#XisChina

Long stories short The surface temperature of the world’s oceans has hit a record high since the start of April.Tesla is building a new battery factory in Shanghai, strengthening China’s position in the clean energy supply chain (more below)India’s population of wild tigers, the largest in the world, has risen above 3,000. Everything everywhere all at once? Eight years ago in Paris, world leaders pledged to reduce emissions enough to maintain a habitable world for most of humanity. Aside from the pandemic year of 2020, emissions have kept rising. Campaigners say the problem is that governments aren’t doing enough. Their words are ‘blah, blah, blah’. Simon Sharpe, formerly deputy director of the UK’s COP26 unit, suggests instead that they might be trying to do too much – and failing in the process. So what? If the global diplomatic approach to climate is “everything everywhere all at once”, the world may be in for a 28th failed attempt this year. Our species is running out of time. By the numbers: 43 – per cent. To limit a global temperature rise, emissions need to fall this much by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. Instead, emissions are expected to rise 10.6 per cent by the end of this decade. 79.6 – billion US dollars. This is the scale of climate finance provided by rich countries for developing ones in 2019. At climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, rich nations promised to provide $100 billion a year by 2020. Sharpe said: “You could say the way climate diplomacy has been done has ignored everything we know about how diplomacy has ever been successful in the past.” He likened the current approach to climate to legislating for world peace by getting every country to sign a binding agreement. Instead, Sharpe suggested, we should: Break the problem down into manageable pieces, such as eliminating coal from power generation.Work for cooperation in each sector separately, and work with small groups of countries in each of those sectors, rather than every country in the world.Focus on current actions, rather than long-term targets. If this sounds familiar, it is the approach attempted under the UK COP presidency, with its “cash, coal, cars, trees” mantra. So what progress has been made on that front since COP26 in Glasgow? Cash. There’s hope: this summer, the World Bank will have new leadership, and expectations are high that the bank will do more to address climate change. At last year’s COP, rich countries agreed to a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries hit by climate disasters. Coal. Slow progress: developed countries have announced partnerships with South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia to transition away from coal, but there’s little movement – South Africa has openly expressed concern that much of the finance will come as loans rather than grants, increasing its debt burden. Cars. The biggest success story: in 2019, electric cars were 2.5 per cent of global car sales. In 2021, EVs were nearly 9 per cent of overall sales. Growth in sales slowed at the start of this year with the withdrawal of subsidies in China and Europe, but the rollout of tax credits in the US will spur growth. Trees.The biggest disappointment: Indonesia, home to one of the world’s biggest rainforests, repudiated the Glasgow deal on deforestation almost instantly. Despite a change of government in Brazil, destruction of the Amazon remains rampant. Sharpe acknowledged that breaking the problem up does not mean things will be “quick and easy. He argued that: “It gives us a chance of doing something useful.” Further reading: Simon Sharpe’s book, Five Times Faster, is out now from Cambridge University Press.  policy Future shock From bank rescues to inflation, there is plenty to discuss at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, underway in Washington this week. Andrew Mitchell, UK development minister, and Njuguna N’dungu, Kenya’s finance minister, offered a joint agenda for change in The Times, pushing world leaders to make good on a commitment to channel finance to vulnerable countries. The ministers also note the value of innovative financing to deal with shocks. After rains failed in Somalia for a fifth consecutive time, the country received an insurance payout of $4.2 million this February, under a collaboration between the UK and Somali governments and an African Union agency. Plenty more bold thinking is needed to prepare for future crises. eco-nomics Plugging in Tesla has announced plans to build a factory in Shanghai for its Megapack, a battery that provides energy storage at a scale large enough to support power grids. The new plant is due to begin production next year, supplementing the output of Tesla’s existing Megapack factory in California. China already dominates battery technology, producing three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries, according to the IEA. The move is also a sign that many Western companies are ignoring rhetoric over US-China decoupling: Airbus recently announced plans to double production capacity in China for the A320 jet. activism Screen wipe Rolling Stone described it as the “hottest date movie of the season”, unexpected praise for a film based on a direct-action manifesto by a Swedish professor. How to Blow Up a Pipeline takes Andreas Malm’s radical argument and turns it into a fictional thriller.  