Donald Trump’s re-election must be one of the biggest nightmares of everyone interested in the climate. He would block international climate negotiations again, weaken the EPA and the IRA. But what do the Republican Party and its other candidates stand for? Laurin Meyer explores this question and has unearthed some interesting aspects.
The Republicans can witness what climate change is doing to their neighboring country. An area of 14 million hectares of forest has already burned in Canada this year – an area almost half the size of Germany. With a warming of 2 degrees, the countries affected by fires could “probably still adapt quite well” in fighting them, says forest expert Thomas Hickler in an interview conducted by Alexandra Endres. On the world’s current path, things will be much more difficult.
Europe’s new Climate Commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, faces a massive challenge. First, his appointment has to be confirmed, and then, COP28 is just a few weeks away, where he will have to hold his own alongside seasoned heavyweights like John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua. At least Hoekstra does not have to worry about implementing the Green Deal. Nevertheless, Lukas Scheid sees a long to-do list for Hoekstra.
Mr Hickler, do you still have an overview of where forests are currently burning?
Satellite observation data, for example, from ESA’s Copernicus program or NASA’s fire observation system, provide a good overview. Copernicus, for instance, has closely monitored the blazes in eastern Russia, the fires in Greece, Algeria, Italy and Canada. I have kept track of some regional fires, but not all of them. Interesting statistics on these often only emerge after some delay.
Are we in a new age of wildfires? Or do the fires only seem to be getting worse because we are looking more closely?
Data show: From a global perspective, the area of forest fires has been increasing since the turn of the millennium. However, the trend is not very strong so far, and there are significant regional differences. There are not more fires everywhere. So, I would not speak of a new era. Until recently, the area of fires in Europe actually tended to decrease, but due to climate change, forest fires are now also occurring in northern regions, where they were hardly ever so intense before. In Germany, too, there were more fires a few decades ago than today. But since the very dry summer of 2018, we have had three years in which considerably more forests have burned than in previous years.
What dimensions are we talking about here?
Last year, more than 3,000 hectares of forest burned in Germany. That is a lot by local standards. But in Southern Europe, the burnt areas are much larger. In Portugal, for example, more than 86,000 hectares burned in 2022, in Romania more than 150,000 and in Spain more than 280,000, and in all of Europe more than 700,000 hectares burned – more than ever before since measurements began. But in Canada, almost 14 million hectares of forest have burned so far this year. These are entirely different dimensions.
To achieve the Paris climate targets, we need forests as CO2 sinks – instead, the current fires are releasing CO2. Just how much?
According to the Copernicus calculations, this year, it was 290 million tonnes of carbon in Canada alone by the end of July – equivalent to more than one billion tons of CO2. By comparison, Germany’s annual emissions in 2022 were 746 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. And last year, fires in the EU and UK in June, July and August generated estimated carbon emissions of 6.4 million tons, the equivalent of about 23.5 million tons of CO2. That was the highest level since 2007.
How much is climate change contributing to fires?
Global warming increases the risk of fire, especially in northern latitudes, because it results in drier and hotter weather conditions in which fires can ignite more easily and spread faster. The warmer it gets, the more frequent we will have such weather conditions in the future. The EU also recognizes this in its climate change adaptation strategy. But whether there is a fire or not, and how great the destruction caused by the fire is, depends above all on humans.
In what way?
The vast majority of fires are caused by humans, either through arson or simply through carelessness, for example, when hikers throw cigarette butts into the forest or start a campfire. At the same time, humankind has become better and better at detecting and fighting fires at an early stage. And finally, the condition of the forest itself plays a big role in the frequency and severity of fires.
Can you give any examples?
Trails for forestry create aisles that can stop fires. In Germany, there are people almost everywhere who report fires, and in some regions, we have sensors on old fire watch towers that detect fires at distances of up to 50 kilometers. In Canada’s vast, often unpopulated forests, it is, of course, much harder to detect and fight fires at an early stage. The volunteer fire brigade, which plays a vital role here, can be far away in these areas.
Or take another example from Germany: In our temperate climate, it has so far usually rained a little more in summer than in winter. Damp forests do not catch fire so quickly. But summers are becoming drier, and most climate models show that our summers will become even drier in the future. The weather-related risk of forest fires has clearly increased in recent decades, without correspondingly increasing the number of fires, at least until 2018. Especially in Eastern Germany, ammunition in the ground still plays a role in some places, which can ignite and complicate firefighting. At the same time, however, the area in Germany where young coniferous forest monocultures grow, which burn particularly well, is decreasing. The size of deciduous and mixed forests is increasing. This counteracts the weather-related trend.
How does the forest fire risk in the tropics generally differ from that of temperate regions?
In the tropical rainforests, in particular, many fires are deliberately set in order to clear land for soy plantations, cattle breeding or palm oil plantations, for example, because forests hardly bring in any money, but agriculture does. In temperate and northern latitudes, we tend to try to prevent forest fires, although, in northern coniferous forests, they can be part of the natural processes of the forest ecosystem. However, due to climate change, we are increasingly experiencing weather conditions that favor fires – especially in areas where forest fires have not been so frequent in the past. Although the frequency of forest fires also varies from region to region in the north, on average, the weather-related situation has worsened more there than in the tropics.
What are forest countries doing about the growing risk?
They invest in monitoring and firefighting systems, they support forest conversion so that it can withstand climate change as best as they can, and they cultivate it in such a way as to keep as little combustible material as possible in the undergrowth. However, what is done in individual cases always depends on local conditions.
What does that mean specifically?
In many places in Germany, attempts are being made to convert the forests to near-natural mixed deciduous forests, also because the spruce, which has been the bread and butter tree of forestry so far, is severely affected by climate change. In North America, forests are partly thinned out to reduce biomass accumulation, i.e., combustible material. Mediterranean countries like Spain also do this in their own way: Pasturing in forests is promoted in some regions because sheep and goats eat away the combustible material in the undergrowth.
