Tallying the toll of Storm Beryl

By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

Hello,

The aftermath of tropical Storm Beryl is the focus of today’s newsletter after three people died in Texas and the Caribbean counts the financial cost of widespread destruction. Plus a recent report by a global think tank warns of the economic impact global stocks will suffer from rising physical climate damage.

Beryl brought howling winds and torrential rain to southeast Texas, killing at least three people, flooding highways, closing oil ports, canceling more than 1,300 flights and knocking out power to more than 2.7 million homes and businesses.

The season’s earliest Category 5 hurricane on record weakened after pounding the coastal Texas town of Matagorda with dangerous storm surges and heavy rain before moving across Houston, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

The agency said conditions could spawn tornadoes in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Also on my radar today:

Rhonda Bricker checks on her mother’s flooded home after Hurricane Beryl moved through the area in Bay City, Texas, U.S. REUTERS/Kaylee Greenlee Beal

Flood waters exceeded 10 inches (25 cm) across most of Houston, Mayor John Whitmire said.

In Texas, a 53-year-old man and a 74-year-old woman were killed in two incidents by trees that fell on their homes in the Houston area on Monday. A third person, a city of Houston employee going to work, drowned in an underpass, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick told reporters.

State officials had yet to assess the economic damage as officials remained on a rescue footing while powerful winds continued to blow. Restoring power would take several days, said Thomas Gleeson, chair of the Texas Public Utility Commission.

More than 2,500 first responders were deployed statewide, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. Crews using a life jacket and ladder fire truck rescued a man from a truck on a flooded stretch of freeway, video posted on social media by Houston’s local ABC station showed. Patrick said there were several other rescues.

The storm, which was expected to rapidly weaken as it moved inland, swept a destructive path through Jamaica, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines last week. It killed at least 11 in Mexico and the Caribbean and before reaching Texas, Patrick said.

Leaders across the Caribbean were still tallying the financial toll after Beryl left a trail of destruction on Jamaica and islands of the eastern Caribbean.

“There is no doubt this disaster will have a major impact on Grenada’s economic situation,” Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told a briefing on Tuesday. “We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild.”

Mitchell emphasized the need to rebuild structures resistant to storms, noting many of the country’s wood houses are not insured as severe weather becomes more frequent due to record sea temperatures, which scientists say is due to fossil fuel-driven climate change.

Decision makers should pursue aggressive policies to bring climate change under control if they want to avoid losses in the value of global stocks that could top 50%, think-tank EDHEC-Risk Climate Impact warned in a recent report.

The report aims to show investors how physical climate damage, along with the costs of transition, can have a material impact on the value of stocks.

It’s also relevant to regulators who want to understand how a loss in value in climate-sensitive assets held at systemically important financial institutions could ultimately threaten financial stability, it said.

The National Samsung Electronics Union workers strike in front of the Samsung Electronics Nano City Hwaseong Campus in Hwaseong, South Korea. REUTERS/Kim Soo-hyeon

Ruth Richardson, executive director of the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA), a non-profit initiative hosted by the United Nations Foundation, calls for policymakers to radically rethink risks: 

“Extreme weather is one of the many cascading effects of climate change, manifesting in more frequent storms, prolonged droughts, and intense heat waves – events that threaten the very fabric that sustains human and other-than-human life. 

“Witness Hurricane Beryl devastating the Caribbean, relentless rainfall in Kenya causing hundreds of deaths, and lives lost from heat waves in the U.S. – all in recent weeks. 

 “Beyond immediate fatalities and huge damage to communities, extreme weather displaced 26.4 million people in 2023, which in turn triggers more challenges. 

“The scale of the damage raises critical questions about how we assess and manage global, interconnected risks and their many ripple effects. 

“Current policy approaches to understanding and navigating complex systemic risks are significantly falling short, leading to poor analysis, ineffective responses, wasted time and money, and potentially worsening the very drivers of the problems. 

“One part of the solution is to review the tools and frameworks decision-makers use to inform scenario modeling and planning. 

“There needs to be someone in government with the express mandate to act across departments, connecting agendas, bridging silos, and addressing vulnerable blind spots in ‘non-emergency’ times; this will build adaptability and critical resilience to shocks.”

BP expects oil demand to peak next year and wind and solar capacity to grow rapidly in both of the two main scenarios in its annual Energy Outlook, a study of the evolution of the global energy system to 2050 it published.

Energy demand peaks in the middle of the current decade under the Net Zero scenario before declining thereafter. Energy demand is around 25% lower in 2050 compared with 2022.

Under the Current Trajectory scenario, carbon emissions are far off the net zero ambition which most of the world’s largest economies have committed to achieving. Click here for the full Reuters article.

A handout image shows the production of ‘Kyoto’ at Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain. Manuel Harlan/Handout via REUTERS

Today’s spotlight focuses on the interconnection between art and the climate crisis as a group of British playwrights shine a light on the climate crisis.

Known affectionately as “the two Joes”, Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy earned acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic with the sell-out “The Jungle”, which premiered in 2017 and drew on their experience of running a theater in the Jungle refugee camp in Calais, France.

“Kyoto”, the first installment of their “Carbon Cycle” of plays, acknowledges that the protocol agreed in Japan on the first binding targets to curb emissions was only a moment.

The sequel will be based on the Copenhagen U.N. talks, notorious for not reaching a binding deal. They still led to future progress, including theaters’ efforts to minimize emissions.

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