Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The problem with the recent IPCC report is that it is still talking about ‘average’ changes over the earth, discussing what might happen decades from now as a result of increased rate of change. Even if the message is labeled “code red” or urgent, it is still understating what is already happening.
Earth has warmed 1.09℃ since pre-industrial times and many changes such as sea-level rise and glacier melt are now virtually irreversible, according to the most sobering report yet by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
CAT began life as an off-grid test-bed community for experimenting with alternative types of technology and lifestyles in response to the 1970s oil crisis and an emerging concern about the environmental impacts of how we lived.
In the best case, we will go through a transitional period in which we shrink our population and energy/materials usage while minimizing casualties and preserving the best of what we humans have achieved in these last few decades of anomalous energy abundance.
When advocates support NZ2050 they are tacitly supporting a dangerous agenda leading up to COP 26 in Glasgow that will codify an unsustainable pathway with continuing high fossil fuel use, dangerous “offset” trade-offs, and unacceptable risks of unstoppable climate warming.
As areas like California and Texas struggle amid wildfires, extreme freezes, high winds and other challenges, and take measures to keep the lights on, it’s worth pausing to consider what “resilient” and “reliable” grid power means from the perspective of grid planning.
From devastating wildfires to rising methane emissions, Earth’s vital signs are continuing to deteriorate, scientists warn.
Many model pathways designed to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement rely heavily on large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR), also known as “negative emissions”.
Of course, Afghanistan has no oil, and this much was known. But in the 1990s the oil reserves of the Caspian region, adjacent to Afghanistan, had been the object of a game of aggrandizing that led to exaggerating their extent at least of an order of magnitude.
The companies that used to spend millions to deny that climate change even existed, now, since it is no longer possible to cover up the elephant in the room, seek to promote these doubts about the origin of it, emphasizing that the earth has always changed, that it is no big deal, etc.
Reduction and removal of direct emissions from across all modes cannot be addressed by considering individual modes in isolation. A whole system view is critical—and this report offers an important contribution to this.
The fossil fuel industry has been exceptionally proficient at delaying actions which would curb our appetite for fossil fuels or which would actually address climate change by dramatically reducing carbon emissions.