Entertainment can connect in ways that facts can’t: just look at the reaction to Don’t Look Up, which became one of Netflix’s most popular films. Yet what’s on screen over the past decade has had little connection to the biggest oncoming change affecting people’s lives. Just 2.8 per cent of US TV and film scripts aired between 2016 and 2020 featured ‘climate-adjacent’ words, according to a study commissioned by campaign group Good Energy. science Swing for the fences Climate change has given baseball sluggers a boost. When the air is warmer and less dense, flying objects go farther, so the number of balls hit out of the park is going up. Researchers at Dartmouth College who analysed more than 100,000 games found that rising temperatures had led to an extra 50 home runs a year between 2010 and 2019. A grimmer effect of climate change is that it’s likely to be increasingly hard to play baseball in the open air and in daytime in coming decades. Eight of the 30 major league teams’ stadia now have retractable roofs. Thanks for reading. Jeevan Vasagar@jeevanvasagar If you want to get in touch, drop us a line at sensemaker@tortoisemedia.com. With thanks to our coalition members: a network of organisations similarly committed to achieving Net Zero Visit the homepage to find out more about the coalition and join us.

Long stories short The surface temperature of the world’s oceans has hit a record high since the start of April.Tesla is building a new battery factory in Shanghai, strengthening China’s position in the clean energy supply chain (more below)India’s population of wild tigers, the largest in the world, has risen above 3,000. Everything everywhere all at once? Eight years ago in Paris, world leaders pledged to reduce emissions enough to maintain a habitable world for most of humanity. Aside from the pandemic year of 2020, emissions have kept rising. Campaigners say the problem is that governments aren’t doing enough. Their words are ‘blah, blah, blah’. Simon Sharpe, formerly deputy director of the UK’s COP26 unit, suggests instead that they might be trying to do too much – and failing in the process. So what? If the global diplomatic approach to climate is “everything everywhere all at once”, the world may be in for a 28th failed attempt this year. Our species is running out of time. By the numbers: 43 – per cent. To limit a global temperature rise, emissions need to fall this much by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. Instead, emissions are expected to rise 10.6 per cent by the end of this decade. 79.6 – billion US dollars. This is the scale of climate finance provided by rich countries for developing ones in 2019. At climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, rich nations promised to provide $100 billion a year by 2020. Sharpe said: “You could say the way climate diplomacy has been done has ignored everything we know about how diplomacy has ever been successful in the past.” He likened the current approach to climate to legislating for world peace by getting every country to sign a binding agreement. Instead, Sharpe suggested, we should: Break the problem down into manageable pieces, such as eliminating coal from power generation.Work for cooperation in each sector separately, and work with small groups of countries in each of those sectors, rather than every country in the world.Focus on current actions, rather than long-term targets. If this sounds familiar, it is the approach attempted under the UK COP presidency, with its “cash, coal, cars, trees” mantra. So what progress has been made on that front since COP26 in Glasgow? Cash. There’s hope: this summer, the World Bank will have new leadership, and expectations are high that the bank will do more to address climate change. At last year’s COP, rich countries agreed to a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries hit by climate disasters. Coal. Slow progress: developed countries have announced partnerships with South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia to transition away from coal, but there’s little movement – South Africa has openly expressed concern that much of the finance will come as loans rather than grants, increasing its debt burden. Cars. The biggest success story: in 2019, electric cars were 2.5 per cent of global car sales. In 2021, EVs were nearly 9 per cent of overall sales. Growth in sales slowed at the start of this year with the withdrawal of subsidies in China and Europe, but the rollout of tax credits in the US will spur growth. Trees.The biggest disappointment: Indonesia, home to one of the world’s biggest rainforests, repudiated the Glasgow deal on deforestation almost instantly. Despite a change of government in Brazil, destruction of the Amazon remains rampant. Sharpe acknowledged that breaking the problem up does not mean things will be “quick and easy. He argued that: “It gives us a chance of doing something useful.” Further reading: Simon Sharpe’s book, Five Times Faster, is out now from Cambridge University Press.  