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.
Brilliant Economist Thomas Piketty’s Plan to Save the World
Nature, Culture, and Inequality: A Comparative and Historical Perspective
Thomas Piketty, translated by Willard Wood
Other Press (2024)
Oct 7, 2024 – The Tyee – Crawford Kilian
The French economist Thomas Piketty is better known for writing enormous books like 2013’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which went all the way back to the 18th century to show that personal wealth will always increase faster than economic growth, making inequality almost inevitable.
But Piketty can also make a strong case in under 100 pages, as he does in Nature, Culture and Inequality, his latest book out this fall. It’s adapted from a lecture he gave in 2022, and Piketty’s conversational style makes the book highly readable. He offers two key proposals: even highly unequal societies can become more equal (and rich) without violence, and global heating will worsen unless we achieve global equality of wealth.
How climate change inundated a ‘climate haven’
Oct 6, 2024 – Chris Hatch
All the dry stats about climate change can obscure a more fundamental truth: We are fools to court the violence of nature.
It’s one thing to learn that the air holds more moisture as it gets hotter. You may have heard the factoid that the atmosphere holds seven per cent more water vapour for every degree of temperature rise.
That’s the basic thermodynamics. Doesn’t sound like such a big deal. Unless you’re underneath the sky when it spins that moisture together and disgorges it from the heavens.
The sheer volume of water dumped by Hurricane Helene was beyond comprehension. More here
Silent Solar
Sept 16, 2024 – Bill McKibben – The Crucial Years
Solar panels have, over the last months, suddenly gotten so cheap that they’re now appearing in massive numbers across much of the developing world. Without waiting for what are often moribund utilities to do the job, business and home owners are getting on with electrifying their lives, and doing it cleanly.
Scary Times Produce Scary Decisions
Aug 17, 2024 – Mitchell Beer – The Energy Mix Weekender
None of us make our best decisions when we’re in a state of panic. And the worst way to respond to climate change is to assume there’s nothing we can do to slow it down.
A Bit Closer to Holding Big Oil Accountable
May 01, 2024 – Bill McKibben – The Crucial Years
This morning’s fascinating Senate hearing shows the debate continues to progress.
…All the skirmishing that really matters is about gas—it’s the one thing the industry relies on to blunt the rise of its mortal foe, actual clean energy in the form of wind, solar, and batteries. And since California this spring is decisively showing that a modern economy can support itself on that trinity, the battle is growing ever more desperate for big oil. – read more
There’s no such thing as a benign beef farm – so beware the ‘eco-friendly’ new film straight out of a storybook
April 15, 2024 – George Monbiot – the Gaurdian, Opinion
Few illusions reach us earlier than the story of the benign livestock farm. Pre-literate children are repeatedly exposed to farmyard tales. The impression these books and animations create – the animal farm as a place of kindness and harmony – seems extremely hard to shake, regardless of people’s later exposure to the realities of the industry…
Livestock farming ranks with the fossil fuel industry as one of the two most destructive industries on Earth. The whole story
The most epic (and literal) gaslighting of all time.
Exxon–is it possible?–hits a new low
MAR 5, 2024 – Bill Mckibben – The Crucial Years
… Because he explains to his nodding interlocutors that the world “waited too long” to start developing renewables.
…It cost us huge swaths of our planet. We “waited too long.” But never mind, the important thing is that we made “above-average returns.” More
The heat beneath our feet
Feb 18, 2024 – Chris Hatch – Zero Carbon
… But very smart people are rolling them out under whole neighbourhoods in a version of district heating known as a geothermal network, where a few boreholes supply a community, distributing the system cost while providing heating and air conditioning to multiple buildings. In New England, studies show networked geothermal to be cheaper than gas or air-source heat pumps and scalable across the region. – More
Fossil Fuel Advertising Gets Its Tobacco Moment
Feb 11, 2024 – Mitchell Beer – the Energy Mix Weekender
Canadian doctors seem to have touched a raw nerve this week with their support for a private member’s bill calling for a ban on fossil fuel advertising.
We should all be lining up to thank MP Charlie Angus (NDP, Timmins-James Bay) and the small but mighty Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) for what will likely be the most important public health intervention many of us will receive this year.
The news was not well received by the fossil fuel lobby, or the network of alt-right publications that reliably carry its message. You can expect that reaction to amp up in the weeks ahead. – More
Sheet cake as ammunition – In a polarized society, sometimes you can fight a different way
Jan 20, 2024 – BILL MCKIBBEN
So, a question is: can we sometimes conduct politics—even politics about life and death matters like climate change—in a way that doesn’t do further damage to our society? And are there cases where it might be more effective to do it that way?
I’m thinking about this right now because on Thursday my colleagues at Third Act, with other activists, launched a campaign designed to get Costco to pressure its bank—Citi—to stop funding fossil fuel expansion. It’s an interesting fight for several reasons. — More
Electrification is efficiency: The world will need less energy after the transition
Oct 23, 2023 – Hannah Ritchie – Sustainability by numbers
When we electrify our energy systems, a magical thing happens: large inefficiencies vanish. As the International Energy Agency puts it: “Electrification is efficiency”.
