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The Union Budget for 2024-25, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, places significant emphasis on <keyword id="19941381" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="energy-security" source="keywords">energy security</keyword> and sustainability. As per the government, the current strategy will focus on ensuring that energy resources are readily available, making energy affordable for all citizens and keeping energy costs low to prevent economic strain on consumers.<br /><br />Here's a breakdown of the key initiatives announced:<br /><h2>PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana</h2>One of the standout initiatives is the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana. This program aims to install <keyword id="20366573" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="rooftop-solar-plants" source="keywords">rooftop solar plants</keyword> across 1 crore households, providing up to 300 units of free electricity per month. As per the FM, the scheme has already seen significant interest, with over 1.28 crore registrations and 14 lakh applications.<br /><h2>Pumped Storage Policy</h2>To enhance electricity storage capabilities and integrate more <keyword id="19895602" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="renewable-energy" source="keywords">renewable energy</keyword> into the grid, the government will introduce a policy promoting pumped storage projects. These projects are crucial for balancing the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.<br />  <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="111956035" title="Union Budget 2024: What FM Nirmala took from your pocket, what she gave you" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div><br /><h2>Development of <keyword id="20876045" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nuclear-energy" source="keywords">Nuclear Energy</keyword></h2>Recognising the importance of nuclear energy in India's future energy mix, the government plans to invest in new nuclear technologies. The announcement also mentioned partnering with the private sector to develop and set up Bharat <keyword id="20260886" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Small-Modular-Reactors" source="keywords">Small Modular Reactors</keyword>.<br /><br />Boasting up to a 300 MW capacity, Small Modular Reactors are mobile, flexible in design and require a smaller footprint. Unlike conventional nuclear reactors that need to be built on-site, SMRs can be factory-built. These advantages can add up to significant savings in cost and construction time.<br /><h2>Advanced Ultra Super Critical Thermal Power Plants</h2>The Budget highlights the completion of indigenous technology development for Advanced Ultra Super Critical (AUSC) thermal power plants. These plants boast higher efficiency and will be established through a joint venture between the National Thermal Power Corporation and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited. The initiative includes government support for fiscal needs and aims to boost local production of high-grade steel and advanced metallurgical materials.<br /><h2>Roadmap for Hard-to-Abate Industries</h2>A significant shift is planned for industries that are difficult to decarbonise. The government will move these industries from energy efficiency targets to emission reduction targets. This transition will be regulated through the Indian Carbon Market, replacing the current '<em>Perform, Achieve and Trade</em>' mode.<br /><h2>Support for Traditional Micro and Small Industries</h2>To promote cleaner energy usage and efficiency, the government will conduct energy audits in 60 clusters of traditional micro and small industries, including brass and ceramics. Financial support will be provided to help these industries switch to cleaner energy forms and implement energy efficiency measures. This initiative will be expanded to 100 more clusters in the next phase.<br /><br />As per Sameer Jain, Managing Director at Primus Partners, MSMEs consume approximately 50% of the nation's power needs while generating over 75% of greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, additional support — such as climate financing — will be crucial to ensure that the MSME sector adapts well to the green revolution, especially with how the budget has committed support to MSMEs to grow and compete globally.<br />  <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="111953230" title="Union Budget 2024-25: Mobile Phones to get cheaper, as FM Nirmala Sitharaman reduces basic customs duty to 15%" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div><br /><h2><keyword id="22521154" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="climate-resilient-crops" source="keywords">Climate-Resilient Crops</keyword></h2>The government will release 109 high-yielding and climate-resilient varieties of 32 field and horticultural crops for cultivation by farmers. With the provision of research funding, including for the private sector, this move is part of a broader strategy to enhance agricultural productivity while adapting to climate change.<br />  <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="111957080" title="What does Union Budget 2024-2025 have in store for farmers and the agricultural sector?" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div><br /><h2>Minerals for Green Technologies</h2>To support the growing demand for minerals used in green technologies, such as cobalt and lithium, the budget proposes exemptions from custom duties for 25 critical minerals and reduction on basic customs duty for two other essential metals. This move aims to bolster the domestic manufacturing of batteries and other components crucial for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies.<br /><h2>Development of Climate Taxonomy</h2>A new climate taxonomy will be developed to guide the green transition, ensuring that investments and policies are aligned with the goal of reducing carbon emissions and promoting sustainable practices. <br /><br />All in all, the Union Budget 2024-25 sets a promising course for India's energy and sustainability sector. With substantial investments and new initiatives, it aims to accelerate the transition to a greener future, and hopefully take us a step further towards India's net-zero emissions target by 2070.<br />

Free solar electricity to mobile nuclear plants — major sustainability initiatives announced in Budget 2024!