policy Future shock From bank rescues to inflation, there is plenty to discuss at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, underway in Washington this week. Andrew Mitchell, UK development minister, and Njuguna N’dungu, Kenya’s finance minister, offered a joint agenda for change in The Times, pushing world leaders to make good on a commitment to channel finance to vulnerable countries. The ministers also note the value of innovative financing to deal with shocks. After rains failed in Somalia for a fifth consecutive time, the country received an insurance payout of $4.2 million this February, under a collaboration between the UK and Somali governments and an African Union agency. Plenty more bold thinking is needed to prepare for future crises. eco-nomics Plugging in Tesla has announced plans to build a factory in Shanghai for its Megapack, a battery that provides energy storage at a scale large enough to support power grids. The new plant is due to begin production next year, supplementing the output of Tesla’s existing Megapack factory in California. China already dominates battery technology, producing three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries, according to the IEA. The move is also a sign that many Western companies are ignoring rhetoric over US-China decoupling: Airbus recently announced plans to double production capacity in China for the A320 jet. activism Screen wipe Rolling Stone described it as the “hottest date movie of the season”, unexpected praise for a film based on a direct-action manifesto by a Swedish professor. How to Blow Up a Pipeline takes Andreas Malm’s radical argument and turns it into a fictional thriller.  Entertainment can connect in ways that facts can’t: just look at the reaction to Don’t Look Up, which became one of Netflix’s most popular films. Yet what’s on screen over the past decade has had little connection to the biggest oncoming change affecting people’s lives. Just 2.8 per cent of US TV and film scripts aired between 2016 and 2020 featured ‘climate-adjacent’ words, according to a study commissioned by campaign group Good Energy. science Swing for the fences Climate change has given baseball sluggers a boost. When the air is warmer and less dense, flying objects go farther, so the number of balls hit out of the park is going up. Researchers at Dartmouth College who analysed more than 100,000 games found that rising temperatures had led to an extra 50 home runs a year between 2010 and 2019. A grimmer effect of climate change is that it’s likely to be increasingly hard to play baseball in the open air and in daytime in coming decades. Eight of the 30 major league teams’ stadia now have retractable roofs. Thanks for reading. Jeevan Vasagar@jeevanvasagar If you want to get in touch, drop us a line at sensemaker@tortoisemedia.com. With thanks to our coalition members: a network of organisations similarly committed to achieving Net Zero Visit the homepage to find out more about the coalition and join us.

Long stories short The surface temperature of the world’s oceans has hit a record high since the start of April.Tesla is building a new battery factory in Shanghai, strengthening China’s position in the clean energy supply chain (more below)India’s population of wild tigers, the largest in the world, has risen above 3,000. Everything everywhere all at once? Eight years ago in Paris, world leaders pledged to reduce emissions enough to maintain a habitable world for most of humanity. Aside from the pandemic year of 2020, emissions have kept rising. Campaigners say the problem is that governments aren’t doing enough. Their words are ‘blah, blah, blah’. Simon Sharpe, formerly deputy director of the UK’s COP26 unit, suggests instead that they might be trying to do too much – and failing in the process. So what? If the global diplomatic approach to climate is “everything everywhere all at once”, the world may be in for a 28th failed attempt this year. Our species is running out of time. By the numbers: 43 – per cent. To limit a global temperature rise, emissions need to fall this much by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. Instead, emissions are expected to rise 10.6 per cent by the end of this decade. 