Nobel prize winners call for urgent ‘moonshot’ effort to avert global hunger catastrophe

A rice paddy during a drought in Uttaradit, northern Thailand. Rice production around the world is stagnating and even declining. Photograph: Jack Taylor/The Guardian

 

More than 150 Nobel and World Food prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for “moonshot” efforts to ramp up food production before an impending world hunger catastrophe.

The coalition of some of the world’s greatest living thinkers called for urgent action to prioritise research and technology to solve the “tragic mismatch of global food supply and demand”.

Big bang physicist Robert Woodrow Wilson; Nobel laureate chemist Jennifer Doudna; the Dalai Lama; economist Joseph E Stiglitz; Nasa scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig; Ethiopian-American geneticist Gebisa Ejeta; Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank; Wole Soyinka, Nobel prize for literature winner; and black holes Nobel physicist Sir Roger Penrose were among the signatories in the appeal coordinated by Cary Fowler, joint 2024 World Food prize laureate and US special envoy for global food security.

 

Citing challenges including the climate crisis, war and market pressures, the coalition called for “planet-friendly” efforts leading to substantial leaps in food production to feed 9.7 billion people by 2050. The plea was for financial and political backing, said agricultural scientist Geoffrey Hawtin, the British co-recipient of last year’s World Food prize.

“It’s almost as if people are burying their head in the sand,” he said. “There’s so many other issues that grab the attention, that this is somehow insidious and creeping up on us and most people don’t give it too much thought. Which is what makes how way off we are from meeting the UN targets on hunger very scary.

“There’s a lot of concern over the rate at which climate change is going on, then this secondary notion that further down the road food is going to be a problem,” he said.

 

Hawtin pointed to already stagnating and even declining production in rice and wheat around the world, at a time when food production needed to be ramping up by 50% to 70% over the next two decades.

“It’s very easy to defer tackling it, but if we wait until there really is a massive food crisis then we’ll have 10 to 15 [years] to live in that crisis

“You can’t solve that sort of problem overnight. From the time you start a research programme to the time it can have a significant impact on production, you’re talking 10 to 15 years.

“It does require political will, international political will. It really needs the focused attention of international institutions.

“A lot of knowledge is there, a lot more is needed. If you look at the possibilities, it’s very encouraging, if you look at the will to make some of those possibilities happen, it’s far less encouraging,” he said.

The world was “not even close” to meeting future needs, the letter said, predicting humanity faced an “even more food insecure, unstable world” by mid-century unless support for innovation was ramped up internationally.

“All the evidence points to an escalating decline in food productivity if the world continues with business as usual,” said Fowler. “With 700 million food-insecure people today, and the global population expected to rise by 1.5 billion by 2050, this leaves humanity facing a grossly unequal and unstable world. We need to channel our best scientific efforts into reversing our current trajectory, or today’s crisis will become tomorrow’s catastrophe.”

The laureates’ letter outlined the climate threat, particularly in Africa, where the population is growing yet yields of the staple maize are forecast to decline.

Factors undermining productivity include soil erosion, land degradation, biodiversity loss, water shortages, conflict and government policies that hold back agricultural innovation.

“The impacts of climate change are already reducing food production around the world, particularly in Africa, which bears little historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions yet sees temperatures rising faster than elsewhere,” said Adesina, who received the World Food prize in 2017.

“Temperature rises are expected to be most extreme in countries with already low productivity, compounding existing levels of food insecurity. In low-income countries where productivity needs to almost double by 2050 compared to 1990, the stark reality is that it’s likely to rise by less than half. We have just 25 years to change this.”

The letter cited the most promising scientific breakthroughs and emerging fields of research that could be prioritised as “moonshot” goals. These include improving photosynthesis for wheat and rice and developing cereals that can source nitrogen biologically and grow without fertilisers; alongside boosting research into indigenous crops that tolerate extreme weather conditions, reducing food waste by improving the shelf life of fruits and vegetables, and creating food from microorganisms and fungi.

Mashal Husain, incoming president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said: “This is an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ moment for global hunger. Having the world’s greatest minds unite behind this urgent wake-up call should inspire hope and action. If we can put a man on the moon, we can surely rally the funding, resources and collaboration needed to put enough food on plates here on Earth.”

