its job: protect inland ecosystems, provide excellent habitat for wildlife, provide capture carbon, and even allow some cattle grazing.

Managed retreat and other resilience schemes are going to be challenge in the US for many reasons, not least the fact that people continue to move to higher-risk places! This article by By Mira Rojanasakul and Nadja Popovich in the New York Times explains patterns of migration inside the US, concluding that people are not taking climate risk into account when they move, with the result that “The country’s vast population shift has left more people exposed to the risk of natural hazards and dangerous heat at a time when climate change is amplifying many weather extremes.”

Source.

How on earth can people get realistic information about where they want to move? Well, here’s a curious development: Zillow is now including climate risk information in their listings:

Home shoppers will gain insights into five key risks—flood, wildfire, wind, heat and air quality—directly from listing pages, complete with risk scores, interactive maps and insurance requirements.

Wow. So I checked out my own home, and there were no facts and figures there about climate risk for me because our home is not on the market. So I looked for the nearest home for sale near me and found this information:

OK, I’m not surprised. I already know that we can expect more intense rainfall in my region. However, then I clicked through on “Show more” and got amazingly fine-grained maps! Yes! The flood map showed that this particular home is near enough to Plaster Creek that, yes, flooding is a big risk. However, I could see on the map that my own house is safe. Safer, anyway.

Try it! This is an amazing tool, and it strikes me that we have a case here of market demand requiring more honesty—because people want to make wise and safe (as safe as possible) investments in their home. I wonder if all those people moving to Phoenix have checked this out. Even if they’re not buying homes, this tool could be useful…

Refugia Sighting

Today’s sighting has little to do with climate change, but it does demonstrate how a faith community can come together even in a low-resource community to create a beautiful refugia space. My good friends Rev. Trevor Rubingh and Rev. Linda Rubingh founded New City Kids over 30 years ago. Here’s what they do:

New City Kids offers faith-based, after-school programming for local youth from under-resourced communities. Children and teens actively engage in spiritual, leadership, academic, and musical development in a challenging and fun environment. Although youth living in under-resourced communities face many challenges, New City Kids is a safe place where they experience trust, value, leadership, collaboration and love.

This is great refugia work. The idea is to employ and train teen leaders and mentors to help teach and mentor the younger kids. They work on academics, college readiness, and musical and performing skills. After years of watching and supporting this ministry, I can tell you that the stories of transformation and long-term success are myriad and inspiring.

While New City Kids now has six locations in four cities in the US, I want to share with you this story of their new initiative, called New City Networks. Trevor has been traveling the world partnering with leaders abroad who want to adopt the New City model. He recently traveled to South Africa to work with the Nguzo Saba Institute in Cape Town and help them adopt and adapt the New City model for their context.

I promise, you’ll find this video inspiring.

The Not-So-Wayback Machine

One more piece of election-related content. The Harris campaign held a rally in my town last weekend, and… I went! I’ve never done that before. Have you? If you’re wondering what it was like, I’ve written up this account of my experience.

Naturally, I listened carefully for climate-related matters in the speeches. All the speakers put quite a bit of emphasis on clean energy jobs in Michigan, which heartened me. They’re talking about it! They’re making the case for clean energy’s economic benefits! For more, read on.

Image credit: Hannah Scholten. No, I did not get anywhere near this close to Harris. Thanks to my friend Lee Hardy for sending me this photo, taken by Hannah Scholten, the sister of Hillary Scholten, my US Congressional Rep. Thanks, Hannah!

Thanks for reading. Till next time, be well.