79.6 – billion US dollars. This is the scale of climate finance provided by rich countries for developing ones in 2019. At climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, rich nations promised to provide $100 billion a year by 2020. Sharpe said: “You could say the way climate diplomacy has been done has ignored everything we know about how diplomacy has ever been successful in the past.” He likened the current approach to climate to legislating for world peace by getting every country to sign a binding agreement. Instead, Sharpe suggested, we should: Break the problem down into manageable pieces, such as eliminating coal from power generation.Work for cooperation in each sector separately, and work with small groups of countries in each of those sectors, rather than every country in the world.Focus on current actions, rather than long-term targets. If this sounds familiar, it is the approach attempted under the UK COP presidency, with its “cash, coal, cars, trees” mantra. So what progress has been made on that front since COP26 in Glasgow? Cash. There’s hope: this summer, the World Bank will have new leadership, and expectations are high that the bank will do more to address climate change. At last year’s COP, rich countries agreed to a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries hit by climate disasters. Coal. Slow progress: developed countries have announced partnerships with South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia to transition away from coal, but there’s little movement – South Africa has openly expressed concern that much of the finance will come as loans rather than grants, increasing its debt burden. Cars. The biggest success story: in 2019, electric cars were 2.5 per cent of global car sales. In 2021, EVs were nearly 9 per cent of overall sales. Growth in sales slowed at the start of this year with the withdrawal of subsidies in China and Europe, but the rollout of tax credits in the US will spur growth. Trees.The biggest disappointment: Indonesia, home to one of the world’s biggest rainforests, repudiated the Glasgow deal on deforestation almost instantly. Despite a change of government in Brazil, destruction of the Amazon remains rampant. Sharpe acknowledged that breaking the problem up does not mean things will be “quick and easy. He argued that: “It gives us a chance of doing something useful.” Further reading: Simon Sharpe’s book, Five Times Faster, is out now from Cambridge University Press.  policy Future shock From bank rescues to inflation, there is plenty to discuss at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, underway in Washington this week. Andrew Mitchell, UK development minister, and Njuguna N’dungu, Kenya’s finance minister, offered a joint agenda for change in The Times, pushing world leaders to make good on a commitment to channel finance to vulnerable countries. The ministers also note the value of innovative financing to deal with shocks. After rains failed in Somalia for a fifth consecutive time, the country received an insurance payout of $4.2 million this February, under a collaboration between the UK and Somali governments and an African Union agency. Plenty more bold thinking is needed to prepare for future crises. eco-nomics Plugging in Tesla has announced plans to build a factory in Shanghai for its Megapack, a battery that provides energy storage at a scale large enough to support power grids. The new plant is due to begin production next year, supplementing the output of Tesla’s existing Megapack factory in California. China already dominates battery technology, producing three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries, according to the IEA. The move is also a sign that many Western companies are ignoring rhetoric over US-China decoupling: Airbus recently announced plans to double production capacity in China for the A320 jet. activism Screen wipe Rolling Stone described it as the “hottest date movie of the season”, unexpected praise for a film based on a direct-action manifesto by a Swedish professor. How to Blow Up a Pipeline takes Andreas Malm’s radical argument and turns it into a fictional thriller.  Entertainment can connect in ways that facts can’t: just look at the reaction to Don’t Look Up, which became one of Netflix’s most popular films. Yet what’s on screen over the past decade has had little connection to the biggest oncoming change affecting people’s lives. Just 2.8 per cent of US TV and film scripts aired between 2016 and 2020 featured ‘climate-adjacent’ words, according to a study commissioned by campaign group Good Energy. science Swing for the fences Climate change has given baseball sluggers a boost. When the air is warmer and less dense, flying objects go farther, so the number of balls hit out of the park is going up. Researchers at Dartmouth College who analysed more than 100,000 games found that rising temperatures had led to an extra 50 home runs a year between 2010 and 2019. A grimmer effect of climate change is that it’s likely to be increasingly hard to play baseball in the open air and in daytime in coming decades. Eight of the 30 major league teams’ stadia now have retractable roofs. Thanks for reading. Jeevan Vasagar@jeevanvasagar If you want to get in touch, drop us a line at sensemaker@tortoisemedia.com. With thanks to our coalition members: a network of organisations similarly committed to achieving Net Zero Visit the homepage to find out more about the coalition and join us.