Climate Action 15: 2024's top global innovators powering green solutions

<ul class="summary-list"><li>An ag-tech company has developed an army of resilient crops by growing them with salt water.</li><li>These crops are better at surviving salty soils, which is a growing problem in our warming world.</li></ul><p>Saltwater is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/potato-farmers-destroy-potatoes-covid19-even-in-a-food-shortage-2020-6">bad news for most crops</a>, but not for a series of tomatoes, alfalfa, onions, and rice sprouting in a lab in Israel.</p><p>These crops are the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-wouldnt-exist-without-gmos-2015-8">non-GMO</a> brainchild of Ṛcā Godbole, a plant molecular biologist and co-founder of SaliCrop. And they don't just grow, they thrive on salt water.</p><p>Over the last four years, SaliCrop has been testing its <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-soil-health-fights-climate-change-2023-6">seed enhancement technology</a> on tomatoes in southern Spain, where devastating drought has triggered severe salinization, the process where soils become too salty for crops to grow efficiently.</p><div type="image" title="An aerial view of a harvesting truck loading tomatoes into a trailer." height="675" width="900" msid="108901209" hostid="261" sizebytes="209370"></div><p>With SaliCrop's seeds, however, participating tomato farmers have seen a 10% to 17% increase in crop yields, earning them an extra $1,600 per hectare, SaliCrop CEO Carmit Oron told Business Insider.</p><p>Spain is just one of many places worldwide with a serious salinization issue. A perfect storm of years-long irrigation, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/world-hottest-year-ever-history-climate-crisis-2024-1">warming global temperatures</a>, and sea level rise have made 20% to 50% of irrigated soils worldwide too salty to be fertile. This costs the global economy an estimated $27 billion per year in lost crops.</p><p>Meanwhile, the number of mouths to feed continues to grow with the global <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/graphics-showing-population-change-world-2019-7">human population</a> projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, the UN estimates. "How do we grow more on lands that are becoming degraded? This was the main question and the motivation for establishing SaliCrop," Oron said.</p><p>Godbole founded SaliCrop with Sharon Devir, an agricultural engineer, with a grand mission: Help farmers who face the challenges of our rapidly changing world and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/crispr-genetic-modification-agriculture-food-2018-4">prevent starvation</a> for potentially billions of people.</p><p>"We believe this solution is a must," Devir told BI.</p><h2>SaliCrop's saltwater success</h2><p>Scientists at SaliCrop are developing an army of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wild-seeds-of-domesticated-crops-boost-food-security-2019-12">resilient crops</a> that can grow under the stresses of our changing world, like saltier soils and warmer temperatures.</p><p>Salt naturally occurs in soils everywhere, but too much of it can make it <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/woman-who-fed-people-during-housing-crisis-finds-garden-ruined-2023-4">harder for plants to absorb water</a> and nutrients, which stunts their growth, reduces crop yields, and ultimately threatens global food production.</p><div type="image" title="Rice seedlings planted in salty soil." height="1414" width="2121" msid="108901214" hostid="261" sizebytes="602392"></div><p>Across the globe, more than 1.5 billion people live with soils that have become too salty to grow crops efficiently. And it's predicted to only get worse.</p><p>In India, for example, 44% of the land is already saline, and researchers estimate that salinization will affect 50% of the country by 2050.</p><p>The problem farmers worldwide can't escape is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-global-warming-extreme-heat-inflation-global-economy-impact-2024-3">warmer average temperatures</a>, which speed up evaporation in the soil, concentrating the salt within that soil — especially in arid regions.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sea-levl-rise-flooding-risk-higher-estimates-2019-10">Flooding from rising sea levels</a> also poses a threat, particularly to coastal farmlands, because it deposits more salt into the soil and groundwater. Poor irrigation practices, such as insufficient water application, using saline water, and not maintaining adequate drainage can also lead to salty soils.</p><div type="image" title="Irrigation machines watering a grassy farm field." height="1414" width="2121" msid="108901218" hostid="261" sizebytes="256520"></div><p>To help farmers combat all these factors, SaliCrop is working to bring its solution to eight different countries, and is already fielding calls from seed companies in Europe, India, and Africa that are seeking immediate solutions to improve their crop yield, Oron said.</p><p>"Plants have certain environmental stress-inducible genes that act as <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/plants-talk-to-each-other-scientists-record-for-first-time-2024-1">internal alarms</a>," Godbole explained in a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/salicrops-novel-seed-enhancement-tech-makes-deserts-bloom-302060421.html">press release</a>. "When there is too much salt, or too much heat, these alarms go off and the plant enters defense mode."</p><p>Godbole figured out a way to harness those alarm bells by exposing plants to stress early in their growth cycle. In this case, that means watering crops with salt water in their lab. That way, when they're planted in salty soil, the crops already have <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/plants-shriek-with-high-pitched-ultrasonic-clicks-when-stressed-study-2023-3">their defenses up</a>, which makes them less sensitive to salty conditions.</p><p>Based on their test data, this strategy cuts crop losses due to stress in half, and it only takes about a year to achieve that result, Devir said.</p><p>"We calibrate our technology to each crop, to each species, and even to each batch of species," Devir said. This allows them to precisely target the best resilience response and maximize yield for each type of crop.</p><h2><strong>Seeding the future with non-GMO crops</strong></h2><p>"We believe that it's a matter of one to two years until we will have a global footprint with our solution," Devir said. So far, SaliCrop has been working with farms 25 acres to 250 acres in size. Globally, over 3,700 acres — just over four times the size of NYC's Central Park — of farmland grow SaliCrop seeds.</p><div type="image" title="Aerial view of a tractor harvesting alfalfa." height="1409" width="2127" msid="108901219" hostid="261" sizebytes="299864"></div><p>But SaliCrop isn't the only company targeting a non-GMO solution. Red Sea Farms, for example, is a Saudi Arabian company that uses selective breeding to grow crops that can be irrigated with salt water. In Sweden, a company called OlsAro is growing salt-tolerant wheat by using AI to select traits that improve its resilience.</p><p>Worldwide, up to 783 million people <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/global-food-crisis-higher-prices-shortages-civil-unrest-2022-8">face chronic hunger</a>. The UN has set an ambitious goal to eradicate hunger by 2030, but it'll need innovative solutions to improve agricultural productivity in the face of climate change.</p><p>Non-GMO resilient crops are one possible answer. "SaliCrop is a good example of how you can bring to the world a cheap, reliable solution with no negative environmental effect, just to produce more food," Devir said. "We believe in it."</p>

Scientists are growing crops with salt water that could help save us from starvation 