Can this help control the risk of forest fires in the long term?
At a certain point, we will hardly be able to prevent forest fires. We are already seeing that in some places. For example, California is actually very experienced in fighting forest fires. But fire brigades there are already often pushed to their limits. And other forest fire areas have also shown: If it becomes extreme, as it did in Europe in 2022 or now in Canada or parts of Greece, then people hardly stand a chance against the fire. Then, the only thing we can do is try to prevent the worst or evacuate. We will have to be prepared for more extreme periods of drought and heat in the future. The projections of climate models are clear. Things will never be what they used to be, and we must adapt to the changes as best we can.
Where is the critical limit?
It is impossible to say for sure. The regional conditions are too varied, and the extent of future climate change is also uncertain. If we were still able to maintain the 1.5-degree or 2-degree limit, we could probably still adapt quite well when it comes to fighting forest fires. But I believe that is virtually impossible. The global investments in fossil energies alone indicate that we will exceed both limits. The climate action we are taking is not at all in line with the goals that were actually agreed upon! And then we quickly enter temperature ranges whose effects many can still hardly imagine.
Biogeographer Thomas Hickler works at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt am Main. He researches how ecosystems are changing due to climate change, and how life on Earth influences the climate. In the project FirEUrisk, he is working with other European researchers to develop strategies for dealing with large wildfires.
On Tuesday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen officially proposed Netherlands’ Wopke Hoekstra as the new commissioner for the fight against climate change. The incumbent foreign minister of the Netherlands is supposed to be in charge of European climate diplomacy – so he will play an important role in the run-up to COP28 and at the climate conference itself. This means he will only take over half the portfolio of his predecessor Frans Timmermans, who left the Commission to run for Prime Minister of the Netherlands. The other half – the ongoing implementation of the Green Deal in Europe – lies with the Slovak Maroš Šefčovič, who has taken Timmermans’ role as executive vice-president of the Commission.
Šefčovič will finalize the remaining legislative proposals of the Green Deal at the EU level. Then there is the stricter regulation of fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases), a certification framework for CO2 removals and the CO2 fleet limits for trucks. Even though these are no longer the big issues of European climate legislation, they are still considered highly relevant for industrial policy. They must be closed before the start of the European election campaign in the spring of 2024, which is an ambitious task on its own.
Before Hoekstra can get started in his new post, he still has a long way to go. The 47-year-old must now face parliamentary scrutiny followed by a vote in the EU Parliament. Although the result of the vote is not binding for the Commission – only the EU member states can formally object to a reappointment – it is considered an important assessment of political sentiment.
The Social Democrats are considering voting against him. The reason for their skepticism: On the one hand, Hoekstra does not have any decisive experience in the international climate business and first has to familiarize himself with it. On the other hand, the Christian Democrat is to replace the Social Democrat Timmermans. This has met with criticism, especially after the opposition by the EPP to important environmental policy legislative proposals. “The climate crisis does not take a break, so we need a commissioner who can get started immediately,” demands SPD environmental politician Tiemo Wölken.
Von der Leyen, however, justifies her decision with Hoekstra’s experience as deputy prime minister of the Netherlands, finance minister and finally foreign minister. He could therefore drive forward climate financing as well as the “implementation of climate-relevant legal instruments.”
However, it is also clear that von der Leyen is essentially fulfilling a prominent demand of the EPP. After the weak results of the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh from the EU’s point of view, the EPP demanded a “European John Kerry” to take over the international climate negotiations full-time. In the meantime, the demand also received support from Green MEPs, but was strictly rejected by the Commission and the Timmermans cabinet.
Hoekstra is now expected to take on this role in a slightly modified form. SPD politician Wölken criticizes this: “This creation of a ‘climate envoy’, as demanded by the conservatives, has so far been rejected by the majority in parliament, as it stands in the way of a coherent climate policy.” Peter Liese, climate policy spokesman for the EPP, on the other hand, sees it as an opportunity. Since Hoekstra does not have to take care of the entire Green Deal, he also has more time for international climate negotiations, says Liese.
But this will not be an easy task either, as Hoekstra lacks the network and standing on the international climate stage. Timmermans was considered the voice of Europe at the climate conferences. He met several times a year with the climate envoys from the USA (John Kerry) and China (Xie Zhenhua) and most recently traveled around the world to forge partnerships in the fight against climate change. Hoekstra has exactly three months to prepare for the EU negotiations. Although he has an experienced climate negotiator at his side with Spain’s Environment Minister Teresa Ribera thanks to Spain’s EU Council Presidency, this pillar of support also threatens to fall away at any moment due to the complicated government formation in Spain.
The EU’s main concern in Dubai is to find new sources of climate financing. In particular, the large CO2 emitters outside the group of developed countries are to be included in the group of donor countries, if Europe has its way. These include not only oil-producing countries, but also China. So far, these countries have refused to pay for damage and losses resulting from climate change or for global climate adaptation measures.
The EU states are likely to set their negotiating mandate for the COP at the Environment Council on 16 October. Hoekstra and the EU Commission are serving in an advisory capacity here. It will be interesting to see how the countries position themselves regarding the use of CO2 capture to achieve the climate targets. Back in March, the EU ministers decided to also permit the use of CCS technologies for fossil fuels. Previously, the position had always been that CCS should only play a role in unavoidable emissions from industrial processes.
The word from government circles in Berlin is that a return to the old position before COP28 is considered likely, as CCS is perceived to provide a loophole for the continued use of fossil fuels in the energy industry. However, an overly strict formulation would also limit the scope for negotiations in Dubai, where many influential countries (including the USA) are likely to advocate for greater consideration of CCS.
