By JAMEY KEATEN (Associated Press)

GENEVA (AP) — U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called Wednesday for a “windfall” tax on profits of fossil fuel companies to help pay for the fight against global warming, decrying them as the “godfathers of climate chaos.”

Guterres spoke from the American Museum of Natural History in New York in a bid to revive focus on climate change at a time when many national elections, and conflict in places like Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan this year have seized much of the international spotlight.

In a bare-knuckled speech timed for World Environment Day, Guterres drew on new data and projections to trumpet his case against Big Oil: The European Union’s climate watching agency reported that last month was the hottest May ever, marking the 12th straight monthly record high.

The EU’s Copernicus climate change service, a global reference for tracking world temperatures, cited an average surface air temperature of 15.9 C (60.6 F) last month — or 1.52 C higher than the estimated May average before industrial times.

The burning of fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — is the main contributor to global warming caused by human activity.

Meanwhile, the U.N. weather agency predicted an 80% chance that average global temperatures will surpass the 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) target set in the landmark Paris climate accord of 2015.

The World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, said that the global mean near-surface temperature for each year from 2024 to 2028 is expected to range between 1.1 and 1.9 degrees Celsius hotter than at the start of the industrial era.

It also estimated that there’s nearly a one-in-two chance — 47% — that the average global temperatures over that timeframe could top 1.5 C, an increase from just under a one-in-three chance projected for the 2023-2027 span.

“This forecast is affirmation that the world has entered a climate where years that are as hot as 2023 should no longer be a surprise,” Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, said in an email of the WMO forecast.

Waleed Abdalati, who heads an environmental sciences institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, said the WMO report was “sobering – but not surprising” and noted the prospect of changes like higher costs for farm products, higher insurance rates, and greater public health risks linked to high heat or scarcity of water.

“The implications of this warming range from drought, to flooding, to fires, to health issues, to climate migration, and more,” he wrote in an email. “While some individuals may escape direct consequences, we will all be affected.”

Guterres took particular aim at the carbon-spewing industry and appealed to media and technology companies to stop taking advertising from its biggest players, as has been done in some places with Big Tobacco.

He repeated concerns about subsidies paid out in many countries for fossil fuels, which help keep prices low for consumers.

“Climate change is the mother of all stealth taxes paid by everyday people and vulnerable countries and communities,” he said. “Meanwhile, the godfathers of climate chaos — the fossil fuel industry — rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies.”

Guterres said that global emissions of carbon dioxide must fall 9% each year to 2030 for the 1.5 C-degree target under the Paris climate accords to be kept alive.

But temperatures are “heading in the wrong direction,” he said: They rose 1 degree last year.

“We are playing Russian roulette with the planet. We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell,” Guterres said, while adding: “The truth is, we have control of the wheel.”

Guterres called on advanced Group of 20 countries — which are holding a summit in Brazil next month and are responsible for about 80% of all emissions — to lead. The richest 1% of people on Earth emit as much as two-thirds of all humanity, he said.

“We cannot accept a future where the rich are protected in air-conditioned bubbles, while the rest of humanity is lashed by lethal weather in unlivable lands,” Guterres said.

He appealed to “global finance,” alluding to banks and international financial institutions, to help contribute money, saying “innovative sources of funds” are needed.

“It’s time to put an effective price on carbon and tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies,” Guterres said.

But all countries — and people — must join the fight, he said, including the developing world, such as by ending deforestation and meeting targets to double energy efficiency and triple renewables by 2030.

Some critics say Guterres, which such alarmist speeches, puts too much a focus on stirring emotions than focusing on science that lays out the actual threat.

But U.N. officials and nongovernmental groups acknowledge that the secretary-general has little power beyond the “bully pulpit” — his perch at the head of the world body — to stir people, governments and business to change.

Most of the food scraps and yard waste collected by the city isn’t getting composted. Instead, it’s being turned into fuel to heat people’s homes—and that’s not actually great for the environment, climate advocates say. 

New Yorkers might be surprised to learn that only 20 percent of the food scraps and yard waste that the city collects from the curb is actually turned into compost, according to the Department of Sanitation (DSNY).

But a bill introduced this spring, and the subject of a City Council hearing on Monday, would change that by requiring DSNY to establish at least one organic waste composting facility in each borough between 2026 and 2027.

