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greenpeace international
Only 7 Countries Meet WHO's Air Quality Guidelines as Fossil Fuels Worsen Pollution
"The science is pretty clear about the impacts of air pollution and yet we are so accustomed to having a background level of pollution that's too high to be healthy," said an official at Swiss firm IQAir.
Mar 19, 2024
A Swiss air quality monitoring firm on Tuesday said its latest worldwide data reveals the need for more walkable cities and a swift transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels, as just 7 out of 134 countries were found to meet global standards for dangerous air pollution.
IQAir found that Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and New Zealand were the only countries that met the World Health Organization's (WHO) guidelines for particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) pollution, which is made up of microscopic airborne particles and can become embedded in peoples' lungs and even their bloodstreams, especially in cases of high exposure.
Three territories—Bermuda, French Polynesia, and Puerto Rico—also met WHO's standard.
PM2.5 can cause or aggravate asthma and has been linked to worsened lung function, heart attacks, respiratory ailments, and irregular heartbeat.
While IQAir measured countries' air quality against WHO's guideline for "safe" PM2.5 levels—five micrograms per cubic meter—U.S. scientists found last month that there is no safe amount of PM2.5 for humans.
IQAir found that PM2.5 levels were highest in the Global South. Bangladesh was found to have more than 15 times the amount of PM2.5 pollution than what is advised by WHO, while Pakistan's level was 14 times higher. The most polluted metropolitan area in 2023 was Begusarai, India, and India had four of most polluted cities in the world.
But "things have gone backwards" in wealthy countries as well, Glory Dolphin Hammes, North America chief executive of IQAir, told The Guardian, particularly as planetary heating has fueled wildfires like those that stunned scientists in Canada and Europe last year.
Canada, long a leader in air quality, had a PM2.5 level of 10.3 in 2023, and air quality across North America was "significantly influenced by extensive Canadian wildfires that raged from May to October." More than 40% of Canadian cities recorded annual PM2.5 levels that exceeded 10 micrograms per cubic meter. Eleven percent, or 35 cities, exceeded 15 micrograms per cubic meter, compared to just a single city in 2022.
World Weather Attribution directly linked Canada's wildfires to the climate emergency,
saying fossil fuel combustion and the resulting planetary heating made the blazes twice as likely.
The country's PM2.5 levels last year showed that governments "should act to make their cities more walkable and less reliant upon cars, amend forestry practices to help curtail the impact of wildfire smoke, and move more quickly to embrace clean energy in place of fossil fuels," Hammes told The Guardian.
"The science is pretty clear about the impacts of air pollution and yet we are so accustomed to having a background level of pollution that's too high to be healthy," she said. "We are not making adjustments fast enough."
Robb Barnes, climate program director for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, said the report shows Canada is "no exception" as governments are urged to confront the fact that "climate change, pollution, and burning fossil fuels is disastrous for human health."
Air pollution is blamed for an estimated 7 million premature deaths each year, with countries in the Global South—where clean energy sources are less available for heating and other uses—reporting the most deaths linked to PM2.5.
Frank Hammes, global CEO of IQAir, noted that much of the Global South, including many countries in Africa, lack air quality monitoring mechanisms.
"A clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a universal human right. In many parts of the world the lack of air quality data delays decisive action and perpetuates unnecessary human suffering," said Hammes in a statement. "Air quality data saves lives."
In order to prevent more premature deaths linked to PM2.5 pollution, the report said, policymakers in Canada and other wealthy countries where air quality suffered in 2023 must take decisive steps to decrease PM2.5 emissions from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, power plants, and industrial processes, including:
- Broadening the adoption of renewable, clean energy in public transportation systems;
- Providing subsidies for battery-powered and human-powered modes of transportation;
- Championing infrastructure projects that enhance pedestrian mobility; and
- Introducing incentive programs to stimulate the adoption of clean air vehicles for commercial and personal purposes.