It will be Hoekstra’s task to moderate this process, as he will have to represent the result in Dubai and convince others of the same stance.
It only took one simple question to reveal the lack of direction regarding climate action. At the first television debate of the Republican presidential candidates (excluding Donald Trump) last week, the candidates convinced of man-made climate change were asked to raise their hands. Only one of the eight, Asa Hutchinson, put his fingers up. Everyone else looked hesitant. Then, Ron DeSantis abruptly ended the voting by pointing out that the candidates were not schoolchildren.
The Republicans are struggling to find a common position on climate change. Presidential candidates vie for the favor of conservative voters with superficial slogans or climate-skeptical slogans. At the same time, however, pressure is growing on the leadership to offer serious solutions – especially from moderate and young forces at the grassroots. Thus, climate policy becomes a crucial issue in the upcoming election campaign within the Grand Old Party (GOP).
The different positions of the leading candidates already reveal the problem. Right-wing populist and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, sees no need for action. “The climate change agenda is a hoax,” Ramaswamy said during the debate. He claimed that more people die because of climate policy than because of climate change, without providing any evidence.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, on the other hand, said: “Is climate change real? Yes, it is.” The only woman among the candidates, however, holds China and India primarily responsible, while consistently rejecting own efforts. Yet the US is currently responsible for 14 percent of global CO2 emissions and continues to emit the most historically. Still, in his role as US president, Donald Trump has curtailed the country’s climate policy: He withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, damaged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and repealed more than 100 regulations and laws aimed at lowering emissions.
But opposition to such policies is growing within the party. “The country has decided that climate change is a problem,” Bob Inglis told Table.Media. The former congressman chairs RepublicEn, a coalition of conservative climate realists. “If Republicans want to be relevant, we have to come up with solutions on the magnitude of the problem.” Inglis advises his party to focus on the free market as the solution to climate change. “Otherwise, we’re going to be stuck with a combination of regulations and large-scale government spending programs,” he says, setting himself apart from the Democrats’ policies.
Conservative climate concepts have long been on the table. One of the best-known is the so-called “Carbon Dividends Plan” from 2017 by James Baker and George Shultz, who worked as ministers under Republican presidents George Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. The plan envisages:
But such concepts traditionally receive less attention, Johannes Thimm, Deputy Head of Research Division “The Americas” at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told Table.Media. “In the US, it’s not so much a party program that matters as the position of individual candidates and members of Congress.” In general, Republican politicians would question any policy that seeks to regulate the extraction and use of fossil fuels. “They have no constructive answers to the challenge of global warming,” Thimm said.
Polls show the fundamental voter potential for a targeted climate policy. 56 percent of all adults in the USA consider global warming a “major threat.” In addition, one in four still speaks of a “minor threat.” However, the perception differs greatly depending on the supporters. While almost nine out of ten Democrats see global warming as a major threat, Republicans are divided: 28 percent see global warming as a major threat, but about the same number (33 percent) believe that climate change poses no threat at all.
According to polls, there are significant differences between the generations. While only three percent of Republicans over 65 are open to switching the US energy supply completely to renewables, a full 29 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds support the idea. And so the Young America’s Foundation, the most influential conservative youth organization in the country, has recently repeatedly raised the climate concerns of young people in public.
Yet the traditionally Republican-dominated states in the southern United States are particularly vulnerable to disasters such as hurricanes and droughts. Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was forced to declare a state of emergency for dozens of counties in response to the current warning of Hurricane Idalia. He evaded the question about the influence of climate change: “You’ve got waters that are warm and there’s not really going to be much to slow it down,” DeSantis answered a reporter.
It is also unclear what a possible Republican US president would do with President Joe Biden’s massive Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) investment program. Depending on cost estimates, it is expected to channel between 370 million and 1.2 billion US dollars in subsidies and tax breaks into the development of green technologies over the next ten years. So far, Republicans want to drop certain IRA funds. They criticize that the green transformation could cost more jobs than it brings in new ones while driving inflation.
But simultaneously, Republican-dominated districts and states, of all places, have benefited the most from the IRA so far. In total, companies have announced investments totaling 278 billion US dollars – 220 billion US dollars of which are to flow into “red” districts currently represented by Republicans in the House of Representatives. By Laurin Meyer, New York City
As part of the international debate on a phase-out of fossil fuels, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington presented new figures on government subsidies for fossil fuels. In 2022, direct and indirect subsidies from taxpayers’ money for oil, coal and gas amounted to a total of seven trillion US dollars worldwide, or 7.1 percent of global economic output. According to the IMF working paper, a reform of the system could cut global carbon emissions by a total of 43 percent by 2030 and thus help meet the 2-degree limit of the Paris Agreement.
Like other IMF studies, the report examines direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels. A majority of the subsidies from state funds (82 percent) are “implicit” subsidies, because the ecological and medical consequences of fossil fuels are not attributed to the polluters, but are borne by the general public. “Explicit”, i.e. direct, price subsidies account for only 18 percent of the total amount.
Specifically, the report finds, among other things:
The report comes at a time when the debate over a global fossil phase-out is growing more topical and heated. The issue will be controversial at the upcoming COP28 in the oil and gas country United Arab Emirates: A progressive alliance of the EU, smaller developing countries and NGOs is calling for a global phase-out roadmap. The oil and gas countries, including many of the newly formed BRICS-plus nations, can envision a phase-out of “fossil emissions,” at best.
But that would mean focusing on the controversial technologies of CCS and CCU, storage and use of captured carbon dioxide. Since this technology is neither mature nor commercially viable to date, it would probably entail additional government subsidies for research, testing and application – in other words, in the view of the IMF report, further direct or indirect subsidies.
