Reuters World News - Above the Arctic Circle at climate change's Ground Zero

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

On Earth Day, we travel high above the Arctic Circle where the planet is warming at record temperatures. The war in Ukraine complicates the Arctic's future with a diplomatic freeze. The Republican backlash over ESG investing heats up. And the life-changing implications of genetic testing for Alzheimer's disease.  Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt-out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we take you north of the Arctic Circle to find out how slush and geopolitics are complicating the climate change fight. We follow the money. After a record year of profits for fossil fuel companies, the Republican backlash over ESG investing is heating up. And we talk to one of the millions of people taking a life-changing genetic test for Alzheimer's. This is Reuters' World News, bringing you everything you need to know, from the front lines in 10 minutes. I'm Kim Vennel in London. And I'm Christopher Waljasper in Chicago. To the tiny Norwegian town of Nielsen,

high above the Arctic Circle. This is a global hot spot for climate change research. And I mean, literally, it is the fastest warming place on Earth. And those rising temperatures are making it harder for scientists to get a handle on the climate crisis. Reuters Leisy Neasner joined them to see how the data is vanishing before they can even collect it. It took me three days to get there, reaching this little town which is surrounded, you know, by a massive amount of ice, snow and glaciers. And it feels quite untouched and it's so beautiful and the light is golden and turns violet and it turns into blue.

Temperature will be 11 to a minus on the glacier, low wind. There are a lot of research stations from different countries. I was mainly in touch with the Italian research station. If you need anything to close a jacket, if you feel a bit of wind and stuff, don't wait that you get really frozen because then it's too late and it's called a frostbite. We met at 10 o'clock in the morning and it took a three hours drive on snowmobiles to reach the ice drilling camp for ice memory, where I met Andreas Bolaour.

He's the leader of the project. I'm working in Zvalbard since 2012, and one of the things that you immediately see is the retreat at the front of the glacier, especially the floating glacier, that are the most vulnerable to the climate warming. And I could see why they were drilling that a lot of water was dripping out the drill up,

And when they extracted the core from the tube, there was sort of slushy ice. It was not an ice core in terms of compact ice core. And this is a clear sign of what's happening in this region. So that the temperatures are rising, that is really, really sad. Because, I mean, this should be the best site for drilling in this region and it's almost gone. In this time of the season, I never expected rain. came there with a lot of clothing, you know, just thick don't checkouts and bring the proper shoes. And then it rained, meaning it was one or two degrees plus.

And I never expected this. And I think it's quite a sign of climate warming. I'm these in Isna, photographer reporting from New Orleans, Norway. So when it comes to climate change, what goes on in the Arctic, clearly matters a lot. And that adds another dimension to the new Cold War between Russia and the West. Ever since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, the Arctic Council, that's a diplomatic club that deals with regional issues like climate change, has been stuck in the deep freeze. Roiters-Gladis Foucher explains why that's bad for the planet. One of the dangers is that one, we won't know.

what's going on in terms of climate change in about half of the Arctic. Half of the Arctic is Russian. And if we don't know what's going on there, that we don't know how climate change is progressing in the Arctic, and this is a region of the planet that's warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. The other issue is that the Arctic Council is fundamentally a peace project. It was created very soon after the end of the Cold War, and this was a place where Americans and Russians sat down together

and discussed pragmatic issues affecting the region. Without the Arctic Council, there's a risk that the political tensions would rise and it could become a hotspot for political tensions. Gladys, thanks so much. Countries and companies have made pledges to move away from fossil fuels in order to save the planet from a warming climate. But investing with an eye towards environmental, social and good governance, also known as ESG, is coming under fire by some Republican lawmakers. Our business correspondent, Ross Kerber in Boston, has been following this fight over the money to fight climate change. Hey, Ross, happy Earth Day. Good to be here, Christopher.

So walk me through these state-level ESG fights. This is an interesting year because Republican lawmakers have filed a record number of bills aimed at somehow restricting the use of ESG considerations in state business. The concern is that a lot of the ESG programs that Wall Street have introduced are too invasive. A lot of cases they've been vilified by Republicans in their language, when even called ESG Investings compared it to Satan's plan. The broader goal is to shield a lot of companies, especially in energy producing states from some of the ESG restrictions and shareholder interest in the topic that's been on the rise in the last few years. people often don't think of states as big players in investments, but there's actually a lot of money at stake here, right? Yeah, states have a fair amount of leverage through their big pension funds. This goes for Democratic and Republican states alike.

Texas alone has about $400 billion in public employee retirement plans. So when a state threatens to pull that chunk of money, I mean, that speaks volumes. The stakes are very high. The difference is that states obviously don't speak with one voice. And what's happening here is that you have the political ideas often colliding or interacting with business interests within the state, like pension fund board leaders, pension fund directors, whose duty is to maximize returns for retirees. How are voters thinking about these laws?

It's pretty interesting. Nobody ever expected ESG to become a political issue. it traditionally was a very quiet corner of finance. Everybody's concerned about climate change. As those concerns have gone mainstream, the backlash against them has arisen. And what we'll find out in coming months is sort of where the equilibrium sits

between the business community and these public officials. You may have heard of APOE4 from Aussie actor Chris Hemsworth. He paused his career after discovering he had two copies of the gene that puts you at a high, risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. You know, I have three kids and beautiful family and that is certainly what it's about for me now and my focus. Millions of Americans are taking genetic tests to see if they have the gene. Healthcare reporter Julie Steenheisen spoke to one biotech executive

who did the test and changed her life. Wendy Nelson is a fascinating woman. Hi, I'm Wendy Nelson, my mother and a biotech executive. And she also happens to have two copies of gene that puts her at extremely high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. She experienced a pretty grueling death of her mother who died of Alzheimer's disease. And that process took 13 years. It was really hard at the end. And she decided she wanted to find out whether or not she was at risk as well. My daughters wanted to do 23 Me for ancestry reasons, so I thought, okay, why not?

Let's all do it. And hopefully I'll just clear myself and find out that I don't have the gene and I can live half the younger after. And unfortunately, that really backfired. Not only did she inherit a copy of that gene from her mother, but she also inherited a copy from her father who had not yet developed Alzheimer's disease. It's not a diagnosis because you can carry two variants and not get it, and you can carry zero variance and still get it. So it's just a biomarker. It's just a strong indicator of where you're going to fall. For Wendy, though, I think she's pretty sure that, you know, she wants to live her life and she's been able to manage this. She's decided she's not going to wait to do the trips that she has on her bucket list.

So she already has climbed to Mount Kilimanjaro. I'm right here. We're all covered with ice. I heard my parents always say, we'll do that when we retire. Oh, we'll do, we can't wait to go there when we retire or this or that. Well, then my dad end up retiring because he couldn't leave my mom by herself anymore. Neurologists are expecting a large increase in the amount of people who seek testing for Alzheimer's genes because of a new drug that was just approved in January. The drug is exciting because it can slow down the progression of Alzheimer's. disease. But it's not a silver bullet. It can cause brain swelling. Wendy would not be eligible for this drug because, A, she's too young. She doesn't have any symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. And she's not interested in anything that could cause that kind of a side effect because she's healthy. I don't want to end up like my mom. It was awful. So I've actually told my kids, I don't want them to waste their life like I saw my dad do sitting next to my mom day in and

day out. I mean, he cared for her for 13 years and it basically killed him. That's it for today. We'll be back on Monday. Before you go, we would love for you to tell us what you think about the show. There's a survey in the pod's description on the Reuters website or your preferred podcast platform.