"IQAir's annual report illustrates the international nature and inequitable consequences of the enduring air pollution crisis," said Aidan Farrow, senior air quality scientist for Greenpeace International. "In 2023 air pollution remained a global health catastrophe. IQAir's global data set provides an important reminder of the resulting injustices and the need to implement the many solutions that exist to this problem."
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'Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter' Denounced as Greenwashing Scheme by Fossil Fuel Arsonists
"Voluntary pledges cannot be a substitute for a formal negotiated outcome at COP28 for countries to address the root cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels."
Dec 02, 2023
Hundreds of civil society groups and frontline voices from around the world on Saturday condemned a voluntary pledge heralded by government leaders and fossil fuel giants, calling the "Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter" unveiled at the COP28 climate talks in Dubai nothing but a cynical industry-backed smokescreen and greenwashing ploy that will allow for the continuation of massive emissions of carbon, methane, and other greenhouse gases.
"The Oil and Gas Decarbonization Accelerator is a dangerous distraction from the COP28 process," warned David Tong, the global industry campaign manager for Oil Change International, in a statement from Dubai. "We need legal agreements, not voluntary pledges. The science is clear: staying under 1.5ºC global warming requires a full, fast, fair, and funded phase-out of fossil fuels, starting now."
Backed by approximately 50 state-run and private oil and gas companies, the stated aims of the pledge, also being referred to as the Decarbonization Accelerator, is to cut upstream emissions of methane to "near-zero" levels and end "routine flaring"—that is, emissions involved with production but not consumption—by 2030 while aiming for a "net-zero operations" target by 2050.
"Voluntary commitments are a dangerous distraction from what is needed at COP28. Oil and gas companies meeting to sign a pledge that only deals with their operational emissions is like a group of arsonists meeting to promise to light fires more efficiently."
What's key, say the Charter's critics, is both the voluntary nature of the scheme and the glaring fact that it does not include 80-90% of the emissions produced by the industry, namely the downstream consumption of their products—the burning of coal, oil, and fracked gas.
An open letter released by 320 groups on Saturday accuses Sultan al-Jaber, president of COP28 and the chief executive of the host nation's national oil company, of missing a "historic opportunity" by allowing the pledge to grandstand as meaningful progress while the planet experiences its hottest year in 125,000 years.
"The COP28 Presidency appears to have been encouraging fossil fuel companies to make yet another set of hollow voluntary pledges, with no accountability mechanism or guarantee the companies will follow through," the letter states. "Releasing another in the long succession of voluntary industry commitments that end up being breached will not make COP28 a success. Voluntary efforts are insufficient, and are a distraction from the task at hand."
By only aiming to reduce "oil and gas operational emissions without sharp reductions in overall fossil fuel production," the groups argue, the Charter "will fail to achieve the cuts in methane emissions necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
Citing recent findings from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Climate and Clear Air Coalition released in October, the letter states that the only way to meet the 1.5ºC target established by the 2015 Paris agreement is to phase out fossil fuels completely—and rapidly.
"Cutting methane pollution from the oil and gas supply chain is an important component of near-term emissions reductions—but it is not enough on its own," the letter states.
Alongside the industry-backed Charter, 118 nations on Saturday also pledged a tripling of renewable energy by 2030, but green groups say that while welcome, this kind of effort means so much less if fossil fuels are not phased out during that same period.
"The future will be powered by solar and wind, but it won't happen fast enough unless governments regulate fossil fuels out of the way," said Kaisa Kosonen, leading Greenpeace International's COP28 delegation in Dubai.
Oil Change's Tong also pointed to national promises on renewables in the context of the overall greenwashing effort underway trying to tell the world it can have a renewable energy revolution while also allowing the fossil fuel industry to continue its existence.
"If your company digs stuff up and burns it, you’re the problem. It’s time to wind down your business."
"Bundling up the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter with a renewable energy commitment appears to be a calculated move to distract from the weakness of this industry pledge," Tong said.
"Promising to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency is welcome and indicates momentum for a final agreement at this year's U.N. climate talks," he added, "but voluntary pledges cannot be a substitute for a formal negotiated outcome at COP28 for countries to address the root cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels."