According to the report, the countries with the largest nominal amounts of subsidies are China, the USA, Russia, the EU and India. Almost half of all subsidies come from the East Asia/Pacific region.
Separate statistics show subsidies from 170 different countries for 2022. For explicit subsidies
Germany is ranked with 43.4 billion US dollars in explicit subsidies. According to figures from the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA), total environment-damaging subsidies in Germany amount to around 65 billion euros annually. However, the UBA and the Federal Ministry of Finance disagree over which government payments count as subsidies at all.
The picture of the most generous countries changes when the IMF report looks at all – explicit and implicit – subsidies. In this case, countries that have introduced a carbon price (such as the European Emissions Trading System) are significantly closer to the true costs than countries without a comprehensive carbon price. Prices for coal, oil and gas are significantly closer in Germany, France, Italy and the UK to the damage caused by these fuels. In other countries such as Saudi Arabia, the USA, Russia, Indonesia and Iran, the indirect subsidies for climate-damaging fuels are in some cases significantly higher.
More than 25 African heads of state and government, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and 20,000 delegates will meet for the first African Climate Summit (Sept. 4-6, Kenya) guided by the theme “Driving Green Growth and Climate Finance Solutions for Africa and the World.” Apart from the restructuring of the international financial system and investments in renewables, the transport sector and the extraction of raw materials for the energy transition, the summit will also focus on climate change adaptation.
African leaders and observers hope that African heads of government will find a “continental position” to jointly represent the interests of African countries at COP28.
Historically, Africa is responsible for only 2.8 percent of global emissions. Yet the continent is particularly affected by the climate crisis – be it through extreme weather events or the consequences of climate change such as water shortages and crop failures. Although Africa receives an annual 30 billion US dollars in climate financing, it would need more than 270 billion. At the same time, there is plenty of potential – for instance, Africa boasts 60 percent of the world’s best locations for solar power plants and could become a future market for green hydrogen. Whether these plans become reality depends on many factors: It needs money from international climate finance and a solution to the African debt crisis. However, the political and economic elites in Africa must also create the right framework conditions for change. nib
Clean energy for Africa is one of the key focuses of the Africa Climate Summit, which will be held next week in Nairobi, Kenya. Renewables are also of concern to Diana Nabiruma. The 37-year-old is a spokesperson for the African Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) and visited Table.Media’s editorial office in the summer for an interview – after a meeting with Jennifer Morgan, special representative for international climate policy at the German Foreign Office, and before an exchange with members of the German parliament. She spent two days in Berlin to share her perspective on energy projects in Africa.
Diana Nabiruma says it is wrong that African countries need to develop oil and gas reserves in order to prosper. This argument is spread by the fossil fuel industry – through African governments that “sometimes don’t ask about the needs of the people, but about the benefits for themselves.” It is an old pattern that the interests of Africa’s elites are often more aligned with those of elites in the Global North than with those of their own people.
The Ugandan non-governmental organization AFIEGO campaigns for clean energy, environmental protection and human rights. The organization gained attention because it jointly filed a lawsuit with the French NGOs Amis de la Terre and Survie and three Ugandan organizations against French energy company TotalEnergies. TotalEnergies is part of a consortium that intends to extract oil from Lake Albert in western Uganda and pump it through the world’s longest heated oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean coast in neighboring Tanzania. The production area is partly located in the Murchison Falls National Park, which is rich in species and home to antelopes, elephants and hundreds of bird species.
The NGOs sued to stop the project until TotalEnergies complies with the due diligence obligations that they see under the French supply chain law (Loi de vigilance). Specifically, the lawsuit required the company to take greater account of the impact on the ecosystem and to provide adequate compensation to the people who were forced to relocate for the project. The responsible court rejected the complaint on formal grounds.
When asked what she thinks about the outcome of the lawsuit, she says, “What is important is what the affected communities think, because it is their livelihoods that are threatened by the project.” Nabiruma recounts stories of affected people who did not understand why the court rejected the lawsuit on formal grounds, despite it being so important to protect the environment and people. But in their country, there are hardly any ways to hold multinational corporations accountable.
At least European due diligence regulations create the chance to do this. “But then the laws must also be strong and those affected must be able to easily assert their rights,” says the activist. She compares the fight against large corporations like TotalEnergies to that of David versus Goliath. She hopes that God will help the people affected in this case, just as he helped David – a reminder that much is beyond one’s control, no matter how committed one is.
Nabiruma, who comes from the Ugandan capital of Kampala, has experienced first-hand how much a clean environment is worth living in. At the age of seven, she moved to the countryside to attend a boarding school. Unlike in the big city, the water there was clean and the air pure. When she returned to Kampala eleven years later, she felt that the air polluted by combustion cars was even dirtier than before, says the activist. She developed allergic asthma as a result.
After studying communications and journalism, Nabiruma worked for six years as a journalist for the privately owned Ugandan newspaper The Observer. Her focus: environmental policy. During that time, she learned “that people can only prosper if they live in harmony with nature.” In any case, owning land plays an important role for people in Uganda, where 70 percent earn their living from agriculture, most of them as smallholder farmers. Although Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world by conventional standards, many people are happy and generous because nature allows them to cultivate their land profitably, says the activist. So those who have enough to eat themselves and can appreciate that are happier and more willing to share.
But the fight against the destruction of nature is difficult – not only because multinational corporations have great political influence, but also because environmental activists in Uganda work under difficult conditions. Between September 2020 and October 2021, eight AFIEGO employees were arrested – a total of 14 people work for the NGO.
“We work in fear, but it’s work that needs to be done because we are among the few who still stand up for the communities,” says Nabiruma. She takes strength from her interactions with people, which show her time and time again that it’s necessary to speak up for them – and the conviction that speaking with a common voice can make a difference. Nicolas Heronymus
Donald Trump’s re-election must be one of the biggest nightmares of everyone interested in the climate. He would block international climate negotiations again, weaken the EPA and the IRA. But what do the Republican Party and its other candidates stand for? Laurin Meyer explores this question and has unearthed some interesting aspects.