The letter is due to be discussed at an event in the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry in WashingtonDC on Tuesday, followed by a webinar on Thursday.

Rosenzweig, the 2022 World Food prize laureate, said it was a timely call: “Many if not most food-producing regions are experiencing more frequent extreme events that are damaging not only yields but farmer livelihoods as well.

“We need to launch long-term science-based actions today in order to achieve a world without hunger.”

 

‘We’re in a New Era’: How Climate Change Is Supercharging Disasters. Extreme weather events — deadly heat waves, floods, fires and hurricanes — are the consequences of a warming planet, scientists say.

 

 

The remains of a home after the Marshall fire swept through Louisville, Colo., in 2021.Credit...Alyson Mcclaran/Reuters

 

By Friday, the fires in California had consumed more than 30,000 acres and destroyed thousands of buildings.Credit...Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

 

By David Gelles and Austyn Gaffney

 

As Los Angeles burned for days on end, horrifying the nation, scientists made an announcement on Friday that could help explain the deadly conflagration: 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history.

With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.

The firestorms ravaging the country’s second-largest city are just the latest spasm of extreme weather that is growing more furious as well as more unpredictable. Wildfires are highly unusual in Southern California in January, which is supposed to be the rainy season. The same is true for cyclones in Appalachia, where Hurricanes Helene and Milton shocked the country when they tore through mountain communities in October.

Wildfires are burning hotter and moving faster. Storms are getting bigger and carrying more moisture. And soaring temperatures worldwide are leading to heat waves and drought, which can be devastating on their own and leave communities vulnerable to dangers like mudslides when heavy rains return.

 

Around the globe, extreme weather and searing heat killed thousands of people last year and displaced millions, with pilgrims dying as temperatures soared in Saudi Arabia. In Europe, extreme heat contributed to at least 47,000 deaths in 2023. In the United States, heat-related deaths have doubled in recent decades.

“We’re in a new era now,” said former Vice President Al Gore, who has warned of the threats of global warming for decades. “These climate related extreme events are increasing, both in frequency and intensity, quite rapidly.”

The fires currently raging in greater Los Angeles are already among the most destructive in U.S. history. By Friday, the blazes had consumed more than 36,000 acres and destroyed thousands of buildings. As of Saturday, at least 11 people were dead, and losses could top $100 billion, according to AccuWeather.

Although it is not possible to say with certainty as any specific weather event unfolds whether it was caused by global warming, the Los Angeles fires are being driven by a number of conditions that are becoming increasingly common on a hotter planet.

Last winter, Southern California got huge amounts of rain that led to extensive vegetation growth. Now, months into what is typically the rainy season, Los Angeles is experiencing a drought. The last time it rained more than a tenth of an inch was on May 5. Since then, it has been the second-driest period in the city’s recorded history

Temperatures in the region have also been higher than normal. As a result, many of the plants that grew last year are parched, turning trees, grasses and bushes into kindling that was ready to explode.

 

That combination of heat and dryness, which scientists say is linked to climate change, created the ideal conditions for an urban firestorm.

“Wintertime fires in Southern California require a lot of extreme climate and weather events to occur at once,” said Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “And the warmer the temperatures, the more intense the fires.”

A third factor fueling the fires, the fierce Santa Ana winds, which blow West from Utah and Nevada, cannot be directly linked to climate change, scientists say. But the winds this week have been particularly ferocious, gusting at more than 100 miles per hour, as fierce as a Category 2 Hurricane.

Fires across the West have been getting worse in recent years. In 2017, thousands of homes in Santa Rosa, Calif., burned to the ground. The next year, the Camp fire leveled more than 13,000 homes in Paradise, Calif. In 2021, roughly a thousand homes burned near Boulder, Colo.

 

Virtually nothing was unscathed in the Coffey Park section of Santa Rosa, Calif., following a wildfire in 2017.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

 

 

Workers searched for the remains of victims after the Camp fire in Paradise, Calif., in 2018.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York Times

 

 

And from the boreal forests of Canada to the redwood groves of Oregon, large fires have been incinerating vast areas of wilderness.

