day 1: i hate wood pellets

 In 2016, in Gloster, Mississippi, a UK company called Drax opened a wood pellet production plant. Wood pellets have been a popular shift from fossil fuels, considered a form of "biomass" fuel. However, according to a Gloster resident speaking at the Global Forest Coalition press conference at COP28, there's nothing "clean" about using biomass as a reusable energy source.

Drax's plant in Gloster — a majority Black, low-income town — has been cited multiple times for contributing to poor air quality, and it runs 24 hours, causing constant noise and pollution no matter the time of day. It is a blatant example of environmental racism in action. 

According to a report from the Rachel Carson Council, burning wood pellets in fact releases 65% more CO2 than burning coal. And yet, in countries where it's become a popular industry like the United States, it counts towards the renewable energy quota set out in the Paris Agreement.

Honestly, I felt ashamed that I didn't know burning wood pellets was even a thing when I watched this press conference early this morning. Others on the panel spoke about biomass economics and other details, but the story of Gloster stuck with me throughout my day as I thought about the Black children growing up with asthma disproportionately and the constant noise that never lets the city have peace.

—

I just finished a book yesterday called A Liberation for the Earth: Climate, Race, and the Cross by A.M. Ranawana — it was incredible and challenging. One idea that I sat with before finishing was the fact that climate anxiety is a white (or if not white, very privileged) phenomenon. I immediately felt uncomfortable with this: what's wrong with being fearful about the world as we know it turning to famine, disease, perpetual war and seeing millions of species go extinct over the course of my lifetime? 

But Ranawana was right. There's nothing wrong with having climate anxiety, but for some, like the residents of Gloster and more acutely residents of small island nations, deserts, etc., the climate crisis is manifesting in their lives now. It's not something you can be anxious about, it's just here, and you have to deal with it. In many ways, the climate crisis is here now for all of us, but we find ways to explain around it or focus on the next bad projection. 

This disconnect between those who have only climate anxiety, climate grief, or who are experiencing a complete inundation with the effects of the climate disaster was on my mind as I watched my first sessions of COP28.

Besides the Global Forest Coalition press conference, I attended an event called "Youth and Female Changemakers Share Sustainability Solutions from Climate-Hit Communities" as well as an informative session called "Protecting nature and ending deforestation; the NDCs, the laws, and the data that can drive change."

In the later session, the focus was on Cerrado, a region of beautiful savannah in Brazil, and how its land-use change has led to deforestation and a loss in biodiversity (it's one of the most biodiverse places in the world). The Cerrado — although it provides water for 8 of Brazil's major river basins, supplies 40% of Brazil's fresh water, 80% of its electricity, and stores 2/3 of its 13.7 billion tons of carbon safely underground — has tiny sliver of protection. Only 0.1% of the sustainable use areas are set aside for traditional populations and local communities, the same communities who best conserve and manage native vegetation. 

As agribusiness continues to expand in the Cerrado, more and more Indigenous and other Brazilian communities are being displaced. It is the global biodiversity hotspot with the least legal protection in the whole world, so private landowners and companies can clear up to 80% of their land. One of the main uses of the land, and the third biggest emitter of carbon, is wood pulp.

Immediately, I thought back to Gloster. Admittedly, I don't know where Drax gets its timber from, but besides the active harm done to the communities around the plant in Mississippi, biomass burning is also contributing to deforestation and thus the destruction of ecosystems and the displacement of peoples.

—

I could reflect on these sessions for ages, but that's not the point. The point is, the more behind-the-scenes information we learn about fuel industries, the more connections we make between problems in our own backyard and the problems we only hear about on the news (if that) in other countries.

My goal this COP is to have a birds-eye view as I attend these sessions, pulling out specific issues that link people, places, and landscapes. My track is Loss & Damage, so I am paying special attention to natural disasters, deforestation, land-use change, and other abuses of land, ocean, and species. I am already sleepy from watching live events in Dubai time in the midst of finals, but these stories need to be heard — even by a random seminarian in Connecticut and the people who read her blog.