“The goal is to generate more compost for local use,” Councilmember Sandy Nurse, the bill’s sponsor, told City Limits. “Compost is an important input for our local ecosystem. And producing that locally and using it locally is beneficial to the environment.” 

More than a third of the city’s waste—36 percent—is suitable for composting, which turns food scraps and yard waste into a dark, nutrient-rich soil that can be used to fertilize plants.

That’s good for the environment, since organic waste that’s thrown into a landfill gets suffocated by trash and as it decomposes, releases greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. Mayor Eric Adams says he is committed to diverting all organic garbage away from landfills by 2030, and sorting of this waste will become mandatory citywide this fall. 

But right now, 80 percent of the food scraps and yard waste collected is being fed to wastewater treatment plants, where the organic material is broken down through a process called anaerobic digestion. A biogas, primarily methane, is extracted from the digested material and turned into energy to heat businesses and homes.

While converting organic waste into energy is a better alternative to throwing it in a landfill, environmentalists say it’s not without pitfalls. 

The scarps-to-fuel approach emits its own share of greenhouse gasses, and the process has the potential to leak methane into the atmosphere. Methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere.

Another issue is that once the methane has been extracted, a leftover sludge known as “digestate” ends up getting thrown into the landfill anyway. 

“The digestate is being landfilled because the organic waste is mixed with sewage waste during the process, and it becomes so contaminated that it loses the quality it needs to turn into finished compost that can be applied to agriculture,” said Eric Goldstein, New York City environment director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

“From an environmental and sustainability standpoint, the best approach is to compost that organic waste and return it to soil where it can serve as a soil enhancer,” he explained.

Goldstein calls Nurse’s bill to boost the city’s composting capacity “the most important piece of solid waste legislation that the City Council will be considering this year.”

New York City is currently home to two facilities that can process food waste for both composting and anaerobic digestion; one is located on Staten Island and the other in Brooklyn. DSNY does note, however, that it is looking to diversify where the city’s organic material goes, and have an active procurement for vendors that has the potential to change the number of facilities churning out compost.

Nurse told City Limits that the goal of her bill is to encourage the build out of sites solely dedicated to composting—smaller alternatives to the high-tech and expensive facilities currently processing both aerobic digestion and compost.

But the Department of Sanitation begs to differ. It will still cost billions of dollars to build these facilities, which will take up a lot of space, the agency said at a Council hearing on Monday. 

DSNY also took issue with the proposed timeline, saying it doesn’t give the city enough time for the massive undertaking, and with the fact that the bill excludes aerobic digestion, which officials argued is a better option than throwing organic materials away.

“We need to accept that the goal is getting this waste out of landfills,” DSNY Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the hearing.

“New York City already produces more compost than we can give away, and reducing our need for fracked gas by producing renewable energy from food waste is also a noble goal and a substantial win for the environment,” she added.

Still, environmental advocates say they will be backing the bill, especially since the Adams administration has defunded the city’s community composting program—neighborhood sites where residents could drop off food scraps. The move has caused national uproar among the environmental community, since it was considered among the most successful community-run composting programs in the nation.

“Compost is a valuable resource that can be used to nourish the depleted soil of local parks, community gardens and street trees and the over 12,000 rain gardens the city has created as part of its climate resiliency plan,” said Jane Selden, chair of the committee on waste reduction at the environmental group 350 NYC. 

These rain gardens, Selden explained, are important for flood mitigation because they act as a sponge, soaking up to six times their weight in water when it rains, keeping it away from the city’s streets (and after, its sewers and waterways). 

“Local composting plays a vital role in moving our city closer to achieving its greenhouse gas reduction and infrastructure resiliency goals,” she underscored.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Mariana@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org.

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Every year, it’s the same old story. Julian Loscalzo announces this could be it — his final summer bus trip leading tour groups to America’s iconic ballparks, majors and minors, a feat he’s been pulling off for 42 years running, with the single exception of a pandemic year.

And every year, Loscalzo — a former stadium beer vendor, sometime bike-taxi manager and lobbyist at the State Capitol for the St. Paul Saints, nonprofits and other groups — fails out of retirement. But at the age of 72, he may mean it this time.

Julian Loscalzo laughs as he welcomes a member of the Bleacher Bums baseball park tour group as they check in to board the bus at the Midway Target in St. Paul on Tuesday, June 4, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

An Alaska Bus Lines coach bus he’s rented for the occasion picked up 44 baseball fans at the Midway Target parking lot on Tuesday morning and took them to Beloit, Wis. — go Beloit Sky Carp! — for the Tuesday night game against the Lake County Captains.

