More grid power failures are likely: a distributed network is the only solution
If you have heard about the concept of a VPP, it is most likely that you read about a Tesla Virtual Power Plant. A virtual power plant (VPP) is a system that uses a network of decentralized energy resources, such as solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage systems, to generate electricity.
These resources are connected and controlled through a central management system, which allows them to operate as a single, coordinated entity.
The goal of a VPP is to provide a reliable and cost-effective source of electricity by leveraging the collective output of the connected energy resources.
Tesla has been working on the concept going back as far as 2015, when they first began producing battery back up systems for solar.
Tesla’s home system, called Powerwall, and the Megapack, first offered in 2019, which is a massive 3 MWh energy storage product, are the best known backup systems for solar panel systems.
More recently companies such as Swell Energy are working together with utilities to operate a “behind the meter” virtual power plant systems that are able to manage residential solar installations to ensure that there are no outages and that the maximum financial benefit is available for the power generated.
VPPs can be used to provide electricity to a specific location, such as a neighborhood or a campus, or they can be connected to the grid and used to generate electricity for a larger area.
They can also be used to support the integration of renewable energy sources into the grid, by providing a flexible and responsive source of electricity that can be dispatched as needed to meet changing demand.
VPPs can be beneficial in a number of ways. They can help to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, which can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
They can also help to lower energy costs by using locally-generated renewable energy, and they can help to improve the reliability of the electricity supply by providing a distributed source of electricity that is not reliant on a single power plant or transmission line.
The many benefits of these systems are only now beginning to emerge – with greater cooperation between the government, regulations, utilities and individual home owners the potential for a more resilient grid and more secure, sustainable energy for communities are virtually unlimited.
Some of the most effective climate tech is proven and ready to roll
George Monbiot, columnist for The Guardian, released an article with the eye-catching title “Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all”. The article goes into some interesting detail regarding precision fermentation as a way to grow staple foods. He goes on to point out that, by switching from animal or even soy protein as our worldwide source, we could increase efficiency by a factor of 17,000 (Soy) of 138,000 (Beef).
And, he goes on, in the process this would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water use by significant amounts. The detail is well presented and, if true, does add up to a world changing, planet saving formula, or at least a major step toward rescue.
The problem? In a nutshell this idea, even if rock solid in the data, would require the entire world to not only change the production methods for food (protein) but we would have to banish centuries of eating customs and traditions.
Ultimately if we are to be saved by this solution, it would only happen when no other food is available. Not a pleasant thought.
Reading between the lines the piece underscores a real and important issue, that finding a planet saving solution for global warming is one thing, finding a way to achieve mass adoption is another.
The Tesla Example
Tesla self driving sensors map photo: Tesla
EVs are the most obvious example of a technology, around since before the fossil fuel industry became dominant, that has finally reached a tipping point of eventual total adoption vs. internal combustion engine cars.
The transition, though perhaps inevitable, happend sooner, most would agree, because of Tesla and Elon Musk. And the difference was in the transformation of the concept and image from one of giving up pleasure for the good of the planet to “Have fun going 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds while you save the planet”.
This formula, don’t sell the problem, sell the beauty, power and pleasure of the solution, is probably going to be the most important factor in deciding if the planet, and humanity, will survive.
Why make such a drastic claim? Because there are more solutions that are ready to be scaled up in a massive push worldwide, without any unproven or yet to be invented technology involved, if only the demand can be boosted with desire and excitement, not fear.
While precision fermentation might be too difficult to market at scale, there are other sectors ripe for positive disruption and change, that could save us all.
Unfortunately, not everything is as endorphin inducing as pounding the pedal to the metal in a Model S Plaid edition. Some things, like superior design, are only exciting when the results are felt over time.
The important thing is to make sure that attention is paid, not just to the climate benefits, but to the superior aesthetics and owner experience made possible by the new thing.
New built communities using hyper-efficient design and sustainable energy
Design technology that can reduce the energy required to heat and cool homes and buildings by up to 90% is available right now and proven. This method, combined with sustainable energy systems, including grid interactive generation and storage, could ultimately remove nearly 40% of worldwide emissions that can be traced back to to construction and buildings.
Not only would the new infrastructure in towns and cities eliminate greenhouse gas emissions but a host of other benefits for health, such as indoor air quality, would be automatically improved.
Further, climate adaptation, the ability to continue to live in maximum comfort even when the outdoor temperatures are at high or low extremes, would be built-in.
As if this is not enough, at scale, with some propagated construction and manufacturing intelligence added, the cost for all of this? Less than zero, in other words, the same or less than the current costs for obscenely inefficient “business as usual” homes and buildings.
So why is this not already a new standard, even mandatory?
For much the same reason it took more than a century for Tesla to come along and change the car industry. The challenge is to change the perception of the product. To build a focus on the beauty, power and excitement of a real life solution that does not trade fun and abundance for austerity and “do it because it’s right”.
There has to be so much momentum toward such an obviously superior concept that the public, the people that will live work and play in the structures, will demand nothing less.
This quote lays out one of the challenges, support and funding for efficiency, in a nutshell
“In our house we save 97% of the pumping energy by properly laying out some pipes. Well, if everyone in the world did that to their pipes and ducts, you would save about a fifth of the world’s electricity, or half the coal-fired electricity. And you get your money back instantly in new-build or in under a year typically in retrofits in buildings and industry. And yet, this sort of energy efficiency is not taught, and it’s certainly not in any government study or climate model. Why not? Because it’s not a technology. It’s a bloody design,”
Amory Lovins, cofounder (1982) and chairman emeritus of RMI, integrative designer of super-efficient buildings, factories, and vehicles
The challenges are layered but can be overcome
Tesla was subsidized, to the tune of $2.48 billion for ZEV credits alone, and more than $.3.2 billion in total from the State of California, but bear in mind that this is just one state, the total is far higher if all of the US is included.
The accomplishment, changing the perception of the EV and, ultimately, causing a worldwide shift toward sustainable transport to be accelerated, is no less remarkable, subsidies or not.
The point should be, that another mature design and technology, the hyper-efficient design system for homes and buildings as described above, needs both the genius marketing push and the financial support, both public and private that Tesla had.
It’s important to note, that Tesla did not invent the electric car. As a matter of fact, they were more than 100 years late to the party. Without Elon Musk as an early investor (with his own funds) the entire story might never have happened.
All of this just underscores the magnitude of the challenge. The perception of solutions like hyper-efficient building design as optional or unnecessary must be destroyed in favor of a focus on the excitement of a better built world and a more affordable magnificence and beauty, within reach now and will exist for all future generations.
If you are reading this and you get it – reach out, shout out, respond in every way you are able to help the world begin the march toward a positive change that is possible, and fun.
Possibly even worse than greenwashing, HopeFishing is when bad actors exaggerate and accelerate the fantasy of how we can solve the climate crisis, using solutions that either don’t yet exist, or that may actually be harmful if they were ever implemented.
There are entire web sites, which we will not link to for obvious reasons, that publish stories every day about a new invention or discovery that is “sure” to save the world.
Not all of the featured solutions are totally bogus, the clever publishers add in just enough “real” information to keep you guessing, but our informal research showed that 8 out of 10 were either total speculation or something that has been tried in a tiny sample in a lab and would, if ever, come to market in perhaps decade, for example.
Why is this so bad, you say? Because when these faux solutions, always hyped to the hilt, are so outrageously fantastic, that when taken at face value, can overshadow any real solution that might be available today, right now.
An example of this is hyper-efficient design of homes and buildings combined with sustainable energy generation and storage. A perfect combination of existing design techniques and currently available advanced technology these solutions are reedy to activate immediately.
This incredible mix is available and should be, must be, implemented worldwide as fast as possible. Doing so would reduce the cost of shelter, at a time with the affordable housing crisis is exploding worldwide, and at the same time lower carbon and greenhouse gas emissions for all structures built this way to beyond zero (in other words, using less energy than is produced, all from clean renewable sources).
Unfortunately, stories about such realistic and practical ideas will not be published by HopeFishing sites. The all-to-real situation is that a bias toward “deep-tech” and intellectual property generating solutions already exists and many of these are also still in R&D and might never actually work in the general marketplace.
Worse, those who are led to believe that these exaggerated claims and world rescuing solutions are going to be ubiquitous “any day now” are lulled into a state of apathy and complacency. And, all this at a time when the precise opposite is so urgently needed. HopeFishing. As deadly or more deadly than climate denial.
At the same time, those profiting off these “happy” non-news stories can tell themselves they are the good guys, just pointing out how wonderful humans are for inventing a world saving solution every day, sometimes multiple times per day.
Partial HopeWashing is also not ideal which makes things harder to understand
Some, such as Elon musk, “innocently” introduced products and services like the Tesla Semi EV, which is, finally, set for a product launch on December 1, 2022. Five years after it was first announced. As for the Cybertruck, which has yet to see the light of day, or for example, the full self driving feature, which has been announced, over and over and over, yet still has potentially years until it will be fully functional.
This all seems harmless enough but when taken to the next level, where say, a remedy is put forward that claims all electric cars will have batteries that can run for thousands of miles and take seconds to charge, and then, upon deeper research, it turns out this idea is simply a thought, or even a projection of an imaginary claim: at that point it becomes HopeFishing.
Another example of a partial level of this is Cement and Steel. These two materials, heavily used for building and construction, produce some of the highest levels of “embodied” carbon – meaning to manufacture them for use, a large amount greenhouse gasses must be released into the atmosphere. (causing and worsening global warming)
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were alternative versions of these materials that do not harm the environment during manufacture? Sure it would. But it would also be a gold-mine, or like all the world’s gold mines combined, to whoever figures out how to to this with little or no added costs.
Here are just a few companies that have been heavily funded to solve this problem already:
Key Companies Profiled by Fact.MR:
CarbiCrete
Carbon Cure
Cemex
CeraTech
Ecocem Ireland Lt
Heidelberg Cement
Holcim
Kiran Global Chems Ltd.
This is an old list, there are many, many more that have been formed since this list was published. And that is not including the same scenario for steel.
Again, what’s the problem here? For one, it is an example of how “racing forward to recreate the past” dominates the climate solutions marketplace. Instead of looking for different ways to build our infrastructure with less of these materials, we are desperately trying to find a way to imitate the cheap, massively subsidized growth patterns of the last 150 years.
An alternative building material, and there are some out there, that does not require a patented invention just to exist will very likely be minimized while these highly supported “lottery tickets” will be touted and exaggerated back and forth as they all try to dominate a future market in the trillions of dollars.
Secondly, the partial HopeWashing effect comes into play. How should someone who does not spend the time or have the expertise to research the claims of these companies ever hope to grasp just how close they actually are (or aren’t) to removing billions of tons of high carbon producing materials from the supply chain?
And if the answer, after arduous research and due diligence and sober calculation, is that the solution is certain to be too late? Once again the money and effort spent chasing happy unicorns and rainbows (and the past) will already be gone.
Therefore, the funding and attention that should be paid to immediately viable less obviously obscenely-lucrative solutions will be passed over, potentially for years or decades.
And if that happens, HopeFishing will turn out to be far deadlier than climate denial, GreenWashing or any other nefarious game of self-deception humans play on themselves.
Transportation has been the focus, due to Tesla’s rise, but houses and commercial buildings are next
When Tesla was still just an oddball upstart, there was plenty of skepticism that they would survive, let alone change the industry and define sustainable transportation and the future of EVs. This was before Tesla’s stock price soared, even as the climate crisis has become more serious.
Although the stock market is as irrational as ever, on another level the massive rise in market cap for the once underdog sustainable energy focused company can also be seen as a vote from the general public – a vote for the transition away from fossil fuels and toward a sustainable energy future..