“In the last couple years we’ve seen an increase in extreme weather events and increasing amounts of billion-dollar disasters,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate focused on wildfires and the West Coast at Climate Central, a nonprofit research group. “It’s very clear that something is off, and that something is that we’re pumping an insane amount of carbon into the atmosphere and causing the climate systems to go out of whack.”

As the Los Angeles fires consumed some of the most valuable real estate in the world, an unfolding tragedy became fodder for political attacks.

President-elect Donald J. Trump blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, for the disaster. Mr. Trump inaccurately claimed that state and federal protections for a threatened fish had hampered firefighting efforts by leading to water shortages.

And on Thursday, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and an ally of Mr. Trump, inserted himself into the debate over the role climate change plays in wildfires.

“Climate change risk is real, just much slower than alarmists claim,” Mr. Musk wrote to his 211 million followers on X, the social media site he owns. He said the loss of homes was primarily the result of “nonsensical overregulation” and “bad governance at the state and local level that resulted in a shortage of water.”

Those claims were rebutted by scientists, who noted that, as humans continue to warm the planet with emissions, extreme weather is becoming more common.

In Los Angeles, residents displaced by the fires watched in exasperation as the unfolding disaster was politicized.

“People are just wanting to blame somebody else,” said Sheila Morovati, a climate activist who lives in Pacific Palisades and saw her neighborhood burn. “What about all the dryness? What about the temperatures? There’s so many pieces that are all pointing back to climate change.”

News that 2024 was the hottest year on record was hardly a surprise. The previous hottest year was 2023. All 10 of the hottest years on record have come in the last decade.

“We sound like a broken record but only because the records keep breaking,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which monitors global temperatures. “They will continue to break until we get emissions under control.”

But the world is not getting emissions under control. In fact, last year countries released record amounts of planet warming gases into the atmosphere, even as the consequences of climate change have become painfully clear. U.S. efforts to cut emissions largely stalled last year.

The inevitable result: more heat and more

extreme weather.

In late September and early October, Hurricane Helene, which scientists said was made worse by climate change, roared across the Southeast, unleashing deadly floods and landslides in several states, including North Carolina.

 

A flood-damaged church in Swannanoa, N.C., in October.Credit...Mike Belleme for The New York Times

Months earlier, researchers showed that the devastating floods that swamped Porto Alegre, Brazil, would not have been so severe were it not for human caused global warming.

In May, scientists found the fingerprints of climate change on a crippling heat wave that gripped India, and found that an early heat wave in West Africa last spring was made 10 times more likely by climate change.

On Friday, parts of the South that are not used to winter weather, including Atlanta, saw sleet and snow, disrupting travel and canceling flights. But it’s unclear whether the recent blast of cold air that has led to plunging temperatures across the Southeast and Gulf Coast states was caused by a warming climate.

“We just don’t see robust increases in severe cold events,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research organization. “If anything, they’re decreasing.”

While Southern California is no stranger to fires, the events of the past week have exposed the region’s inherent vulnerabilities.

As the first fires started, fierce winds pushed the flames through canyons loaded with dried-out vegetation and into homes built in the so-called wildland-urban interface, areas where neighborhoods abut undeveloped wilderness. Both of the areas in the Los Angeles region that suffered the greatest losses, Pacific Palisades and Altadena, were in such fire-prone areas.

Art delaCruz, the chief executive of Team Rubicon, a nonprofit organization that mobilizes veterans and other volunteers to assist after disasters, was at home in Los Angeles when the fires broke out. His house is safe for now, and he is now preparing to deploy volunteers who will help clear roads and distribute aid.

Team Rubicon was founded after a group of former Marines went to Haiti to volunteer after the devastating earthquake in 2010. But Mr. delaCruz said that most of the disasters his organization responds to around the world now are linked to climate change.

“It’s simple physics,” he said. “Warmer air holds more water. The storms are increasing in frequency. The storms are increasing in severity. And the damage is just unbelievable.”

There is no rain in the forecast for Los Angeles for at least another couple weeks. But scientists are already concerned about what will happen when the rains do arrive.