<p><em>This article is part of Insider's "The True Cost of Extreme Weather" project. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-climate-change-crisis-extreme-weather-is-costing-you-2023-9">Read more here</a>.</em></p><p>The climate crisis is about many things. One of them is that tiny numbers add up to big effects.</p><p>About two degrees Fahrenheit. That's how much the <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature#:~:text=The%20roughly%202%2Ddegree%20Fahrenheit,significant%20increase%20in%20accumulated%20heat." target="_blank" rel="noopener">planet has warmed</a> since the preindustrial era, before the advent of smokestacks and cars.</p><p>At least $165 billion. That's how much the US recorded in <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2022-us-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters-historical#:~:text=2022%20was%20also%20third%20highest,Eastern%20winter%20storm%2Fcold%20wave." target="_blank" rel="noopener">weather-related damage</a> last year — a total that can't all be blamed on the climate crisis, but has been made worse by a warming world.</p><p>This story keeps getting replayed around the world and in people's wallets. </p><p>Those costs will only climb if we don't address the climate crisis, economists tell Insider. But in these sometimes-scary numbers, there are is also opportunity — a chance to remake the global economy into one that's far more resilient and in which the climate isn't blowing holes in our wallets. </p><p>The ultimate goal, Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, told Insider, should be to create a world where "climate or weather is a problem as boring as plumbing."</p><p>But to get there, we'll need to spend a lot of money up front and be real about the climate costs we're already paying — even if we don't always notice them.</p><h2><strong>The full costs of extreme weather are often hidden</strong></h2><p>The biggest fires, floods, and heat waves tend to draw headlines. But for years, the more subtle effects of extreme weather had gone pretty much unnoticed. That's changing. </p><p>Research over the past decade has exposed the wider-ranging fallout from wild weather. It's been linked to <a href="https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/programs/climatechange/health_impacts/weather_related_morbidity/index.cfm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">poorer health</a> and higher mortality, of course. Yet extreme weather is also linked to costs like <a href="https://impactlab.org/research-area/labor/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lower productivity at work</a>, reduced crop yields, and worse mental health. It's also tied to an increased <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2018/07/23/warming-temperatures-linked-increased-suicide-rates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">risk of suicide</a>, and higher rates of property crime, <a href="https://impactlab.org/research-area/conflict/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">murder, rape, and civil unrest</a>.</p><p>In short, "How's the weather?" is becoming an increasingly important question. Weather extremes put a strain on society, and that leaves the social safety net to pick up the slack. </p><p>"The science on this in the past 10 years has just shown that even in the wealthiest countries, we are very much susceptible to exposure to weather, heat, disasters, etc. in a way which we probably thought we could adapt our way out or spend our way out of," Jina said.</p><p>One study looking at the <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20140296" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cost of hurricanes</a> between 1979 and 2002 found that about a decade on, the storms cost about tenfold more than the initial amount spent on disaster relief. Those costs, the study found, were hidden in local budgets, in spending on social programs, and in insurance payouts. </p><div type="image" title="Two women wade through waist-deep water carrying items from their homes." height="1375" width="1836" msid="103845395" hostid="261"></div><p>All of these sleeper effects cost money. And that has to come from somewhere. This "affects the taxes, it affects health insurance, and many other costs that we pay towards the running of the government, and it spreads down across the economy," Jina said.  </p><p>"There's almost no sector of the economy that people have looked at where we haven't seen a negative effect — particularly of heat," he added.</p><p>Still, for many of us, unless we get hit with a big event, we don't always notice when we encounter these costs. </p><p>"You could pick up the shadow of extremely hot days on people's incomes at the end of the year," Jina said. "There's this incremental increase in costs that people are facing, where no one in the US, or no one in the world, is truly insulated from the economic consequences of climate change."</p><h2><strong>As climate disasters rise, social safety nets start to strain</strong></h2><p>The steepest cost of extreme weather can't be measured in dollars and cents: People are dying, <a href="https://www.insider.com/maui-hawaii-wildfires-death-toll-bodies-floating-resident-2023-8">losing loved ones</a>, and forgoing livelihoods.</p><p>Yet, for now, governments can offset many of the most acute financial costs of catastrophic events by drawing on emergency funds and letting some of the bills fall to private insurance. </p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic was a similar type of catastrophe, Creon Butler, the director of the global economy and finance program at the London think tank Chatham House, told Insider. </p><p>Even though the crisis brought <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-covid-pandemic-disproportionately-impacts-communities-of-color-2021-6">enormous costs</a>, many governments managed to shell out enough money to insulate their populations from the worst economic pain, he said.</p><div type="image" title="Alan Sibaja wears a head covering for sun protection while working with a leaf blower amid the city's worst heat wave on record on July 24, 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona." height="1313" width="1750" msid="103845396" hostid="261"></div><p>Those safety nets and economic buffers will likely start to strain and fail in a warmer world, Butler said, as catastrophes become more common.</p><p>Just look at property insurance. </p><p>"Insurance only works if the frequency of events doesn't change," Butler said. In a world where extreme weather becomes the norm, "private insurance won't be able to cope with that."</p><p>At first, your premiums might start growing so that insurers can keep making a profit, Jina said. Down the line, insurers might decide to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-insurers-will-shape-where-people-live-climate-change-2023-7">pull out of a market</a> entirely. That's already happening in parts of the US.</p><p>As the government starts shouldering more of the relief costs, taxes could go up and spending on other priorities like health or education could go down.</p><p>"It begins to then raise the question, can the government constantly protect its public?" Butler said. "And the answer is probably no."