Then it’s off to Chicago, where the White Sox meet the Cubs at Wrigley Field on Wednesday. And then it’s the Red Sox versus the White Sox on Thursday on Chicago’s south side, at Guaranteed Rate Field, the former home of Comiskey Park.

Then it’s back to Wisconsin on Friday to watch the Quad City River Bandits take on the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers at Neuroscience Group Field in Appleton. Yes, there will be fireworks — literal ones.

A love of urban travel

Loscalzo, who has made his home in St. Paul since the mid-1970s, has promised his tour group they’ll roll back into St. Paul’s Midway next weekend. But his sights are already set on his next ballpark tour to Syracuse, Cooperstown and Utica, N.Y., in July.

“We seldom stay out in the suburbs unless we’re on a tight schedule,” said Loscalzo, who has turned his love of urban travel into a side gig across four decades of ballpark hopping, much but not all of it concentrated in the Midwest. “We stayed in downtown Wichita last year. Same with Tulsa. It’s as much a chance to explore the city as the baseball.”

Every other year, he goes big before he goes home, wrangling a few dozen tour-goers on an eight-day tour. About a third of his entourage are retired folks. Most are repeat customers. Sometimes they bring with them their kids or grandkids, who get to experience the family road trip with a baseball family writ large.

He recalls a tour that drew three generations of the same clan. He brought his own grandson with him two years ago to Cooperstown. Travel friendships form. Sometimes they last.

Rolling out for Beloit, Wis.

When Joel Hanson’s aunt died in February, a number of the friends he made over four years of ballpark tours attended the funeral. On Tuesday, he was scheduled to roll out for Benoit with his 73-year-old father and his 42-year-old brother, who would be joining him for the first time.

“My dad’s from Chicago and he used to skip school and go to opening day at Wrigley Field,” said Hanson, 34, of West St. Paul, one of the younger individuals on recent trips. “His mother would write him a note: ‘Please excuse Billy from class as he’s sick today.’”

Of course, not every ballpark is a Wrigley Field.

“We’re tending to see probably twice as many minor league ballparks as major leagues,” Loscalzo said. “They’re as fun. They’re more fun. They’re different, but I think we get more enjoyment out of it because it’s more like Americana. You get to hang out with the players, you get to meet people. They’re always intrigued by a bus load of Minnesotans. If you have a kid with you, the kid gets to throw out the first pitch. People kind of take you under their wing.”

John Reay has been going on Loscalzo’s ballpark tours almost annually since they launched in the early 1980s. He doesn’t consider himself a baseball super-fan as much as a fan of the community that forms on the road. What started out as a bit of a men’s outing has become almost equally co-ed.

“It’s the friendships. It’s the sitting on the bus for seven or eight hours to Chicago. These are friends I get to see every year,” said Reay, 79, of St. Paul. “You come back and you start up right where you left off.”

Julian Loscalzo shows the schedule for the Bleacher Bums baseball park tour group as they check in to board the bus at the Midway Target in St. Paul on Tuesday, June 4, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Why ballparks?

So why the fixation on ballparks?

Loscalzo, who grew up in working class Philadelphia, one of the only kids in his neighborhood to go to college, lost his father when he was just three months old. His mother poured her love of baseball into him from a young age, but it would take him 20 years or more to make the connection — America’s pastime was her link to her late husband, and an emblem of dad that she could pass on to her son.

He remembers trips to long-gone Connie Mack Stadium in old Shibe Park, and the nosedive the Philadelphia Phillies took in 1964, the year their 10-game losing streak cost them the pennant they had opened the season seemingly destined to win. His mother took him to Game One of that 10-game slide. Yes, baseball can be a game that breaks your heart.

“It does, it does, it does! But it’s a game of people,” Loscalzo said. “It’s a game of history.”

Some of those repeat customers on his ballpark tours are no longer with us. At 72, Loscalzo takes a close read when he learns that a celebrity or local notable his age has passed away. Nothing lasts forever, maybe not even America’s favorite pastime, which has lost ground in popular culture to football and basketball.

So after this summer, he’s hanging up his baseball tour hat for good.

Or maybe not.

“It’s been a tongue-and-cheek statement to people,” Loscalzo said. “It’s kind of a reminder that everyday could be your last.”

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