In 2018, the wealthy enclave of Montecito, Calif., just north of Los Angeles, was devastated by mudslides after torrential downpours fell on hills that had recently burned.

 

An inmate fire crew deployed to help search for victims following a mudslide in Montecito, Calif., in 2018.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

 

“If we get intense rainfall on those burn scars, then we’re going to add insult to injury and have debris flows,” said Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

Heat waves. Drought. Fires. Superstorms. Floods. Mudslides. These are the growing threats of a rapidly warming world, and scientists say nowhere is entirely protected from the effects of climate change.

“We think sometimes that if we live in a city, we’re not vulnerable to natural forces,” Dr. Schmidt said. “But we are, and it comes as a huge shock to people. There’s no get out of climate change free card.”

Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.

David Gelles reports on climate change and leads The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series. More about David Gelles

Austyn Gaffney is a reporter covering climate and a member of the 2024-25 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers. More about Austyn Gaffney

Alemães fazem revolução da energia solar em suas varandas. Mais de 800 mil painéis foram instalados na Alemanha em 2024, o dobro do ano anterior.

 

Painéis solares instalados em casa em Berlim, na Alemanha - Tobias Schwarz - 3.jan.2025/AFP 

 Sophie Makris

 

Berlim | AFP

Flocos de neve caem suavemente sobre os painéis solares instalados na varanda do berlinense Jens Sax, que frequentemente verifica seu telefone para ver quanta eletricidade está sendo gerada.

A quantidade atualmente é modesta, disse Sax, que admite estar "viciado" em checar as notificações do celular para ver a geração de energia. "Economizamos 79 euros (cerca de R$ 497 na cotação atual) desde que os instalamos em agosto".

Mais de 800 mil equipamentos como este foram instalados na Alemanha em 2024, segundo dados oficiais, graças aos subsídios e os desejos de economizar dinheiro diante dos altos custos da eletricidade.

Isso é mais que o dobro do ano anterior e 10 vezes a quantidade de 2022.

 

A consultora EmpowerSource calcula que existam 3 milhões de equipamentos ativos no país, incluindo alguns que não estão oficialmente registrados.

Os números de instalação poderiam ser maiores porque o equipamento muitas vezes não é registrado, segundo Leonhard Probst, pesquisador do Instituto Fraunhofer de Sistemas de Energia Solar.

As instalações em varandas ganharam força na Alemanha porque são mais baratas e mais fáceis de instalar do que os painéis fotovoltaicos no telhado.

 

COVID E GUERRA

A principal economia da Europa quer que 80% de seu consumo bruto de eletricidade seja renovável até 2030, em comparação com 59% em 2024. A energia solar foi responsável por 14,6% da eletricidade alemã no ano passado.

Os painéis solares de varanda, menos potentes que os de telhado, cobrem apenas parte da demanda de uma casa e são usados para tarefas como carregar computadores.

Probst calcula que os equipamentos correspondam a apenas 2% de quase 100 gigawatts de capacidade solar total da Alemanha, mas espera que esse número aumente.

"Há um efeito educacional, mais pessoas se familiarizam com a energia solar e isso pode levá-las a investir em sistemas mais potentes", diz ele.

 

Oliver Lang, chefe da empresa de equipamentos solares em Sonnenepublik, em Berlim, disse que a firma cresceu nos últimos anos graças a pandemia de Covid-19 e a guerra na Ucrânia.

Ele recorda que havia pouca demanda quando começou a vendê-los há seis anos.

"Começou durante a Covid quando as pessoas tinham tempo, logo depois começou a guerra na Ucrânia e havia o medo da escassez elétrica. Depois, entraram os subsídios", explica.

SUBSÍDIOS

A cidade de Frankfurt pagou a Christoph Stadelmann, um professor de 60 anos, metade dos 650 euros (cerca de R$ 4.000 na cotação atual) que o equipamento lhe custou no início do ano passado.

Stadelmann espera recuperar seu investimento em três anos.

"Para um sistema fotovoltaico clássico, um sistema mais potente, o investimento inicial é de cerca de 15.000 euros" (R$ 94,4 mil), estima Lang, da Sonnenrepublik. "Demora cerca de 15 anos para recuperar o investimento".

