The big climate question: Can we sever the link between CO2 and economic growth?
Brad Plumer, Vox
Historically, there’s been a tight relationship between economic growth and the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change. As the world’s economy expands, we’ve built more power plants and factories and driven more cars and trucks. That’s long meant burning more coal, gas, and oil.
If we ever hope to stop global warming, we’ll have to sever that relationship — and figure out how to have economic growth while reducing emissions. (Alternatively, we could halt economic growth, but no one wants that.)
That’s why a preliminary announcement last week by the International Energy Agency raised so many eyebrows. The agency reported that in 2014, the world’s economy grew 3 percent. Yet CO2 emissions from energy sources actually stayed flat, compared with the previous year. It’s the first time that has happened in over 40 years of record-keeping…
All oil is bad, but some is worse. Here’s the difference.
John Light, Grist
Though all oils are dirty, some are dirtier than others. High-profile case in point: the Canadian tar sands. The fact that tar-sands oil is one of the filthiest oils in the world has helped fuel the debate around the Keystone XL pipeline.
The good folks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace thought someone had better analyze which oils were a bad idea to extract, and which oils were a really, really, really bad idea to extract. CEIP teamed up with Stanford and the University of Calgary to develop an oil-climate index; the result of their work is documented in a new report titled “Know Your Oil.”
The team found that there’s at least an 80 percent difference in greenhouse gas emissions per barrel between the worst oil researchers looked at and the least worse. The worst, by the way, is Suncor Synthetic H — unsurprisingly, a type of tar-sands crude from Alberta. The least damaging oil they looked at is from the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan…
“Energy wasted by design”
Craig Morris, Energytransition.de
In 1985, German researchers at a newly founded institute called Öko-Institut published a book called “The Energiewende is possible” investigating why no progress had been made since the original proposal five years earlier. Craig Morris says the book’s analysis can be summed up in one word: brilliant.
The book speaks to us from a far-gone era, in which monthly hookup fees for household electricity were based on the number of rooms in an apartment. Nowadays, all German households can switch power providers on a monthly basis and choose from different monthly connection fees. So is the 30-year-old book outdated?
Far from it. The book itself reviews the history of Germany’s energy sector back to around 1900 to “show how it can be changed and what interests have dominated.” The investigation is not just academic, but political: “We aim to encourage citizens to get involved in a ‘bottom-up energy policy’ and redesign for-profit energy supply in their interest.”..
SolarCity, a Vocal Critic of the Utility Industry, Joins It
Diane Cardwell, New York Times
As SolarCity, the rooftop solar system provider, has rapidly expanded its reach over the last few years, its executives have pushed hard against the utility industry, criticizing it as a hidebound monopoly standing in the way of change.
Now, SolarCity officials are trying a different tactic: moving into that business themselves.
On Monday, company executives plan to announce a program aimed at cities, remote communities, campuses and military bases under which they will design and operate small, independent power networks called microgrids. While the move will not turn the company into, say, Con Edison overnight, it represents a step in that direction…
Wind Could Power 35 Percent of U.S. Electricity by 2050
Bobby Magill and Climate Central via Scientific American
Wind power in the U.S. has grown significantly over the last decade, with Americans using three times as much wind power as seven years ago and wind now provides about 4.5 percent of the nation’s electricity.
The U.S. Department of Energy believes those numbers can grow a lot more, projecting that wind turbines could supply as much as 35 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050.
That is the conclusion of a new report released Thursday by the DOE. “Wind Vision: A New Era for Wind Power in the United States,” draws a roadmap for how carbon-free wind power can become one of America’s leading sources of energy as the country looks for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change…
Oil Company Lease Stirs Revolt in Green Seattle
Kirk Johnson, New York Times
The environmental messaging never stops here, whether from a city-owned electric utility that gets nearly 98 percent of its power from sources untainted by carbon (and is not about to let residents forget it) or the fussy garbage collectors who can write tickets for the improper sorting of recyclables.
So when a lease was signed allowing Royal Dutch Shell, the petrochemical giant, to bring its Arctic Ocean drilling rigs to the city’s waterfront, the result was a kind of civic call to arms. A unanimous City Council lined up alongside the mayor to question the legality of the agreement with the Port of Seattle, a court challenge was filed by environmental groups, and protesters, in bluster or bluff, vowed to block the rigs’ arrival — though the exact timetable is secret, for security reasons — with a flotilla of kayaks in Elliott Bay…
Watch Four Years of Oil Drilling Collapse in Seconds
Tom Randall, Julian Burgess, and Blacki Migliozzi, Bloomberg
The crash in oil prices kicked off intense debate over when, and how, American producers would react. So far they’re still cranking out oil, but there are signs that a slowdown is looming. Chief among them: the record drop-off in drilling for new oil. The animation below shows the deployment of drilling rigs since 2011, culminating recently in a sudden collapse.
Click image to view animation
Arctic sea ice hit a record low this winter. Here’s why it matters.
Brad Plumer, Vox
As the planet heats up, the Arctic Ocean’s vast expanse of sea ice keeps shrinking. On Thursday, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced an ominous new milestone. Usually Arctic sea ice, made of frozen seawater floating in the ocean, expands in the cold winter months, reaching a "maximum" around February or March. But this year, the winter maximum appears to be the lowest on record…
California has just one year of water left
Michelle Kennedy Hogan, Inhabitat
California is drying up and it’s happening faster than you think. The Los Angeles Times reports that January of this year was the driest on record since 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are also at an all-time low and according to NASA satellites, all of the water in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins—all of it—is 34 million acre-feet below normal. Reports indicated that, last year, California had approximately two years of water remaining, and the water depletion is right on schedule, as estimates now suggest that just one year of water is left in the coastal state….
