Sustainable Switch-Tallying the toll of Storm Beryl
July 11 -
By Sharon Kimathi
Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital
sharon.kimathi@thomsonreuters.com
Hello,
The aftermath of tropical Storm Beryl is the focus of today’s newsletter after three people died in Texas and the Caribbean counts the financial cost of widespread destruction. Plus a recent report by a global think tank warns of the economic impact global stocks will suffer from rising physical climate damage.
Beryl brought howling winds and torrential rain to southeast Texas, killing at least three people, flooding highways, closing oil ports, canceling more than 1,300 flights and knocking out power to more than 2.7 million homes and businesses.
The season's earliest Category 5 hurricane on record weakened after pounding the coastal Texas town of Matagorda with dangerous storm surges and heavy rain before moving across Houston, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The agency said conditions could spawn tornadoes in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.
Yet to assess the economic damage
Flood waters exceeded 10 inches (25 cm) across most of Houston, Mayor John Whitmire said.
In Texas, a 53-year-old man and a 74-year-old woman were killed in two incidents by trees that fell on their homes in the Houston area on Monday. A third person, a city of Houston employee going to work, drowned in an underpass, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told reporters.
State officials had yet to assess the economic damage as officials remained on a rescue footing while powerful winds continued to blow. Restoring power would take several days, said Thomas Gleeson, chair of the Texas Public Utility Commission.
More than 2,500 first responders were deployed statewide, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. Crews using a life jacket and ladder fire truck rescued a man from a truck on a flooded stretch of freeway, video posted on social media by Houston's local ABC station showed. Patrick said there were several other rescues.
Millions of dollars to rebuild
The storm, which was expected to rapidly weaken as it moved inland, swept a destructive path through Jamaica, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines last week. It killed at least 11 in Mexico and the Caribbean and before reaching Texas, Patrick said.
Leaders across the Caribbean were still tallying the financial toll after Beryl left a trail of destruction on Jamaica and islands of the eastern Caribbean.
"There is no doubt this disaster will have a major impact on Grenada's economic situation," Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told a briefing on Tuesday. "We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild."
Mitchell emphasized the need to rebuild structures resistant to storms, noting many of the country's wood houses are not insured as severe weather becomes more frequent due to record sea temperatures, which scientists say is due to fossil fuel-driven climate change.
Bring climate change under control
Decision makers should pursue aggressive policies to bring climate change under control if they want to avoid losses in the value of global stocks that could top 50%, think-tank EDHEC-Risk Climate Impact warned in a recent report.
The report aims to show investors how physical climate damage, along with the costs of transition, can have a material impact on the value of stocks.
It's also relevant to regulators who want to understand how a loss in value in climate-sensitive assets held at systemically important financial institutions could ultimately threaten financial stability, it said.
Talking Points
Samsung Electronics' biggest workers' union in South Korea said it will continue a strike indefinitely, stepping up its campaign against the tech giant for better pay and benefits.
Thames Water drama: British regulator Ofwat told water companies that they must make environmental upgrades without raising bills as much as they had wanted amid a funding crisis and public anger over the level of pollution in rivers and the sea.
The state of Ohio joined oil companies and business groups asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse decisions that underpin California's ambitious plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.
Humanitarian crisis: The recent deaths of several more children from malnutrition in the Gaza Strip indicate that famine has spread throughout the enclave, a group of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations said. Gaza health authorities say at least 33 children have died of malnutrition, mostly in northern areas which had until recently faced the brunt of the Israeli military campaign launched after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
Montana's top court is set to hear the state's appeal of a landmark ruling holding that it was violating the rights of young people to a clean and healthy environment by barring regulators from considering the impacts on climate change when approving fossil fuel projects.
Canada's top property and casualty insurers have invested more than C$19.5 billion ($14.30 billion) in fossil fuels production at a time when climate change is driving up risks for the industry, according to a report by a shareholder advocacy group.
In Conversation
Ruth Richardson, executive director of the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA), a non-profit initiative hosted by the United Nations Foundation, calls for policymakers to radically rethink risks:
“Extreme weather is one of the many cascading effects of climate change, manifesting in more frequent storms, prolonged droughts, and intense heat waves – events that threaten the very fabric that sustains human and other-than-human life.
“Witness Hurricane Beryl devastating the Caribbean, relentless rainfall in Kenya causing hundreds of deaths, and lives lost from heat waves in the U.S. – all in recent weeks.
“Beyond immediate fatalities and huge damage to communities, extreme weather displaced 26.4 million people in 2023, which in turn triggers more challenges.
“The scale of the damage raises critical questions about how we assess and manage global, interconnected risks and their many ripple effects.
“Current policy approaches to understanding and navigating complex systemic risks are significantly falling short, leading to poor analysis, ineffective responses, wasted time and money, and potentially worsening the very drivers of the problems.
