TBLI Weekly - November 19th, 2024

Your weekly guide to Sustainable Investment

TBLI Radical Truth Podcast

Medical Debt Abolishment as an Economic & Social Intervention

Allison Sesso is President & CEO of RIP Medical Debt, a national non-profit whose purpose is to strengthen communities by abolishing burdensome medical debt.? RIP Medical Debt has eliminated over 7 Billion Dollars and received $ 50 million from MacKenzie Scott (billionaire philanthropist) for their great work. What will you learn?

1. Medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.4 in 10 adults in the U.S. have medical debt.
2. RIP Medical Debt (RIP) uses donated dollars to buy and relieve medical debt across the country for those in financial need.
3. RIP's one-of-a-kind model turns $1 donated into $100 of medical debt relief.

Listen to the podcast ?

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Meet the Changemakers: Join the TBLI Mixer

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Date: November 29th - 16:00 CET ? Join Us for an Extraordinary Networking Experience: TBLI Virtual Mixer. ?

Free to attend - no charge.

?Imagine a networking event where you don’t have to sell anything – just be yourself. Through our TBLI virtual mixers, we’ve reimagined how professionals can connect. This is where people who care deeply about sustainability, impact, and creating real change come together. Meet non-extractive, authentic eccentrics – people from diverse industries who think beyond the ordinary and act for a better world. The conversation flows, the connections are meaningful, and every participant brings something unique to the table. ?

?Register Here and add to calendar.

Why Share This Event??Whether you’re looking to build partnerships, share your ideas with new minds, or simply want to meet people who get it – this is where you want to be. TBLI Mixers don’t just create connections, they spark movements. So share this with your network, and help create a world where real connections lead to real impact. Let’s redefine networking – together!

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Sustainable investors are split on just how bad Trump will be for the green economy

by?Eugene Ellmen?- Corporate Knights

With Donald Trump's reelection, the ESG backlash is entering a dangerous new phase, but the sustainable finance community still sees momentum for renewables

The stock market delivered a swift and decisive judgment on Donald Trump’s election win last week.

Anticipating juicy growth in corporate earnings under the new administration, the U.S. stock market closed Friday up almost 5%, the biggest weekly percentage gain in a year. But?clean energy stocks sank, as investors feared that Joe Biden’s pro-renewable program will give way to “drill, baby, drill” policies under Trump.

The decline in clean energy stocks despite an?otherwise buoyant market?confirms the uncertain reality facing sustainable finance. For the last two years, Republicans have waged a battle against environmental, social and governance investing, prompting many states to boycott ESG managers.

Before the vote, the very thought of a second Trump presidency?inspired dread?for many in the ESG community. But now a week after voting day, two schools of thought have emerged on how the Trump effect will play out.

While some industry leaders believe the sustainable finance community should lawyer up for a legal fight of mammoth proportions, others take a softer view. The latter group argues that the price advantage of clean energy, the resilience of ESG investments and pro-climate political considerations will prove stronger than the new administration’s policy attacks.

The pessimists: One billion tonnes more CO2

“The U.S. election is going to be a headwind for climate,” said Rebecca Mikula-Wright, CEO of the Investor Group on Climate Change, at the group’s?annual summit?in Melbourne, Australia, on November 7. Some other attendees agreed with the downbeat assessment.

“Donald Trump likes emissions,” said Greg Sharenow, managing director and portfolio manager at U.S-based asset manager PIMCO. “His positions are going to be distinctly supportive of additional emissions.”

If Trump makes good on all his climate and energy promises, it could delay the energy transition in the United States by 10 years or more, according to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

“A Trump administration means radical changes for tariffs on imports, climate policy and international affairs,”?writes?Simon Flowers, Wood Mackenzie’s chair and chief analyst. He says that Trump’s election along with probable Republican control of Congress makes it more likely there will be a delayed climate transition. “The U.S. will backtrack on net-zero.”

Trump will follow through on his promise to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, Flowers says in a post-election blog. The result will be felt as early as this week when the U.S. voice “will carry much less weight” at the United Nations COP29 climate summit.

In a report in May, Wood Mackenzie predicted that Trump policy changes would result in reducing low-carbon investments by US$1 trillion, resulting in one billion additional tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. The Trump changes would hit the industry with a double whammy by removing tax credits and subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act while raising costs through a general tariff on steel and equipment.

Trump is also likely to allow more permits for liquefied natural gas projects, new regulations favouring fossil fuels over renewables (blue rather than green hydrogen, for example) and rollbacks on methane caps and power-plant and vehicle-emission standards.