Fast forward to 2022 and there is an entirely different situation in the automotive and transportation industries. The entire industry is shifting, rapidly, to 100% electric vehicle production and competing for the climate conscious upwardly mobile customer base that was first identified by Tesla’s “S3XY” marketing methods and designs.
Another underdog – Passive House is ready for the next wave of climate conscious changes
Although sustainable transportation infrastructure still has a long way to go and many issues to overcome, the speed of the transition over the last decade is, nevertheless, impressive.
The next phase of the transition toward sustainable energy infrastructure as a whole, however, is clearly going to be energy generation, solar, wind, geothermal and beyond. This will include design and construction of dwellings and commercial real estate with an eye toward efficient ways to decrease the carbon footprint and create structures that have a low carbon cost (embodied carbon and green cement, use of natural materials, etc.).
Passive house, a concept first pioneered in Germany, is at the center of the coming design revolution in architecture and sustainable construction. Andreas Benzing, of A.M.Benzing Architects PLLC has been at the forefront of the New York, NY movement (as executive director of NY Passive House) as it has grown for nearly two decades and is now ready to break out.
Emphasizing the active role that passive house can play in reaching ‘peak performance’ for dwellings and commercial structures, Benzing elucidates his credo and underscores the similarities to Tesla’s higher-end approach to EV’s, now poised to spearhead a similar revolution in architecture; “We strive to better user experience and comfort, engineer to easily achieve peak performance, and maximize the durability of quality materials.”
The books below are a few that show the history and concepts behind passive house from various perspectives. Houses and buildings that have a reduced carbon footprint, while at the same time generate energy from sustainable sources are becoming feasible and all have as a foundation the passive house standard for highly efficient design.
The new threshold for green building is not just low energy, it’s net-zero energy. In The New Net Zero, sustainable architect Bill Maclay charts the path for designers and builders interested in exploring green design’s new frontier net-zero-energy structures that produce as much energy as they consume and are carbon neutral.
In a nation where traditional buildings use roughly 40 percent of the total fossil energy, the interest in net-zero building is growing enormously-among both designers interested in addressing climate change and consumers interested in energy efficiency and long-term savings. Maclay, an award-winning net-zero designer whose buildings have achieved high-performance goals at affordable costs, makes the case for a net-zero future; explains net-zero building metrics, integrated design practices, and renewable energy options; and shares his lessons learned on net-zero teambuilding.
Designers and builders will find a wealth of state-of-the-art information on such considerations as air, water, and vapor barriers; embodied energy; residential and commercial net-zero standards; monitoring and commissioning; insulation options; costs; and more.
The comprehensive overview is accompanied by several case studies, which include institutional buildings, commercial projects, and residences. Both new-building and renovation projects are covered in detail.
The New Net Zero is geared toward professionals exploring net-zero design, but also suitable for nonprofessionals seeking ideas and strategies on net-zero options that are beautiful and renewably powered.
Passive House Details introduces the concepts, principles, and design processes of building ultralow-energy buildings. The objective of this book is to provide design goals, research, analysis, systems, details, and inspiring images of some of the most energy-efficient, carbon-neutral, healthy, and satisfying buildings currently built in the region. Other topics included: heat transfer, moisture management, performance targets, and climatic zones. Illustrated with more than 375 color images, the book is a visual catalog of construction details, materials, and systems drawn from projects contributed from forty firms. Fourteen in-depth case studies demonstrate the most energy-efficient systems for foundations, walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, and more.
Passive is the new green. Passive Houses–well insulated, virtually airtight buildings–can decrease home heating consumption by an astounding 90 percent, making them not only an attractive choice for prospective homeowners, but also the right choice for a sustainable future. The Greenest Home showcases eighteen of the world’s most attractive Passive Houses by forward-thinking architects such as Bernheimer Architecture, Olson Kundig Architects, and Onion Flats, among many others. Each case study consists of a detailed project description, plans, and photographs. An appendix lists helpful technical information. Including a mix of new construction and retrofit projects built in a variety of site conditions, The Greenest Home is an inspiring sourcebook for architects and prospective homeowners, as well as a useful tool for students, and builders alike.
Passive solar heating and passive cooling–approaches known as natural conditioning–provide comfort throughout the year by reducing, or eliminating, the need for fossil fuel. Yet while heat from sunlight and ventilation from breezes is free for the taking, few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved.
Now Dan Chiras, author of the popular book The Natural House, brings those principles up to date for a new generation of solar enthusiasts.
The techniques required to heat and cool a building passively have been used for thousands of years. Early societies such as the Native American Anasazis and the ancient Greeks perfected designs that effectively exploited these natural processes. The Greeks considered anyone who didn’t use passive solar to heat a home to be a barbarian
In the United States, passive solar architecture experienced a major resurgence of interest in the 1970s in response to crippling oil embargoes. With grand enthusiasm but with scant knowledge (and sometimes little common sense), architects and builders created a wide variety of solar homes. Some worked pretty well, but looked more like laboratories than houses. Others performed poorly, overheating in the summer because of excessive or misplaced windows and skylights, and growing chilly in the colder months because of insufficient thermal mass and insulation and poor siting.
In The Solar House, Dan Chiras sets the record straight on the vast potential for passive heating and cooling. Acknowledging the good intentions of misguided solar designers in the past, he highlights certain egregious–and entirely avoidable–errors. More importantly, Chiras explains in methodical detail how today’s home builders can succeed with solar designs.
Now that energy efficiency measures including higher levels of insulation and multi-layered glazing have become standard, it is easier than ever before to create a comfortable and affordable passive solar house that will provide year-round comfort in any climate.
Moreover, since modern building materials and airtight construction methods sometimes result in air-quality and even toxicity problems, Chiras explains state-of-the-art ventilation and filtering techniques that complement the ancient solar strategies of thermal mass and daylighting. Chiras also explains the new diagnostic aids available in printed worksheet or software formats, allowing readers to generate their own design schemes.
Passivhaus is the fastest growing energy performance standard in the world, with almost 50,000 buildings realised to date. Applicable to both domestic and non-domestic building types, the strength of Passivhaus lies in the simplicity of the concept. As European and global energy directives move ever closer towards Zero (fossil) Energy standards, Passivhaus provides a robust ‘fabric first’ approach from which to make the next step.
The Passivhaus Designers Manual is the most comprehensive technical guide available to those wishing to design and build Passivhaus and Zero Energy Buildings. As a technical reference for architects, engineers and construction professionals The Passivhaus Designers Manual provides:
State of the art guidance for anyone designing or working on a Passivhaus project;
In depth information on building services, including high performance ventilation systems and ultra-low energy heating and cooling systems;
Holistic design guidance encompassing: daylight design, ecological materials, thermal comfort, indoor air quality and economics;
Practical advice on procurement methods, project management and quality assurance;
Renewable energy systems suitable for Passivhaus and Zero Energy Buildings;
Practical case studies from the UK, USA, and Germany amongst others;
Detailed worked examples to show you how it’s done and what to look out for;
Expert advice from 20 world renowned Passivhaus designers, architects, building physicists and engineers.
Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 full colour illustrations, and presented by two highly experienced specialists, this is your one-stop shop for comprehensive practical information on Passivhaus and Zero Energy buildings.
“If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC’s findings seriously, it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far,” writes Robert Pollin.
In the wake of a United Nations report that activists said showed the “bleak and brutal truth” about the climate emergency, a leading economist on Friday highlighted a step that supporters argue could be incredibly effective at combating the global crisis: nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.
“With at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion.”
Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Pollin, an economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and high gas prices exacerbated by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC’s findings seriously,” Pollin wrote, “it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far, both within the U.S. and globally. Within the U.S., such measures should include at least putting on the table the idea of nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.”
“With at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion”
Asserting that “at least in the U.S., the private oil companies stand as the single greatest obstacle to successfully implementing” a viable climate stabilization program, Pollin made the case that fossil fuel giants should not make any more money from wrecking the planet, nationalization would not be an unprecedented move in the United States, and doing so could help build clean energy infrastructure at the pace that scientists warn is necessary.
The expert proposed starting with “the federal government purchasing controlling ownership of at least the three dominant U.S. oil and gas corporations: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.”
“They are far larger and more powerful than all the U.S. coal companies combined, as well as all of the smaller U.S. oil and gas companies,” he wrote. “The cost to the government to purchase majority ownership of these three oil giants would be about $420 billion at current stock market prices.
Today at @TheProspect, Robert Pollin takes a big swing and explains how and why to nationalize the nation's fossil fuel companies, protecting consumer wallets while transitioning to renewables:https://t.co/h4nfEiwz0A
Emphasizing that the aim of private firms “is precisely to make profits from selling oil, coal, and natural gas, no matter the consequences for the planet and regardless of how the companies may present themselves in various high-gloss, soft-focus PR campaigns,” Pollin posited that “with at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion.”
“The government could determine fossil fuel energy production levels and prices to reflect both the needs of consumers and the requirements of the clean-energy transition,” he explained. “This transition could also be structured to provide maximum support for the workers and communities that are presently dependent on fossil fuel companies for their well-being.”
Pollin pointed out that some members of Congress are pushing for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil companies using various global crises—from Russia’s war to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic—to price gouge working people at the gas pump. The proposal, he wrote, “raises a more basic question: Should the fossil fuel companies be permitted to profit at all through selling products that we know are destroying the planet? The logical answer has to be no. That is exactly why nationalizing at least the largest U.S. oil companies is the most appropriate action we can take now, in light of the climate emergency.”
The economist highlighted the long history of nationalizing in the United States, pointing out that “it was only 13 years ago, in the depths of the 2007–09 financial crisis and Great Recession, that the Obama administration nationalized two of the three U.S. auto companies.”
In addition to enabling the government to put the nationalized firms’ profits toward a just transition to renewables, Pollin wrote, “with nationalization, the political obstacles that fossil fuel companies now throw up against public financing for clean energy investments would be eliminated.”
Nationalization “is not a panacea,” Pollin acknowledged. Noting that “publicly owned companies already control approximately 90% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves,” he cautioned against assuming such a move in the U.S. “will provide favorable conditions for fighting climate change, any more than public ownership has done so already in Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, or Iran,” without an administration dedicated to tackling the global crisis.
Pollin is far from alone in proposing nationalization. Writing for Jacobin last month, People’s Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig argued that “an industry that is absolutely essential to maintain in the short term and absolutely essential to eliminate in the long term is an industry that really should be managed publicly.”
“Private owners and investors are not in the business of temporarily propping up dying industries, which means that they will either work to keep the industry from dying, which is bad for the climate, or that they will refuse to temporarily prop it up, which will cause economic chaos,” he wrote. “A public owner is best positioned to pursue managed decline in a responsible way.”
In a piece for The New Republic published in the early stage of the pandemic a few years ago, climate journalist Kate Aronoff—like Pollin on Friday—pointed out that nationalization “has a long and proud tradition of navigating America through times of crisis, from World War II to 9/11.”
As Aronoff—who interviewed New College of Florida economist Mark Paul—reported in March 2020:
In a way, nationalization would merely involve the government correcting for nearly a century of its own market intervention. All manner of government hands on the scales have kept money flowing into fossil fuels, including the roughly $26 billion worth of state and federal subsidies handed out to them each year. A holistic transition toward a low-carbon economy would reorient that array of market signals away from failing sectors and toward growing ones that can put millions to work right away retrofitting existing buildings to be energy efficient and building out a fleet of electric vehicles, for instance, including in the places that might otherwise be worst impacted by a fossil fuel bust and recession. Renewables have taken a serious hit amid the Covid-19 slowdown, too, as factories shut down in China. So besides direct government investments in green technology, additional policy directives from the federal level, Paul added, would be key to providing certainty for investors that renewables are worth their while: for example, low-hanging fruit like the extension of the renewable tax credits, now on track to be phased out by 2022.
