Resilience Roundup – June 19

June 19, 2015

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A roundup of news, views and ideas from the main stream press and the blogosphere.  Click on the headline link to see the full article.


This Big Texas City Will Soon Be Powered Entirely By Wind And Sun

Ari Phillips, Climate Progress
There’s a fast-growing city in Texas that also has one of the most progressive energy programs in the country — and it’s not Austin.

Located about 30 miles north of the Texas capital in a deeply conservative county, the city of Georgetown will be powered 100 percent by renewable energy within the next couple years. Georgetown’s residents and elected officials made the decision to invest in two large renewable energy projects, one solar and one wind, not because they reduced greenhouse gas emissions or sent a message about the viability of renewable energy — but because it just made sense, according to Mayor Dale Ross…

By bringing nearly 150 megawatts of wind energy from north Texas and another 150 megawatts of solar from far west Texas, Georgetown is taking full advantage of what the Lone Star State has to offer. And in doing so, it is getting some of the cheapest, most reliable, and most sustainable energy in the country…


Radical Ecological Democracy: A Path Forward for India and Beyond

Ashish Kothari , The Great Transition
The search is on for sustainable and equitable alternatives to the dominant economic development model, and the emerging concept and practice of “radical ecological democracy” can contribute to this search. This new framework places the goals of direct democracy, local and bioregional economies, cultural diversity, human well-being, and ecological resilience at the core of its vision. It arises from the myriad grassroots initiatives that have sprung up in India and other parts of the world. Although efforts to amplify and spread such a paradigm face the enormous challenge of overcoming the resistance of entrenched institutions and mindsets, current practice suggests opportunities for making progress. Ultimately, the wide embrace of radical ecological democracy will require the spread of the core values underlying the framework, a transition guided not only by hard-headed rationality but also by a strong ethical and emotional foundation…


This Small Town Shows Why The Trans-Pacific Partnership Could Be A Disaster For American Workers

Peter Cole, In These Times
Every time politicians look to pass a new free trade agreement like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), they reassure the American people that this time around, workers will be protected. But my research on and experiences in a small industrial town in Illinois—not to mention even a cursory glance at the broader data on the impact of such deals—reveals that “free trade” has been a nightmare for most of the American people. And Galesburg, Illinois—which, oddly enough, has a long-standing history with President Obama—is a poster child for why free trade deals are a problem rather than a solution to the precarious reality experienced by most working- and middle-class Americans.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton worked largely with Republicans in Congress to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that drastically reduced tariffs and other “trade barriers” intended to spur greater cross-border trade and investment. However, as billionaire-turned-presidential candidate Ross Perot famously said at the time, “If this agreement is signed as it is currently drafted, the next thing you will hear will be a giant sucking sound as the remainder of our manufacturing jobs—what’s left after the two million that went to Asia in the 1980s—get pulled across our southern border.”

Sadly for American workers, Perot—and the Democratic Congressional majority who voted against the treaty—were right. Even President Obama has admitted that NAFTA resulted in massive job losses for American workers when corporations made the economically rational choice and moved production to Mexico, where the wages were much lower and governmental regulation of industry (think clean air and water) much less stringent.

Now, for the past few years and almost entirely in secret, the Obama Administration has been negotiating with a dozen other Pacific Rim nations to create a mammoth new “free trade” zone, named the TPP. The Administration asserts that the TPP will “expand opportunity for American workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses.” According to this “logic,” further lowering trade barriers (already much lower than before the 1990s) will increase American exports and, hence, American jobs…


‘It’s going to be bad, whatever happens’: Greece on edge as eurozone exit looms

Jon Henley, The Guardian
“Everybody’s doing it,” said Joanna Christofosaki, in front of a Eurobank cash dispenser in the leafy Athens neighbourhood of Kolonaki. “Our friends have all done it. Nobody wants their money to be worthless tomorrow. Nobody wants to be unable to get at it.”

A researcher in the archaeology department at the Academy of Athens, Christofosaki said she knew plenty of people who had “€10,000 somewhere at home” and plenty of others who chose to keep their stash at the office. Was she among them? “If I was, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”

It was not too hard, in central Athens’ plushest district on Tuesday, to find people worried that the latest breakdown of talks between Greece and its creditors over a new aid-for-reforms deal may have implications for the security – and accessibility – of their savings…


TED Talk: How to Reimagine the Streets of the Future with Janette Sadik-Khan

Janette Sadik-Khan, TED
TED Talk: How to Reimagine the Streets of the Future with Janette Sadik-Khan


The latest global temperature data are breaking records

John Abraham, The Guardian
Just today, NASA released its global temperature data for the month of May 2015. It was a scorching 0.71°C (1.3°F) above the long-term average. It is also the hottest first five months of any year ever recorded. As we look at climate patterns over the next year or so, it is likely that this year will set a new all-time record. In fact, as of now, 2015 is a whopping 0.1°C (0.17°F) hotter than last year, which itself was the hottest year on record.