</p><h2>Economies lose out if they don't control climate change </h2><p>Economists haven't agreed on exactly how much climate change will cost in the future, though they do tend to share the sentiment that unless we <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">limit emissions fast</a>, these costs are going to be very difficult to deal with.</p><p>"Each new piece of information we learn is showing that the problem is actually worse than we thought," Jina said. </p><p>One 2017 paper by Jina and his colleagues, which takes into account climate disasters and the growing effect of extreme weather on society, provides a sneak peek at how much the warming climate could cost the US by the end of the century.</p><div type="image" title="A person wearing a face mask takes photos of the skyline as smoke from wildfires in Canada cause hazy conditions in New York City on June 7, 2023." height="1333" width="1777" msid="103845397" hostid="261"></div><p>It found that if little effort is made to control emissions — meaning temperatures rise by about three to six degrees Fahrenheit — these costs could strip about 2% to 5% off of the US gross domestic product every year between 2080 and 2099. </p><p>If that estimate proves right, the economy "is probably still going to be growing," but the price of climate change will compound year over year to enormous, avoidable costs, Jina said.</p><p>"If we think about the future — even very conservatively — the benefits of mitigation always outweigh the costs," he said. </p><p>This situation could be made worse by a <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/07/climate-change-threatens-cause-next-economic-mega-shock" target="_blank" rel="noopener">looming financial "mega shock,"</a> which could arise as more people wake up to the reality of the climate crisis, Butler said.  </p><p>Investors could suddenly pull out of markets, developing countries could quickly lose access to international financial markets, and people could demand governments bring in rapid policy changes as they see the weather get worse, <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/07/climate-change-threatens-cause-next-economic-mega-shock" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Butler forecasted</a> in a blog post.</p><p>All of this means the longer people take to realize drastic action is needed, the more abrupt the transition will be. And economies aren't very good at dealing with rapid change.</p><h2><strong>Mitigation and adaptation are going to be expensive, but they'll pay off </strong></h2><p>There's now a "golden hour" to limit the worst of the effects of climate change and reach the best scenario available today, Jina said. </p><div type="image" title="Donna LaMountain, 51, surveys damage on Pine Island Road on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, in Matlacha after Hurricane Ian made landfal" height="1263" width="1684" msid="103845398" hostid="261"></div><p>Unfortunately, historic emissions mean that some of the effects of the climate crisis are inevitable, per Jina. </p><p>That means some will need to relocate and pricey infrastructure will need to be built to protect others from harsher environments. Countries will also need to invest to slow the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by moving away from fossil fuels and investing in measures to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-dioxide-removal-air-sky-machine-climate-change-climeworks-2023-1?r=US&amp;IR=T">suck carbon dioxide out of the air</a>.</p><p>But those measures won't come cheap. </p><p>The Biden administration has already<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2023/03/09/fact-sheet-president-bidens-budget-lowers-energy-costs-combats-the-climate-crisis-and-advances-environmental-justice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> earmarked $52 billion</a> to tackle the climate crisis for 2024. That's likely not enough. Demand for climate spending could make for difficult economic times, Butler said. </p><p>"We've got lots of priorities in terms of social care, general health, retirement, and so on. But none of that makes much sense unless you are actually protecting your public," said Butler. "And governments are going to have to choose."</p><h2>With effort, the climate crisis could be made "boring"</h2><p>Despite a long list of worries, there's reason for optimism: Climate change has never been so visible, and it's never been higher on the political agenda of government and international meetings, Jina and Butler said. At the same time, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/solar-power-cost-decrease-2018-5">price of renewable energy</a> has dropped much faster than many analysts predicted. </p><p>Both Jina and Butler said it's wrong to see the spending going to the net-zero transition as a loss. Instead, they said, we should see it as a necessary investment to build a sustainable and climate-resilient economy. </p><p>"We currently have a system, both an energy system and an economic system, where we are quite susceptible to fluctuations in climate, where we are quite susceptible to big disasters, because of an interlinked economy," Jina said. "I would like a transition to an energy economy, facing this global energy challenge that we have, where this just becomes a completely boring issue."</p><p>Jina points to how countries brought down the death toll from diarrheal diseases by rolling out plumbing. That initial investment must have seemed huge, yet now we reap the benefits of that infrastructure without even thinking about it, even though stomach bugs are still around. </p><p>In the same way, a future economy could mean that thanks to clever adaptation policies, people are able to thrive in spite of an inevitable rise in climate extremes.</p><p>"Everything is taken care of. We don't have to talk about it. It's not politically contentious, and people aren't dying," Jina said of this future economy.</p><p>Jina and Bulter said most economists agree investment in mitigation and adaptation today will be paid back many times over by the end of the century. </p><p>There could be short-term benefits to this investment, <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/key-findings" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to the UN</a>. For instance, cleaner air could save global economies $1.2 to $4.2 trillion by 2030 by reducing pollution. The transition to renewable energy could create up to 24 million jobs by 2030, compared with an estimated 6 million that could be lost, the UN reported.</p><p>As of now, however, only four countries — Botswana, Denmark, Namibia, and the UK — are on track to <a href="https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/en/news/2023/news_0006.html#:~:text=Only%20four%20countries%20are%20on,Denmark%2C%20Namibia%20and%20the%20UK" target="_blank" rel="noopener">meet zero greenhouse-gas emissions</a> by 2050, per the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization. </p><p>"We're at this point where we could shift pretty dramatically. That really involves people raising their voices and people realizing there might be some short-term pain," Jina said.</p>