While Pollin, Bruenig, and Aronoff’s writing focused on the United States, campaigners are also making similar cases around the world.
In a June 2021 opinion piece for The Guardian, Johanna Bozuwa, co-manager of the Climate & Energy Program at the Democracy Collaborative, and Georgetown University philosophy professor Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò took aim at Royal Dutch Shell on the heels of a historic court ruling, declaring that “like all private oil companies, Shell should not exist.”
“Governments like the Netherlands could better follow through on mandates to reduce emissions if they held control over oil companies themselves,” the pair added. “It is time to nationalize Big Oil.”
net-zero by 2050 was a joke, but nobody’s laughing
Attitude matters. Imagine that in the run-up to the 20xx Olympics your country declared: we will strive to not-lose and achieve net-zero gold medals!
OK maybe not the best metaphor but still – why aim to not trigger armageddon by… 2050?
It is international scientific consensus that, in order to prevent the worst climate damages, global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050. –
Once that lofty non-goal was agreed upon by governments across the globe, it quickly became apparent that virtually none of them were doing anywhere near what it would take to get to said uninspired non-goal.
The idea was (and still is) to drag and under-achieve as long as politically possible and then suddenly, in the final stretch, accelerate efforts (with resources controlled by future politicians) and reach net-zero. And then declare victory.
People want more than net-zero. People need more than net-zero. At the very least there has to be a better name, and a serious plan to make it actually happen.
You are going to hear a lot about minus-zero carbon soon. The reason is a good one. When the stakes are as high as the extinction of all life on earth, just getting to a tie score is not a good plan. So those who are in the trenches, working on solutions for global warming and reducing the carbon footprint, are search also for better ways to communicate what the goal is and what it means.
This, hopefully, can lead to a focus on a goal, or at least the articulation of a desire, that can inspire people to become highly active, even agitated, perhaps even alarmed, and begin the hard work and striving that it will take to get to a net-positive outcome for all of us.
And, who exactly decided that it would be a good idea to prolong the carbon carnival as long as possible in the first place? Carbon emitters and oil profiteers perhaps?
60 years of feet dragging, obfuscation and deliberate blocking of any solutions threatening the status quo have already come and gone.
Also, if energy is clean and abundant, why not use more? Energy is good, more energy use, if clean and sustainable, could be better. It can give us amazing things. Efficient use is good too, of course, but this is a mind-set issue. This is thought error or a thought liberation.
Minus-zero carbon x 100% (with 200% energy availability) is a much better goal and represents a thought liberating idea.
Perfection can’t be the enemy of good in the energy arena
Do we need architects and inventors, innovators and scientists, and massive amount of ammunition in the form of trillions of dollars in funding, from both public and private sources? Hell yes.
And must these magicians and Mavericks do amazing things that were believed impossible just a short while ago? Absolutely. Is this a ‘moon-shot’ to, not just save, but catapult humanity into a better future? You bet-ur-a%$ it is.
That means that the challenges of finding better tech, examples such as for soil regeneration, or more efficient battery storage, or for alternatives to rare earth metals, if they are too, um, rare need to be figured out and set into motion, fast. It means inventing and discovering tech that does not exist, that has not been tried or even sought after, why never sought? Because oil was cheap and available, so don’t stress it, Bub.
And, there are those out there, already today, that are thinking beyond net-zero in 2050. There are those that want more, that know that we need more. Those that understand that political inertia and corrupt vested interests are not the excuses we want written on our tombstones.
And why not look for half-full glasses or beliefs manifested into action? Why not aim for something that makes us want to get up, stand up, and make something possible that looks like hope and feels like success and winning?
Decentralized solutions are coming, in every part of life
The reality is that it is not only the world’s energy infrastructure that needs a total makeover. Financial inequality, political and economic systems are fragile and failing, regardless where.
There is a whiff of collapse that could turn into a whirlwind and then could derail any progress made, as we plunge into dark ages, even before factoring in the catastrophic climate challenges.
We need new, innovative ways to learn, to communicate, interact and collaborate. And these are emerging – if you don’t believe in crypto, web3 or any other new directions that many are seeing as alternatives to broken systems of the past, you at least have to acknowledge that actively looking for a better way, one that does represent a solution, is what is needed even as the current systems are failing us.
So if you don’t agree with the ideas for change and proposed ways to improve methods for human interaction and coexistence, come up with new ideas and put them forth, ok?, maybe we have to try and strive and stumble until a truly better way presents itself.
Give yourself and all you have into actions that will finally change the direction from one that spells doom, in this case continuing to burn carbon in insanely massive amounts while we fight, disagree and kill one another (war, etc.), to something new, something that at least could have a chance to win the peace.
Losing is unacceptable for-real this time. Winning isn’t everything, no sir, it’s the only thing. And starting on 04-22-2022 this net-zero BS needs to be sent to Mars, or perhaps Uranus.
Meanwhile here on earth we gotta get busy building the only thing that will prevent oblivion: a tiny taste of utopia that will grow from a seed into a raging forest of real, not fossilized, success.
Six months ago, negotiators at the United Nations’ Glasgow climate summit celebrated a series of new commitments to lower global greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience to the impacts of climate change. Analysts concluded that the new promises, including phasing out coal, would bend the global warming trajectory, though still fall short of the Paris climate agreement.
In the U.S., the Biden administration has struggled to get its promised actions through Congress. Last-ditch efforts have been underway to salvage some kind of climate and energy bill from the abandoned Build Back Better plan. Without it, U.S. commitments to reduce emissions by over 50% by 2030 look fanciful, and the rest of the world knows it – adding another blow to U.S. credibility overseas.
As a former senior U.N. official, I’ve been involved in international climate negotiations for several years. At the halfway point of this year’s climate negotiations, with the next U.N. climate conference in November 2022, here are three areas to watch for progress and cooperation in a world full of danger and division.
In the short term, Europe’s pivot means much more energy efficiency – the International Energy Agency estimates that the European Union can save 15%-20% of energy demand with efficiency measures. It also means importing oil and gas from elsewhere.
There are issues to solve. As Europe buys up gas from other places, it risks reducing gas supplies relied on by other countries, and forcing some of those countries to return to coal, a more carbon-intense fuel that destroys air quality. Some countries will need help expanding renewable energy and stabilizing energy prices to avoid a backlash to pro-climate policies.
Their promises faced cries of “greenwash” from many climate advocacy groups. Some efforts are now underway to hold companies, as well as countries, to their commitments.
A U.N. group chaired by former Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is now working on a framework to hold companies, cities, states and banks to account when they claim to have “net-zero” emissions. This is designed to ensure that companies that pledged last year to meet net-zero now say how, and on what scientific basis.
For many companies, especially those with large emissions footprints, part of their commitment to get to net-zero includes buying carbon offsets – often investments in nature – to balance the ledger. This summer, two efforts to put guardrails around voluntary carbon markets are expected to issue their first sets of guidance for issuers of carbon credits and for firms that want to use voluntary carbon markets to fulfill their net-zero claims. The goal is to ensure carbon markets reduce emissions and provide a steady stream of revenue for parts of the world that need finance for their green growth.
Climate change influencing elections
Climate change is now an increasingly important factor in elections.
French President Emmanuel Macron, trying to woo supporters of a candidate to his left and energize young voters, made more dramatic climate pledges, vowing to be “the first major nation to abandon gas, oil and coal.”
With Chile’s swing to the left, the country’s redrafted constitution will incorporate climate stewardship.
In Australia, Scott Morrison’s government – which supported opening one of the world’s largest coal mines at the same time the Australian private sector is focusing on renewable energy – faces an election on May 21, 2022, with heatwaves and extreme flooding fresh in voters’ minds. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro faces opponents in October who are talking about protecting the climate.
Elections are fought and won on pocketbook issues, and energy prices are high and inflation is taking hold. But voters around the world are also experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand and are increasingly concerned.
The next climate conference
Countries will be facing a different set of economic and security challenges when the next round of U.N. talks begins in November in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, compared to the challenges they faced in Glasgow. They will be expected to show progress on their commitments while struggling for bandwidth, dealing with the climate emergency as an integral part of security, economic recovery and global health.
There is no time to push climate action out into the future. Every decimal point of warming avoided is an opportunity for better health, more prosperity and better security.
“The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic,” said the head of the World Meteorological Organization. “It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”
The World Meteorological Organization warned Monday that the planet now faces a 50% chance of temporarily hitting 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels over the next five years, another signal that political leaders—particularly those of the rich nations most responsible for carbon emissions—are failing to rein in fossil fuel use.
“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise.”
In 2015, by comparison, the likelihood of briefly reaching or exceeding 1.5°C of global warming over the ensuing five-year period was estimated to be “close to zero,” the WMO noted in a new climate update. The report was published amid a deadly heatwave on the Indian subcontinent that scientists say is a glimpse of what’s to come if runaway carbon emissions aren’t halted. Thus far, the heatwave has killed dozens in India and Pakistan.
Signatories to the Paris climate accord have agreed to act to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2°C—preferably to 1.5°C—by the end of the century. Climate advocates have deemed the 1.5°C target “on life support” following world leaders’ refusal to commit to more ambitious action at the COP26 summit in Glasgow late last year.
“We are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement,” Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the WMO, said in a statement Monday. “The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”
“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” Taalas added. “And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and, our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.”
BREAKING from the World Meteorological Organization @WMO: There is now a 50% probability that at least one of the next 5 years will temporarily reach the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5°C. In 2015 this chance was estimated to be zero.Our house is truly on fire. #ClimateEmergencyhttps://t.co/u5sTx63weR
— Scientist Rebellion (@ScientistRebel1) May 10, 2022
Dr. Leon Hermanson, a climate expert at the U.K. Met Office who led the WMO report, stressed that a short-lived breach of the 1.5°C threshold would not mean that the world is guaranteed to fall short of the Paris accord’s most ambitious warming target, which climate experts and campaigners have long decried as inadequate.
Such a breach, however, would “reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period,” said Hermanson.
The WMO’s latest research also estimates that there is a 93% chance that at least one year between 2022 and 2026 will be the warmest on record. Currently, 2016 and 2020 are tied for the top spot.
Even if global warming is limited to 1.5°C by 2100, countless people across the globe will still face devastating heatwaves, droughts, and other extreme weather, with the poor facing the worst consequences.
Meanwhile, key ecosystems could be damaged beyond repair in a 1.5°C hotter world. One recent study found that 99% of the world’s coral reefs would experience heatwaves that are “too frequent for them to recover” if the planet gets 1.5°C warmer compared to pre-industrial levels.
Scientists behind the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report cautioned last month that if there’s to be any hope of keeping warming to 1.5°C or below by 2100, “it’s now or never.”
“Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” said Jim Skea, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The award-winning documentary titled YOUTH v GOV premiered globally on the streaming platform Netflix Friday as the youth plaintiffs featured in the film await a decision that could put their historic climate lawsuit on a path to trial.
“In under two hours, you get an inside look at nearly seven years of Juliana v. United States,” said Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust, in a statement about the independent film. “And it’s not over. We are determined to get to trial because our young clients deserve to take the stand and have their evidence heard by a judge.”
The documentary—directed by scientist and filmmaker Christi Cooper—focuses on the federal suit filed in 2015 and its 21 plaintiffs. The Our Children’s Trust legal team, which represents the young people, argues that by contributing to the climate emergency, the U.S. government is violating their clients’ constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and failing to protect essential public trust resources.
Shortly after settlement negotiations between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and attorneys for the Juliana youth ended without resolution last November, federal lawmakers and advocacy groups sent President Joe Biden and other leaders in his administration letters in support of the plaintiffs.