Long stories short The surface temperature of the world’s oceans has hit a record high since the start of April.Tesla is building a new battery factory in Shanghai, strengthening China’s position in the clean energy supply chain (more below)India’s population of wild tigers, the largest in the world, has risen above 3,000. Everything everywhere all at once? Eight years ago in Paris, world leaders pledged to reduce emissions enough to maintain a habitable world for most of humanity. Aside from the pandemic year of 2020, emissions have kept rising. Campaigners say the problem is that governments aren’t doing enough. Their words are ‘blah, blah, blah’. Simon Sharpe, formerly deputy director of the UK’s COP26 unit, suggests instead that they might be trying to do too much – and failing in the process. So what? If the global diplomatic approach to climate is “everything everywhere all at once”, the world may be in for a 28th failed attempt this year. Our species is running out of time. By the numbers: 43 – per cent. To limit a global temperature rise, emissions need to fall this much by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. Instead, emissions are expected to rise 10.6 per cent by the end of this decade. 79.6 – billion US dollars. This is the scale of climate finance provided by rich countries for developing ones in 2019. At climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, rich nations promised to provide $100 billion a year by 2020. Sharpe said: “You could say the way climate diplomacy has been done has ignored everything we know about how diplomacy has ever been successful in the past.” He likened the current approach to climate to legislating for world peace by getting every country to sign a binding agreement. Instead, Sharpe suggested, we should: Break the problem down into manageable pieces, such as eliminating coal from power generation.Work for cooperation in each sector separately, and work with small groups of countries in each of those sectors, rather than every country in the world.Focus on current actions, rather than long-term targets. If this sounds familiar, it is the approach attempted under the UK COP presidency, with its “cash, coal, cars, trees” mantra. So what progress has been made on that front since COP26 in Glasgow? Cash. There’s hope: this summer, the World Bank will have new leadership, and expectations are high that the bank will do more to address climate change. At last year’s COP, rich countries agreed to a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries hit by climate disasters. Coal. Slow progress: developed countries have announced partnerships with South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia to transition away from coal, but there’s little movement – South Africa has openly expressed concern that much of the finance will come as loans rather than grants, increasing its debt burden. Cars. The biggest success story: in 2019, electric cars were 2.5 per cent of global car sales. In 2021, EVs were nearly 9 per cent of overall sales. Growth in sales slowed at the start of this year with the withdrawal of subsidies in China and Europe, but the rollout of tax credits in the US will spur growth. Trees.The biggest disappointment: Indonesia, home to one of the world’s biggest rainforests, repudiated the Glasgow deal on deforestation almost instantly. Despite a change of government in Brazil, destruction of the Amazon remains rampant. Sharpe acknowledged that breaking the problem up does not mean things will be “quick and easy. He argued that: “It gives us a chance of doing something useful.” Further reading: Simon Sharpe’s book, Five Times Faster, is out now from Cambridge University Press.  policy Future shock From bank rescues to inflation, there is plenty to discuss at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, underway in Washington this week. Andrew Mitchell, UK development minister, and Njuguna N’dungu, Kenya’s finance minister, offered a joint agenda for change in The Times, pushing world leaders to make good on a commitment to channel finance to vulnerable countries. The ministers also note the value of innovative financing to deal with shocks. After rains failed in Somalia for a fifth consecutive time, the country received an insurance payout of $4.2 million this February, under a collaboration between the UK and Somali governments and an African Union agency. Plenty more bold thinking is needed to prepare for future crises. eco-nomics Plugging in Tesla has announced plans to build a factory in Shanghai for its Megapack, a battery that provides energy storage at a scale large enough to support power grids. The new plant is due to begin production next year, supplementing the output of Tesla’s existing Megapack factory in California. China already dominates battery technology, producing three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries, according to the IEA. The move is also a sign that many Western companies are ignoring rhetoric over US-China decoupling: Airbus recently announced plans to double production capacity in China for the A320 jet. activism Screen wipe Rolling Stone described it as the “hottest date movie of the season”, unexpected praise for a film based on a direct-action manifesto by a Swedish professor. How to Blow Up a Pipeline takes Andreas Malm’s radical argument and turns it into a fictional thriller.  