Climate change is already costing us money, but we have a chance to limit the worst of it and prosper. Here's how.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>From satellite soil-monitoring sensors in Pakistan to blockchain in the Democratic Republic of Congo's coffee bean cherry production, <keyword id="11893017" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="technology" source="Orion">technology</keyword> is reshaping the agricultural sector.</li><li>But at a <keyword id="11902211" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="world-economic-forum" source="Orion">World Economic Forum</keyword> session in <keyword id="12777989" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="davos" source="Orion">Davos</keyword>, a far simpler solution to solving <keyword id="12443850" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="world-hunger" source="Orion">world hunger</keyword> issues was put forward: improved infrastructure and access to basic technology like cell phones.</li></ul><p><keyword id="11965213" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="food-insecurity" source="Orion">Food insecurity</keyword> is a long-standing issue that requires a combination of technology and real-world solutions to solve.</p><p>This was the message put forward by Ishmael Sunga, CEO of the Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU), on the last day of the World Economic Forum conference in Davos.</p><p>At least <a href="https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/food#:~:text=Hunger%20and%20nutrition%20in%20numbers&amp;text=It%20is%20estimated%20that%20between,pandemic%20on%20global%20food%20security.">720 million</a> people worldwide are thought to be hungry today. And although food supplies have been disrupted by the war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic, we cannot pin these world events on the continued problem of global hunger, he told the room.</p><p>"The ones that are feeding the world are themselves hungry," said Sunga, who joined fellow panelists from Nestlé, the Indian government, and chemicals company Yara International in a panel discussion.</p><p>During the session, which sought to discuss how technology can drive food security, he called for equity and fairness in distribution, as well as improved infrastructure for the world's agricultural sector. "Technology plays an important role," Sunga said. "But context matters. Technology should be at the service of <keyword id="11897207" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="farmers" source="Orion">farmers</keyword>, and it should be able to help solve their problems."</p><p>Many of those problems are simple and require simple solutions. "And yet those solutions can be very profound," he told attendees.</p><h2><strong>Technology as a solution </strong></h2><p>Technological advancements offer a promising opportunity for farmers around the world to improve their output and avert the negative impacts of climate change.</p><p>"Our founder was the first one that came up with the innovation to sequester, and get nitrogen out of the air, and turn it into fertilizer to feed a growing population," Svein Tore Holsether, president and CEO of Yara International ASA told the panel.</p><p>"Our agricultural universities are working on hybrid seeds," added Mansukh Mandaviya, minister of health and family welfare and minister of chemicals and fertilizers for India.</p><p>And from satellite soil-monitoring sensors in Pakistan to using <a href="https://www.ibm.com/uk-en/blockchain/solutions/food-trust">blockchain</a> to build food trust in the Democratic Republic of Congo's coffee bean cherry supply chain, Nestlé executive vice president, Leanne Geale outlined the myriad ways the conglomerate is leveraging technology in the agricultural space.</p><p>These innovative measures may prove fundamental in reshaping the world's agricultural landscape. But new forms of technology must come at a low cost to the individual farmer. And that often means the most simple forms of technology, could prove the most transformative.</p><h2><strong>Back to basics </strong></h2><p>"If you deploy simple technology, which could be providing cell phone technology, it is going to do things at scale, it's going to do things at speed, it is going to empower people to make decisions," said Sunga.</p><p>Tore Holsether agreed, telling Davos attendees that this approach has proven to be effective.</p><p>At the start of the pandemic, his company worked with farmers in East Africa to figure out how to rapidly increase food production. They used cell phones to provide economic advice and connect digitally with 2 million farmers. 250,000 of those farmers were also given fertilizer, and through the program, they were able to triple their maize yields in the first season.</p><p>An integrated approach that combines technology, and practice-based reward systems — like Nestlé's Income Accelerator project, which gives incentives to farmers who adopt agricultural practices like pruning and using shade trees to build more resilient <keyword id="14049043" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="crops" source="Orion">crops</keyword> — may help to empower farmers and move toward ending global hunger.</p><p>But above all else, Sunga argues that access to equitable value chains for all farmers has the biggest potential for impact. This means that better infrastructure for the world's poorer agricultural communities is critical, especially information and communication infrastructure.</p><p>"Issues around the areas you are farming on might influence your amount of input. Maybe you think your land is one hectare, but maybe it's half a hectare," said Sunga. When you input the data for that one hectare, you end up with waste. "Yet you can measure the size of the land with technology," he said, adding that "those basics are so fundamental to fix."</p><p>"The moment the value chain becomes more equitable, fair, and distributes fair work, and fair pay for the ecosystem role that management farmers play, you will see a big change," he said.</p>