Os preços da eletricidade na Alemanha se estabilizaram depois de alcançar seu ponto mais alto em 2022, no entanto, seguem entre os mais altos na Europa.

Painel solar instalado em casa em Berlim - Tobias Schwarz - 3.jan.2025/AFP

 
 As pesquisas indicam que o custo de vida é uma das principais preocupações da população antes das eleições legislativas de 23 de fevereiro.

Segundo Sax, a economia superou as preocupações ambientais em sua decisão de comprar equipamentos solares para varandas.

O governo apoiou a tendência, Os donos dos equipamentos já não precisam registrar os equipamentos e as pessoas que moram em prédios podem utilizá-los sem autorização do proprietário ou administrador do imóvel.

Mirjam Sax, esposa de Jens, recomenda os painéis solares de varanda, apesar do céu às vezes cinza da Alemanha

"Se você tem uma varanda e um pouco de sol, pode instalar um desses painéis para ver se vale a pena", comenta. "É fácil e tem muitos orçamentos".

 

Lei aprovada em Mato Grosso quer converter Amazônia em Cerrado; entenda. Estudo mostra que mudança liberaria 5,3 milhões de hectares para o desmatamento; deputado nega incentivo à derrubada de floresta.

 

Lei abre brecha para aumento do desmatamento no Mato Grosso, afirmam ambientalistas Foto: Tiago Queiroz/Estadão

Por Paula Ferreira

 

 

BRASÍLIA- Uma lei aprovada pela Assembleia Legislativa do Mato Grosso quer converter florestas antes consideradas pertencentes à Amazônia em vegetação classificada como do Cerrado. Caso a medida seja sancionada pelo governador Mauro Mendes (União), o porcentual de reserva legal, ou seja, a área onde o desmate é proibido, cairá de 80% para 35%. O texto foi aprovado na quarta-feira, 8, por 15 votos a 8.

Na prática, segundo ambientalistas, a mudança deixará uma área maior suscetível ao desmatamento. Isso porque com a queda do porcentual de reserva legal, produtores rurais poderão expandir suas áreas agrícolas sobre a vegetação.

 O projeto de lei complementar 18/2024 foi apresentado originalmente pelo Executivo, em maio do ano passado, para fazer um ajuste na escala de mapas utilizada como base pela Secretaria de Estado do Meio Ambiente para operar o Cadastro Ambiental Rural (CAR). O projeto, no entanto, sofreu diversas alterações durante a tramitação, o que acabou desfigurando a proposta.

O texto aprovado, de autoria do deputado Nininho (PSD), traz uma nova redação para a lei que cria definições para áreas que seriam classificadas como floresta, pertencentes ao bioma Amazônia, e as que seriam enquadradas como Cerrado.

 

O dispositivo diz que serão definidas como “floresta” as áreas com predominância de vegetação “com as médias de alturas totais a partir de 20 metros, e que apresentem indivíduos com alturas máximas entre 30 (trinta) e 50 (cinquenta) metros”. Já “as áreas com predominância de indivíduos com a média das alturas totais até 20 metros” serão classificadas como Cerrado.

O deputado Lúdio Cabral (PT) chegou a apresentar outro substitutivo para suprimir a redação e preservar a proposta original do Executivo, mas o texto não passou.

 

Milhões de hectares vulneráveis

Um estudo feito pelo Observatório Socioambiental de Mato Grosso afirma que a mudança permitiria o desmatamento de 5,2 milhões de hectares. Em nota, o Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM) cita o levantamento e classifica como “retrocesso” a aprovação da lei na assembleia. Segundo o Ipam, a perda de florestas acentua as mudanças climáticas.

“Estudos científicos já demonstraram que não é mais necessário derrubar nenhuma árvore para ter mais produtividade no campo. Em muitos casos, os ganhos podem dobrar ou até triplicar apenas restaurando áreas degradadas ou reutilizando pastos abandonados”, afirma no comunicado o diretor-executivo do Ipam, André Guimarães.

 

Após a repercussão negativa da lei, o deputado Nininho afirmou em nota publicada em seu site que a legislação proposta atende as exigências feitas pelo Supremo Tribunal Federal para identificação de biomas.