The Republicans can witness what climate change is doing to their neighboring country. An area of 14 million hectares of forest has already burned in Canada this year – an area almost half the size of Germany. With a warming of 2 degrees, the countries affected by fires could “probably still adapt quite well” in fighting them, says forest expert Thomas Hickler in an interview conducted by Alexandra Endres. On the world’s current path, things will be much more difficult.
Europe’s new Climate Commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, faces a massive challenge. First, his appointment has to be confirmed, and then, COP28 is just a few weeks away, where he will have to hold his own alongside seasoned heavyweights like John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua. At least Hoekstra does not have to worry about implementing the Green Deal. Nevertheless, Lukas Scheid sees a long to-do list for Hoekstra.
Mr Hickler, do you still have an overview of where forests are currently burning?
Satellite observation data, for example, from ESA’s Copernicus program or NASA’s fire observation system, provide a good overview. Copernicus, for instance, has closely monitored the blazes in eastern Russia, the fires in Greece, Algeria, Italy and Canada. I have kept track of some regional fires, but not all of them. Interesting statistics on these often only emerge after some delay.
Are we in a new age of wildfires? Or do the fires only seem to be getting worse because we are looking more closely?
Data show: From a global perspective, the area of forest fires has been increasing since the turn of the millennium. However, the trend is not very strong so far, and there are significant regional differences. There are not more fires everywhere. So, I would not speak of a new era. Until recently, the area of fires in Europe actually tended to decrease, but due to climate change, forest fires are now also occurring in northern regions, where they were hardly ever so intense before. In Germany, too, there were more fires a few decades ago than today. But since the very dry summer of 2018, we have had three years in which considerably more forests have burned than in previous years.
What dimensions are we talking about here?
Last year, more than 3,000 hectares of forest burned in Germany. That is a lot by local standards. But in Southern Europe, the burnt areas are much larger. In Portugal, for example, more than 86,000 hectares burned in 2022, in Romania more than 150,000 and in Spain more than 280,000, and in all of Europe more than 700,000 hectares burned – more than ever before since measurements began. But in Canada, almost 14 million hectares of forest have burned so far this year. These are entirely different dimensions.
To achieve the Paris climate targets, we need forests as CO2 sinks – instead, the current fires are releasing CO2. Just how much?
According to the Copernicus calculations, this year, it was 290 million tonnes of carbon in Canada alone by the end of July – equivalent to more than one billion tons of CO2. By comparison, Germany’s annual emissions in 2022 were 746 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. And last year, fires in the EU and UK in June, July and August generated estimated carbon emissions of 6.4 million tons, the equivalent of about 23.5 million tons of CO2. That was the highest level since 2007.
How much is climate change contributing to fires?
Global warming increases the risk of fire, especially in northern latitudes, because it results in drier and hotter weather conditions in which fires can ignite more easily and spread faster. The warmer it gets, the more frequent we will have such weather conditions in the future. The EU also recognizes this in its climate change adaptation strategy. But whether there is a fire or not, and how great the destruction caused by the fire is, depends above all on humans.
In what way?
The vast majority of fires are caused by humans, either through arson or simply through carelessness, for example, when hikers throw cigarette butts into the forest or start a campfire. At the same time, humankind has become better and better at detecting and fighting fires at an early stage. And finally, the condition of the forest itself plays a big role in the frequency and severity of fires.
Can you give any examples?
Trails for forestry create aisles that can stop fires. In Germany, there are people almost everywhere who report fires, and in some regions, we have sensors on old fire watch towers that detect fires at distances of up to 50 kilometers. In Canada’s vast, often unpopulated forests, it is, of course, much harder to detect and fight fires at an early stage. The volunteer fire brigade, which plays a vital role here, can be far away in these areas.
Or take another example from Germany: In our temperate climate, it has so far usually rained a little more in summer than in winter. Damp forests do not catch fire so quickly. But summers are becoming drier, and most climate models show that our summers will become even drier in the future. The weather-related risk of forest fires has clearly increased in recent decades, without correspondingly increasing the number of fires, at least until 2018. Especially in Eastern Germany, ammunition in the ground still plays a role in some places, which can ignite and complicate firefighting. At the same time, however, the area in Germany where young coniferous forest monocultures grow, which burn particularly well, is decreasing. The size of deciduous and mixed forests is increasing. This counteracts the weather-related trend.
How does the forest fire risk in the tropics generally differ from that of temperate regions?
In the tropical rainforests, in particular, many fires are deliberately set in order to clear land for soy plantations, cattle breeding or palm oil plantations, for example, because forests hardly bring in any money, but agriculture does. In temperate and northern latitudes, we tend to try to prevent forest fires, although, in northern coniferous forests, they can be part of the natural processes of the forest ecosystem. However, due to climate change, we are increasingly experiencing weather conditions that favor fires – especially in areas where forest fires have not been so frequent in the past. Although the frequency of forest fires also varies from region to region in the north, on average, the weather-related situation has worsened more there than in the tropics.
What are forest countries doing about the growing risk?
They invest in monitoring and firefighting systems, they support forest conversion so that it can withstand climate change as best as they can, and they cultivate it in such a way as to keep as little combustible material as possible in the undergrowth. However, what is done in individual cases always depends on local conditions.
What does that mean specifically?
In many places in Germany, attempts are being made to convert the forests to near-natural mixed deciduous forests, also because the spruce, which has been the bread and butter tree of forestry so far, is severely affected by climate change. In North America, forests are partly thinned out to reduce biomass accumulation, i.e., combustible material. Mediterranean countries like Spain also do this in their own way: Pasturing in forests is promoted in some regions because sheep and goats eat away the combustible material in the undergrowth.