Making technology more accessible to farmers could help solve the world's hunger and food insecurity crisis, according to a panel of experts at the World Economic Forum

<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/one-planet"></a></p><div type="image" title="Loam Bio cofounders Tegan Nock, CPO; Mick Wettenhall; Guy Webb, global head of agronomy; and Guy Hudson, CEO." height="4476" width="6706" msid="101144246" hostid="261" sizebytes="1853746"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Soil is a huge carbon sink, but intensive agriculture has degraded its ability to store emissions.</li><li>The startup Loam Bio wants to use fungi to boost soil health and help keep carbon in the ground.</li><li>The fungi could help fight the climate crisis, but scientists have questioned its scalability.</li></ul><p>There is too much carbon in the atmosphere and not enough beneath our feet.</p><p>Soil forms the basis of food security, holding water and playing host to vast amounts of biodiversity. It also stores an enormous amount of carbon dioxide — a crucial element of healthy land that helps hold the nutrients and water needed for plant growth.</p><p>But soil carbon is in a sorry state, in <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1706103114" target="_blank" rel="noopener">part due to current agricultural practices</a>. Soil degradation poses a major risk to food-supply lines, threatening to undermine crop and plant quality.</p><p>Loam Bio, a biotech startup, has set out to slow down the rapid advance of climate change while dramatically improving soil health at the same time. The Australian company, founded in 2019, has created a microbial fungi-seed coating to enhance agricultural crops' ability to store carbon in soil.</p><p>"It kind of blows my mind that there's so much we don't know about this incredible group of organisms," Guy Hudson, the CEO and a cofounder of Loam Bio, told Insider.</p><p>Hudson's startup has wowed investors, raising A$155 million, or around $100 million, to date to scale its product from investors including the US heavyweight investor Chris Sacca's climate-tech fund Lowercarbon Capital. The <a href="https://lowercarboncapital.com/company/soilcarbonco/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lure</a> for Lowercarbon Capital was the lack of additional land, energy, equipment, or dramatic behavior changes needed for microbial-carbon removal to thrive.</p><p>Loam Bio is part of a bevy of young companies trying to enhance natural processes as a form of carbon removal. Scientists have predicted that, if we are to achieve our goals for climate and economic growth, <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/25259/chapter/2#9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">10 gigatons</a> of carbon dioxide must be drawn down from the atmosphere annually. Sustainable agriculture and carbon sequestration, including from soil-carbon management, could reduce up to or the equivalent of <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_SPM.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">4.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide</a> annually. </p><p>While getting carbon into the soil is relatively easy, keeping it there is a more complex challenge, according to one expert. Just how commercially scalable seed coatings can be is also a sticking point for scientists. </p><h2><strong>Hacking a natural process</strong></h2><p>Typically, plants absorb CO2 and convert it into sugars through photosynthesis. The plants then exude some of this through the roots and into the soil.</p><p>There are <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=8def10940a48de6ab964ca36ec384da5ad0cfea3d7a706f17317c9582daa7383&amp;postID=647eeb64c3a3c70df450a6c5&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Fscitable%2Fknowledge%2Flibrary%2Fsoil-carbon-storage-84223790%2F" target="_blank" rel="noopener">different types of soil carbon</a>; some decompose easily while others can take thousands of years to break down. When a soil microbiome, which is a medley of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, degrades a carbon compound, carbon is released back into the atmosphere.</p><p>Some carbon compounds can become fixed to minerals in the soil, which makes them more resistant to soil microbes breaking them down. When this happens, the carbon is stored for hundreds to thousands of years.</p><p>Loam Bio treats seeds with a coating so that fungi grow with their roots. The fungi live symbiotically with the plant and help it convert easily broken-down carbon compounds into more resilient <a href="https://www.soilquality.org.au/factsheets/organic-carbon-pools" target="_blank" rel="noopener">forms</a>. It's a win-win for farmers and the environment as increased carbon improves soil health, which ultimately benefits local biodiversity and helps crops grow.</p><p>The company, which has been working with farmers for three years, launched its first commercial products in Australia this year. It reported an average yield increase of 5.1% for canola and an increase of 2.9% for barley and has research papers in the peer-review stage, which will be released later this year, Hudson said. </p><div type="image" title="Loam Bio microbes in a petri dish" height="2671" width="3555" msid="101144248" hostid="261" sizebytes="289382"></div><h2><strong>Verifying carbon capture in soil</strong></h2><p>A solution that improves both soil carbon and crop productivity is an attractive one, Britt Koskella, an associate professor of ecology and evolution at UC Berkeley, said. She added that they are often tackled separately.</p><p>But there are always tradeoffs in nature; even if scientists find "unicorn bacteria" with the desired characteristics, they may come at the expense of the plant's native microbiome, Koskella said. A functioning, good microbiome — one which helps fight disease — is generally one that is diverse, she added.</p><p>"If we do things that reduce microbiome diversity, tipping it towards a particular function, there's a worry that decreased diversity itself has a cost," Koskella said.</p><p>Increased carbon is generally beneficial to soil, but if it locks up other minerals — ones longer-lasting compounds could become fixed to — then there is a risk of depleting other nutrients that plants need, Andy Bailey, a plant pathologist at the University of Bristol, said. Otherwise, Bailey sees the solution as beneficial.</p><p>The soil microbiome could also change to start breaking down the carbon that gets fixed in soil, Bailey added.</p><p>"So it might not be a permanent way of capturing things; it's not been known or studied enough to be able to say with confidence that this will fix carbon for 20 years, 50 years, 100 years," he said.</p><p>"It's that longevity of fixation which is the bit that's really needed if you're talking about this for carbon capture."</p><p>The challenge hasn't gone unnoticed. "The most important thing is that we're really accurately measuring the carbon that we store in the soil," Hudson said. That involves taking an "incredible high density" of soil cores from its fields. In 2022, Loam Bio took around 14,000 soil cores from 86 different field locations and tested a "whole ton" of carbon-measurement technologies.</p><p>The company has shown "statistically significant increases" in longer-lasting carbon pools, Hudson added. The startup continues to study its carbon storage capabilities in a variety of soil types.</p><div type="image" title="Loam Bio's agronomy team Chris Shafto and Dr Brooke Bruning taking soil samples." height="2772" width="3697" msid="101144250" hostid="261" sizebytes="1173070"></div><h2><strong>A reckoning for agriculture </strong></h2><p>Koskella said that sustainable alternatives to chemical fertilizers, such as microbial treatments, are "not going to have the same widespread efficacy."</p><p>"They are more time-consuming, they're probably more bespoke, and that can be a real challenge for commercialization," she said.</p><p>Australian cereal growers don't use many fungicides, Bailey said. In European farming systems, it's much more common to use fungicides, so a fungi-based solution could be less effective in certain regions.</p><p>Indeed, Loam Bio has products in development in Australia, US, and Brazil that are tailored to each agricultural context, Hudson said.</p><p>"These things aren't a magic bullet in themselves; you've got to look at it much more holistically in the whole of your farming system," Bailey said. That includes looking at the rest of the field, getting crop residue or debris back into the soil, and pivoting to a no-till system, he said. </p><p>Still, Koskella said that there is no doubt that seed coatings "have to be part of our future."</p>

Why investors pumped $100 million into a startup using microbial fungi to turn soil into a crucial tool in the fight against climate change