Journalist and veteran climate organizer Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and now Third Act, said it "isn't hard" to know what needs to be done or to identify who is at fault for the current crisis.
"If your company digs stuff up and burns it, you’re the problem. It’s time to wind down your business. Past time," McKibben said.
The green critics of the Charter are clear that the chief culprits should have little say in the way governments and society at large choose to manage the transition from a dirty energy economy to a more sustainable and clean one.
As the letter from the coalition argues, "Voluntary commitments are a dangerous distraction from what is needed at COP28. Oil and gas companies meeting to sign a pledge that only deals with their operational emissions is like a group of arsonists meeting to promise to light fires more efficiently."
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The Collapse of the Bees... And How To Save Them
Two new reports—one alarming and the focused on solutions—take focus on the deep crisis facing the world's best, but most threatened, pollinators
May 10, 2014
Two new reports this week provide key evidence that back a growing call that the destructive use of large-scale chemical agriculture must be halted in order to give the global bee population a fighting chance to regain their strength as the world's most prolific and effective pollinating species.
The first, a scientific study (pdf) conducted by researchers at Harvard University, found further proof that the wide-scale agricultural use of neonicotinoids--a volatile class of insecticide (neonics for short)--is a leading contributor to what has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD).
"The only solution for the global bees decline and the current agriculture crisis is a change towards ecological farming." --Matthias Wuthrich, Greenpeace
The second report (pdf), issued by Greenpeace International, focuses on solutions to the bee crisis by releasing its report that shows how the widespread expansion and re-introduction of ecological farming practices--as opposed to the chemically-intensive agriculture that now dominates--is the most efficient and surfire way to save the world's bee population and the food system they support.
For the Harvard researchers, their study specifically looked at how exposure to various kinds of neonics impacted the ability of colonies to survive winter hybernations and found that "Bees from six of the 12 neonicotinoid-treated colonies had abandoned their hives and were eventually dead with symptoms resembling CCD," while those not exposed to the chemicals survived with inverse rates.
"It is striking and perplexing to observe the empty neonicotinoid-treated colonies because honey bees normally do not abandon their hives during the winter," the report contined. "This observation may suggest the impairment of honey bee neurological functions, specifically memory, cognition, or behavior, as the results from the chronic sub-lethal neonicotinoid exposure."
The Greenpeace report--titled "Plan Bee--Living without Pesticides: Moving Towards Ecological Farming"--picks up where the science against chemical herbicides and pesticides leaves off by showing that the implementation of "ecological farming is feasible and in fact the only solution to the ever increasing problems associated with industrial agriculture" that is destroying both natural systems and proven, non-toxic farming practices.
Ecological farming, according to the report, includes "organic agricultural methods, promotes biodiversity on farmland and supports the restoration of semi-natural habitat on farms as ecological compensation areas for bees and other wildlife. Ecological farming does not rely on the use of synthetic chemical pesticides and herbicides and, thereby, safeguards bees from toxic effects of these agrochemicals."
And Matthias Wuthrich, ecological farming campaigner and European bees project leader at Greenpeace Switzerland, adds: "The only solution for the global bees decline and the current agriculture crisis is a change towards ecological farming."
The Greenpeace report supports the environmental group's ongoing campaign to fight bee decline in Europe, North America, and elsewhere by highlighting farmers and others who are showing that these alternatives exist and are working.
By applying and promoting ecological and bee-friendly farming methods, argues Wuthrich, forward-thinking farmers, experts and entrepreneurs in the food industry "are ensuring healthy food for today and tomorrow, are protecting soil, water and climate, promote biodiversity and do not contaminate the environment with chemicals or genetically engineered organisms. Policy makers need to hear these experts who live by and champion the solution."
As part of their "S.O.S Bees" campaign last month, Greenpeace released this video to show that if people don't rapidly deploy solutions to the crisis, the bees will have no other choice but to rise up themselves against humanity's neglect:
Greenbees (Greenpeace)Greenbees: Save the bees, save the humans. Greenpeace: https://sos-bees.org/greenbees The Greenbees are mobilising to ...
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