Mark Hand

Study Predicts Major Expansion of Offshore Wind along Atlantic coast

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Almost every state along the Atlantic coast — 12 out of 14 — has offshore wind potential that exceeds its current electricity needs, according to a new study. Bringing the electricity generated by offshore Atlantic wind farms ashore could help meet future electricity demand created by activities — transportation and the heating of homes and businesses — that are currently powered by gasoline, natural gas, and other fossil fuels.

What I Learnt from the 2018 National Peace Symposium

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I asked the Caliph what the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community can do about the moral issue of climate change. He said one of their auxiliary organisations is working on providing renewable energy to poor remote villages in Africa and Asia, as well as clean water projects. This group is apparently called IAAAE and I am going to ask them for an interview to learn more about their work.

Puerto Rico Teenagers take Post-Maria Water Safety into their Own Hands

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Water activist Steve Tamar expected just a dozen students to show up to his citizen-science training at Maricao High School in western Puerto Rico this past October. Instead, the sweltering hot auditorium was packed with teenagers looking to help test the island’s water.

The World in 2018 – Part Four

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In the modern world, our perceptions of reality are largely shaped by economic and financial considerations, and our policy conversations are largely built around intellectual categories and evaluative criteria that pertain to the economics discipline. Yet a long-term view shows that ‘The world in 2018’ is in a significantly different place than what economists typically claim, and than what many of us want to believe.

Nations Won’t Reach Paris Climate Goal Without Protecting Wildlife and Nature, Warns Report

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The Paris Climate Agreement and several other United Nations (UN) pacts “all depend on the health and vitality of our natural environment in all its diversity and complexity,” said Dr. Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the UN-backed organization behind the report. “Acting to protect and promote biodiversity is at least as important to achieving these commitments and to human well-being as is the fight against global climate change.”

Richard Heinberg on Sustainable Nation Podcast

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Richard Heinberg joins Sustainable Nation to discuss:

The current state of energy and its contributions to the climate crisis
The shale gas and tight oil bubble
Community resiliency
The transition to a fossil fuel free future
Recommendations and advice for sustainability leaders

When They Couldn’t Afford Internet Service, They Built Their Own

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In 2016, a coalition of media, tech, and community organizations launched the Equitable Internet Initiative, a project that will result in the construction of wireless broadband internet networks across three underserved Detroit neighborhoods. Leading the initiative is the Detroit Community Technology Project, a digital justice project sponsored by Allied Media Projects.

A Dazzlingly Delicious Taste of the Future in Liége

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The following day, in Louvain-le-Neuve, Olivier de Schutter gave a presentation in which he used the term ‘Partner State’, his vision of the state getting alongside bottom-up community action, allowing the ideas and inspiration to rise up from below, and seeing their role as being to remove obstacles and to help things to flourish.  My strong sense from everyone I spoke to in Liege was that that looks like the very model that is unfolding in Liege.

Oyez Oyez the (Environmental) Courts are Now in Session (Part 2)

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The growing number of legal cases is the result of the failure of the legislative and executive branches to craft a stable framework of environmental protections based upon the overwhelming preponderance of scientific research that even the oil companies have come to accept.

Post Present Future

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I have been running POST PRESENT FUTURE for almost a decade. It’s a simple project where I invite people to write a letter to their future – anything they want as long as it’s to themselves – which they receive in the post five years later. It’s like an alternative post service – just with a five-year delay.

Who are the New Co-op Weavers?

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Today the term ‘thread’ has taken on another meaning and even the Oxford English Dictionary includes a second definition, after sewing and weaving, citing a thread as “a group of linked messages posted on an Internet forum that share a common subject or theme” and it is here, in this new digital domain, that a renewed essence of cooperation is emerging.

Peak Oil Review: 26 March 2018

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The most significant news driving the oil markets last week came from Washington, where major policy and personnel shifts drove the markets down and up last week. Crude posted its biggest weekly gain since July on Friday as President Trump changed his national security team, fueling speculation sanctions on Iran will be re-imposed.