Entertainment can connect in ways that facts can’t: just look at the reaction to Don’t Look Up, which became one of Netflix’s most popular films. Yet what’s on screen over the past decade has had little connection to the biggest oncoming change affecting people’s lives. Just 2.8 per cent of US TV and film scripts aired between 2016 and 2020 featured ‘climate-adjacent’ words, according to a study commissioned by campaign group Good Energy. science Swing for the fences Climate change has given baseball sluggers a boost. When the air is warmer and less dense, flying objects go farther, so the number of balls hit out of the park is going up. Researchers at Dartmouth College who analysed more than 100,000 games found that rising temperatures had led to an extra 50 home runs a year between 2010 and 2019. A grimmer effect of climate change is that it’s likely to be increasingly hard to play baseball in the open air and in daytime in coming decades. Eight of the 30 major league teams’ stadia now have retractable roofs. Thanks for reading. Jeevan Vasagar@jeevanvasagar If you want to get in touch, drop us a line at sensemaker@tortoisemedia.com. With thanks to our coalition members: a network of organisations similarly committed to achieving Net Zero Visit the homepage to find out more about the coalition and join us.

Long stories short The surface temperature of the world’s oceans has hit a record high since the start of April.Tesla is building a new battery factory in Shanghai, strengthening China’s position in the clean energy supply chain (more below)India’s population of wild tigers, the largest in the world, has risen above 3,000. Everything everywhere all at once? Eight years ago in Paris, world leaders pledged to reduce emissions enough to maintain a habitable world for most of humanity. Aside from the pandemic year of 2020, emissions have kept rising. Campaigners say the problem is that governments aren’t doing enough. Their words are ‘blah, blah, blah’. Simon Sharpe, formerly deputy director of the UK’s COP26 unit, suggests instead that they might be trying to do too much – and failing in the process. So what? If the global diplomatic approach to climate is “everything everywhere all at once”, the world may be in for a 28th failed attempt this year. Our species is running out of time. By the numbers: 43 – per cent. To limit a global temperature rise, emissions need to fall this much by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. Instead, emissions are expected to rise 10.6 per cent by the end of this decade. 79.6 – billion US dollars. This is the scale of climate finance provided by rich countries for developing ones in 2019. At climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, rich nations promised to provide $100 billion a year by 2020. Sharpe said: “You could say the way climate diplomacy has been done has ignored everything we know about how diplomacy has ever been successful in the past.” He likened the current approach to climate to legislating for world peace by getting every country to sign a binding agreement. Instead, Sharpe suggested, we should: Break the problem down into manageable pieces, such as eliminating coal from power generation.Work for cooperation in each sector separately, and work with small groups of countries in each of those sectors, rather than every country in the world.Focus on current actions, rather than long-term targets. If this sounds familiar, it is the approach attempted under the UK COP presidency, with its “cash, coal, cars, trees” mantra. So what progress has been made on that front since COP26 in Glasgow? Cash. There’s hope: this summer, the World Bank will have new leadership, and expectations are high that the bank will do more to address climate change. At last year’s COP, rich countries agreed to a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries hit by climate disasters. Coal. Slow progress: developed countries have announced partnerships with South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia to transition away from coal, but there’s little movement – South Africa has openly expressed concern that much of the finance will come as loans rather than grants, increasing its debt burden. Cars. The biggest success story: in 2019, electric cars were 2.5 per cent of global car sales. In 2021, EVs were nearly 9 per cent of overall sales. Growth in sales slowed at the start of this year with the withdrawal of subsidies in China and Europe, but the rollout of tax credits in the US will spur growth. Trees.The biggest disappointment: Indonesia, home to one of the world’s biggest rainforests, repudiated the Glasgow deal on deforestation almost instantly. Despite a change of government in Brazil, destruction of the Amazon remains rampant. Sharpe acknowledged that breaking the problem up does not mean things will be “quick and easy. He argued that: “It gives us a chance of doing something useful.” Further reading: Simon Sharpe’s book, Five Times Faster, is out now from Cambridge University Press.  