Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Claims that existing (or augmented) patterns of urbanism are more pro-social and pro-nature than rural alternatives appeal to people’s contrarian nature. And since most people live in urban areas, especially in the rich countries, it also tells them what they want to hear…
The Oil Kills uprising and fellow movements around the world have placed their bodies between those tankers and our shared future to say, “here, and no further.”
My research focuses on the economic and environmental costs and benefits of producing electricity. Here’s how the clean energy transition is changing the role of peaker plants and some other options for keeping the lights on during peak demand periods.
The way popular understandings of economics shape our ability to accurately perceive the role of government in the fracking boom is an extremely complex and nuanced problem. The small facet I attempt to tackle here is the role of our belief in the free market. I
We are stretching the material and labor limits of this planet to capacity merely to increase the complexity of our production methods, not to increase production, not to better meet our needs, not to create abundance or well-being for any body.
Retrofitting modern cities and their glass towers for better heat control isn’t simple, but there are techniques that can be adapted to new designs for living better in hotter and drier climates and for relying less on constant summer air conditioning. These ancient civilizations can teach us how.
Given the basically non-existent ‘transition’ into clean energy outlined in my previous post which is failing to meet even existing needs for energy, the vast increase in renewable electricity generation that would be required to fund the additional energy demands of manufactured food if it’s to play any major part in a sustainable future makes this technology a non-starter as a mass food approach.
The Southern Company has an official target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 — but its regional affiliates disclaim any responsibility toward achieving that goal, leaving open the question of how the company as a whole can decarbonize while its subsidiaries are building new fossil infrastructure and delaying the retirement of existing coal plants.
The only effective way currently available for emissions reductions from aviation to align with the 2015 Paris Agreement limits, is through a dramatic reduction in the number flights — an action not seriously addressed in the government’s transport emissions reduction roadmap.
The energy transition represents the opportunity of a lifetime to invest in a more equitable and resilient future.
But we all need to understand: this is a fight for survival in which cooperation and sacrifice are required, just as in total war. Until we feel that level of shared urgency, there will be no real energy transition, and little prospect for a desirable human future.
The incident offers a rare window into some of the inner workings of private oil companies while also revealing how taxpayers can wind up paying enormous subsidies to carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) operations that generate far more climate-altering pollution than they prevent.