In a decarbonised world, our final energy demand is much lower than it is today. A study by the Oxford Professor Nick Eyre suggests it’s about 40% lower.
Read Hannah Ritchie’s Blog – Sustainability by numbers
Cottage colonialism: lakeside property in Ontario –
Sept 12,2023 – Abhishek Wagle – Essays, The Architectural Review
…Known as ‘cottage country’, this rural recreational landscape sits on the edges of a rapid territorial expansion of private property in Ontario. Today, most of the land south of cottage country is privately owned, while most of northern Ontario – 95 per cent by recent metrics – is Crown land, owned and managed by provincial and federal governments. In all of Ontario, less than one per cent is First Nations reserve land.
An Ever-Smaller Board – On which to play the human game
Aug 18, 2023 – BILL MCKIBBEN – substack.com
I didn’t expect to love Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories—a lot of the towns of the far north always seem hunkered down to me, a collection quonset huts braced against the long winter. Yellowknife, though, was charming: I hadn’t been off the airplane three minutes before the northern lights broke through, a green wave cracking across the sky.
I thought fossil fuel firms could change. I was wrong
July 6, 2023 – Christiana Figueres – Aljazeera.com
More than most members of the climate community, I have for years held space for the oil and gas industry to finally wake up and stand up to its critical responsibility in history.
I have done so because I was convinced the global economy could not be decarbonised without their constructive participation and I was therefore willing to support the transformation of their business model.
But what the industry is doing with its unprecedented profits over the past 12 months has changed my mind. – Read Christiana’s Opinion
The kids are alright
How We Can Help the Youth Leading the Climate Fight
June 22, 2023 – Bill McKibben – The Crucial Years
The plaintiffs presented their case over the first week, and it was a doozy. (You can read the daily summaries here). Some of it was testimony from experts on climate and energy—Steven Running, say, emeritus professor at the University of Montana and a team member of NASA’s Earth Observing System… But much of the testimony came from experts on being kids. Grace talked about playing soccer in high school, including how “a lot of practices were smoked out.” … – Read the whole Blog
The hard right and climate catastrophe are intimately linked. This is how
June 15, 2023 – George Monbiot – the Guardian
Round the cycle turns. As millions are driven from their homes by climate disasters, the extreme right exploits their misery to extend its reach. As the extreme right gains power, climate programmes are shut down, heating accelerates and more people are driven from their homes. If we don’t break this cycle soon, it will become the dominant story of our times. – Read George Monbiot’s opinion piece
Canada’s RBC Tops List of Banks Financing the Climate Crisis
April 13, 2023 – By Jonathan Hahn – Sierra Magazine
Fossil fuel companies use loopholes to get billions in financing, according to “Banking on Climate Chaos”
Canada’s biggest lender, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), has a “Climate Commitments” splash page on its website that features pictures of children walking in nature and windmills spinning in the distance.
The fine print on our ‘final warning’
You probably followed some of the news about the big climate science report approved by the world’s governments on Monday. The coverage was alarming enough — “final warning” was a common headline — but if you read the report itself, you will have run across a curious concept called “overshoot.”
You can subscribe to Chris Hatch’s Zero Carbon Newsletter – Sign up.
Investigation needed into foreign election meddling
Foreign-owned corporations are exempt from Elections Act if they list their headquarters in Canada.
March 6, 2023 – Toronto Star – By Gordon Laxer Contributor
Powerful, non-government foreign entities, including foreign-influenced corporations, regularly intervene in our elections. Their meddling is more effective than China’s because they hire Canadian managers, gaily wave the Maple Leaf and seem Canadian. They know how to sway voters better than China’s operatives.
Read the Toronto Star opinion piece
‘It’s inequality that kills’: Naomi Klein on the future of climate justice
Madeleine de Trenqualye interviews Naomi Klein for the Guardian – Naomi Klein’s first book on the climate crisis, This Changes Everything, was published almost a decade ago. She was one of the organisers and authors of Canada’s Leap manifesto, a blueprint for a rapid and justice-based transition off fossil fuels. In 2021, she joined the University of British Columbia as professor of climate justice in the Department of Geography and co-director of Canada’s first Centre for Climate Justice.
If you have never read 350.org’s Bill McKibben’s The Crucial Years blog, we recommend this one, “On the Outside Looking In” published in September, 2022. You can subscribe for free if you like his writing. McKibben is a wonderful activist and writer whose perspective will give you a positive outlook on the future.
Here’s another one just published Feb 17, 2023 – Halfway to a Happy Ending – The climate denier is gone at the World Bank; now we need a climate champion.
Margaret Atwood – Jan 22,2023
Will Douglas claim riches and power by seizing the Magic Greenbelt, only to lose his Superpowers? Thrills! Action! Amateur drawing!
Yes, kids, it’s Comix Time! The backstory: Our Hero, Douglas (admonished previously in these pages, more than once, scroll down) wishes to claim the Magic Greenbelt as his, all his.
Visions of fusion danced in our heads
Chris Hatch, Zero Carbon
,,,An astounding number of holy grails were found this week in the headlines and commentary of the world’s news media. It was hard to miss the appetite for salvation, and it was served with a side of absolution.
THE NATURE STORIES OF DAVID J. HAWKE
David J. Hawke – Click for more