Below, NASA’s annual temperatures are shown. Each year’s results are shown as black dots. Some years are warmer, some are cooler and we never want to put too much emphasis on any single year’s temperature. I have added a star to show where 2015 is so far this year, simply off the chart. The last 12 months are at record levels as well. So far June has been very hot as well, likely to end up warmer than May…


West Coast Grange Wars: A Reborn Farmers’ Movement Takes on Corporate Agriculture

John Collins, In These Times
As more and more grocery shoppers refuse to write-off the origins of their food as some unsolvable whodunit, a network of sustainability minded, locally oriented farmers are working to connect those people to calories from known sources. For such farmers, and those in the communities that support them, the local Grange is a well-established ally.

Jay Sexton is Master at Mary’s River Grange #685 in Philomath, Oregon. A member of that Grange for six years, he is also the current director of the Oregon State Grange Agriculture Committee, working to advance Grange policies and promote agriculture awareness. Reminding the general public that we all depend on agriculture for the food we eat has been no small part of the organization’s mission for the last 148 years.

“The Grange has an interesting history,” says Sexton, “not just with the ups and downs of membership, but with how closely it’s been tied to big agriculture.”…


Pope Francis is actually bringing America’s environmentalism movement to its religious and moral roots

Mark Stoll, Washington Post
Pope Francis is set to publish “Laudato Si’: On the Care of Our Common Home” on Thursday, the first encyclical on the environment by any pope. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and many others have expressed hopes the encyclical will put the moral weight of a popular pope and the world’s largest Christian church behind meaningful action on environmental problems, such as global warming.

What most Americans seem to have forgotten is that the link between religion and environment is not recent. The relationship between religion and environment goes back centuries, but the original moral and religious inspiration for conservation and environmentalism was forgotten during environmentalism’s heyday in the ’70s….

The encyclical should remind us of American environmentalism’s own intensely religious and moral roots, which have mostly been forgotten since the 1960s.

The very issues that Francis will emphasize — sin, the common good, and the harm that greedy exploitation causes society — inspired conservation and environmentalism from their earliest beginnings. Their roots, however, were in the social and religious teachings, not of the Catholic Church, but of Calvinist churches, such as Congregationalism and Presbyterianism…


The Carbon Brief Interview: Dr Fatih Birol

Simon Evans, Carbonbrief
Dr Fatih Birol is the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, and is responsible for its World Energy Outlook publication. He is also chairman of the World Economic Forum’s energy advisory board. Before joining the IEA in 1995, he worked at the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna. Birol will take over as chief executive of the IEA in September.

On renewables and coal: "Renewables will be, if the INDCs [ Intended Nationally Determined Contributions] are implemented, in 2030 the first fuel in terms of providing electricity. Efficiency improvements accelerate by a factor of three, which is extremely important and we see that the coal consumption gets strong downward trend."

On current climate pledges: "The INDCs will not bring us there, where we want to go. They are far from bringing us to our 2C scenario."

On banning some coal plants: "The first area in terms of coal we should focus would be to ban inefficient coal-fired power plants and this can save a lot of emissions and this is not out of reach."

On carbon capture and storage: "Without having a significant carbon price in many countries it will be difficult to see CCS having an important market share."

On oil demand projections: "People who want to look at the future, need to look at the efficiency policies and their impact on the demand growth much more closely."

On a 100% renewable future: "If it is tomorrow, that’s wishful thinking. But if it’s in the very future, it is definitely feasible, and it is also something that I would like to see."…


Coal crash: how pension funds face huge risk from climate change

Damian Carrington and Caelainn Barr, The Guardian
The pension funds of millions of people across the world, including teachers, public sector workers, health staff and academics in the UK and US, are heavily exposed to the plummeting coal sector, a Guardian analysis has revealed.

It has also found that just a dozen people, including the owner of Chelsea FC, Roman Abramovich, own coal reserves equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of China, the world’s biggest polluter. The UN, which advocates a shift to clean energy, has more than $100m (£65m) invested in coal through its own pension fund.

The Guardian examined the ownership of the biggest 50 publicly traded coal companies, ranked by the reserves of the fossil fuel they hold. If burned, these reserves would produce the equivalent of more than 10 years of global emissions. This alone could push the planet past beyond the 2C of climate change deemed dangerous by the world’s governments…


Map: Here’s where the world is running out of groundwater

Brad Plumer, Vox
Some of the world’s most important farming regions rely on freshwater from large underground aquifers that have filled up slowly over thousands of years. Think of the Central Valley aquifer system in California. Or the Indus basin in Pakistan and India. This groundwater is particularly valuable when rain is scarce or during droughts.

But that groundwater won’t necessarily last forever. New data from NASA’s Grace satellites suggests that 13 of the world’s 37 biggest aquifers are being seriously depleted by irrigation and other uses much faster than they can be recharged by rain or runoff. And, disturbingly, we don’t even know how much water is left in these basins. That’s according to a new paper in Water Resources Research.

The map below gives an overview. In all, there were 21 major groundwater basins — in red, orange, and yellow — that lost water faster than they could be recharged between 2003 and 2013. The 16 major aquifers in blue, by contrast, gained water during that period. Click to enlarge:

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(UC Irvine/NASA)

News clippings image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org with permission.

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