Maybe you noticed that you haven’t heard from me for a while. As I had mentioned, we went on a vacation and had a great time. And I took a vacation from writing this blog as well. Now I’m back and will try to get into the groove again of putting these together but it is summer…so probably won’t be as frequent.
Meanwhile, news keeps happening and it’s hard to know where to start. There’s news about how climate change is impacting the insurance industry and the financial markets. There is more evidence of how increasingly rapid the auto and electric utility business models are transitioning. And the weather just keeps getting worse and worse.
But I want to start with something a little different. When I first started writing these articles one of my initial concerns and themes, even before climate change, was how we humans were tearing apart the fabric of life by destroying the natural world. One of the biggest fears was the loss of pollinators. Decades later, here’s what that means.
Bloomberg News
Beehive Wipeout Is Crimping Harvests as Crisis Enters New Stage
On Canada’s blueberry farms, there simply aren’t enough bees. It’s a troubling sign, experts say, of what could happen elsewhere.
June 27, 2022
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-27/bee-hive-wipeout-is-crimping-harvests-as-crisis-enters-new-stage?cmpid=BBD062722_CUS&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=220627&utm_campaign=closeamericas
Blueberry growers across the entire country face similar troubles due to a shortage of the commercial hives they rely on to boost their bounty of Canada’s most valuable fruit crop. Canadian beekeepers have on average lost half their colonies this year, and in some areas there’s almost total collapse. That leaves berry farmers with a crippling bee shortage and few suppliers to fill the void.
“We probably haven’t seen this high of losses since one of our early years in beekeeping,” said Kevin Nixon, who has been in the business for nearly three decades. He lost 40% of the 10,000 hives he manages south of Red Deer, Alberta. “I know some guys that lost 90%.”
Beekeepers worldwide have been reporting massive honeybee deaths for years, but in parts of Canada this year’s losses are catastrophic. The impact on the C$274 million ($211 million) blueberry market in Canada, the world’s seventh largest exporter, is a warning to the world of what happens when there is a breakdown in the fragile pollination industry.
As pollinators vanish so too is the food upon which the population of the world relies. Loss of pollinators is not our only problem, of course. Heat and drought and war are further exacerbating the world’s food supply.
Bloomberg News
Wheat Crops Almost Everywhere Are Coming Under Threat
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Dryness threatens both French growers and U.S. Central Plains
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Soaring wheat prices compound hunger, cost-of-living crises
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May 12, 2022https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-11/droughts-flooding-and-heat-follow-war-as-next-test-for-wheat?cmpid=BBD051222_OUS&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=220512&utm_campaign=openamericas
As Russia’s invasion chokes off Ukrainian wheat exports, pushing up bread and noodle prices, the global harvest faces an added test: extreme weather.
Droughts, flooding and heatwaves threaten output from the U.S. to France and India, compounding shrinking production in Ukraine. Just about every major producing region is facing one threat or another. The one notable exception is Russia, which is shaping up for a bumper crop and stands to benefit from the rising prices and limited supply elsewhere.
Bloomberg News by E&E News
Extreme Heat in Europe Spurred ‘Brutal’ Rise in Sea Temperatures
Figuring out how much oceans are heating up and how much more heat the bodies of water can store is essential to understanding how fast the planet will warm in the coming decades.
June 30, 2022
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eenews/2022/06/30/extreme-heat-in-europe-led-to-brutal-rise-in-sea-temperatures-00043210
What I’ve been telling you incessantly about how the industry “experts” keep moving their estimates of how fast and when Electric Vehicles (EVs) will be the dominate product or, in my view, the ONLY type of vehicle you can buy (by 2030 is my prediction) keeps happening and will continue to happen. And the competition to dominate the future of the industry is accelerating this phenomenon.
Automotive News
‘Switch Has Been Flipped’ on Global EV Growth, Forecast Says
BCG anticipates 59% of all new vehicles sold worldwide will be BEVs by 2035.
June 09, 2022
https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/switch-has-been-flipped-global-ev-growth-forecast-says
“We really think the switch has been flipped,” said Aakash Arora, managing director and partner at BCG. “It used to be a few years ago that for many companies, both OEMs and suppliers, EVs were a very important piece of their strategy but still just a project. Now, we’re seeing that EVs are the company and that ICE is the project.”
“Now that everybody is pointing in the same direction, we’ll be working through these challenges,” he said. “I’m not dismissing the importance or significance of them, but we think this will lead to a new kind of innovation on charging and battery types and in mining. And it’s going to drive change in regulation.”
The Wall Street Journal
GM and Ford, Driving to Beat Tesla, Turn on Each Other
Detroit’s greatest rivalry is intensifying in the race to dominate in electric vehicles; Silverado vs. F-150 Lightning
June 20, 2022
https://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-ford-tesla-electric-ev-lighning-silverado-1165540838
The Ford-GM rivalry—one of the business world’s fiercest for a century—is taking on an urgent new dimension as the companies enter the electric age. Each is under pressure to show Wall Street it can close the gap on Tesla Inc., TSLA 1.24%▲ which has been cementing its EV dominance through profit and sales growth.
Ms. Barra and Ford CEO Jim Farley have said they intend to seize the U.S. sales lead from Tesla, which sold about 13 times as many EVs as both Detroit companies combined in the U.S. during the first quarter, according to sales figures and estimates from research firm Wards Intelligence.
“This will make for a great business-school case study someday,” said Barclays analyst Brian Johnson, about the dueling business models. Ford has generated consumer enthusiasm and an early EV sales lead, he said, while GM appears better positioned to scale up output in coming years.
The same gathering momentum is occurring in the energy field as well. But I’m going to leave that for another time. I want to end with the growing awareness of the geo-political threat that the changing climate presents to the world.