Can this help control the risk of forest fires in the long term?
At a certain point, we will hardly be able to prevent forest fires. We are already seeing that in some places. For example, California is actually very experienced in fighting forest fires. But fire brigades there are already often pushed to their limits. And other forest fire areas have also shown: If it becomes extreme, as it did in Europe in 2022 or now in Canada or parts of Greece, then people hardly stand a chance against the fire. Then, the only thing we can do is try to prevent the worst or evacuate. We will have to be prepared for more extreme periods of drought and heat in the future. The projections of climate models are clear. Things will never be what they used to be, and we must adapt to the changes as best we can.
Where is the critical limit?
It is impossible to say for sure. The regional conditions are too varied, and the extent of future climate change is also uncertain. If we were still able to maintain the 1.5-degree or 2-degree limit, we could probably still adapt quite well when it comes to fighting forest fires. But I believe that is virtually impossible. The global investments in fossil energies alone indicate that we will exceed both limits. The climate action we are taking is not at all in line with the goals that were actually agreed upon! And then we quickly enter temperature ranges whose effects many can still hardly imagine.
Biogeographer Thomas Hickler works at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt am Main. He researches how ecosystems are changing due to climate change, and how life on Earth influences the climate. In the project FirEUrisk, he is working with other European researchers to develop strategies for dealing with large wildfires.
On Tuesday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen officially proposed Netherlands’ Wopke Hoekstra as the new commissioner for the fight against climate change. The incumbent foreign minister of the Netherlands is supposed to be in charge of European climate diplomacy – so he will play an important role in the run-up to COP28 and at the climate conference itself. This means he will only take over half the portfolio of his predecessor Frans Timmermans, who left the Commission to run for Prime Minister of the Netherlands. The other half – the ongoing implementation of the Green Deal in Europe – lies with the Slovak Maroš Šefčovič, who has taken Timmermans’ role as executive vice-president of the Commission.
Šefčovič will finalize the remaining legislative proposals of the Green Deal at the EU level. Then there is the stricter regulation of fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases), a certification framework for CO2 removals and the CO2 fleet limits for trucks. Even though these are no longer the big issues of European climate legislation, they are still considered highly relevant for industrial policy. They must be closed before the start of the European election campaign in the spring of 2024, which is an ambitious task on its own.
Before Hoekstra can get started in his new post, he still has a long way to go. The 47-year-old must now face parliamentary scrutiny followed by a vote in the EU Parliament. Although the result of the vote is not binding for the Commission – only the EU member states can formally object to a reappointment – it is considered an important assessment of political sentiment.
The Social Democrats are considering voting against him. The reason for their skepticism: On the one hand, Hoekstra does not have any decisive experience in the international climate business and first has to familiarize himself with it. On the other hand, the Christian Democrat is to replace the Social Democrat Timmermans. This has met with criticism, especially after the opposition by the EPP to important environmental policy legislative proposals. “The climate crisis does not take a break, so we need a commissioner who can get started immediately,” demands SPD environmental politician Tiemo Wölken.
Von der Leyen, however, justifies her decision with Hoekstra’s experience as deputy prime minister of the Netherlands, finance minister and finally foreign minister. He could therefore drive forward climate financing as well as the “implementation of climate-relevant legal instruments.”
However, it is also clear that von der Leyen is essentially fulfilling a prominent demand of the EPP. After the weak results of the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh from the EU’s point of view, the EPP demanded a “European John Kerry” to take over the international climate negotiations full-time. In the meantime, the demand also received support from Green MEPs, but was strictly rejected by the Commission and the Timmermans cabinet.
Hoekstra is now expected to take on this role in a slightly modified form. SPD politician Wölken criticizes this: “This creation of a ‘climate envoy’, as demanded by the conservatives, has so far been rejected by the majority in parliament, as it stands in the way of a coherent climate policy.” Peter Liese, climate policy spokesman for the EPP, on the other hand, sees it as an opportunity. Since Hoekstra does not have to take care of the entire Green Deal, he also has more time for international climate negotiations, says Liese.
But this will not be an easy task either, as Hoekstra lacks the network and standing on the international climate stage. Timmermans was considered the voice of Europe at the climate conferences. He met several times a year with the climate envoys from the USA (John Kerry) and China (Xie Zhenhua) and most recently traveled around the world to forge partnerships in the fight against climate change. Hoekstra has exactly three months to prepare for the EU negotiations. Although he has an experienced climate negotiator at his side with Spain’s Environment Minister Teresa Ribera thanks to Spain’s EU Council Presidency, this pillar of support also threatens to fall away at any moment due to the complicated government formation in Spain.
The EU’s main concern in Dubai is to find new sources of climate financing. In particular, the large CO2 emitters outside the group of developed countries are to be included in the group of donor countries, if Europe has its way. These include not only oil-producing countries, but also China. So far, these countries have refused to pay for damage and losses resulting from climate change or for global climate adaptation measures.
The EU states are likely to set their negotiating mandate for the COP at the Environment Council on 16 October. Hoekstra and the EU Commission are serving in an advisory capacity here. It will be interesting to see how the countries position themselves regarding the use of CO2 capture to achieve the climate targets. Back in March, the EU ministers decided to also permit the use of CCS technologies for fossil fuels. Previously, the position had always been that CCS should only play a role in unavoidable emissions from industrial processes.
The word from government circles in Berlin is that a return to the old position before COP28 is considered likely, as CCS is perceived to provide a loophole for the continued use of fossil fuels in the energy industry. However, an overly strict formulation would also limit the scope for negotiations in Dubai, where many influential countries (including the USA) are likely to advocate for greater consideration of CCS.
