Reversing on the 'highway to climate hell'

Dear friend,

With COP27 having come to an end, you may have encountered discussions about the agreements made and what was missing from this year’s summit, as covered by Qiyun (@theweirdandwild), Kate (@byobottlesg) and Terese who represented Singapore’s youth activists there. While some progress has been achieved from COP27, such as establishing the new Loss and Damage fund (also mentioned in our previous newsletter), important issues are still not adequately addressed. Notably, the finalised agreement on emission targets was a step backwards from what was discussed in COP26. The finalised text provides more loopholes for fossil fuel lobbyists and industries to exploit. Moreover, just like in the previous COPs, the voices from marginalised communities are generally missing in COP27. With that, one thing’s certain: the fight still goes on. We are on the “highway to climate hell”, but more can still be done to divert the trajectory.  

When coming up with our final theme for the year, Resolutions and Revolutions, the team thought of its multiple meanings: the (lack of) concrete resolutions at COP27, the end of the year marking another revolution around the sun, the common practice of resolving to do better in the coming year, the many historical revolutions that have paved the way for a better world… As always, we welcome your contributions to the new theme (e.g articles, illustrations, etc.). Drop us a message if you have any ideas! We thank you for being with us this past year, and hope you will continue to support the movement in 2023!

For a better world,
SG Climate Rally

Housing has been a hot topic for much of 2022, with high property prices and long BTO wait times dominating the headlines. A common point of discussion is whether HDBs should be considered as a form of investment. With an eye on the oft-cited question ‘Are you prepared to give up a home to save a forest?’ always coming up when a nature site is slated for development, we look into some myths that this question poses about trade-offs at the individual and national level when it comes to housing policies in Singapore.

Other than housing, recent discussions on land use have also touched on the topic of farming. While the illegal clearance of the Kranji woodland for an Agri-Food Innovation Park has been all over the news, other questions such as whether there is a place for land-based farms amidst this push for increasing technology (like the now closed Green Circle Eco-Farm and Fireflies Health Farm), and what we lose without them, remain unanswered. Read our article to find out more!

Global 

A report by Swiss Re Institute estimated that natural disasters such as storms, floods, and wildfires caused around US$260 billion in economic losses in 2022. This was down 11 per cent from 2021, but is still above the 10-year average of US$207 billion. This further highlights the economic impact of extreme weather events and adds yet another imperative for businesses and governments to act.

And on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to resume cooperation on climate change. This is an important step with the two biggest contributors to climate emissions working together again, but concrete discussions have yet to resume.

Singapore 

The Ministry of Transport has announced that half of the taxis and public buses will be electric by 2030, and Singapore will be joining the US-led initiative to increase the deployment of zero-emission vehicles. This is achieved by having 50 per cent of new light-duty vehicles sold by 2030 (e.g battery electric vehicles, fuel cell electric vehicles, and plug-in hybrid vehicles). On the sidelines of COP27, Singapore also announced that an International Blue Carbon Institute to protect and restore coastal marine ecosystems across Southeast Asia and beyond will be set up in Singapore.The institute is established by Amazon and Conservation International.

The Carbon Pricing (Amendment) Bill was passed in Parliament earlier this month, where the carbon tax will increase from the current S$5 per tonne to S$25 per tonne for greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 and 2025, and S$45 per tonne for greenhouse gas emissions in 2026 and beyond. By 2030, Singapore will reach between S$50 and S$80 per tonne through progressive increases. The framework for International Carbon Credits (ICC) will also be set up. Suggestions made to increase the transparency of ICC usage were rejected to protect the privacy of the corporations’ data. Furthermore, in response to concerns about the rising cost of living due to the rising carbon taxes, Ms Grace Fu said that efforts will be sustained to support affected businesses and households during the transition. 

Meanwhile, despite the new net-zero target by Singapore and carbon tax raise, Climate Action Tracker continued to rate Singapore’s climate ambitions as ‘critically insufficient’, the lowest on a five-tier scale. The organisation said that the targets were only a ‘marginal improvement’, and the country’s emissions are higher than what is needed to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

Lots have already been written about the aftermath of COP27: its lack of ambition, disappointing results, and hot air from the politicians. One good thing that emerged was finally the creation of a loss and damage fund to provide developing nations with the funds needed to enact climate action. However, more about the fund needs to be discussed. In this article from Jacobin, precedent suggests that such reparations could be based on post-Nazi Germany’s model, as climate-related humanitarian impacts have similarities to past historical atrocities.

Ever wondered how weather forecasters do the work they do? This article by CNA sheds light on the work of a meteorologist in Singapore, and how climate change, causing more extreme weather events, makes their job harder. In the future, if technology doesn’t keep up, you might be caught outside without a brolly more often!

This thought-provoking article by The Intercept looks at an issue often tied up with climate change - conservation biology. It posits that climate change is but a smaller subset of a larger problem - ecological overshoot. Simply put, human activities have grown too large on a scale to maintain biodiversity. There will need to be constraints on human activity and unsustainable growth to mitigate these impacts.

Finally, we’ve written before on the impact of heat stress on the body, but this great visual article by the New York Times, using thermal imagery and videos of people in Kuwait City and Basra, Iraq, gives you a first-hand view of the tangible impacts it has on laborers, children, and more generally, people’s everyday lives in those parts of the world. As carbon emissions increase and we experience more and more days of extreme heat, more and more people will be affected - and not all can adapt their way out of it.