Equilibrium & Sustainability

Blizzards bury Plains as tornadoes head for South

Blizzard conditions are expected to bury much of the Northern Plains through Wednesday, as a multiday tornado outbreak threatens the South-Central U.S.

Incoming from the West Coast: The winter storm first moved onshore this weekend in the Pacific states, drenching coastal California with rain and bringing snow to the Intermountain West, according to AccuWeather.  

The system then shifted eastward on Tuesday, where “hundreds of thousands of square miles from the central Rockies through the northern Plains will be affected,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski. 

Blizzard warnings abound: Blizzard warnings were in effect on Tuesday for portions of six states: western Nebraska, northeastern Colorado, western South Dakota, southeastern Montana, eastern Wyoming and far northwestern Kansas, AccuWeather reported.

It’s all connected: The same storm system is expected to generate severe weather — including tornadoes — across the southern U.S. through the middle of the week, according to AccuWeather

Tornado passes through Texas: Already on Tuesday morning, at least two tornadoes hit northern Texas — including one near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, The New York Times reported.  

And later this week: The unrelenting winter storm system is expected to hit New England on Thursday or Friday, CBS News reported.  

The storm will likely bring more than a foot of snow to central and northern New England but just rains to Boston and coastal areas.

Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Sign up here or in the box below.

Today we’ll start with a significant development in nuclear fusion tech, followed by a look at how the U.S. and African nations are collaborating on a space-based early warning system for climate change. Plus: A major food crisis in one African nation.

US unveils nuclear fusion breakthrough

(Damien Jemison/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory via AP, File)

Scientists at a federal research facility have generated more energy from nuclear fusion reactions than they used to start the process, our colleague Rachel Frazin reported. 

Scientific breakthrough: This development could move the country closer to realizing the potential of fusion energy — a carbon-free resource, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at a Tuesday press conference. 

“This is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,” Granholm declared. She added that researchers have been working on the effort for 60 years.  

What’s fusion again? Nuclear fusion is the process of fusing atoms together to generate energy. 

The fine print: The experiment — conducted at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — used 2.05 megajoules of energy while resulting in 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output, according to The Washington Post.  

Still a ways off: Granholm said at the press conference that the Biden administration intends to achieve commercial fusion within a decade, Frazin reported.

But Budil said it could take “decades” to commercialize the technology. 

The reaction produced at the Livermore lab’s National Ignition Facility required firing a laser so big that it had to be housed in a football stadium, according to the Post.  

Meanwhile, producing electricity from fusion would mean creating such a reaction “every second” of the day — what the Post described as “a monumental engineering feat.” 

Much work ahead: While policymakers may view nuclear fusion as an attractive alternative to burning fossil fuels, it’s too early to talk about building fusion power plants, Gianluca Sarri, a physics professor at Queen’s University Belfast, told The Wall Street Journal.  

“There are technical issues that need to be solved still before it becomes an energy source,” Sarri said.

US, African nations building ‘early warning system’

(Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)

U.S. officials on Tuesday promoted their work with African governments and industry to create space-based “early warning systems” to address the impacts of climate change. 

The collaboration came as President Biden welcomes various African heads of state to Washington, D.C., this week for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.

Climate alarms: “Everyone must have early warning systems for their ability to deal with the climate challenge,” Monica Medina, assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, told reporters at a virtual press conference on Tuesday. 

U.S.-Africa space collaboration: The U.S.-Africa agreement builds on a broader surge of interest in space technology as a means of protecting against the ravages of climate change.

Case study: San Francisco-based satellite imaging company Planet Labs is investing in remote sensing to help African governments make decisions around “drought risk protection, forest protection and renewable energy,” according to the White House. 

Kenyan reinsurance company ZEP-RE will use Planet Labs maps to create models that predict the risk of drought in Sub-Saharan Africa, a statement from the firm said. The company says the satellite monitoring will enable them to expand insurance coverage to 250,000 pastoral farmers in the Horn of Africa. 

Broader campaign: Medina linked the early warning collaboration to broader international goals.  

The U.N. wants every person on Earth to be protected by early warning systems that can foresee dangers from climate change and extreme weather, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced in March. 

Worse than war: Residents of Africa, South Asia, South and Central America, and small island states are 15 times more likely to die from climate disasters than from war, Guterres said in November.

To read the rest of the story, please click here.

Ford spins up electric F-150 production amid EV lag

(AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)

Ford Motor Company is adding an additional work shift at the Detroit-based factory that produces its F-150 Lightning electric truck, CNBC reported.  

The production increases came amid Ford’s poor performance on an annual Environmental Protection Agency report tracking carmaker emissions. 

Award winning: The F-150 Lightning won the 2023 MotorTrend Truck of the Year Award by unanimous decision, per Ford. 

EV progress is stalling: But Ford’s award-winning zero-emission truck is an outlier for the company, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2022 Automotive Trends report.  

Following the pack: “Auto companies claim they’re chugging ahead with electric vehicles, but the EPA’s report shows they’re more like the caboose claiming to be the engine,” Dan Becker, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.  

Somalia facing surge in ‘catastrophic’ hunger: UN

(AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

Food insecurity remains “catastrophic” in parts of Somalia, where the number of individuals in dire straits is expected to triple by June, the United Nations warned on Tuesday. 

While the country has thus far avoided total famine due to massive relief efforts, hundreds of thousands of Somalis are facing the highest levels of food insecurity, according to a new analysis published by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“Even without a famine declaration, the situation is extremely alarming,” Adam Abdelmoula, resident and humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, said in a statement

“The scale and severity of the emergency are expanding as displacement continues unabated,” he added, noting that food and water prices remain high.  

About 8.3 million people in Somalia are expected to face at least a crisis level of acute food insecurity — level three of five — between April and June 2023, the analysis found.  

The country’s total acute malnutrition burden in from August 2022 through July 2023 is projected to reach about 1.8 million children under 5 years old — including 513,550 who are likely to be “severely malnourished.” 

Meanwhile, the number of individuals affected by the drought in Somalia has more than doubled this year, from 3.2 million in January to 7.8 million in October, with the severity of needs rising in proportion, according to the U.N. 

“The current rains have been poor and insufficient for replenishing water sources and sustaining grazing fields for livestock,” Abdelmoula said. 

Transport Tuesday

Investors in Tesla worry about Elon Musk’s Twitter activities, protests in Peru close the route to a major mine and Viktor Orban’s Hungary attracts global electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers. 

Tesla investors worried about Musk’s focus on Twitter 

Peruvian protesters block highway to major mine 

Germany and China unite to make Hungarian EVs 

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for more. We’ll see you tomorrow.