<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/financing-a-sustainable-future-2022"></a></p><div type="image" title="pepsico" height="3666" width="4888" msid="92529698" hostid="261" sizebytes="2254190"></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>For years, PepsiCo has been a leader in the ESG space.</li><li>The company has aggressive <keyword id="11896309" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="sustainability" source="Orion">sustainability</keyword> goals over the next decade.</li><li>Here's how the company is planning to bolster sustainability internally, and throughout the industry.</li></ul><p>PepsiCo — the parent company of iconic <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-brands/creating-smiles/our-products">brands</a> like Pepsi, Lay's, Gatorade, and Quaker Old Fashioned Oats — has been committed to environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, initiatives for several years. In 2021, the consumer packaged goods company expanded that commitment with the debut of <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/who-we-are/our-commitments/pepsico-positive">PepsiCo Positive</a>, a strategic sustainability and governance plan focusing on three pillars: agriculture, value chain, and choices. </p><p>"It's a strategic end-to-end transformation with sustainability and human capital at the center," Anna Palazij, PepsiCo's vice president of ESG reporting and strategic investments, told Insider. "What we're trying to do is transform the way we source our products in a more sustainable way, how we manufacture our products, and how we bring them to consumers." </p><p>PepsiCo has been a leader in the ESG space. The company recently ranked second on the 2022 list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens by 3BL Media, and it's made the list <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-stories/story/pepsico-named-to-100-best-corporate-citizens-list">every year since 2009</a>. Palazij said PepsiCo Positive aims to drive growth internally and throughout the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. </p><p>Expanding its ESG commitment comes as investors, suppliers, stakeholders, and customers are asking for more commitments on sustainability. The CPG industry is also feeling strained through <a href="https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/climate-change-and-the-future-of-food/#:~:text=In%20short%2C%20climate%20change%20is,to%2030%20percent%20by%202050.">droughts and hotter temperatures</a>. Governance is crucial to all of this because it ensures companies are setting goals, tracking performance, and reporting to stakeholders to ensure accountability.  </p><p>"We knew that now was the time to act, and we felt a responsibility and an opportunity," Palazij said. </p><div type="image" title="Pepsi Cola King Can on Store Shelf" height="2349" width="3132" msid="92529699" hostid="261" sizebytes="758580"></div><p>PepsiCo Positive is a standalone ESG program to help the company grow and become more resilient for the future. It's embedded into the company's overall financial framework, Palazij said. PepsiCo issued a <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/esg-topics-a-z/green-bond">$1 billion green bond</a> in 2019 to produce a more sustainable food system by focusing on better packaging, decarbonization of operations and supply chain, and water sustainability. At the end of 2020, PepsiCo had distributed $858 million of the bond, which had helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water use and improve energy efficiency. </p><p>Here's a look at how PepsiCo is transforming its business operations to produce products more sustainably. </p><h2><strong>Sustainability and governance are interconnected</strong></h2><p><a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/esg-topics-a-z/corporate-governance">Governance</a> is intertwined with PepsiCo's ESG goal-setting and progress reporting.</p><p>PepsiCo aligns its sustainability efforts with the <a href="https://sciencebasedtargets.org/companies-taking-action/case-studies/pepsico">Science-Based Targets initiative</a>, which ensures it's meeting ambitious goals that follow the latest climate science. For example, the company plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2040 — meaning the greenhouse gas emissions produced are balanced with emission reductions — and be net water positive by 2030, in which the company will replenish more water than it uses. In 2020, PepsiCo <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/sustainability/sustainability-report">achieved 100% renewable electricity in its US operations</a>, which is the company's largest market, and plans to expand that to 15 countries by the end of 2021. </p><p>Progress on sustainability is reviewed by the Executive Council, which comprises members of the executive leadership team. "Our governance starts at the top of PepsiCo," Palazij said, adding that executive compensation is tied to sustainability performance and progress. </p><p>PepsiCo regularly shares progress on ESG initiatives with stakeholders, including investors and consumers. The company provides updates on its website, where it lists <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/esg-topics-a-z">details for more than 50 ESG topics</a>, including environmental impact, people, product and nutrition, and ethics and governance.</p><p>"We continue to look at what's needed to be transparent and tell our story, but in an authentic and transparent way, and we align our reporting to that," Palazij said.</p><h2><strong>Supporting people and communities is central to the value chain commitment </strong></h2><p>Creating a safe and equitable environment for employees, the communities it reaches, and everyone involved in its supply chain is a key part of PepsiCo's initiatives. </p><p>"People are such an important part of PepsiCo and sustainability as a whole, and ultimately our PepsiCo Positive agenda looks at how we drive better outcomes for people and the planet," Palazij said. And that spans the full value chain from the farmers who grow the crops to the consumers who enjoy them. </p><div type="image" title="Anna Palazij is PepsiCo's vice president of ESG reporting and strategic investments." height="1026" width="1365" msid="92529700" hostid="261" sizebytes="39754"></div><p>PepsiCo plans to <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/esg-topics-a-z/agriculture">expand regenerative farming</a> across 7 million acres and so far has rolled out regenerative farming on 345,000 acres. The company, Palazij said, is committed to improving the livelihood of the 250,000 people in its agriculture supply chain through partnerships with the <a href="https://nationalblackgrowerscouncil.com/">National Black Growers Council</a> and the <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/">US Agency for International Development</a>. PepsiCo plans to sustainably source 100% of ingredients, like oats and potatoes — a goal it's already achieved in some countries. The company also hopes to provide <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/esg-topics-a-z/water">safe water access</a> to 100 million people by 2030, and Palazij said the company now delivers water to 68 million people globally. </p><p>Building <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/esg-topics-a-z/diversity-equity-and-inclusion">diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplaces</a> across the company is part of its commitment to people. In 2020, PepsiCo launched the <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/our-impact/diversity/racial-equality-journey/racial-equality-journey-hispanic-initiative">Racial Equity Journey</a> with plans to invest $570 million in the next five years to support Black and Hispanic businesses and communities. PepsiCo also pledged $100 million through 2025 to support opportunities for women in the workforce. </p><h2>Driving ESG innovation to improve the packaged goods industry </h2><p>PepsiCo's <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/who-we-are/awards">recognition for its ESG initiatives</a> helps validate the value of the company's work and shows that it's resonating with stakeholders and others in the industry, Palazij said.  </p><p>The company seeks to drive innovation in sustainability through its <a href="https://labs.pepsico.com/">PepsiCo Labs</a> program, which works with venture capital to identify new technology to help accelerate its sustainability agenda. PepsiCo champions innovation from competitors, which ultimately improves the CPG sector as a whole. </p><p>"Consumers consume our products <a href="https://www.pepsico.com/who-we-are/about-pepsico">more than a billion times a day</a>, so we have a unique opportunity from a size and scale standpoint to transform," Palazij said. "We think that is both an obligation and an opportunity to change the way business is done. It goes beyond the competition with others because we want everyone engaged in this collaboration." </p>