“O projeto não aumenta nem incentiva o desmatamento no Estado. Estamos adequando o que já foi decidido pelo STF e adotando dados mais precisos do IBGE, em conformidade com o projeto original enviado pelo próprio Governo do Estado”, argumentou no comunicado.

Procurado pelo Estadão neste sábado, 11, o deputado não se manifestou sobre o tema. A Secretaria de Estado de Meio Ambiente de Mato Grosso também não se posicionou até o momento. O espaço permanece à disposição.

 

 

More Than 100,000 Flee as Fires Race Unchecked in L.A. Blaze Breaks Out in Hollywood Hills, as L.A. Wildfires Kill at Least 5.

 

 

Corina KnollSoumya Karlamangla and Mike Ives

Corina Knoll is reporting from Los Angeles.

 

A central part of the city was under threat as a new fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills. Firefighters were already struggling to fight the worst blaze in Los Angeles history, and more than 100,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders.

 

A new wildfire broke out on Wednesday evening in the Hollywood Hills, an area of central Los Angeles indelibly associated with the American film industry, as emergency crews struggled against several other devastating blazes that were raging out of control and forcing desperate evacuations.

Even though wildfires are a fact of life in the hills of Southern California, the experience of watching one encroach upon a metropolitan area left residents deeply unsettled and afraid.

The 60-acre Sunset fire, burning among the hiking trails and secluded mansions of the Hollywood Hills, was zero percent contained as of 9 p.m. local time. A mandatory evacuation order was in effect for a wealthy area bordered by Mulholland Drive and Hollywood Boulevard, and an evacuation warning extended west along Sunset Boulevard toward West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

The street names evoke the grandeur and romance of the movies, and the iconic “Hollywood” sign stands nearby, on the other side of the 101 Freeway.

As of Wednesday evening, five people had died as a result of the wildfires, more than 25,000 acres had burned, more than 100,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders and hundreds of thousands of customers had lost power. Glowing embers were floating through the sky like lightning bugs as thick black smoke turned day into night.

The largest of the blazes is the uncontained, 15,000-acre Palisades Fire. It has already consumed more than 1,000 structures, making it the most destructive in Los Angeles history, according to Cal Fire, the state fire agency.

About 16 million people in Southern California were under a red flag warning, the highest fire-related alert issued by the National Weather Service, by 9 p.m. on Wednesday. The agency said “extremely critical” fire weather conditions — the result of strong winds and dry conditions — were forecast to wane overnight. But conditions would remain “critically elevated” through at least Thursday and potentially into Friday, it said.

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  Here’s what else to know:

• Other fires: East of Los Angeles in Eaton Canyon, the day-old Eaton fire had reached Pasadena and consumed more than 10,000 acres as of Wednesday night. Another blaze that started on Tuesday, the Hurst fire in the San Fernando Valley, had grown to about 850 acres. Read more about the three major fires.

• Water availability: A lack of water has hampered crews’ efforts to beat back the major fires and several smaller ones The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power said that the department had filled reservoirs across the city before the windstorm. But with so many trucks connected to hydrants, and no aerial support possible, the tanks were depleted.

• Climate context: Santa Ana winds are notorious for spreading wildfire, and they often occur in colder months. By January, though, their impacts are usually less dramatic, as the landscape is typically less flammable after rains in the fall and early winter. But this year, the rains have not come, leaving most of Southern California extremely dry. Scientists have also found that fires across the region have become faster-moving in recent decades.

   Yan Zhuang, Jacey Fortin, and Ken Bensinger contributed reporting.

   

Bill Gates-backed Mission Zero raises £22m for direct air capture (CO2). UK-based Mission Zero builds machines to remove carbon from the air.

 

 

by Freya Pratty

 

UK-based Mission Zero builds machines to remove carbon from the air  — a process known as direct air capture (DAC). To scale up its tech, Mission Zero has just raised a £21.8m Series A round, led by 2150. Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, which led the seed round in 2020, also put in cash into the Series A, alongside World Fund, Fortescue and Siemens. 