policy Future shock From bank rescues to inflation, there is plenty to discuss at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, underway in Washington this week. Andrew Mitchell, UK development minister, and Njuguna N’dungu, Kenya’s finance minister, offered a joint agenda for change in The Times, pushing world leaders to make good on a commitment to channel finance to vulnerable countries. The ministers also note the value of innovative financing to deal with shocks. After rains failed in Somalia for a fifth consecutive time, the country received an insurance payout of $4.2 million this February, under a collaboration between the UK and Somali governments and an African Union agency. Plenty more bold thinking is needed to prepare for future crises. eco-nomics Plugging in Tesla has announced plans to build a factory in Shanghai for its Megapack, a battery that provides energy storage at a scale large enough to support power grids. The new plant is due to begin production next year, supplementing the output of Tesla’s existing Megapack factory in California. China already dominates battery technology, producing three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries, according to the IEA. The move is also a sign that many Western companies are ignoring rhetoric over US-China decoupling: Airbus recently announced plans to double production capacity in China for the A320 jet. activism Screen wipe Rolling Stone described it as the “hottest date movie of the season”, unexpected praise for a film based on a direct-action manifesto by a Swedish professor. How to Blow Up a Pipeline takes Andreas Malm’s radical argument and turns it into a fictional thriller.  Entertainment can connect in ways that facts can’t: just look at the reaction to Don’t Look Up, which became one of Netflix’s most popular films. Yet what’s on screen over the past decade has had little connection to the biggest oncoming change affecting people’s lives. Just 2.8 per cent of US TV and film scripts aired between 2016 and 2020 featured ‘climate-adjacent’ words, according to a study commissioned by campaign group Good Energy. science Swing for the fences Climate change has given baseball sluggers a boost. When the air is warmer and less dense, flying objects go farther, so the number of balls hit out of the park is going up. Researchers at Dartmouth College who analysed more than 100,000 games found that rising temperatures had led to an extra 50 home runs a year between 2010 and 2019. A grimmer effect of climate change is that it’s likely to be increasingly hard to play baseball in the open air and in daytime in coming decades. Eight of the 30 major league teams’ stadia now have retractable roofs. Thanks for reading. Jeevan Vasagar@jeevanvasagar If you want to get in touch, drop us a line at sensemaker@tortoisemedia.com. With thanks to our coalition members: a network of organisations similarly committed to achieving Net Zero Visit the homepage to find out more about the coalition and join us.

Long stories short The surface temperature of the world’s oceans has hit a record high since the start of April.Tesla is building a new battery factory in Shanghai, strengthening China’s position in the clean energy supply chain (more below)India’s population of wild tigers, the largest in the world, has risen above 3,000. Everything everywhere all at once? Eight years ago in Paris, world leaders pledged to reduce emissions enough to maintain a habitable world for most of humanity. Aside from the pandemic year of 2020, emissions have kept rising. Campaigners say the problem is that governments aren’t doing enough. Their words are ‘blah, blah, blah’. Simon Sharpe, formerly deputy director of the UK’s COP26 unit, suggests instead that they might be trying to do too much – and failing in the process. So what? If the global diplomatic approach to climate is “everything everywhere all at once”, the world may be in for a 28th failed attempt this year. Our species is running out of time. By the numbers: 43 – per cent. To limit a global temperature rise, emissions need to fall this much by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. Instead, emissions are expected to rise 10.6 per cent by the end of this decade. 