Climate Action Muskoka
Hottest year on record sent planet past 1.5C of heating for first time in 2024
Jan 10, 2025 – the Guardian
… The average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) shows. That is a jump of 0.1C from 2023, which was also a record hot year and represents levels of heat never experienced by modern humans.
The heating is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and the damage to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate around the world until coal, oil and gas are replaced. The Paris agreement target of 1.5C is measured over a decade or two, so a single year above that level does not mean the target has been missed, but does show the climate emergency continues to intensify. Every year in the past decade has been one of the 10 hottest, in records that go back to 1850. – More
Off to a bleak and blazing start
Jan 10, 2025 — Zero Carbon with Chris Hatch
Why climate activists are becoming more radicalized (and why that’s not a bad thing)
Jan 6, 2025 – The Hill – Dana R. Fisher and Hajar Yazdiha, opinion contributors
As we turn the page on the warmest year ever recorded, and the first year we ever surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius of human-induced warming, a vanguard of activists are employing attention-grabbing tactics to draw attention to the climate crisis.
In 2024, they spray painted Stonehenge, held “die-ins,” teach-ins and other actions in front of Citibank HQ, blocked the entrance to the Department of Energy and spray-painted planes on a private airfield. As these performative and disruptive tactics have spread, so too has the criminalization and repression of climate activists.
… Like the struggle for civil rights, the climate movement is fighting to get its battle cry for systemic changes to be heard over the entrenched interests that are clinging to the status quo. So, too, might the climate movement — and its sympathizers — lean into its efforts to ruffle feathers and wake people up.
Find the opinion piece here
Gasoline Vs Electric: Which Has Better Fuel Efficiency?
Low-carbon tech needs much fewer materials than it used to; this matters for resource extraction in the future
Improvements in material efficiency + recycling = super-circularity.
Nov 12, 2024 – Hannah Ritchie – Sustainability by numbers
A solar panel installed in 2004 will be reaching the end of its life sometime this decade. Now, if we could recover most of that silicon (which isn’t common today, but scientists are making progress on methods to recycle it back into silicon suitable for new panels), then theoretically it could be enough to make eight new panels.1 Realistically, recovery rates wouldn’t reach 100%, so let’s assume it’s only 80%—that would still be enough for six new panels.
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A household in Toronto that replaces gas-powered vehicles with equivalent electric versions, installs a heat pump, forgoes natural gas appliances and makes a few other energy efficiency upgrades could save $550 per month. That’s $6,600 per year.
Let’s stop pretending ‘natural’ gas is in any way good for the environment
Nov 7, 2024 – David Miller – C40 Cities
… The fossil-fuel industry – and many Canadian politicians, particularly, but not exclusively, those from Conservative parties – pretend that natural gas is somehow good for the environment as it displaces dirtier coal. Such natural-gas boosters are pushing for this country to export more. But natural gas is not a transition fuel to clean energy in any way whatsoever, and we need to avoid its use everywhere possible if we are going to avoid irreversible climate breakdown, with its huge consequences – environmentally, socially and economically. In fact, from a climate-change perspective, “natural” gas is nearly as dirty as coal, and LNG is even worse. –More