Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Last month, California’s politicians agreed a new cap-and-trade bill to help curb the state’s emissions. This week, governor Jerry Brown signed it into law, representing a major step forward in the state’s effort to combat climate change. “Cap and trade” requires large emitters such as power plants, refineries and factories to buy permits for the greenhouse gases they release.
In a recent post I extolled public transit as a way to cut personal fuel use, emissions and expenses, for those few Americans who can use it. But I had to think hard about that view after reading two well reasoned rebuttals, from Paul in Madison, Wisconsin, and Vince in Austin, Texas.
The implications for the future of the global economy will not be pretty — but if we face up to it, the transition to more sustainable societies will be all the better for facing reality, rather than continuing with our heads in the sand.
British Petroleum (BP) publishes its Statistical Review of World Energy, venting out a few catchy phrases that the mainstream media mindlessly repeats. This time the catch-phrase was: “overall energy consumption is growing faster than renewable energies put together”. This discourse is naturally convenient to those set on promoting fossil fuels and/or detracting renewable energy. But is BP really a trustworthy source on the matter?
There is a very real trade-off between the rate at which we address climate change and the amount of economic growth we can expect during the transition to a low-carbon economy, but most economic models insufficiently address this trade-off, and thus are incapable of assessing the transition.
The history of the earth system is normally described in terms of a series of time subdivisions defined by discrete (or “punctuated”) stratigraphic changes in the geological record, mainly in terms of biotic composition. The most recent of these subdivisions is the proposed “Anthropocene,” a term related to the strong perturbation of the ecosystem created by human activity.
Pennsylvania’s Environmental Hearing Board today ordered Sunoco Pipeline LP to temporarily halt some types of work on a $2.5 billion pipeline project designed to carry 275,000 barrels a day of butane, propane, and other liquid fossil fuels from Ohio and West Virginia, across Pennsylvania, to the Atlantic coast.
Europe has been the global leader in energy transition for decades, offering to the rest of the world many useful examples of both policies that work and those that don’t. As a result, European countries now have some of the world’s most energy efficient economies, and the largest shares of renewable energy.
This is the second and final part of a recent conversation with Richard Heinberg by Greening the Apocalypse. Greening the Apocalypse is a weekly show on Melbourne’s Triple R 102.7FM.
Global investment in coal-fired power plants is set to decline “dramatically” after passing an all-time high during the past several years, says the International Energy Agency (IEA). That’s one of the most striking messages from World Energy Investment 2017, published today (11th July). The report, now in its second year, offers a comprehensive picture of energy investment from fossil-fuel extraction through to transport, energy efficiency and power networks.
The Greening the Apocalypse team talk peak oil with Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow with the Post Carbon Institute. This is the first of a two part interview.
Richard Heinberg joins Juliet Jacobs at BFM radio to discuss realistic avenues for transitioning to renewable energy, the environmental implications of economic growth, and how we can build more resiliency into the sustainability movement.