79.6 – billion US dollars. This is the scale of climate finance provided by rich countries for developing ones in 2019. At climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, rich nations promised to provide $100 billion a year by 2020. Sharpe said: “You could say the way climate diplomacy has been done has ignored everything we know about how diplomacy has ever been successful in the past.” He likened the current approach to climate to legislating for world peace by getting every country to sign a binding agreement. Instead, Sharpe suggested, we should: Break the problem down into manageable pieces, such as eliminating coal from power generation.Work for cooperation in each sector separately, and work with small groups of countries in each of those sectors, rather than every country in the world.Focus on current actions, rather than long-term targets. If this sounds familiar, it is the approach attempted under the UK COP presidency, with its “cash, coal, cars, trees” mantra. So what progress has been made on that front since COP26 in Glasgow? Cash. There’s hope: this summer, the World Bank will have new leadership, and expectations are high that the bank will do more to address climate change. At last year’s COP, rich countries agreed to a “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries hit by climate disasters. Coal. Slow progress: developed countries have announced partnerships with South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia to transition away from coal, but there’s little movement – South Africa has openly expressed concern that much of the finance will come as loans rather than grants, increasing its debt burden. Cars. The biggest success story: in 2019, electric cars were 2.5 per cent of global car sales. In 2021, EVs were nearly 9 per cent of overall sales. Growth in sales slowed at the start of this year with the withdrawal of subsidies in China and Europe, but the rollout of tax credits in the US will spur growth. Trees.The biggest disappointment: Indonesia, home to one of the world’s biggest rainforests, repudiated the Glasgow deal on deforestation almost instantly. Despite a change of government in Brazil, destruction of the Amazon remains rampant. Sharpe acknowledged that breaking the problem up does not mean things will be “quick and easy. He argued that: “It gives us a chance of doing something useful.” Further reading: Simon Sharpe’s book, Five Times Faster, is out now from Cambridge University Press.  policy Future shock From bank rescues to inflation, there is plenty to discuss at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, underway in Washington this week. Andrew Mitchell, UK development minister, and Njuguna N’dungu, Kenya’s finance minister, offered a joint agenda for change in The Times, pushing world leaders to make good on a commitment to channel finance to vulnerable countries. The ministers also note the value of innovative financing to deal with shocks. After rains failed in Somalia for a fifth consecutive time, the country received an insurance payout of $4.2 million this February, under a collaboration between the UK and Somali governments and an African Union agency. Plenty more bold thinking is needed to prepare for future crises. eco-nomics Plugging in Tesla has announced plans to build a factory in Shanghai for its Megapack, a battery that provides energy storage at a scale large enough to support power grids. The new plant is due to begin production next year, supplementing the output of Tesla’s existing Megapack factory in California. China already dominates battery technology, producing three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries, according to the IEA. The move is also a sign that many Western companies are ignoring rhetoric over US-China decoupling: Airbus recently announced plans to double production capacity in China for the A320 jet. activism Screen wipe Rolling Stone described it as the “hottest date movie of the season”, unexpected praise for a film based on a direct-action manifesto by a Swedish professor. How to Blow Up a Pipeline takes Andreas Malm’s radical argument and turns it into a fictional thriller.  Entertainment can connect in ways that facts can’t: just look at the reaction to Don’t Look Up, which became one of Netflix’s most popular films. Yet what’s on screen over the past decade has had little connection to the biggest oncoming change affecting people’s lives. Just 2.8 per cent of US TV and film scripts aired between 2016 and 2020 featured ‘climate-adjacent’ words, according to a study commissioned by campaign group Good Energy. science Swing for the fences Climate change has given baseball sluggers a boost. When the air is warmer and less dense, flying objects go farther, so the number of balls hit out of the park is going up. Researchers at Dartmouth College who analysed more than 100,000 games found that rising temperatures had led to an extra 50 home runs a year between 2010 and 2019. A grimmer effect of climate change is that it’s likely to be increasingly hard to play baseball in the open air and in daytime in coming decades. Eight of the 30 major league teams’ stadia now have retractable roofs. Thanks for reading. Jeevan Vasagar@jeevanvasagar If you want to get in touch, drop us a line at sensemaker@tortoisemedia.com. With thanks to our coalition members: a network of organisations similarly committed to achieving Net Zero Visit the homepage to find out more about the coalition and join us.