This Week on Earth: Nov 6-12

Corn maze at Richardson Adventure Farm in Spring Grove, Ill. (Jonathan Zhao/ION)

Worldwide

The COP29 climate summit, the 29th annual meeting of the 197 countries signed onto the 1992 U.N. climate framework, will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan this upcoming week. This year, the conference will focus on finances — both to help poorer countries deal with the effects of climate change and to help them build the infrastructure necessary to cut their own emissions. COP’s current goal of $100 billion per year (raised primarily by wealthy countries and international organizations) is nowhere near enough to achieve their aims, so much of the conference is expected to be spent figuring out where to set new goals. 

2024 is likely to be the hottest year on record, and natural disasters across the world (including the recent flooding in Spain) have made the reality of the climate crisis even more obvious. But many world leaders, including President Biden and the leaders of China, India, France, Germany, Brazil and the U.K., are skipping COP29. 

The overarching goal of the COP summits is cutting down greenhouse gas emissions to avoid reaching the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Doing this would require a major shift toward renewable energy and away from oil and gas. But Baku, the location of the conference, is a city full of oil refineries and fossil fuels make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports, serving as a harsh reminder of how far there is left to go.

It seems unlikely that COP29 will lead to substantial solutions around the issues of fossil fuels and emissions, but some financial plans may be within reach, enabling countries besides the wealthiest to take major action against climate change.

New Jersey/New York

3000 acres in New Jersey and New York have burned in the latest in a series of wildfires in the region. Weeks without rain (the driest October in New York City history) have made the fires incredibly difficult to control, and by Sunday evening, only 10% of the fire was estimated to have been contained by the New Jersey Forest Fire Service.

While rain is expected early next week, it is unlikely to be enough to stop the fires or prevent new ones. Parts of New Jersey and New York’s Hudson Valley are under air quality alerts as the smoke spreads, and a brush fire in Brooklyn put much of New York City under an alert earlier this week.

The New Jersey Forest Fire Service has responded to 537 fires in the past month, up from less than 50 over the same period last year. They currently list the entire state as being in “extreme” fire danger.

Greece

In Greece, rising sea temperatures have devastated this year’s mussel harvest. The Aegean Sea in northern Greece experienced its third consecutive year of warming, and this year the water temperatures reached a level that the mussel population could not survive. With parts of the sea going above 30 degrees Celsius in July, not only did this year's mussel harvest die out, but the seeds for next year were also killed off.

As a result, these mussel farmers are facing at least two years without a harvest. Greek aquaculture was valued at 619 million EUR in 2021, and the vast majority of it came from small family farms, of which most are in the same northern region of the country.

“If this happens again next year, we'll all leave and everything I've done as a farmer for the last 30 years will be gone," said Sotiris Tsaros, one of the region’s mussel farmers. Many of his fellow farmers are already looking for new jobs to keep their families afloat without income from this year’s harvest.