“The question now is whether the Biden administration will keep fighting tooth and nail to keep them silenced, and whether our courts will stand up for their constitutional rights,” Olson said Friday. “After 50 years of the government—both Democrats and Republicans—knowingly making the climate crisis worse, I’m not betting on partisan politics. But I do have faith in the judiciary.”
The plaintiffs—now ages 14 to 26—are waiting for a court to rule on a motion to amend their complaint, which could put the case on track for a trial.
Take a peek at the stories of the youth who sued the U.S. government through a campaign supported by @youthvgov and WITNESS!
Since talks with the DOJ concluded, climate scientists have reiterated warnings about the need for systemic changes on a global scale, Congress has failed to pass a package containing key climate measures, and Biden has facedcriticism for not taking executive action to address the planetary emergency.
“I think for a lot of young people right now, life is really scary, because we’ve never seen a moment like this in history, and our feelings about our life and our future [are] all because of choices that we had no participation in,” says 26-year-old Kelsey Juliana—the named plaintiff in the case—during the first two minutes of the film.
“And so the plaintiffs joined this case,” Juliana adds, “because we all know who’s to blame and what needs to be done.”
The Netflix release of the film—which has won over two dozen awards at film festivals worldwide—was met with excitement by climate action advocates.
“Put this on your must watch list this weekend!” tweeted the Wisconsin Environmental Health Network. “Let’s get this important documentary into Netflix’s trending now category!”
Noting that one of the plaintiffs—21-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez—is based in Boulder, Matt Benjamin, a member of the Colorado city’s council, also highlighted the doc on Twitter.
“Make sure to check out this film streaming tonight on Netflix,” he said. “It’s inspirational. It’s emotional. It fills me with hope that our younger generations will take control of their future.”
Originally published on Common Dreams and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Around the world, many countries are becoming less democratic. This backsliding on democracy and “creeping authoritarianism,” as the U.S. State Department puts it, is often supported by the same industries that are escalating climate change.
It’s a dangerous shift, both for representative government and for the future climate.
Corporate capture of environmental politics
In democratic systems, elected leaders are expected to protect the public’s interests, including from exploitation by corporations. They do this primarily through policies designed to secure public goods, such as clean air and unpolluted water, or to protect human welfare, such as good working conditions and minimum wages. But in recent decades, this core democratic principle that prioritizes citizens over corporate profits has been aggressively undermined.
Today, it’s easy to find political leaders – on both the political right and left – working on behalf of corporations in energy, finance, agribusiness, technology, military and pharmaceutical sectors, and not always in the public interest. These multinational companies help fund their political careers and election campaigns to keep them in office.
When it comes to the political parties, it’s easy to find examples of campaign finance fueling political agendas.
In 1988, when NASA scientist James Hansen testified before a U.S. Senate committee about the greenhouse effect, both the Republican and Democratic parties took climate change seriously. But this attitude quickly diverged. Since the 1990s, the energy sector has heavily financed conservative candidates who have pushed its interests and helped to reduce regulations on the fossil fuel industry. This has enabled the expansion of fossil fuel production and escalated CO2 emissions to dangerous levels.
The industry’s power in shaping policy plays out in examples like the coalition of 19 Republican state attorneys general and coal companies suing to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
Corporate interests have also fueled a surge in well-financed antidemocratic leaders who are willing to stall and even dismantle existing climate policies and regulations. These political leaders’ tactics have escalated public health crises, and in some cases, human rights abuses.
Brazil, Australia and the US
Many deeply antidemocratic governments are tied to oil, gas and other extractive industries that are driving climate change, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and China.
In “Global Burning,” I explore how three leaders of traditionally democratic countries – Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Scott Morrison of Australia and Donald Trump in the U.S. – came to power on anti-environment and nationalist platforms appealing to an extreme-right populist base and extractive corporations that are driving climate change. While the political landscape of each country is different, the three leaders have important commonalities.
Bolsonaro, Morrison and Trump all depend on extractive corporations to fund electoral campaigns and keep them in office or, in the case of Trump, get reelected.
For instance, Bolsonaro’s power depends on support from a powerful right-wing association of landowners and farmers called the União Democrática Ruralista, or UDR. This association reflects the interests of foreign investors and specifically the multibillion-dollar mining and agribusiness sectors. Bolsonaro promised that if elected in 2019, he would dismantle environmental protections and open, in the name of economic progress, industrial-scale soybean production and cattle grazing in the Amazon rainforest. Both contribute to climate change and deforestation in a fragile region considered crucial for keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.
Bolsonaro, Morrison and Trump are all openly skeptical of climate science. Not surprisingly, all have ignored, weakened or dismantled environmental protection regulations. In Brazil, that led to accelerated deforestation and large swaths of Amazon rainforest burning.
In Australia, Morrison’s government ignored widespread public and scientific opposition and opened the controversial Adani Carmichael mine, one of the largest coal mines in the world. The mine will impact public health and the climate and threatens the Great Barrier Reef as temperatures rise and ports are expanded along the coast.
Notably, all three leaders have worked, sometimes together, against international efforts to stop climate change. At the United Nations climate talks in Spain in 2019, Costa Rica’s minister for environment and energy at the time, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, blamed Brazil, Australia and the U.S. for blocking efforts to tackle climate injustice linked to global warming.
Brazil, Australia and the U.S. are not unique in these responses to climate change. Around the world, there have been similar convergences of antidemocratic leaders who are financed by extractive corporations and who implement anti-environment laws and policies that defend corporate profits. New to the current moment is that these leaders openly use state power against their own citizens to secure corporate land grabs to build dams, lay pipelines, dig mines and log forests.
Fortunately, there is a lot that people can do to protect democracy and the climate.
Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and reducing the destruction of forests can cut greenhouse gas emissions. The biggest obstacles, a recent U.N. climate report noted, are national leaders who are unwilling to regulate fossil fuel corporations, reduce greenhouse gas emissions or plan for renewable energy production.
The path forward, as I see it, involves voters pushing back on the global trend toward authoritarianism, as Slovenia did in April 2022, and pushing forward on replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. People can reclaim their democratic rights and vote out anti-environment governments whose power depends on prioritizing extractive capitalism over the best interests of their citizens and our collective humanity.
In the global effort to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, achieving a “100% renewables” electricity system is considered ideal.
Some Australian states have committed to 100% renewable energy targets, or even 200% renewable energy targets. But this doesn’t mean their electricity is, or will be, emissions free.
Electricity is responsible for a third of Australia’s emissions, and making it cleaner is a key way to reduce emissions in other sectors that rely on it, such as transport.
So it’s important we have clarity about where our electricity comes from, and how emissions-intensive it is. Let’s look at what 100% renewables actually implies in detail.
Is 100% renewables realistic?
Achieving 100% renewables is one way of eliminating emissions from the electricity sector.
It’s commonly interpreted to mean all electricity must be generated from renewable sources. These sources usually include solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal, and exclude nuclear energy and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage.
But this is a very difficult feat for individual states and territories to try to achieve.
The term “net 100% renewables” more accurately describes what some jurisdictions — such as South Australia and the ACT — are targeting, whether or not they’ve explicitly said so.
These targets don’t require that all electricity people use within the jurisdiction come from renewable sources. Some might come from coal or gas-fired generation, but the government offsets this amount by making or buying an equivalent amount of renewable electricity.
A net 100% renewables target allows a state to spruik its green credentials without needing to worry about the reliability implications of being totally self-reliant on renewable power.
So how does ‘net’ 100% renewables work?
All east coast states are connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM) — a system that allows electricity to be generated, used and shared across borders. This means individual states can achieve “net 100% renewables” without the renewable generation needing to occur when or where the electricity is required.
The ACT government buys renewable energy from generators outside the territory, which is then mostly used in other states, such as Victoria and South Australia. Meanwhile, people living in ACT rely on power from NSW that’s not emissions-free, because it largely comes from coal-fired power stations.
This way, the ACT government can claim net 100% renewables because it’s offsetting the non-renewable energy its residents use with the clean energy it’s paid for elsewhere.
SA’s target is to reach net 100% renewables by the 2030s. Unlike the ACT, it plans to generate renewable electricity locally, equal to 100% of its annual demand.
At times, such as especially sunny days, some of that electricity will be exported to other states. At other times, such as when the wind drops off, SA may need to rely on electricity imports from other states, which probably won’t come from all-renewable sources.
So what happens if all states commit to net 100% renewable energy targets? Then, the National Electricity Market will have a de-facto 100% renewable energy target — no “net”.
That’s because the market is one entire system, so its only options are “100% renewables” (implying zero emissions), or “less than 100% renewables”. The “net” factor doesn’t come into it, because there’s no other part of the grid for it to buy from or sell to.
How do you get to “200% renewables”, or more?
It’s mathematically impossible for more than 100% of the electricity used in the NEM to come from renewable sources: 100% is the limit.
Any target of more than 100% renewables is a different calculation. The target is no longer a measure of renewable generation versus all generation, but renewable generation versus today’s demand.
Australia could generate several times more renewable energy than there is demand today, but still use a small and declining amount of fossil fuels during rare weather events. Shutterstock
Tasmania, for example, has legislated a target of 200% renewable energy by 2040. This means it wants to produce twice as much renewable electricity as it consumes today.
But this doesn’t necessarily imply all electricity consumed in Tasmania will be renewable. For example, it may continue to import some non-renewable power from Victoria at times, such as during droughts when Tasmania’s hydro dams are constrained. It may even need to burn a small amount of gas as a backup.
This means the 200% renewable energy target is really a “net 200% renewables” target.
Meanwhile, the Greens are campaigning for 700% renewables. This, too, is based on today’s electricity demand.
In the future, demand could be much higher due to electrifying our transport, switching appliances from gas to electricity, and potentially exporting energy-intensive, renewable commodities such as green hydrogen or ammonia.
Targeting net-zero emissions
These “more than 100% renewables” targets set by individual jurisdictions don’t necessarily imply all electricity Australians use will be emissions free.
It’s possible — and potentially more economical — that we would meet almost all of this additional future demand with renewable energy, but keep some gas or diesel capacity as a low-cost backstop.
This would ensure continued electricity supply during rare, sustained periods of low wind, low sun, and high demand, such as during a cloudy, windless week in winter.
The energy transition is harder near the end — each percentage point between 90% and 100% renewables is more expensive to achieve than the previous.
That’s why, in a recent report from the Grattan Institute, we recommended governments pursue net-zero emissions in the electricity sector first, rather than setting 100% renewables targets today.
For example, buying carbon credits to offset the small amount of emissions produced in a 90% renewable NEM is likely to be cheaper in the medium term than building enough energy storage — such as batteries or pumped hydro dams — to backup wind and solar at all times.
The bottom line is governments and companies must say what they mean and mean what they say when announcing targets. It’s the responsibility of media and pundits to take care when interpreting them.
For 50 years warnings have been ignored: now it will be actions and solutions that matter
As a child I was fascinated with the Geodesic Dome and other inventions, such as the Dymaxion Car by R. Buckminster Fuller. I devoured his books but one stood out in particular. ‘Utopia or Oblivion‘, an obscure title that was difficult to read due to the pregnant prose and the seemingly overwrought message ( and title), the text shocked my young mind.
Originally published in 1963, decades before my birth, is is now nearly 60 years since it came out. What was shocking to me, at the time I first read it, was that the warnings in the book, made abundantly and overtly clear in the title and body, were not heeded, and that basically after decades passed the issue of fossil fuels being a non-sustainable resource was virtually ignored, with prejudice.
In 1963 the ozone layer was for all practical purposes still intact. Climate change, and / or global warming, caused by massive carbon emissions and the whole nasty, familiar story of today, was not even a consideration.