It will be Hoekstra’s task to moderate this process, as he will have to represent the result in Dubai and convince others of the same stance.
It only took one simple question to reveal the lack of direction regarding climate action. At the first television debate of the Republican presidential candidates (excluding Donald Trump) last week, the candidates convinced of man-made climate change were asked to raise their hands. Only one of the eight, Asa Hutchinson, put his fingers up. Everyone else looked hesitant. Then, Ron DeSantis abruptly ended the voting by pointing out that the candidates were not schoolchildren.
The Republicans are struggling to find a common position on climate change. Presidential candidates vie for the favor of conservative voters with superficial slogans or climate-skeptical slogans. At the same time, however, pressure is growing on the leadership to offer serious solutions – especially from moderate and young forces at the grassroots. Thus, climate policy becomes a crucial issue in the upcoming election campaign within the Grand Old Party (GOP).
The different positions of the leading candidates already reveal the problem. Right-wing populist and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, sees no need for action. “The climate change agenda is a hoax,” Ramaswamy said during the debate. He claimed that more people die because of climate policy than because of climate change, without providing any evidence.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, on the other hand, said: “Is climate change real? Yes, it is.” The only woman among the candidates, however, holds China and India primarily responsible, while consistently rejecting own efforts. Yet the US is currently responsible for 14 percent of global CO2 emissions and continues to emit the most historically. Still, in his role as US president, Donald Trump has curtailed the country’s climate policy: He withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, damaged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and repealed more than 100 regulations and laws aimed at lowering emissions.
But opposition to such policies is growing within the party. “The country has decided that climate change is a problem,” Bob Inglis told Table.Media. The former congressman chairs RepublicEn, a coalition of conservative climate realists. “If Republicans want to be relevant, we have to come up with solutions on the magnitude of the problem.” Inglis advises his party to focus on the free market as the solution to climate change. “Otherwise, we’re going to be stuck with a combination of regulations and large-scale government spending programs,” he says, setting himself apart from the Democrats’ policies.
Conservative climate concepts have long been on the table. One of the best-known is the so-called “Carbon Dividends Plan” from 2017 by James Baker and George Shultz, who worked as ministers under Republican presidents George Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. The plan envisages:
But such concepts traditionally receive less attention, Johannes Thimm, Deputy Head of Research Division “The Americas” at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told Table.Media. “In the US, it’s not so much a party program that matters as the position of individual candidates and members of Congress.” In general, Republican politicians would question any policy that seeks to regulate the extraction and use of fossil fuels. “They have no constructive answers to the challenge of global warming,” Thimm said.
Polls show the fundamental voter potential for a targeted climate policy. 56 percent of all adults in the USA consider global warming a “major threat.” In addition, one in four still speaks of a “minor threat.” However, the perception differs greatly depending on the supporters. While almost nine out of ten Democrats see global warming as a major threat, Republicans are divided: 28 percent see global warming as a major threat, but about the same number (33 percent) believe that climate change poses no threat at all.
According to polls, there are significant differences between the generations. While only three percent of Republicans over 65 are open to switching the US energy supply completely to renewables, a full 29 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds support the idea. And so the Young America’s Foundation, the most influential conservative youth organization in the country, has recently repeatedly raised the climate concerns of young people in public.
Yet the traditionally Republican-dominated states in the southern United States are particularly vulnerable to disasters such as hurricanes and droughts. Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was forced to declare a state of emergency for dozens of counties in response to the current warning of Hurricane Idalia. He evaded the question about the influence of climate change: “You’ve got waters that are warm and there’s not really going to be much to slow it down,” DeSantis answered a reporter.
It is also unclear what a possible Republican US president would do with President Joe Biden’s massive Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) investment program. Depending on cost estimates, it is expected to channel between 370 million and 1.2 billion US dollars in subsidies and tax breaks into the development of green technologies over the next ten years. So far, Republicans want to drop certain IRA funds. They criticize that the green transformation could cost more jobs than it brings in new ones while driving inflation.
But simultaneously, Republican-dominated districts and states, of all places, have benefited the most from the IRA so far. In total, companies have announced investments totaling 278 billion US dollars – 220 billion US dollars of which are to flow into “red” districts currently represented by Republicans in the House of Representatives. By Laurin Meyer, New York City
As part of the international debate on a phase-out of fossil fuels, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington presented new figures on government subsidies for fossil fuels. In 2022, direct and indirect subsidies from taxpayers’ money for oil, coal and gas amounted to a total of seven trillion US dollars worldwide, or 7.1 percent of global economic output. According to the IMF working paper, a reform of the system could cut global carbon emissions by a total of 43 percent by 2030 and thus help meet the 2-degree limit of the Paris Agreement.
Like other IMF studies, the report examines direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels. A majority of the subsidies from state funds (82 percent) are “implicit” subsidies, because the ecological and medical consequences of fossil fuels are not attributed to the polluters, but are borne by the general public. “Explicit”, i.e. direct, price subsidies account for only 18 percent of the total amount.
Specifically, the report finds, among other things:
The report comes at a time when the debate over a global fossil phase-out is growing more topical and heated. The issue will be controversial at the upcoming COP28 in the oil and gas country United Arab Emirates: A progressive alliance of the EU, smaller developing countries and NGOs is calling for a global phase-out roadmap. The oil and gas countries, including many of the newly formed BRICS-plus nations, can envision a phase-out of “fossil emissions,” at best.
But that would mean focusing on the controversial technologies of CCS and CCU, storage and use of captured carbon dioxide. Since this technology is neither mature nor commercially viable to date, it would probably entail additional government subsidies for research, testing and application – in other words, in the view of the IMF report, further direct or indirect subsidies.