PepsiCo's world-class ESG agenda is centered on supporting people, communities, and the entire packaged goods industry

<ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>Ezgi Barcenas is the chief <keyword id="11896309" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="sustainability" source="Orion">sustainability</keyword> officer at AB InBev, maker of Budweiser and Stella Artois.</strong></li><li><strong>She spoke to Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.</strong></li></ul><p>Investing in local agricultural has made the world's largest brewer more resilient to supply-chain disruptions and <keyword id="11896311" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="climate-change" source="Orion">climate change</keyword>, a top executive at AB InBev said.</p><p>"About five years ago, there was a fundamental change in how we thought about supply security and risk management," Ezgi Barcenas, AB InBev's chief sustainability officer, told Insider on Wednesday. "That gave us the ability to work more strategically with suppliers. This is about the water, the raw materials, the packaging, the energy that we need."</p><p>AB InBev, which is based in Belgium, brews beers such Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Artois" title="Stella Artois"></a></p><p>Barcenas said the shift has paid off as industries grapple with global supply-chain bottlenecks because of the pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine. AB InBev has been able to avoid major hits from the disruptions, underscoring that having local <keyword id="11994879" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="farming" source="Orion">farming</keyword> and recycling operations is more sustainable for the company. </p><p>Climate change, however, still remains a major threat. The beer maker operates in nearly 50 countries and has plans to expand over the next decade, including across markets in Africa, where intense drought and other natural disasters in some regions have caused <a href="https://unfccc.int/news/climate-change-is-an-increasing-threat-to-africa">food production and water security</a> to suffer. </p><p>"What policies are going to allow us to actually achieve that growth?" Barcenas asked. "How do you lift people out of poverty so they can be part of our consumer base?"</p><p>AB InBev has been monitoring how climate change affects the regions where it sources ingredients. Many farms rely on rain and lack irrigation, making them vulnerable to crop loss and disease, Barcenas said. </p><p>AB InBev convened a discussion on food security alongside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The event highlighted the need to get farmers the right seed varieties, weather insights, and capital to be financially stable. Partnering with "influencers" or "early adopters" in farming communities who apply less fertilizer, use less water, or use certain seed varieties can encourage other farmers to adopt more sustainable practices, Barcenas said.</p><p>National governments and development banks also have a role to play, she added. They can devote more financing to projects that help farmers adapt to the climate crisis. </p><p>For its part, AB InBev aims to power its operations with 100% renewable energy and <a href="https://www.ab-inbev.com/assets/pdfs/ABINBEV_ESG%202021_Final.pdf">is more than three-fourths of the way there</a>. The company is targeting net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2040 across its entire business, including the farmers it works with, its product packaging, and the energy to keep those products cool. </p><p>AB InBev's investments in clean energy are also reducing the company's risks amid an oil and gas crisis exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. </p><p>"Some of the projects that we've invested in, where the payback would have been five or six years, will now be two or three years," Barcenas said. "So this is actually accelerating investment into alternative sources of fuel or energy-efficiency improvements."</p>

Investments in local agriculture have helped AB InBev, the world's largest brewer, deal with supply-chain challenges and the climate crisis

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="60973" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="biden" source="Orion">Biden</keyword> said workers would earn high wages to prepare for <keyword id="11896311" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="climate-change" source="Orion">climate change</keyword> under his resilience plan.</li><li>The president's <keyword id="12054670" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="build-back-better" source="Orion">Build Back Better</keyword> proposal includes jobs that pay "$45 or $50 an hour," he said.</li><li>He added that the plan would return $6 in savings for each dollar invested to prevent disaster.</li></ul><p>Jobs that help prepare the US for the changing climate will pay a high hourly wage, President Joe Biden said after touring storm damage in New York and New Jersey on Tuesday.</p><p>"I think of one word when I think of climate change: jobs, good-paying jobs," he said. "Not $7 or $12 or $15, but $45, $50 an hour, plus healthcare. That's what is needed."</p><p>Biden's $45 figure is more than six times higher than the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which has remained unchanged since 2009, when Biden was vice president in the Obama administration.</p><p>Businesses are increasingly finding it difficult to attract talent by offering less than $15 an hour, making that a de facto minimum wage in some instances.</p><p>Biden described increased spending on climate resilience as a smart investment, saying that each dollar invested under his Build Back Better plan in things like flood mitigation, forest-fire prevention, and burying electrical lines would ultimately lead to $6 in savings.</p><p>"The storm in the Gulf, as you've now figured out, can reverberate 10 states away," he said. "Supply chains and crop production get interrupted, driving up costs, devastating industries all over America. This is everybody's crisis."</p><p>Tripti Bhattacharya, an environmental-science professor at Syracuse University, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/03/1034058911/hurricane-ida-climate-change-northeast-flooding-rainfall">told NPR</a> that <keyword id="11984778" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ida" source="Orion">Ida</keyword> had "just the right mix of weather conditions" in place to wreak havoc across the Northeast more than 1,000 miles from where it made landfall in Louisiana.</p><p>"A storm like this would have been exceptionally rare 20 or 50 years ago, but we have to start thinking about it becoming the norm as the climate warms," she said.</p><p>Against that backdrop, Biden is pitching his multitrillion-dollar spending plan as a win-win in both economic terms and, more importantly, lives saved.</p><p>"It's serious, serious business," he said. "We got a lot of work to do."</p>

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Why investors pumped $100 million into a startup using microbial fungi to turn soil into a crucial tool in the fight against climate change

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