It was enough to know, unequivocally, that oil and other fossil fuels were a finite resource, and therefore will one day run out, that made it imperative, according to Fuller, to begin the necessary journey to building a world without them.
A book written by a genius, scientist, innovator and sage
This book ‘did the math’ and the science and concluded that humankind (still called mankind in those days) would have two fates possible in the next century (our century, f.y.i.): Utopia or Oblivion. To understand why this is absolutely right, in my opinion, I recommend reading the 448 pages of the book, 8 times, as I have.
In the many years since I first read this, now 59 year old book, the only thing that has changed is that his predictions of a world where humanity would face extinction (or be rescued by the realization that utopia is possible once we, as a species, make it possible) are now more definitely certain than ever.
Elon Musk, someone who would likely agree with much of the science in the book, is trying to get the “light of human consciousness‘ to Mars, since Earth’s survival hangs in the balance.
In the years since the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) was released, scores of scientists and world leaders have repeatedly warned of the increasing dangers, with actual occurrences and measurements producing evidence, mountains of evidence month by month. It has reached a point where, even in the USA which has the highest percentage of climate change skeptics, over 70% of the population, nevertheless, believes the threat is serious, important, and real.
Image: SAP/Qualtrics
Finally, nearly 60 years after R. Buckminster Fuller’s seminal work, there is a consensus in the world that this is a problem that must be solved.
Not something to debate or consider. Nothing to prove or produce evidence of in order to justify acting on, we all believe (as a majority) that the solutions must be found and the actions needed to implement those chances must be started immediately.
Some of us, for example anyone who read ‘Utopia or Oblivion’ during the last 59 years, or anyone who ‘did the math’ and understood that oil and fossil fuels are not, and never were, meant to be a permeant source of energy for humanity, are ready to act.
Therefore, this article, and many more you will have the opportunity to read in celebration of Earth Day 2022, is designed to invite you to act now, if only by reading and learning about the challenges we face.
And then, armed with knowledge and understanding, to begin today, on 04-22-2022, the first day of a new era in human history, the beginning of transition to the sustainable, clean energy era. Utopia, then must be achieved, in order to prevent Oblivion.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW‘S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTA major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half-billion years, there have been Five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind’s most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER – In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical–and accessible–plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet’s slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations.
Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions–suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability–at the level of literature, history, and politics–to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today’s climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres.
In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence–a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time.
No Planet B: A Teen Vogue Guide to the Climate Crisis
An urgent call for climate justice from Teen Vogue, one of this generation’s leading voices, using an intersectional lens – with critical feminist, indigenous, antiracist and internationalist perspectives. As the political classes watch our world burn, a new movement of young people is rising to meet the challenge of climate catastrophe. This book is a guide, a toolkit, a warning and a cause for hope.
I hope that this book embodies Teen Vogue’s motto of making young people feel seen and heard all over the world. I hope that it forces their parents, communities, loved ones, friends, and–most importantly–those in power to see that the health of our planet depends on how quickly and drastically we change our behaviors. I hope it forces them all to respond. –From the foreword by Teen Vogue editor-in-chief, Lindsay Peoples Wagner
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”–Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon
With a new afterwordIt is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible–food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (TheGuardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it–the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation–today’s. Praise for The Uninhabitable Earth“The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”–Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times
Building solar panels over water sources is one way to both provide power and reduce evaporation in drought-troubled regions. Robin Raj, Citizen Group & Solar Aquagrid
To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is an important source of clean energy. Scientists and engineers see that plus far more potential.
They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their owners money and also reducing transportation emissions.
With scientists worldwide sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers and costs of climate change, let’s explore some cutting-edge ideas that could transform how today’s technologies reduce the effects of global warming, from five recent articles in The Conversation.
1. Solar canals: Power + water protection
What if solar panels did double duty, protecting water supplies while producing more power?
California is developing the United States’ first solar canals, with solar panels built atop some of the state’s water distribution canals. These canals run for thousands of miles through arid environments, where the dry air boosts evaporation in a state frequently troubled by water shortages.
“In a 2021 study, we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California’s canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people,” writes engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. They would also expand renewable energy without taking up farmable land.
Putting solar panels over shaded water can also improve their power output. The cooler water lowers the temperature of the panels by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius), boosting their efficiency, Bales writes.
2. Geothermal power could boost battery supplies
For renewable energy to slash global greenhouse gas emissions, buildings and vehicles have to be able to use it. Batteries are essential, but the industry has a supply chain problem.
Most batteries used in electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are lithium-ion batteries, and most lithium used in the U.S. comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia. China is the leader in lithium processing.
Geologist and engineers are working on an innovative method that could boost the U.S. lithium supply at home by extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region.
Brines are the liquid leftover in a geothermal plant after heat and steam are used to produce power. That liquid contains lithium and other metals such as manganese, zinc and boron. Normally, it is pumped back underground, but the metals can also be filtered out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oYtyEVPGEU8?wmode=transparent&start=0 How lithium is extracted during geothermal energy production. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources.
“If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand,” write geologist Michael McKibben of the University of California, Riverside, and energy policy scholar Bryant Jones of Boise State University.
President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act on March 31, 2022, to provide incentives for U.S. companies to mine and process more critical minerals for batteries.
3. Green hydrogen and other storage ideas
Scientists are working on other ways to boost batteries’ mineral supply chain, too, including recycling lithium and cobalt from old batteries. They’re also developing designs with other materials, explained Kerry Rippy, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Lab.
Concentrated solar power, for example, stores energy from the sun by heating molten salt and using it to produce steam to drive electric generators, similar to how a coal power plant would generate electricity. It’s expensive, though, and the salts currently used aren’t stable at higher temperature, Rippy writes. The Department of Energy is funding a similar project that is experimenting with heated sand. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fkX-H24Chfw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Hydrogen’s challenges, including its fossil fuel history.
Renewable fuels, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, provide a different type of storage. Since they store energy as liquid, they can be transported and used for shipping or rocket fuel.
Hydrogen gets a lot of attention, but not all hydrogen is green. Most hydrogen used today is actually produced with natural gas – a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen, in contrast, could be produced using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, but again, it’s expensive.
“The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical,” Rippy writes. “The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.”
4. Using your EV to power your home
Batteries could also soon turn your electric vehicle into a giant, mobile battery capable of powering your home.
Only a few vehicles are currently designed for vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, but that’s changing, writes energy economist Seth Blumsack of Penn State University. Ford, for example, says its new F-150 Lightning pickup truck will be able to power an average house for three days on a single charge.
How bidirectional charging allows EVs to power homes.
For example, he writes, “some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call ‘peak shaving’ – drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours.”
5. Capturing carbon from air and locking it away
Another emerging technology is more controversial.
Humans have put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries that just stopping fossil fuel use won’t be enough to quickly stabilize the climate. Most scenarios, including in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, show the world will have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well.
The technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air exists – it’s called direct air capture – but it’s expensive.
Engineers and geophysicists like David Goldberg of Columbia University are exploring ways to cut those costs by combining direct air capture technology with renewable energy production and carbon storage, like offshore wind turbines built above undersea rock formations where captured carbon could be locked away.
The world’s largest direct air capture plant, launched in 2021 in Iceland, uses geothermal energy to power its equipment. The captured carbon dioxide is mixed with water and pumped into volcanic basalt formations underground. Chemical reactions with the basalt turn it into a hard carbonate.
Goldberg, who helped developed the mineralization process used in Iceland, sees similar potential for future U.S. offshore wind farms. Wind turbines often produce more energy than their customers need at any given time, making excess energy available.
“Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment,” Goldberg writes.
Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.
The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that to avoid massive losses and damage from global warming, nations must act quickly to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that experts believe it’s possible to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 through steps such as using energy more efficiently, slowing deforestation and speeding up the adoption of renewable energy.
Many of those strategies require new laws, regulations or funding to move forward at the speed and scale that’s needed. But one strategy that’s increasingly feasible for many consumers is powering their homes and devices with electricity from clean sources. These four articles from our archives explain why electrifying homes is an important climate strategy and how consumers can get started.
1. Why go electric?
As of 2020, home energy use accounted for about one-sixth of total U.S. energy consumption. Nearly half (47%) of this energy came from electricity, followed by natural gas (42%), oil (8%) and renewable energy (7%). By far the largest home energy use is for heating and air conditioning, followed by lighting, refrigerators and other appliances.
The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from home energy consumption is to substitute electricity generated from low- and zero-carbon sources for oil and natural gas. And the power sector is rapidly moving that way: As a 2021 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory showed, power producers have reduced their carbon emissions by 50% from what energy experts predicted in 2005.
“This drop happened thanks to policy, market and technology drivers,” a team of Lawrence Berkeley lab analysts concluded. Wind and solar power have scaled up and cut their costs, so utilities are using more of them. Cheap natural gas has replaced generation from dirtier coal. And public policies have encouraged the use of energy-efficient technologies like LED light bulbs. These converging trends make electric power an increasingly climate-friendly energy choice.
The U.S. is using much more low-carbon and carbon-free electricity today than projected in 2005. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, CC BY-ND
2. Heat pumps for cold and hot days
Since heating and cooling use so much energy, switching from an oil- or gas-powered furnace to a heat pump can greatly reduce a home’s carbon footprint. As University of Dayton sustainability expert Robert Brecha explains, heat pumps work by moving heat in and out of buildings, not by burning fossil fuel.
“Extremely cold fluid circulates through coils of tubing in the heat pump’s outdoor unit,” Brecha writes. “That fluid absorbs energy in the form of heat from the surrounding air, which is warmer than the fluid. The fluid vaporizes and then circulates into a compressor. Compressing any gas heats it up, so this process generates heat. Then the vapor moves through coils of tubing in the indoor unit of the heat pump, heating the building.”
In summer, the process reverses: Heat pumps take energy from indoors and move that heat outdoors, just as a refrigerator removes heat from the chamber where it stores food and expels it into the air in the room where it sits.
Another option is a geothermal heat pump, which collects warmth from the earth and uses the same process as air source heat pumps to move it into buildings. These systems cost more, since installing them involves excavation to bury tubing below ground, but they also reduce electricity use.
3. Cooking without gas – or heat
For people who like to cook, the biggest sticking point of going electric is the prospect of using an electric stove. Many home chefs see gas flames as more responsive and precise than electric burners.
But magnetic induction, which cooks food by generating a magnetic field under the pot, eliminates the need to fire up a burner altogether.
“Instead of conventional burners, the cooking spots on induction cooktops are called hobs, and consist of wire coils embedded in the cooktop’s surface,” writes Binghamton University electrical engineering professor Kenneth McLeod.
Moving an electric charge through those wires creates a magnetic field, which in turn creates an electric field in the bottom of the cookware. “Because of resistance, the pan will heat up, even though the hob does not,” McLeod explains.
Induction cooktops warm up and cool down very quickly and offer highly accurate temperature control. They also are easy to clean, since they are made of glass, and safer than electric stoves since the hobs don’t stay hot when pans are lifted off them. Many utilities are offering rebates to cover the higher cost of induction cooktops.
4. Electric cars as backup power sources
Electrifying systems like home heating and cooking made residents even more vulnerable to power outages. Soon, however, a new backup system could become available: powering your home from your electric vehicle.
With interest in electric cars and light trucks rising in the U.S., auto makers are introducing many new EV models and designs. Some of these new rides will offer bidirectional charging – the ability to charge a car battery at home, then move that power back into the house, and eventually, into the grid.
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Only a few models offer this capacity now, and it requires special equipment that can add several thousand dollars to the price of an EV. But Penn State energy expert Seth Blumsack sees value in this emerging technology.