According to the report, the countries with the largest nominal amounts of subsidies are China, the USA, Russia, the EU and India. Almost half of all subsidies come from the East Asia/Pacific region.
Separate statistics show subsidies from 170 different countries for 2022. For explicit subsidies
Germany is ranked with 43.4 billion US dollars in explicit subsidies. According to figures from the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA), total environment-damaging subsidies in Germany amount to around 65 billion euros annually. However, the UBA and the Federal Ministry of Finance disagree over which government payments count as subsidies at all.
The picture of the most generous countries changes when the IMF report looks at all – explicit and implicit – subsidies. In this case, countries that have introduced a carbon price (such as the European Emissions Trading System) are significantly closer to the true costs than countries without a comprehensive carbon price. Prices for coal, oil and gas are significantly closer in Germany, France, Italy and the UK to the damage caused by these fuels. In other countries such as Saudi Arabia, the USA, Russia, Indonesia and Iran, the indirect subsidies for climate-damaging fuels are in some cases significantly higher.
More than 25 African heads of state and government, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and 20,000 delegates will meet for the first African Climate Summit (Sept. 4-6, Kenya) guided by the theme “Driving Green Growth and Climate Finance Solutions for Africa and the World.” Apart from the restructuring of the international financial system and investments in renewables, the transport sector and the extraction of raw materials for the energy transition, the summit will also focus on climate change adaptation.
African leaders and observers hope that African heads of government will find a “continental position” to jointly represent the interests of African countries at COP28.
Historically, Africa is responsible for only 2.8 percent of global emissions. Yet the continent is particularly affected by the climate crisis – be it through extreme weather events or the consequences of climate change such as water shortages and crop failures. Although Africa receives an annual 30 billion US dollars in climate financing, it would need more than 270 billion. At the same time, there is plenty of potential – for instance, Africa boasts 60 percent of the world’s best locations for solar power plants and could become a future market for green hydrogen. Whether these plans become reality depends on many factors: It needs money from international climate finance and a solution to the African debt crisis. However, the political and economic elites in Africa must also create the right framework conditions for change. nib
Clean energy for Africa is one of the key focuses of the Africa Climate Summit, which will be held next week in Nairobi, Kenya. Renewables are also of concern to Diana Nabiruma. The 37-year-old is a spokesperson for the African Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) and visited Table.Media’s editorial office in the summer for an interview – after a meeting with Jennifer Morgan, special representative for international climate policy at the German Foreign Office, and before an exchange with members of the German parliament. She spent two days in Berlin to share her perspective on energy projects in Africa.
Diana Nabiruma says it is wrong that African countries need to develop oil and gas reserves in order to prosper. This argument is spread by the fossil fuel industry – through African governments that “sometimes don’t ask about the needs of the people, but about the benefits for themselves.” It is an old pattern that the interests of Africa’s elites are often more aligned with those of elites in the Global North than with those of their own people.
The Ugandan non-governmental organization AFIEGO campaigns for clean energy, environmental protection and human rights. The organization gained attention because it jointly filed a lawsuit with the French NGOs Amis de la Terre and Survie and three Ugandan organizations against French energy company TotalEnergies. TotalEnergies is part of a consortium that intends to extract oil from Lake Albert in western Uganda and pump it through the world’s longest heated oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean coast in neighboring Tanzania. The production area is partly located in the Murchison Falls National Park, which is rich in species and home to antelopes, elephants and hundreds of bird species.
The NGOs sued to stop the project until TotalEnergies complies with the due diligence obligations that they see under the French supply chain law (Loi de vigilance). Specifically, the lawsuit required the company to take greater account of the impact on the ecosystem and to provide adequate compensation to the people who were forced to relocate for the project. The responsible court rejected the complaint on formal grounds.
When asked what she thinks about the outcome of the lawsuit, she says, “What is important is what the affected communities think, because it is their livelihoods that are threatened by the project.” Nabiruma recounts stories of affected people who did not understand why the court rejected the lawsuit on formal grounds, despite it being so important to protect the environment and people. But in their country, there are hardly any ways to hold multinational corporations accountable.
At least European due diligence regulations create the chance to do this. “But then the laws must also be strong and those affected must be able to easily assert their rights,” says the activist. She compares the fight against large corporations like TotalEnergies to that of David versus Goliath. She hopes that God will help the people affected in this case, just as he helped David – a reminder that much is beyond one’s control, no matter how committed one is.
Nabiruma, who comes from the Ugandan capital of Kampala, has experienced first-hand how much a clean environment is worth living in. At the age of seven, she moved to the countryside to attend a boarding school. Unlike in the big city, the water there was clean and the air pure. When she returned to Kampala eleven years later, she felt that the air polluted by combustion cars was even dirtier than before, says the activist. She developed allergic asthma as a result.
After studying communications and journalism, Nabiruma worked for six years as a journalist for the privately owned Ugandan newspaper The Observer. Her focus: environmental policy. During that time, she learned “that people can only prosper if they live in harmony with nature.” In any case, owning land plays an important role for people in Uganda, where 70 percent earn their living from agriculture, most of them as smallholder farmers. Although Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world by conventional standards, many people are happy and generous because nature allows them to cultivate their land profitably, says the activist. So those who have enough to eat themselves and can appreciate that are happier and more willing to share.
But the fight against the destruction of nature is difficult – not only because multinational corporations have great political influence, but also because environmental activists in Uganda work under difficult conditions. Between September 2020 and October 2021, eight AFIEGO employees were arrested – a total of 14 people work for the NGO.
“We work in fear, but it’s work that needs to be done because we are among the few who still stand up for the communities,” says Nabiruma. She takes strength from her interactions with people, which show her time and time again that it’s necessary to speak up for them – and the conviction that speaking with a common voice can make a difference. Nicolas Heronymus