UN calls for action as global water crisis looms/b>
Staff, Deutsche Welle
In its annual World Water Development Report released on Friday, the world body said if current trends of water usage continue, the demand for water will exceed its replenishment by 40 percent by 2030.
The report said the rise in the world’s population by some 80 million people per year was one of the main factors behind this looming global water deficit, with the current population of some 7.3 billion likely to reach 9.1 billion by 2050.
The increase in the number of people on the planet means that agriculture, which already uses some 70 percent of water resources globally – a figure that rises to over 90 percent in most of the world’s least-developed countries, will have to step up output by some 60 percent, the report said.
It said climate change, which will affect rainfall patterns, and growing urban populations across the world will also exacerbate water shortages, with global demand for water likely to rise by 55 percent by 2050…
Farming Africa’s wet savannahs would have a high climate cost, study warns
Robert McSweeney, Carbon Brief
As the global population rises, some scientists have suggested that Africa’s wet savannahs could be ideal for growing the extra crops needed to meet the growing demand for food and bioenergy.
But it isn’t quite the solution it seems, according to new research. The idea that Africa can provide food and biofuels while keeping emissions low "does not add up", the researchers say…
A Terrifying, Fascinating Timelapse of 30 Years of Human Impact on Earth
Emily Badger, CityLab
A new interactive project from Google, NASA and the US Geological Survey.
Landsat images taken between 1984 and 2012 have been converted into a seamless, navigable animation built from millions of satellite photos. As Google wrote this morning on its blog: "We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public."…
You can also zoom in to any spot on the planet – your hometown, the Amazon, your favorite Chinese mega-city – and watch the same three-decade timelapse unroll. Good luck getting anything done for the rest of the day.
Twist on carbon footprinting ‘could unblock’ UN climate talks
Megan Darby, RTCC
Scientists have proposed a new way of counting countries’ carbon emissions that redraws the map of responsibility for climate change. It is carbon footprinting with a twist. As with the conventional method, countries are responsible for emissions from imported goods. But the figures are adjusted to reflect the fact some exporters use cleaner technology than others. By this measure, the European Union clearly outperforms the US, having improved its carbon efficiency at home. Among emerging economies, Brazil compares favourably to China, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change.
CO2 cuts claim sees ministers challenged by experts
Roger Harrabin, BBC
The UK government’s claim to lead the world in cuts of carbon emissions has been challenged by researchers.
UK emissions are rising overall because current calculations omit pollution from goods imported from countries like China, Leeds University experts say.
But the government says it follows internationally agreed rules on CO2 accounting.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is to publish the analysis on its website later.
But the Leeds report’s authors say the UK’s long-term CO2 targets would have to be tightened if Britain took responsibility for the extra emissions stimulated by the demand from British consumers for overseas goods.
The analysis shows that CO2 emissions produced within the UK fell 194 million tonnes in 2012 compared with 1990…
The word-hoard: Robert Macfarlane on rewilding our language of landscape
Robert Macfarlane, The Guardian
For decades the leading nature writer has been collecting unusual words for landscapes and natural phenomena – from aquabob to zawn. It’s a lexicon we need to cherish in an age when a junior dictionary finds room for ‘broadband’ but has no place for ‘bluebell’…
‘Green The Church’ Seeks To Mobilize Black Churches On Climate Change
Kate Sheppard, Huffington Post
Leaders of the "Green The Church" movement launched a new effort this week to help 1,000 African-American congregations take action on climate change.
Green The Church, its organizers said, "aims to bring the benefits of sustainability directly to black communities." It includes a partnership between Green For All, the California-based environment and social justice organization, and the U.S. Green Building Council, which will work with churches on renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. It also seeks to "tap into the power of the African-American church as a moral leader and a force for social change," through education and outreach to millions of black church-goers across the country…
Farmland Without Farmers
Wendell Berry, The Atlantic
The landscapes of our country are now virtually deserted. In the vast, relatively flat acreage of the Midwest now given over exclusively to the production of corn and soybeans, the number of farmers is lower than it has ever been. I don’t know what the average number of acres per farmer now is, but I do know that you often can drive for hours through those corn-and-bean deserts without seeing a human being beyond the road ditches, or any green plant other than corn and soybeans. Any people you may see at work, if you see any at work anywhere, almost certainly will be inside the temperature-controlled cabs of large tractors, the connection between the human organism and the soil organism perfectly interrupted by the machine. Thus we have transposed our culture, our cultural goal, of sedentary, indoor work to the fields. Some of the “field work,” unsurprisingly, is now done by airplanes.
This contact, such as it is, between land and people is now brief and infrequent, occurring mainly at the times of planting and harvest. The speed and scale of this work have increased until it is impossible to give close attention to anything beyond the performance of the equipment. The condition of the crop of course is of concern and is observed, but not the condition of the land. And so the technological focus of industrial agriculture by which species diversity has been reduced to one or two crops is reducing human participation ever nearer to zero. Under the preponderant rule of “labor-saving,” the worker’s attention to the work place has been effectively nullified even when the worker is present. The “farming” of corn-and-bean farmers—and of others as fully industrialized—has been brought down from the complex arts of tending or husbanding the land to the application of purchased inputs according to the instructions conveyed by labels and operators’ manuals…