“Enabling homeowners to use their vehicles as backup when the power goes down would reduce the social impacts of large-scale blackouts. It also would give utilities more time to restore service – especially when there is substantial damage to power poles and wires,” Blumsack explains. “Bidirectional charging is also an integral part of a broader vision for a next-generation electric grid in which millions of EVs are constantly taking power from the grid and giving it back – a key element of an electrified future.”
Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.
Global warming doesn’t stop on a dime. If people everywhere stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, stored heat would still continue to warm the atmosphere.
Picture how a radiator heats a home. Water is heated by a boiler, and the hot water circulates through pipes and radiators in the house. The radiators warm up and heat the air in the room. Even after the boiler is turned off, the already heated water is still circulating through the system, heating the house. The radiators are, in fact, cooling down, but their stored heat is still warming the air in the room.
This is known as committed warming. Earth similarly has ways of storing and releasing heat.
Emerging research is refining scientists’ understanding of how Earth’s committed warming will affect the climate. Where we once thought it would take 40 years or longer for global surface air temperature to peak once humans stopped heating up the planet, research now suggests temperature could peak in closer to 10 years.
But that doesn’t mean the planet returns to its preindustrial climate or that we avoid disruptive effects such as sea level rise.
I am a professor of climate science, and my research and teaching focus on the usability of climate knowledge by practitioners such as urban planners, public health professionals and policymakers. Let’s take a look at the bigger picture.
How understanding of peak warming has changed
Historically, the first climate models represented only the atmosphere and were greatly simplified. Over the years, scientists added oceans, land, ice sheets, chemistry and biology.
Today’s models can more explicitly represent the behavior of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. That allows scientists to better separate heating due to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the role of heat stored in the ocean. https://www.youtube.com/embed/_WUNMzC98jI?wmode=transparent&start=0 Why global warming is ocean warming.
Thinking about our radiator analogy, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere keep the boiler on – holding energy near the surface and raising the temperature. Heat accumulates and is stored, mostly in the oceans, which take on the role of the radiators. The heat is distributed around the world through weather and oceanic currents.
It is important to note that this is only the peak, when the temperature starts to stabilize – not the onset of rapid cooling or a reversal of climate change.
I believe there is enough uncertainty to justify caution about exaggerating the significance of the new research’s results. The authors applied the concept of peak warming to global surface air temperature. Global surface air temperature is, metaphorically, the temperature in the “room,” and is not the best measure of climate change. The concept of instantly cutting off human-caused heating is also idealized and entirely unrealistic – doing that would involve much more than just ending fossil fuel use, including widespread changes to agriculture – and it only helps illustrate how parts of the climate might behave.
Even if the air temperature were to peak and stabilize, “committed ice melting,” “committed sea level rise” and numerous other land and biological trends would continue to evolve from the accumulated heat. Some of these could, in fact, cause a release of carbon dioxide and methane, especially from the Arctic and other high-latitude reservoirs that are currently frozen.
For these reasons and others, it is important to consider the how far into the future studies like this one look.
Oceans in the future
Oceans will continue to store heat and exchange it with the atmosphere. Even if emissions stopped, the excess heat that has been accumulating in the ocean since preindustrial times would influence the climate for another 100 years or more.
Because the ocean is dynamic, it has currents, and it will not simply diffuse its excess heat back into the atmosphere. There will be ups and downs as the temperature adjusts.
The oceans also influence the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because carbon dioxide is both absorbed and emitted by the oceans. Paleoclimate studies show large changes in carbon dioxide and temperature in the past, with the oceans playing an important role.
The possibility that a policy intervention might have measurable impacts in 10 years rather than several decades could motivate more aggressive efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It would be very satisfying to see policy interventions having present rather than notional future benefits.
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Our most robust finding is that the less carbon dioxide humans release, the better off humanity will be. Committed warming and human behavior point to a need to accelerate efforts both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to this warming planet now, rather than simply talking about how much needs to happen in the future.
In face of the “escalating climate emergency,” the advocacy group Scientist Rebellion warns that IPCC summary to global policymakers remains “alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative.”
Amid a weeklong global civil disobedience campaign to demand climate action commensurate with mounting evidence about the need for swift decarbonization, Scientist Rebellion is highlighting specific gaps between what experts say is necessary and what governments allowed to be published in a summary of the United Nations’ latest climate assessment.
“We need a billion climate activists…The time is now. We’ve waited far too long.”
The landmark report on mitigation by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—part of the U.N.’s sixth comprehensive climate assessment since 1992 and possibly the last to be published with enough time to avert the most catastrophic consequences of the planetary crisis—was compiled by 278 researchers from 65 countries.
The authors, who synthesized thousands of peer-reviewed studies published in the past several years, make clear over the course of nearly 3,000 pages that “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach.”
Meanwhile, a 64-page Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the report—a key reference point for governments—required the approval of all 195 member states of the IPCC and was edited with their input.
Following a contentious weekend of negotiations in which wealthy governments attempted to weaken statements about green financing for low-income nations and fossil fuel-producing countries objected to unequivocal language about the need to quickly eliminate coal, oil, and gas extraction, the IPCC document was published several hours later than expected on Monday.
“Despite the escalating climate emergency and the total absence of emissions cuts, the framing of the final version of the SPM is still alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative,” Scientist Rebellion, an international alliance of academics who are advocating for systemic political and economic changes in line with scientific findings, said Tuesday in a statement.
“The science has never been clearer: to have any chance of retaining a habitable planet, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut radically now,” the group continued. “Limiting warming to 1.5°C and responding to the climate emergency requires an immediate transformation across all sectors and strata of society, a mobilization of historic proportions: a climate revolution.”
“The IPCC [has] avoided naming the major culprits for 30 years, which is one reason for the absence of real emissions cuts,” the group added. “Facts detailing the complicity of the world’s richest countries in fueling the climate crisis have been watered down by the IPCC’s political review process.”
Scientist Rebellion proceeded to contrast the final version of the SPM—”the document that garners almost all attention”—to an early draft of a summary of the Working Group III report on mitigation that IPCC authors associated with the group leaked last August out of concern that their conclusions would be diluted by policymakers.
Peter Kalmus, a Los Angeles-based climate scientist and author who is participating in this week’s direct actions, told Common Dreams that the shortcomings of governments and policymakers have driven him to act.
Kalmus said he was willing to engage in civil disobedience and risk arrest this week, “because I’ve tried everything else I can think of over the past decade and nothing has worked. I see humanity heading directly toward climate disaster.”
With humanity “currently on track to lose everything we love,” he said, the scientific community must intensify its efforts.
“If we don’t rapidly end the fossil fuel industry and begin acting like Earth breakdown is an emergency, we risk civilizational collapse and potentially the death of billions, not to mention the loss of major critical ecosystems around the world,” said Kalmus. “This is so much bigger than me. Expect climate scientists to be taking such actions repeatedly in the future and in large numbers.”
On Wednesday, direct actions by scientists took place in Berlin, Germany; The Hague, Netherlands; Bogata, Colombia, and other cities.
In its Tuesday assessment, Scientist Rebellion documented how the political review process weakened or eliminated language about carbon inequality and the need for far-reaching socio-economic transformation to slash greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in the final SPM:
Example 1: Section B6 of the report originally stated that “institutional inertia and a social bias towards the status quo are leading to a risk of locking in future GHG emissions that may be costly or difficult to abate.” This has been replaced with “global GHG emissions in 2030 associated with the implementation of nationally determined contributions… would make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century.” The final version also no longer mentions that “vested interests” and a focus on an “incremental rather than a systemic approach” are limiting factors to ambitious transformation.
Example 2: The leaked SPM stated that “within countries, inequalities increased for both income and GHG emissions between 1970 and 2016, with the top 1% accounting for 27% of income growth,” and that “top emitters dominate emissions in key sectors, for example the top 1% account for 50% of GHG emissions from aviation.” Neither statement appears in the final version.
“While the SPM—being approved line-by-line by all governments—is reserved, docile, and conservative, the situation is clear,” said Scientist Rebellion.
The group went on to quote U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Monday that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster.”
Limiting global heating to the boundaries set out under the Paris Agreement now requires an immediate shift into emergency mode, a transformation across all sectors and stratas of society, a mobilization of historic proportions — in short, a climate revolution. #ClimateCrisis 2/2 pic.twitter.com/wxvNBUee2q
— Scientist Rebellion (@ScientistRebel1) April 5, 2022
As Common Dreamsreported Monday, more than 1,000 scientists in at least 25 countries on every continent in the world are expected to participate in strikes, occupations, and other actions this week to highlight “the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis,” and several demonstrations are already underway.
Guterres, for his part, said Monday that “climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals, but the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”
For his part, Kalmus acknowledged it was going to take much more than a series of direct actions by scientists to turn the tide against inaction.
“We need a billion climate activists,” Kalmus said. “I encourage everyone to consider where we’re heading as a species, and to engage in civil disobedience and other actions. The time is now. We’ve waited far too long.”
“Mobilize, mobilize, mobilize,” he said, “before we lose everything.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods is now “unavoidable” if the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to this week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report, released on Monday, finds that in addition to rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse emissions, CO₂ removal is “an essential element of scenarios that limit warming to 1.5℃ or likely below 2℃ by 2100”.
CDR refers to a suite of activities that lower the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is done by removing CO₂ molecules and storing the carbon in plants, trees, soil, geological reservoirs, ocean reservoirs or products derived from CO₂.
As the IPCC notes, each mechanism is complex, and has advantages and pitfalls. Much work is needed to ensure CDR projects are rolled out responsibly.
How does CDR work?
CDR is distinct from “carbon capture”, which involves catching CO₂ at the source, such as a coal-fired power plant or steel mill, before it reaches the atmosphere.
There are several ways to remove CO₂ from the air. They include:
terrestrial solutions, such as planting trees and adopting regenerative soil practices, such as low or no-till agriculture and cover cropping, which limit soil disturbances that can oxidise soil carbon and release CO₂.
geochemical approaches that store CO₂ as a solid mineral carbonate in rocks. In a process known as “enhanced mineral weathering”, rocks such as limestone and olivine can be finely ground to increase their surface area and enhance a naturally occurring process whereby minerals rich in calcium and magnesium react with CO₂ to form a stable mineral carbonate.
chemical solutions such as direct air capture that use engineered filters to remove CO₂ molecules from air. The captured CO₂ can then be injected deep underground into saline aquifers and basaltic rock formations for durable sequestration.
ocean-based solutions, such as enhanced alkalinity. This involves directly adding alkaline materials to the environment, or electrochemically processing seawater. But these methods need to be further researched before being deployed.
Where is it being used right now?
To date, US-based company Charm Industrial has delivered 5,000 tonnes of CDR, which is the the largest volume thus far. This is equivalent to the emissions produced by about 1,000 cars in a year.
There are also several plans for larger-scale direct air capture facilities. In September, 2021, Climeworks opened a facility in Iceland with a 4,000 tonne per annum capacity for CO₂ removal. And in the US, the Biden Administration has allocated US$3.5 billion to build four separate direct air capture hubs, each with the capacity to remove at least one million tonnes of CO₂ per year.
However, a previous IPCC report estimated that to limit global warming to 1.5℃, between 100 billion and one trillion tonnes of CO₂ must be removed from the atmosphere this century. So while these projects represent a massive scale-up, they are still a drop in the ocean compared with what is required.
In Australia, Southern Green Gas and Corporate Carbon are developing one of the country’s first direct air capture projects. This is being done in conjunction with University of Sydney researchers, ourselves included.
In this system, fans push atmospheric air over finely tuned filters made from molecular adsorbents, which can remove CO₂ molecules from the air. The captured CO₂ can then be injected deep underground, where it can remain for thousands of years.
