United Airlines is betting that it could persuade small-city residents to switch a five-hour automotive trip with a zippy ride in a compact electric plane.
If this plan works, it could result in an electrical renaissance for a lost age of regional American air travel, CNBC reported.
“Return to the Nineties, there have been lots of of small aircraft serving a whole lot of communities which have now lost service,” Anders Forslund, chief executive of electrical startup Heart Aerospace, told CNBC.
Heart is under contract to produce United with 100 of its short range electric aircraft. United also this 12 months contracted to purchase electric planes from Eve, one other manufacturer, that might be able to taking off and landing vertically, much like a helicopter, based on an announcement.
These sorts of aircraft — and the regional connectivity they made possible — mostly went extinct as the burden and expense of newer jet engines restricted flights to more lucrative, higher-capacity flights between major cities, CNBC noted.
Nevertheless it is now those large planes that would suffer probably the most from the energy transition, as they’re too heavy for any existing electric engine to power, the outlet reported.
Electric motors allow corporations like Heart to begin constructing small planes “which have completely different unit economics,” Forslund said.
For residents of smaller cities, meaning they either “get service they didn’t have, that that they had to drive to an airport, or they’re going to have greater frequency of services,” Mike Leskinen, a United vice chairman, told CNBC.
Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the longer term of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin.
Today we’ll see why the British heads of state and government won’t be attending the upcoming United Nations climate summit. Then we’ll turn to a presidential runoff that would dictate the fate of the Amazon. But first: How heat waves have cost the worldwide economy trillions.
Heat waves cost the economy trillions: study
Heat waves driven by climate change have cost the worldwide economy trillions of dollars because the early Nineties, a recent study has found.
- From 1992-2013, countries lost an estimated $16 trillion to the impacts of high temperatures on human health, productivity and agricultural output, based on the study, published in Science Advances on Friday.
- Those that have suffered probably the most are the world’s poorest and lowest carbon-emitting nations, the authors observed.
Cost of doing nothing: “Accelerating adaptation measures inside the most popular period of annually would deliver economic advantages now,” lead writer Christopher Callahan, a doctoral candidate at Dartmouth College, said in an announcement.
The cash dedicated to such measures ought to be assessed “relative to the fee of doing nothing,” Callahan continued, adding that there may be “a considerable price tag to not doing anything.”
Economics meet heat: Callahan and his colleagues said they combed through newly available, in-depth economic data for regions all over the world for the 1992-2013 period.
- They cross-checked this information with the common temperature for the most popular five-day period annually — a metric utilized by scientists to gauge heat intensity.
- Economic losses as a result of extreme heat in wealthy areas averaged 1.5 percent of gross domestic product per capita. In low-income regions, those losses were about 6.7 percent.
Ripple effects: “Almost no country on Earth has benefitted from the intense heat that has occurred,” senior writer Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth, warned in an announcement.
Low-income countries are home to large numbers of out of doors staff, but these individuals generate materials which can be critical to produce chains, based on Mankin.
“There is totally the potential for upward ripple effects,” he added.
To read more of their findings, please click here for the complete story.
COP-27 set to start without UK king, prime minister
Neither King Charles III nor U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will attend next week’s United Nations climate summit, with the federal government opting to give attention to domestic issues.
- Downing Street confirmed on Friday that the monarch wouldn’t be partaking within the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP-27), stressing that it’s not the “right occasion” for him to achieve this, based on The Guardian.
- President Biden is planning to attend the summit, although leaders of another major economies — including Russia — usually are not expected to attend, the BBC reported.
Questioning the climate agenda: Despite Charles’s passion in regards to the climate crisis, it was “unanimously agreed” by Buckingham Palace that the king wouldn’t attend the summit, based on The Guardian.
- Downing Street maintained that the absence of each Charles and Sunak doesn’t mean that climate issues are dropping from the federal government’s agenda.
- Three other cabinet ministers might be attending COP-27, which can happen from Nov. 6-18 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
PM defends decision: Sunak told the BBC on Friday that it was the right decision to skip the climate summit as a result of the country’s must give attention to “pressing domestic challenges.”
Meanwhile, he hailed the U.K.’s progress in combatting climate change, arguing that the U.K. is “certainly one of the countries that has decarbonized the fastest.”
Opposition is just not pleased: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday described the prime minister’s decision to remain within the U.K. as “Britain not showing as much as work,” based on the BBC.
- Ed Miliband, Labour party Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change, described Sunak’s selection as “an enormous failure of leadership.”
- Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey said that the move “flies within the face of the UK’s proud tradition of leading the world in our response to the climate change,” per the BBC.
Scrutinizing leadership: Asked by the BBC on Friday to handle these claims, Sunak said that “the leadership we’ve shown on the climate is unmatched almost along the world.”
“We’re an example for others to follow,” he continued.