DAC promises to create a more circular carbon economy by sourcing the chemical element from the air, rather than from fossil fuel byproducts. This means that you’re not moving carbon from the ground into our atmosphere, but recycling it from the air.

That’s a huge win if — and it’s a big if for the DAC world — the process itself is not too energy intensive.

Moving away from carbon credits

Mission Zero was founded in 2020 when it spun out of London-based venture builder Deep Science Ventures. 

The company’s two-step process works by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) in a water-based solvent and then using electrolysis (water purification) to separate the CO2 from the water. The result is 98-99% pure CO2, says Chadwick.

The business model used by a lot of DAC companies — including Climeworks, Europe’s best funded startup in the space — is to sell carbon credits based on the amount of carbon removed by their machines. Companies buy carbon credits to offset their own emissions: Climeworks has deals with companies like Stripe and Boston Consulting Group. 

Mission Zero is taking a different approach. Rather than running its own machines, it sells its DAC units to industries that need a steady supply of carbon, such as companies producing synthetic aviation fuel — or even the carbonated drinks industry. 

Despite CO2’s abundance in the atmosphere, procuring it from suppliers is difficult. “In the CO2 market, there isn’t a good supply and demand relationship,” Chadwick says. “Companies are susceptible to large increases in price and they can’t guarantee supply.”

“Our pitch to customers was: we can build something that guarantees supply in the long term, doesn't change in price for ten to twenty years, and you have control of the provision of it.” 

Projects on the go

Mission Zero has three projects in the works. There’s a project with Sheffield University in the UK to produce CO2 for aviation fuel; a project with UK-based OCO Technology to produce building materials from carbon; and a project with Deep Sky, a DAC project developer in Canada. 

It also had a project in Oman to capture CO2 in the Al Hajar mountains, which won it a $1m “XPrize” from Elon Musk’s Musk Foundation. Chadwick says Mission Zero has since gone separate ways with its partner on that project to pursue prospects with a clearer commercial trajectory. 

Mission Zero’s goal is to get a billion tonnes of DAC capability deployed by 2040. To do that, Chadwick says the company is producing machines that are easy to mass manufacture.

“People build technologies based on things discovered in the lab, for which the supply chains don't exist and you can't scale it,” he says. “A central part of our product ethos is that everything's off the shelf.” 

Smaller cheques

The direct air capture industry has seen some mammoth rounds in recent years — culminating in Climeworks’ $650m raise in 2022. 

Mission Zero says its focus on selling machines to companies, rather than selling credits, means it’s less in need of such large sums of capital, as it can recoup the cost of making them straight away. The projects Mission Zero is working on at present have been funded through partnerships or government grants. 

He believes that Mission Zero’s approach will also lead to faster scaling. 

“I think there's a general view that scale enables cost reduction, and therefore you raise lots of capital to prove the scale,” he says. “We want to build as cheap as possible to begin with, so that it scales according to market demand.”

Fast-moving wildfire destroys homes as strong winds hit southern California. Fire quickly consumed hundreds of acres in the Pacific Palisades, an affluent community north of Santa Monica.

 

Sam Levin in Los Angeles, Gabrielle Canon and Dani Anguiano

A fast-moving wildfire erupted in Los Angeles county on Tuesday, quickly consuming nearly 3,000 acres and destroying homes in an affluent community along the Pacific Ocean.

Whipped by unusually strong winds, the fire prompted frenzied evacuations through winding roads in the Pacific Palisades, an area north of Santa Monica, with residents fleeing on foot as flames approached.

Late Tuesday evening, new evacuations were ordered in a different part of Los Angeles for an unrelated blaze. The Eaton fire started around 6.30pm PST in Altadena, at the base of the San Gabriel mountains, and quickly grew to threaten homes. By 8pm it had burned 200 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).

 

A “life-threatening” windstorm is impacting a large swath of southern California, fanning the destructive fires and complicating early containment efforts. The region could be seeing the strongest winds in more than a decade, bringing extreme fire risk to areas that have been without significant rain for months.

Videos shared online from Pacific Palisades residents, including from the actor James Woods, show flames licking homes through the canyons, thrashing trees blowing in the winds and plumes of black smoke billowing into a cloudless sky. As the fire rapidly spread, severe gridlock on narrow streets led many to leave their cars, some which were subsequently engulfed in flames. With ditched vehicles blocking first responders, authorities were forced to use bulldozers to move cars.