Natural gas demand will be 6% higher by 2030, the stock of electric vehicles will be 50% lower, and shutdowns of coal-fired power plants will be delayed under these changes, Wood Mackenzie says.

The optimists: Data centre demand, political pressure may dampen Trump effect

Some fund managers, asset owners and clean energy executives are taking a somewhat more positive view, saying that Trump’s policy actions will be blunted by political considerations and the sheer market demand for renewables.

“Policy is not the only driver of the energy transition, and the U.S. is not the only market for companies across the space,”?writes?Alex Monk, portfolio manager of global resource equities at Schroders. “While the shifting U.S. policy landscape is undoubtedly unhelpful, it should not distract from the strength of other forces encouraging investment in the space.” Read full article

‘Graveyard of corals’ found after extreme heat and cyclones hit northern Great Barrier Reef

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By:?Graham Readfearn?- The Guardian

Marine scientists say one area around Cooktown and Lizard Island had lost more than a third of its live hard coral after bleaching event

Reefs across the north of the?Great Barrier Reef?have seen “substantial losses” of coral cover after a summer of extreme heat, two cyclones and major flooding, according to the first results of surveys from government marine scientists.

After the most widespread coral bleaching event seen on the world’s biggest reef system, the Australian Institute of Marine Science said one area around Cooktown and Lizard Island had lost more than a third of its live hard coral – the biggest annual drop in 39 years of monitoring.

Dr Mike Emslie, leader of Aims’ long-term monitoring program, described a “graveyard of corals” off Lizard Island, with Linnet Reef one of the worst-hit.

“It was pretty sobering,” he said. “Probably the worst single impact I have seen in 30 years. We saw dead standing coral colonies and the whole scene was a drab brown mess. As far as the eye could see was corals covered in algae.”

Aims?revealed the results from in-water surveys of 19 reefs between Cairns and Cooktown?carried out in recent months, where 12 reefs saw a drop in coral cover of between 11% and 72%.

The results are the first official assessment of the impact of last summer’s mass coral bleaching event, which came during a fourth global event that saw heat stress high enough to bleach more than 70% of the planet’s corals, affecting reefs in more than 70 countries.

Mass coral bleaching is caused by rising ocean temperatures driven mostly by the burning of fossil fuels.

Emslie said most of the coral death seen in the surveys had been caused by climate change-driven heat stress, but there were also impacts from two summer cyclones and flooding that saw freshwater run into the reef’s waters.

The hardest hit corals were the branching and plating?Acroporas, he said, which had underpinned a growth in coral cover in recent years but had been identified as susceptible to bleaching.

The greatest heat stress last summer was seen in the reef’s southern section where scientists were on Tuesday returning from initial surveys.

Emslie said: “There is a feeling of trepidation of what the data might show [from the south of the reef].”

Between 80 and 100 more reefs are still to be surveyed between now and July 2025.

The world heritage committee, which has refused to put the reef on a list of sites in danger, urged the government to release data on coral mortality “as soon as possible”.

Coral cover in the Lizard Island-Cooktown section of the reef had fallen from 31% to 19%. Around Cairns, coral cover dropped by a third but reefs around Innisfail were stable. Read full article?

Almost 100 Gaza food aid lorries violently looted, UN agency says

By: David Gritten - BBC News

A convoy of 109 UN aid lorries carrying food was violently looted in Gaza on Saturday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) says.

Ninety-seven of the lorries were lost and their drivers were forced at gunpoint to unload their aid after passing through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing with southern Gaza, in what is believed to have been one of the worst incidents of its kind.

Eyewitnesses said the convoy was attacked by masked men who threw grenades.

Unrwa commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini did not identify the perpetrators, but he said the “total breakdown of civil order” in Gaza meant it had “become an impossible environment to operate in”.

Without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen for the two million people depending on humanitarian aid to survive, according to Unrwa.

A UN-backed assessment warned earlier this month that?there was “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip”.

It came after Israeli forces launched a major ground offensive in the north and the UN said fewer aid lorries had entered Gaza last month than at any time since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023.

Saturday’s looting was first reported by Reuters news agency, which cited an Unrwa official in Gaza as saying that the convoy was instructed by Israeli authorities to "depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route" from Kerem Shalom.

Gaza's Hamas-run interior ministry said its security staff killed "more than 20 members of gangs involved in stealing aid trucks" in an operation carried out in cooperation with "tribal committees", a network of traditional family clans.