Opportunities
It is important to stress CDR is not a replacement for emissions reductions. However, it can supplement these efforts. The IPCC has outlined three ways this might be done.
In the short term, CDR could help reduce net CO₂ emissions. This is crucial if we are to limit warming below critical temperature thresholds.
In the medium term, it could help balance out emissions from sectors such as agriculture, aviation, shipping and industrial manufacturing, where straightforward zero-emission alternatives don’t yet exist.
In the long term, CDR could potentially remove large amounts of historical emissions, stabilising atmospheric CO₂ and eventually bringing it back down to pre-industrial levels.
The IPCC’s latest report has estimated the technological readiness levels, costs, scale-up potential, risk and impacts, co-benefits and trade-offs for 12 different forms of CDR. This provides an updated perspective on several forms of CDR that were lesser explored in previous reports.
It estimates each tonne of CO₂ retrieved through direct air capture will cost US$84–386, and that there is the feasible potential to remove between 5 billion and 40 billion tonnes annually.
Concerns and challenges
Each CDR method is complex and unique, and no solution is perfect. As deployment grows, a number of concerns must be addressed.
First, the IPCC notes scaling up CDR must not detract from efforts to dramatically reduce emissions. They write that “CDR cannot serve as a substitute for deep emissions reductions but can fulfil multiple complementary roles”.
If not done properly, CDR projects could potentially compete with agriculture for land or introduce non-native plants and trees. As the IPCC notes, care must be taken to ensure the technology does not negatively affect biodiversity, land-use or food security.
The IPCC also notes some CDR methods are energy-intensive, or could consume renewable energy needed to decarbonise other activities.
It expressed concern CDR might also exacerbate water scarcity and make Earth reflect less sunlight, such as in cases of large-scale reforestation.
Given the portfolio of required solutions, each form of CDR might work best in different locations. So being thoughtful about placement can ensure crops and trees are planted where they won’t dramatically alter the Earth’s reflectivity, or use too much water.
Direct air capture systems can be placed in remote locations that have easy access to off-grid renewable energy, and where they won’t compete with agriculture or forests.
Finally, deploying long-duration CDR solutions can be quite expensive – far more so than short-duration solutions such as planting trees and altering soil. This has hampered CDR’s commercial viability thus far.
But costs are likely to decline, as they have for many other technologies including solar, wind and lithium-ion batteries. The trajectory at which CDR costs decline will vary between the technologies.
Future efforts
Looking forward, the IPCC recommends accelerated research, development and demonstration, and targeted incentives to increase the scale of CDR projects. It also emphasises the need for improved measurement, reporting and verification methods for carbon storage.
More work is needed to ensure CDR projects are deployed responsibly. CDR deployment must involve communities, policymakers, scientists and entrepreneurs to ensure it’s done in an environmentally, ethically and socially responsible way.
To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is simply a power producer. Scientists and engineers see far more potential.
They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their owners money.
photo credit / pexels
With scientists worldwide sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers and costs of climate change, let’s explore some cutting-edge ideas that could transform how today’s technologies reduce the effects of global warming, from five recent articles in The Conversation.
1. Solar canals: Power + water protection
What if solar panels did double duty, protecting water supplies while producing more power?
California is developing the United States’ first solar canals, with solar panels built atop some of the state’s water distribution canals. These canals run for thousands of miles through arid environments, where the dry air boosts evaporation in a state frequently troubled by water shortages.
“In a 2021 study, we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California’s canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people,” writes engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. They would also expand renewable energy without taking up farmable land.
Putting solar panels over shaded water can also improve their power output. The cooler water lowers the temperature of the panels by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius), boosting their efficiency, Bales writes.
2. Geothermal power could boost battery supplies
For renewable energy to slash global greenhouse gas emissions, buildings and vehicles have to be able to use it. Batteries are essential, but the industry has a supply chain problem.
Most batteries used in electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are lithium-ion batteries, and most lithium used in the U.S. comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia. China is the leader in lithium processing.
Geologist and engineers are working on an innovative method that could boost the U.S. lithium supply at home by extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region.
Brines are the liquid leftover in a geothermal plant after heat and steam are used to produce power. That liquid contains lithium and other metals such as manganese, zinc and boron. Normally, it is pumped back underground, but the metals can also be filtered out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oYtyEVPGEU8?wmode=transparent&start=0 How lithium is extracted during geothermal energy production. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources.
“If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand,” write geologist Michael McKibben of the University of California, Riverside, and energy policy scholar Bryant Jones of Boise State University.
President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act on March 31, 2022, to provide incentives for U.S. companies to mine and process more critical minerals for batteries.
3. Green hydrogen and other storage ideas
Scientists are working on other ways to boost batteries’ mineral supply chain, too, including recycling lithium and cobalt from old batteries. They’re also developing designs with other materials, explained Kerry Rippy, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Lab.
Concentrated solar power, for example, stores energy from the sun by heating molten salt and using it to produce steam to drive electric generators, similar to how a coal power plant would generate electricity. It’s expensive, though, and the salts currently used aren’t stable at higher temperature, Rippy writes. The Department of Energy is funding a similar project that is experimenting with heated sand. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fkX-H24Chfw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Hydrogen’s challenges, including its fossil fuel history.
Renewable fuels, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, provide a different type of storage. Since they store energy as liquid, they can be transported and used for shipping or rocket fuel.
Hydrogen gets a lot of attention, but not all hydrogen is green. Most hydrogen used today is actually produced with natural gas – a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen, in contrast, could be produced using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, but again, it’s expensive.
“The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical,” Rippy writes. “The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.”
4. Using your EV to power your home
Batteries could also soon turn your electric vehicle into a giant, mobile battery capable of powering your home.
Only a few vehicles are currently designed for vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, but that’s changing, writes energy economist Seth Blumsack of Penn State University. Ford, for example, says its new F-150 Lightning pickup truck will be able to power an average house for three days on a single charge. https://www.youtube.com/embed/w4XLBOnzE6Q?wmode=transparent&start=0 How bidirectional charging allows EVs to power homes.
For example, he writes, “some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call ‘peak shaving’ – drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours.”
5. Capturing carbon from air and locking it away
Another emerging technology is more controversial.
Humans have put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries that just stopping fossil fuel use won’t be enough to quickly stabilize the climate. Most scenarios, including in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, show the world will have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well.
The technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air exists – it’s called direct air capture – but it’s expensive.
Engineers and geophysicists like David Goldberg of Columbia University are exploring ways to cut those costs by combining direct air capture technology with renewable energy production and carbon storage, like offshore wind turbines built above undersea rock formations where captured carbon could be locked away.
The world’s largest direct air capture plant, launched in 2021 in Iceland, uses geothermal energy to power its equipment. The captured carbon dioxide is mixed with water and pumped into volcanic basalt formations underground. Chemical reactions with the basalt turn it into a hard carbonate.
Goldberg, who helped developed the mineralization process used in Iceland, sees similar potential for future U.S. offshore wind farms. Wind turbines often produce more energy than their customers need at any given time, making excess energy available.
“Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment,” Goldberg writes.
Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.
“With everything going on in the world right now, the dual polar climate disasters of 2022 should be the top story”
Scientists expressed shock and alarm this weekend amid extreme high temperatures near both of the Earth’s poles—the latest signs of the accelerating planetary climate emergency.
“This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system.”
Temperatures in parts of Antarctica were 50°F-90°F above normal in recent days, while earlier this week the mercury soared to over 50°F higher than average—close to the freezing mark—in areas of the Arctic.
Stefano Di Battista, an Antarctic climatologist, tweeted that such record-shattering heat near the South Pole was“unthinkable” and “impossible.”
“Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,” di Battista wrote.
The joint French-Italian Concordia research station in eastern Antarctica recorded an all-time high of 10°F on Friday. In contrast, high temperatures at the station this time in March average below -50°F.
Record heat in the Arctic is driving an early melt season and crushing 2022 sea-ice extent: current rank now #4. The Antarctic is even worse.
With everything going on in the world right now, the dual polar climate disasters of 2022 should be the top story. pic.twitter.com/qsi4OAob6L
Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar meteorology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, toldThe Washington Post that “this event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system.”
“This is when temperatures should be rapidly falling since the summer solstice in December,” Wille tweeted. “This is a Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave kind of event,” he added, referring to the record-breaking event in which parts of Canada topped 120°F for the first time in recorded history. “Never supposed to happen.”
Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, toldUSA Today that “you don’t see the North and the South [poles] both melting at the same time” because “they are opposite seasons.”
“It’s definitely an unusual occurrence,” he added.
50 degrees above normal in the North Pole this week, and 50 to 90 degrees above normal in Antarctica. Good lord. https://t.co/bSrodCJdei
As Common Dreams has reported, the Arctic has been warming three times faster than the world as a whole, accelerating polar ice melt, ocean warming, and other manifestations of the climate emergency.
“Looking back over the last few decades, we can clearly see a trend in warming, particularly in the ‘cold season’ in the Arctic,” Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, told the Post. “It’s not surprising that warm air is busting through into the Arctic this year. In general, we expect to see more and more of these events in the future.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by BRETT WILKINS and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“Climate change is here and now,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. “If a 1,200 year mega-drought isn’t enough to make people realize that, I don’t know what is.”
The megadrought which has gripped western U.S. states including California and Arizona over the past two decades has been made substantially worse by the human-caused climate crisis, new research shows, resulting in the region’s driest period in about 1,200 years.
Scientists at University of California-Los Angeles, NASA, and Columbia University found that extreme heat and dryness in the West over the past two years have pushed the drought that began in 2000 past the conditions seen during a megadrought in the late 1500s.
“We’re sort of shifting into basically unprecedented times relative to anything we’ve seen in the last several hundred years.”
The authors of the new study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, followed up on research they had conducted in 2020, when they found the current drought was the second-worst on record in the region after the one that lasted for several years in the 16th century.
Since that study was published, the American West has seen a heatwave so extreme it sparked dozens of wildfires and killed hundreds of people and droughtconditions which affected more than 90% of the area as of last summer, pushing the region’s conditions past “that extreme mark,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The scientists examined wood cores extracted from thousands of trees at about 1,600 sites across the West, using the data from growth rings in ancient trees to determine soil moisture levels going back to the 800s.
They then compared current conditions to seven other megadroughts—which are defined as droughts that are both severe and generally last a number of decades—that happened between the 800s and 1500s.
The researchers estimated that the extreme dry conditions facing tens of millions of people across the western U.S. have been made about 42% more severe by the climate crisis being driven by fossil fuel extraction and emissions.
“The results are really concerning, because it’s showing that the drought conditions we are facing now are substantially worse because of climate change,” Park Williams, a climate scientist at UCLA and the study’s lead author, told the Los Angeles Times.
In the region Williams and his colleagues examined, the average temperature since the drought began in 2000 was 1.6° Fahrenheit warmer than the average in the previous 50 years. Without the climate crisis driving global temperatures up, the West would still have faced drought conditions, but based on climate models studied by the researchers, there would have been a reprieve from the drought in 2005 and 2006.
“Without climate change, the past 22 years would have probably still been the driest period in 300 years,” Williams said in a statement. “But it wouldn’t be holding a candle to the megadroughts of the 1500s, 1200s, or 1100s.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said the new research must push the U.S. Congress to take far-reaching action to mitigate the climate crisis, as legislation containing measures to shift away from fossil fuel extraction and toward renewable energy is stalled largely due to objections from Republicans and right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
“It’s time for Congress to act by making meaningful investments into climate action—before it’s too late,” she said.
Climate change is here and now.