 

The Palisades fire broke out around 10.30am and by 6.30pm had burned more than 2,900 acres, with the city of LA and the California governor, Gavin Newsom, declaring a state of emergency. Tens of thousands of people were under evacuation orders.

The blazes also reached the grounds of the Getty Villa, an art museum by the Malibu coast. Some vegetation on the property burned, but museum officials said no structures had been impacted and that the galleries and staff were protected by a range of prevention measures.

The blazes also hit the grounds of the Palisades Charter high school, including its baseball field, and approached the beach in Malibu near the Pacific Coast Highway.

Southern California Edison shut off power to more than 28,000 customers as of Tuesday evening, according to the utility’s website. The shutoffs are meant to target areas where the conditions could lead to fires started by equipment.

The Los Angeles school district was also forced to relocate students from three campuses, Joe Biden had to reschedule plans for an event announcing two national monuments and movie premieres in Hollywood were canceled.

Actor Eugene Levy, the honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades, evacuated earlier on Tuesday, telling the Los Angeles Times while stuck in traffic, “The smoke looked pretty black and intense.” Other evacuees described harrowing escapes, one woman recounting to ABC7 how she abandoned her vehicle and fled with her cat in her arms: “I’m getting hit with palm leaves on fire … It’s terrifying. It feels like a horror movie. I’m screaming and crying walking down the street.”

The Palisades fire burns near homes amid a powerful windstorm in Pacific Palisades, California, on Tuesday. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Strong winds began hitting Los Angeles and Ventura counties on Tuesday and were likely to peak in the early hours of Wednesday, when gusts could reach 80mph (129km/h), the National Weather Service (NWS) said Monday. Isolated gusts could top 100mph in mountains and foothills. The NWS called the extreme event a “particularly dangerous situation”, a rarely issued type of red flag warning, saying it was “as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather”.

“The worst and most severe part of this wind event is yet to come,” said LA city council president Marqueece Harris-Dawson at a briefing around 4pm.

A large area of southern California, home to millions of people, is under what officials have described as “extreme risk” from the destructive storm. The weather service warned of downed trees and knocked over big rigs, trailers, and motorhomes, and advised residents to stay indoors and away from windows.

Jeff Monford, a utility spokesperson, said it wasn’t always possible to give advanced notice to customers, telling the Los Angeles Times: “This is a phenomenon of the increasing effects of climate change on weather. We have more weather extremes that can change more quickly than we might be accustomed to.”

Flames from the Palisades fire burn a home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, on Tuesday. Photograph: Eric Thayer/Getty Images

 

The winds will act as an “atmospheric blow-dryer” for vegetation, bringing a long period of fire risk that could extend into the more populated lower hills and valleys, according to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“We really haven’t seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet as the previous one,” Swain said during a Monday livestream, explaining that the abundant growth of vegetation combined with a severe wind event creates an elevated risk.

Newsom announced on Monday that his office would deploy resources around the region to respond to the storm, including moving fire crews and equipment from the north, where the fire season has come to an end, to southern California. He also secured assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We are no strangers to winter-time wildfire threats, so I ask all Californians to pay attention to local authorities and be prepared to evacuate if told to go,” the governor said in a statement.

The Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, declared a state of emergency on Tuesday evening, saying on Twitter the designation would help clear a path for a rapid recovery.

The region has been experiencing warmer-than-average temperatures, in part due to recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas.

Southern California has not seen more than 0.1in (0.25cm) of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have been multiple drenching storms.

The fire risks are particularly extreme in the charred area left behind by the wind-driven Franklin fire in December, which damaged or destroyed nearly 50 homes in the Malibu area.

The blaze was one of nearly 8,000 wildfires that together impacted more than 1,560 sq miles (more than 4,040 sq km) in California in 2024.

The last wind event of this magnitude occurred in November 2011, according to the NWS, during which more than 400,000 customers throughout LA county lost power for days, and there was significant damage in the San Gabriel Valley.

The Associated Press contributed reporting