Lazzarini said he could not comment on the route when asked at a news conference in Geneva on Monday, but he confirmed the looting and said: “We have been warning a long time ago about the total breakdown of civil order.”

“Until four or five months ago, we still had local capacity, people who were escorting the convoy. This has completely gone, which means we are in an environment where local gangs, local families, are struggling among each other to take control of any business or any activities taking place in the south. It has become an impossible environment to operate in.”

He added that hundreds of people desperate for food had tried to storm the Unrwa-run vocational centre in the southern city of Khan Younis because they thought the aid had been delivered there.

“But the convoys were looted and there was absolutely nothing to take from the warehouses.”

Unrwa put out a separate statement on X that accused Israeli authorities of continuing to “disregard their legal obligations under international law to ensure the population's basic needs are met and to facilitate the safe delivery of aid”.

“Such responsibilities continue when trucks enter the Gaza Strip, until people are reached with essential assistance.”

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Read full article?

Countries could use nature to ‘cheat’ on net zero targets, scientists warn

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By relying on natural carbon sinks such as forests and peatlands to offset emissions, governments can appear closer to goals than they actually are

Relying on natural carbon sinks such as forests and oceans to offset continued fossil fuel emissions will not stop global heating, the scientists who developed net zero have warned.

Each year, the planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks?absorb about?half of all human emissions, forming part of government plans to limit global heating to below 2C under the Paris agreement.

But the international group of authors who developed the science behind net zero have warned that countries could “cheat” their way towards Paris targets using naturally occurring parts of Earth’s carbon cycle to make it look as if they achieved net zero while continuing to drive global heating.

The study,?published on Monday in Nature?and led by the University of Oxford, said that naturally occurring carbon sinks such as rainforests and peatlands must be protected so they can remove historic pollution, but never formed part of the original net zero definition developed by scientists in 2009.

The scientists underscored the need for “geological net zero”, which means any future carbon emissions must be counteracted by permanent removal of the pollution from fossil fuels – not from pre-existing natural ecosystems. They urged governments to urgently clarify what net zero means at?Cop29?in Azerbaijan or continue to risk catastrophic climate breakdown.

The rules of the Paris agreement allow countries to claim carbon removals from “managed land” in their territory in their targets towards the goal, such as parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil or the taiga forest in Russia. But the net zero researchers said these rules allow countries to take credit for naturally occurring processes that have nothing to do with human emissions.

Conversely, emissions and removals from “unmanaged” land, such?as the recent wildfires in Canada?that released CO2 equivalent to three times their annual footprint, are not factored into a country’s progress towards the targets.

“We have to protect passive carbon sinks. We have to protect our forests and oceans because we need them to provide that carbon sink service in order for net zero emissions to actually do what we promise people it will do, which is to halt global warming. But we can’t pretend that those passive sinks are somehow compensating for ongoing use of fossil fuels,” said Prof Myles Allen from the University of Oxford’s department of physics, who led the study.

“If you’re still using fossil fuels and still generating carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels by mid-century, you need to have a plan to put the carbon dioxide they generate back underground or into some equally permanent storage,” he said.

Allen raised concerns that countries could even take credit for natural carbon removal from the sea by claiming “managed oceans”.

“Maybe you will get some countries deliberately using this in a mischievous way: ‘cheating’,” said Dr Glen Peters, of the Cicero Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, a co-author on the paper.

The study comes amid growing concern about the stability of Earth’s carbon sinks, which researchers say temporarily collapsed in 2023 during record temperatures, an El Ni?o system, and other pressures on ecosystems. The result was that forest, plants and soil – as a net category – absorbed almost no carbon,?research found.

Analysis by the research organisation?Zero Carbon Analytics?has found that the role of nature in nationally determined contributions (NDCs) was a significant blind spot for governments that could make it look as if they were closer than they were to reaching net zero.

An examination of differences in how natural carbon sinks are accounted for in models and NDCs indicated that the budget to limit global heating to below 2C could be 15% to 18% smaller than thought. It also found that the amount of land designated for land-based carbon dioxide removal – such as tree planting – by governments was unrealistic.

“How land is classified in national climate commitments is a critical blind spot in carbon accounting. It allows vast emissions from wildfires and natural disturbances in forests to go uncounted, ultimately misrepresenting progress towards climate goals … Impressive-sounding national climate plans don’t always give a true reflection of progress,” said Joanne Bentley, who led the analysis for Zero Carbon Analytics.

“This is especially problematic when governments over-rely on forests to absorb emissions instead of making the immediate, large-scale changes to industries that are urgently needed,” she said.

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