“One part of the solution is to review the tools and frameworks decision-makers use to inform scenario modeling and planning.
“There needs to be someone in government with the express mandate to act across departments, connecting agendas, bridging silos, and addressing vulnerable blind spots in ‘non-emergency’ times; this will build adaptability and critical resilience to shocks.”
ESG Lens
BP expects oil demand to peak next year and wind and solar capacity to grow rapidly in both of the two main scenarios in its annual Energy Outlook, a study of the evolution of the global energy system to 2050 it published.
Energy demand peaks in the middle of the current decade under the Net Zero scenario before declining thereafter. Energy demand is around 25% lower in 2050 compared with 2022.
Under the Current Trajectory scenario, carbon emissions are far off the net zero ambition which most of the world's largest economies have committed to achieving. Click here for the full Reuters article.
ESG Spotlight
Today’s spotlight focuses on the interconnection between art and the climate crisis as a group of British playwrights shine a light on the climate crisis.
Known affectionately as "the two Joes", Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy earned acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic with the sell-out "The Jungle", which premiered in 2017 and drew on their experience of running a theater in the Jungle refugee camp in Calais, France.
"Kyoto", the first installment of their "Carbon Cycle" of plays, acknowledges that the protocol agreed in Japan on the first binding targets to curb emissions was only a moment.
The sequel will be based on the Copenhagen U.N. talks, notorious for not reaching a binding deal. They still led to future progress, including theaters' efforts to minimize emissions.
Looking Ahead
July 11, London, United Kingdom: London's Competition Appeal Tribunal will hear an application to certify a mass lawsuit brought on behalf of around 36 million British customers who are said to have paid higher prices for Apple and Beats products due to an alleged secret deal between Apple and Amazon. The lawsuit, valued at around 500 million pounds ($641 million), claims the deal meant independent merchants of Apple and Beats products disappeared from Amazon's platform.
July 15, Nairobi, Kenya: The nation is due to hold wide-ranging talks on addressing concerns raised by anti-government, pro-reform protesters. Although the talks are aimed at addressing grievances raised during protests last month, many youths on social media have spurned them, saying what was needed was action on such issues as firing non-performing ministers, tackling corruption and wastage.
July 15, Singapore City, Singapore: The International Seabed Authority begins 10 days of negotiations aimed at drawing up new rules that will allow controversial mining operations on the ocean floor to begin, despite the opposition of 27 member countries.
July 15, London, United Kingdom: The result of a ballot of Amazon workers at a British warehouse on union recognition is expected from July 15. If workers vote to support recognition, Amazon would be required to negotiate with a union on terms, pay and conditions for the first time outside of the United States.
Today’s Sustainable Switch was edited by Mark Potter
Think your friend or colleague should know about us? Forward this newsletter to them. They can also subscribe here.
BP Outlook: CO2 emissions https://reut.rs/45ZD3DH
Relaterade tillgångar
Senaste nytt
Ansvarsfriskrivning: XM Group-enheter tillhandahåller sin tjänst enbart för exekvering och tillgången till vår onlinehandelsplattform, som innebär att en person kan se och/eller använda tillgängligt innehåll på eller via webbplatsen, påverkar eller utökar inte detta, vilket inte heller varit avsikten. Denna tillgång och användning omfattas alltid av i) villkor, ii) riskvarningar och iii) fullständig ansvarsfriskrivning. Detta innehåll tillhandahålls därför uteslutande som allmän information. Var framför allt medveten om att innehållet på vår onlinehandelsplattform varken utgör en uppmaning eller ett erbjudande om att ingå några transaktioner på de finansiella marknaderna. Handel på alla finansiella marknader involverar en betydande risk för ditt kapital.
Allt material som publiceras på denna sida är enbart avsett för utbildnings- eller informationssyften och innehåller inte – och ska inte heller anses innehålla – rådgivning och rekommendationer om finansiella frågor, investeringsskatt eller handel, dokumentation av våra handelskurser eller ett erbjudande om, eller en uppmaning till, en transaktion i finansiella instrument eller oönskade finansiella erbjudanden som är riktade till dig.
Tredjepartsinnehåll, liksom innehåll framtaget av XM såsom synpunkter, nyheter, forskningsrön, analyser, kurser, andra uppgifter eller länkar till tredjepartssajter som återfinns på denna webbplats, tillhandahålls i befintligt skick, som allmän marknadskommentar, och utgör ingen investeringsrådgivning. I den mån som något innehåll tolkas som investeringsforskning måste det noteras och accepteras att innehållet varken har varit avsett som oberoende investeringsforskning eller har utarbetats i enlighet med de rättsliga kraven för att främja ett sådant syfte, och därför är att betrakta som marknadskommunikation enligt tillämpliga lagar och föreskrifter. Se till så att du har läst och förstått vårt meddelande om icke-oberoende investeringsforskning och riskvarning om ovannämnda information, som finns här.
