False Solutions to Climate Change: Real Solutions
By Mary Wildfire, Resilience.org
This has been a long tour through the Wonderland of fake solutions to climate change, ideas designed to splash a coat of green paint on Business As Usual so that certain private interests can keep getting richer…and so the rest of us need not be bothered with changing our habits or lifestyle. This won’t do.
False Solutions to Climate Change: Geoengineering
By Mary Wildfire, Resilience.org
Geoengineering refers to proposals for solving the problem of climate change, not by mitigation—that is, reducing emissions and deforestation, the causes of global heating—but instead by the use of new technologies.
False Solutions to Climate Change: Buildings
By Mary Wildfire, Resilience.org
Estimations for the percentage of greenhouse gases emitted by the buildings sector vary wildly. But any assessment should include both the embodied energy involved in constructing new buildings and the energy costs of heating, cooling and lighting buildings.
False Solutions to Climate Change: Agriculture
By Mary Wildfire, Resilience.org
The heart of the conflict between real solutions and false ones is no different here than with other sectors. The false solutions in each sector are aimed at maintaining current power relations. The real ones are aimed at rescuing ecosystems and leading to a better world for all humans and other life forms.
False Solutions to Climate Change: Transportation
By Mary Wildfire, Resilience.org
In the US, transportation is said to be the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. The most common solution put forth is a false one: “we’ll electrify all our cars, maybe our trucks too.” Planes and ships are usually not proposed for replacement by electric versions, but trains are. So what’s wrong with this idea?
False Solutions to Climate Change: Part 1, Electricity
By Mary Wildfire, Resilience.org
There is no time left for barking up one wrong tree after another; no time to waste in false solutions. Hence this series pointing out the fallacies behind such proposals as electrifying everything, carbon trading, geoengineering or switching to “gas—the clean energy fuel!”
Farming on the Wild Side: Review
By Mary Wildfire, Resilence.org
But much of the book is philosophical and applicable almost anywhere, as when they question the war against invasive species, or detail the value of leaving some areas wild, even if the neighbors think it’s unkempt. This allows the native ecology to flourish and work harmoniously, controlling pests, pollinating crops, and preventing erosion. Thus, I recommend this book to anyone looking for ideas on how best to steward their land in the most responsible ways.
Growing a Revolution: Review
By Mary Wildfire, Resilience.org
The good news is that despite the barriers mentioned earlier, conservation agriculture is catching on—it’s just happening more slowly, spreading from the ground up as farmers note that the local weirdo using these practices keeps getting better yields.