If a 1,200 year mega-drought isn't enough to make people realize that, I don't know what is. It's time for Congress to act by making meaningful investments into climate action — before it's too late.https://t.co/jExzMKUXxr
The drought has had a variety of effects on the West, including declining water supplies in the largest reservoirs of the Colorado River—Lake Mead and Lake Powell— as well as reservoirs across California and the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 96% of the Western U.S. is now “abnormally dry” and 88% of the region is in a drought.
“We’re experiencing this variability now within this long-term aridification due to anthropogenic climate change, which is going to make the events more severe,” Isla Simpson, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not involved in the study released Monday, told the Los Angeles Times.
The researchers also created simulations of other droughts they examined between 800 and 1500, superimposing the same amount of drying driven by climate change. In 94% of the simulations, the drought persisted for at least 23 years, and in 75% of the simulations, it lasted for at least three decades—suggesting that the current drought will continue for a number of years.
Williams said it is “extremely unlikely that this drought can be ended in one wet year.”
“We’re sort of shifting into basically unprecedented times relative to anything we’ve seen in the last several hundred years,” Samantha Stevenson, a climate modeler at the University of California, Santa Barbara who was not involved in the study, told the New York Times.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license
Without more regulation, this will continue,” said one critic. “We need governments and regulatory bodies to step up and put an end to this greenwashing trend.”
A new study out Monday evaluates the public climate pledges made by 25 of the world’s biggest corporations and concludes they “cannot be taken at face value” because the vast majority of firms analyzed are exaggerating the nature of and progress toward their goals—a greenwashing trend that critics say will continue in the absence of stronger regulation.
“Setting vague targets will get us nowhere without real action, and can be worse than doing nothing if it misleads the public.”
Providing further evidence of the fallacies of “net-zero,”the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 finds that net-zero pledges made by several of the world’s largest companies aim to reduce aggregate greenhouse gas emissions across their full value chains by only 40%, at most, from 2019 levels—a far cry from the 100% implied when they claim to be pursuing “carbon neutrality.”
According to the assessment conducted by NewClimate Insitute in collaboration with Carbon Market Watch, just one company’s net-zero pledge was determined to have “reasonable integrity.” Three were deemed to have “moderate integrity,” 10 “low integrity,” and the remaining 11 “very low integrity.”
“We set out to uncover as many replicable good practices as possible, but we were frankly surprised and disappointed at the overall integrity of the companies’ claims,” lead author Thomas Day of NewClimate Institute said in a statement.
“As pressure on companies to act on climate change rises, their ambitious-sounding headline claims all too often lack real substance, which can mislead both consumers and the regulators that are core to guiding their strategic direction,” said Day. “Even companies that are doing relatively well exaggerate their actions.”
The analysis turned up zero pledges with “high integrity.” Maersk came out on top, with “reasonable integrity,” followed by Apple, Sony, and Vodafone with “moderate integrity.”
Meanwhile, the headline pledges of Amazon, Deutsche Telekom, Enel, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, Hitachi, IKEA, Vale, Volkswagen, and Walmart were rated as having “low integrity.” Those of Accenture, BMW Group, Carrefour, CVS Health, Deutsche Post DHL, E.ON SE, JBS, Nestlé, Novartis, Saint-Gobain, and Unilever were considered to have “very low integrity.”
Although all 25 companies examined in the report establish “some form of zero-emission, net-zero, or carbon-neutral target,” the authors note, just three companies—Maersk, Vodafone, and Deutsche Telekom—make clear commitments to decarbonizing 90% of their entire value chains.
By contrast, at least five companies would effectively decrease their emissions by less than 15%, often by excluding “upstream or downstream emissions”—pollution generated by activities indirectly linked to a company.
Day toldThe Guardian that “it’s short-term action that’s the most important thing, in the climate crisis.”
Nevertheless, noted the British newspaper, “the report show[s] that the companies surveyed would only cut their emissions by about 23% on average by 2030, falling far short of the figure of nearly halving in the next decade that scientists say is needed to limit global heating to 1.5ºC.”
Despite the damning findings, some companies doubled down on their claims of progress. In a statement shared with BBC, Amazon said: “We set these ambitious targets because we know that climate change is a serious problem, and action is needed now more than ever. As part of our goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, Amazon is on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025.”
However, Amazon is one of several companies that have donated to right-wing Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), who teamed up with the GOP to torpedo the Build Back Better Act—a piece of legislation that, among other things, would have accelerated the clean energy transition.
According to climate justice advocates, net-zero pledges are inadequate because they are “premised on the notion of canceling out emissions in the atmosphere rather than eliminating their causes.” Because the practice enables powerful entities to continue with business as usual in some places as long as they fund projects that purportedly slash pollution in other places, there is little to no evidence that overall emissions will be sufficiently reduced.
The new study shows how several corporations are inflating the extent of their ambition and progress by taking advantage of ambiguous terms like net-zero and carbon-neutral and by disregarding upstream or downstream emissions.
“Many company pledges are undermined by contentious plans to reduce emissions elsewhere, hidden critical information, and accounting tricks,” states a summary of the report. It continues:
The exclusion of emission sources or market segments is a common issue that reduces the meaning of targets. Eight companies exclude upstream or downstream emissions in their value chain, which usually account for over 90% of the emissions under their control. E.ON may exclude market segments that account for more than 40% of its energy sales; Carrefour appears to exclude locations that account for over 80% of Carrefour branded stores.
24 of 25 companies will likely rely on offsetting credits, of varying quality. At least two-thirds of the companies rely on removals from forests and other biological activities, which can easily be reversed by, for example, a forest fire. Nestlé and Unilever distance themselves from the practice of offsetting at the level of the parent company, but allow and encourage their individual brands to pursue offsetting to sell carbon-neutral labeled products.
Some apparently ambitious targets may lead to very little short-term action. It may be possible for CVS Health to achieve their 2030 emission reduction target with limited additional action, since the target is compared to a base year with extraordinarily high emissions. GlaxoSmithKline may delay the implementation of key emission reduction measures until 2028/2029, ahead of its 2030 target.
As The Guardian reported, “Day said using offsetting tended to obscure whether companies were making genuine progress on cutting their own emissions, or hiding behind offsets to achieve a notional net-zero.”
“It’s better practice not to offset—it’s more transparent and constructive,” said the researcher. “Companies should not be claiming they are net-zero by 2030 unless they are reducing their emissions by 90% by then.”
The failure of so-called “corporate social responsibility” initiatives to deliver on promises to improve the well-being of workers and ecosystems is a longstanding pattern, which is why many progressive critics have called them public relations gimmicks.
According to the new report: “The rapid acceleration of corporate climate pledges, combined with the fragmentation of approaches means that it is more difficult than ever to distinguish between real climate leadership and unsubstantiated greenwashing. This is compounded by a general lack of regulatory oversight at national and sectoral levels. Identifying and promoting real climate leadership is a key challenge that, where addressed, has the potential to unlock greater global climate change mitigation.”
Gilles Dufrasne from Carbon Market Watch said that “misleading advertisements by companies have real impacts on consumers and policymakers.”
“We’re fooled into believing that these companies are taking sufficient action, when the reality is far from it,” said Dufrasne. “Without more regulation, this will continue. We need governments and regulatory bodies to step up and put an end to this greenwashing trend.”
“Companies must face the reality of a changing planet,” he added. “What seemed acceptable a decade ago is no longer enough. Setting vague targets will get us nowhere without real action, and can be worse than doing nothing if it misleads the public.”
In a Monday op-ed, Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann and Climate Communication director Susan Joy Hassol drew attention to the devastation wrought by corporations that have denied facts to delay necessary political-economic transformations—pointing specifically to a 40-year-long disinformation campaign bankrolled by fossil fuel interests.
Much of the damage caused by extreme weather disasters “could have been avoided had we acted decades ago when the scientific community—and indeed fossil fuel industry’s own scientists—recognized we had a problem,” the pair wrote in The Hill. “While the best time to act boldly to prevent climate catastrophe was decades ago, the second-best time is now.”
Given that the 25 firms analyzed account for roughly 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, researchers stressed how important it is for them to quickly adopt and scale up best practices.
“If we are to meet this monumental challenge, we will need to use all the arrows in the quiver,” wrote Mann and Hassol. “We must incentivize the energy industry to move aggressively toward clean, renewable energy.”
They concluded, “There is no time left to waste, and failure is not an option.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
The blizzard that buried Boston under nearly 2 feet of snow in January 2022 was historic, but not a surprise. Over a century of reliable weather records show many of the Northeast’s heaviest snowfalls have occurred since 1990 – including seven of the top 10 in both Boston and New York.
How can the spate of big snowstorms be reconciled with our warming climate? I’m an atmospheric scientist. Let’s look at an important law of physics and some theories that can help explain the changes.
Warmer air, more moisture
First, warmer air can hold more moisture than cold air.
Think of the atmosphere like a sponge. Air holds about 4% more water vapor for each additional degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature (that’s about 7% per degree Celsius). The physical law that explains this relationship is known as the Clausius-Clapyron relation.
This increased atmospheric moisture is helping to intensify the water cycle. The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have become wetter – not just in winter, but in spring, summer and fall, too. In addition to more total precipitation over a season and year, the additional moisture also fuels extreme events, like more intense hurricanes and flooding rains. The Northeast has seen an increase of more than 50% in the heaviest precipitation events in recent decades, the largest increase of any region of the U.S.
In the early 1900s, winters across the Northeast typically averaged around 22 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, 26 degrees is the official new “normal” temperature, defined as the average over 1991-2020. A few recent winters have been over 30.
In the Northeast, then, we have an environment that has warmed yet is often still below freezing. Put another way, regions of the world that are cold enough for snow have warmed enough to now be visited by storms capable of holding and dropping more moisture. Rather than intense downpours like Louisiana has been seeing lately, the region gets heavy snow.
The warming ocean plays a role
The January blizzard was fueled by ocean waters in the western Atlantic that are warmer than normal. That’s also part of a consistent pattern.
The oceans have been absorbing more than 90% of the additional heat attributable to rising atmospheric greenhouse gases from human activities, particularly burning fossil fuels. The oceans now contain more heat energy than any time since measurements began six decades ago.
Scientists are studying whether global warming may be driving a slowing of the ocean conveyor belt of currents that transport water around the globe. Satellite imagery and ocean measurements show that warmer waters have “piled up” along the East Coast, a possible indication of a slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.
Moisture evaporated from ocean water provides much of the energy for both tropical and mid-latitude extra-tropical cyclones, known commonly as nor’easters.
The Arctic influences the snow pattern, too
While tropical storm systems are fueled primarily by warm water, nor’easters gain energy from sharp temperature gradients where cold and warm air masses meet. The frequency of cold air outbreaks is another aspect of climate change that may be contributing to recent increases in extreme snowfall events.
Recent research has suggested that a warming Arctic, including declines in Arctic sea ice and snow cover, is influencing behavior of the polar vortex, a band of strong westerly winds that forms in the stratosphere between about 10 and 30 miles above the Arctic every winter. The winds enclose a large pool of extremely cold air.
Arctic amplification, the enhanced warming to our north, may, paradoxically, be helping to shuttle cold air to the Eastern Seaboard during polar vortex disruptions, where the cold air can interact with warmer, moisture-laden air from the warmer-than-normal western Atlantic Ocean. The most recent stretched polar vortex event helped to bring together key ingredients for the historic blizzard.
For the east coast of North America, as well as Northern Asia, winter temperatures are expected to still be cold enough for storms to bring heavy snow – at least through mid-century. Climate models suggest that extreme snowfalls will become rarer, but not necessarily less intense, in the second half of the century, as more storms produce rain.
The sharp increase in high-impact Northeast winter storms is an expected manifestation of a warming climate. It’s another risk the U.S. will have to prepare for as extreme events become more common with climate change.