The U.K.-based Climate Coalition gave the country a “C” grade on its most up-to-date “report card,” which evaluated government climate motion for 2021.
Keeping the UK’s ban on fracking: Earlier this week, Sunak told lawmakers that he would maintain a ban on fracking, overturning a choice by his predecessor, Liz Truss, The Washington Post reported.
- Truss had lifted a moratorium on the practice, which involves drilling through underground shale rocks to withdraw oil and gas.
- Fracking stays common in countries just like the U.S., Canada, China and Argentina.
Passing down a greater environment: Sunak’s reinstatement of the fracking ban pleased climate activists and served to distance himself from Truss, based on the Post.
Going forward, the prime minister said he would promote climate-friendly policies that provide “our kids an environment in a greater state than we found it ourselves,” the Post reported.
Dirty politics mark pivotal environmental runoff race
The fate of the world’s largest rainforest — and the worldwide climate stability it helps underpin — is at stake on this weekend’s presidential runoff election in Brazil.
The contentious race — by which right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro faces left-leaning former president Luiz Inacio da Silva — has been marked by personal attacks, race-baiting and pretend news.
- “It’s the Americanization of Brazilian politics,” Guilherme Casarões, a political analyst on the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, told The Washington Post.
- “Certainly one of the features of this election is that Bolsonaro has been able … to create a everlasting state of cultural war.”
The election pits an incumbent who has overseen a staggering leap in deforestation rates against a challenger who once presided over historic declines, as we reported earlier this month.
Naming the issue: Da Silva pointed to the brand new political climate in a campaign event last week, the Post reported.
“I actually have never seen Brazil taken by such hatred as a component of Brazilian society has today,” he said.
A river of misinformation: Brazilian voters are facing a barrage of misleading stories in regards to the two candidates, based on The Associated Press.
- As within the U.S., “a person post won’t have that much reach, but cumulatively over time, having this constant drip-drip has negative consequences,” Vicky Wyatt of U.S.-based SumOfUs told the AP.
- With the Amazon a key campaign issue, the Brazilian right has published widespread false claims in regards to the country’s environmental plight, the Post reported.
In a single campaign video, Bolsonaro, the embattled president, blasts environmentalists who don’t need to let Brazil’s indigenous communities “evolve” or “plant on their land, explore, mine.”
Hundreds of indigenous demonstrators had occupied the capital of Brasilia this spring to protest the Bolsonaro government’s expansion of mining.
Mining for food? Members of the Brazilian right have also falsely claimed that mining indigenous reserves within the Amazon is crucial to secure minerals needed to fabricate fertilizer, the Post reported.
Doing so, they’ve argued, would make up for supply disruptions from the war in Ukraine, the Post.
DEFORESTATION DEFINES ELECTION
Bolsonaro is behind Da Silva within the polls, however the race has tightened previously month.
Hamstrung courts: Bolsonaro would also get to appoint more judges to the country’s Supreme Court, Americas Quarterly reported.
- The court’s judges are expected to demand the federal government renew a billion-dollar international fund aimed toward cutting deforestation, based on Reuters.
- Bolsonaro froze the fund in 2019, Reuters reported.
A clash: Government-sponsored development within the Amazon is butting up against indigenous communities, local leaders told PBS.
The federal government has financed projects like logistics hubs to maneuver grain and soy to international markets from fields cleared from the forest, based on PBS.
‘Deforestation for good: Farmers and ranchers within the Amazon who back Bolsonaro described the lack of forest as a net positive, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported earlier this week.
- The continued lack of forest has meant the opening up of recent farmland, settlers told CBC.
- “[Development] is in full swing here. Day by day, life is recuperating and higher,” one rancher said.
Follow-up Friday
n which we revisit a few of the issues we’ve covered over the past week.
Tens of millions of Pakistani children need assistance following floods: UNICEF
UNICEF warned earlier this week that almost every child on the planet will face frequent heat waves by 2050 as a result of climate change. The U.N. agency estimated on Friday that nearly 10 million children in Pakistan need urgent support within the aftermath of “the catastrophic climate disaster” that overtook the nation with floodwaters this summer.
European officials court African leaders in a bid to seek out recent gas partners
This week we explored why Europe might now have an excessive amount of gas as well a an Israel-Lebanon maritime deal that can enable further gas extraction. But with an uncertain future at hand, European leaders have been courting their African counterparts about the potential of fast-tracking energy projects, The Latest York Times reported.
Florida couple’s home insurance canceled as Ian approached
Climate change is fueling a wave of canceled homeowner insurance policies within the face of utmost weather. In a dramatic example of the issue, one Florida couple had their policy canceled as Hurricane Ian rolled toward the state — a possible violation of state law, Nexstar affiliate WFLA reported.
Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for more and explore more newsletters here. We’ll see you next week.