Here’s a fascinating video on nuclear energy as it applies to climate change mitigation, forwarded to me by a member of the “pro-nuke” group of which I’m a part. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
There are a few things that stood out in my mind: (more…)
Garrison Keillor’s article in today’s Washington Post on Trump’s victory
is amusing, to be sure, though it’s hard to know what to do with his main message, i.e., it’s the Republican’s baby now; progressives can sit back and catch up on their reading and work on cleaning out their garages.
IMO, the world has never seen anyone who could use the language so simply, directly and pointedly. (more…)
The Environmental Protection Agency reports that most electronic equipment with no further useful operating life (aka “e-waste”) isn’t really waste at all—it’s actually usable, marketable equipment and parts. In 2009, only 25 percent of discarded electronics (think computers and TVs) were collected for recycling, and only eight percent of cell phones were recycled. That is a lot of usable material put into the waste stream that could be kept out of landfills and used to reduce manufacturing costs and materials. Green your tech use with responsible electronics recycling. (more…)
Here’s another example of a phenomenon so plentiful in cleantech: it’s doable, but there are no economic reasons that it will ever be done. It’s a battery system that is built by taking carbon dioxide, perhaps from a point source like a fossil-fuel electric station or a concrete manufacturing plant–or even atmospheric CO2, to create batteries whose electrodes are made from carbon nanotubes.
In the process of coming up with the couple of dozen solid cleantech investment opportunities that I support, I’ve looked at many hundreds of concepts that lie in this camp. Interesting but irrelevant.
Pictured here, Annie Leonard of “The Story of Stuff” fame, now the executive director of Greenpeace USA, writes: I’m going to get straight to the point. Donald Trump’s presidency poses an enormous threat to our climate, our environment, and our democracy. That means that over the next four years, we will have to band together like never before to keep fighting for change. (more…)
President Trump. Wow, it hurts just to type those words. Readers hoping for an upbeat take on the presidential election will have to look elsewhere, for instance, to the Natural Resources Defense Council, which wrote this morning:
Shock and disappointment. Like you, that’s how all of us here at NRDC are feeling after witnessing last night’s election results. Hillary Clinton, a climate champion, lost. Donald Trump, who embraces fossil fuels, has vowed to roll back the Paris accord and calls climate change a hoax, has won. Feeling shell-shocked is an appropriate response. But we will not let that shock linger or, worse yet, turn to despair. (more…)
Climate change is a complex phenomenon, so much so that it may never be possible to list all of its eventual effects. And admittedly, not all of them will be bad. In addition to the storms, droughts, famines, extinctions, etc., there will undoubtedly be a few advantages to a warmer Earth. Though no one believes that climate change will have a net benefit, we often hear of people who point to things like a longer growing season in Canada or reduced costs of shipping goods from Asia to North America due to the loss of Arctic ice (by 2040, there won’t be a single cube of ice in the Arctic Ocean in summer). (more…)
Let’s not mince words. The enormous show of government force being applied to silence protesters’ exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly in North Dakota is nothing short of appalling. Replete with attack dogs and rubber bullets (see pic), this brutality has, for good reason, garnered a great deal of international rebuke.
But there’s another, equally interesting way of looking at this struggle. Why is the pipeline needed, in an economic context in which we have more oil than we need? We know who loses from the construction of the pipeline: the local indigenous people and the environment at large. But who benefits? Here’s an interesting analysis.
Solar energy is a huge power resource all over the world, because as of last year solar power generates more than 1% of the electricity demand globally. That is no easy feat to achieve, because power generation market still is ruled by non renewables like oil, coal and natural gas. (more…)
It seems sure that virtually every form of renewable energy will eventually wind up playing a role–somewhere. Just like the U.S. has wind in the Great Plains, solar in the Southwest and biomass in the Deep South, each part of the world has its own unique set of resources–and challenges–with respect to replacing fossil fuels with clean power. (more…)
