Tipping Points To Net Zero, Smarter Train Tracks And Greenland’s Accelerating Melt

This week’s Current Climate, which every Saturday brings you the latest news about the business of sustainability. Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.

Ancient Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes is said to have one said, “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world” – highlighting the power of simple machines to magnify effort. This principle is limited to ancient Greece. This week, a report presented to the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos argues that there are points like this that can accelerate the world’s transition to an economy that’s built around more sustainable principles in order to slow climate change. The researchers behind the report identified three potential “tipping points” that can be pushed in order to accelerate some of these changes.

The first is the transition to electric vehicles, as “government policies and better infrastructure increasingly [are] making electric vehicles more attractive than petrol and diesel cars,” according to a press release around the report. A second tipping point is swapping out methods of producing ammonia for fertilizers in a manner that’s more sustainable, which the researchers say could have a side benefit of bringing down the costs of green hydrogen. The third tipping point is moving towards more alternatives to animal-based proteins, which could help reduce emissions from livestock farming and slow down rates of deforestation. All of these areas, the report argues, can produce ripple effects that reach further into the economy in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“This non-linear way of thinking about the climate problem gives plausible grounds for hope,” the report’s lead author aid in a statement. “The more that gets invested in socioeconomic transformation, the faster it will unfold – getting the world to ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions sooner.”

The Big Read

Greenland Ice Sheet Warmest In At Least 1,000 Years As Scientists Warn Melting Ice Will Accelerate Sea-Level Rise

Recent temperatures in Greenland’s ice sheet—one of the primary culprits behind rising seas—were the warmest they’ve been in at least 1,000 years, according to a new report, as scientists warn the melting of Greenland’s ice could threaten coastal communities around the world.

Read more here.

Discoveries And Innovations

Startup Wingardium Energy is building wind turbines that double as chargers for electric vehicles.

Israel-based startup Steakholder Foods is working with Umami Meats of Singapore to develop 3D-printed structured eel and grouper products made from cultivated cells rather than animals..

Human-caused light pollution has made the night sky nearly 10% brighter each year, according to new research, obscuring astronomical observations and posing a threat to migrating birds that rely on the position of stars and the moon to travel.

Nearly two-thirds of coral reef shark and ray species worldwide are threatened with extinction, reports a new study.