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Ratheesh Pisharody writes: A classic method of avoiding personal sacrifice is to explore “alternatives”. The individual thought behind this is simple. “Can I keep sitting on my privileges by pretending to make a dramatic change with sufficient optics and industry backing, but with no personal cost/effort?”. And the pop-icon of “alternatives” is the electric car.
The task of explaining the wider issues associated with air conditioning is a daunting task as the weather gets warmer. In ‘Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)’, author Stan Cox shows how indoor climate control is colliding with an out-of-control outdoor climate.
From Ecohustler: Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest luxury cruise operator, emits 10 times more air pollution than all of Europe’s cars, says a new study. Carnival’s cruise ships emitted nearly 10 times more sulphur oxide around European coasts than did all 260 million European cars in 2017, a new analysis by Transport & Environment reveals.
Limiting global warming to 1.5C requires strictly limiting the total amount of carbon emissions between now and the end of the century. However, there is more than one way to calculate this allowable amount of additional emissions, known as the “carbon budget”. In this article, Carbon Brief assesses nine new carbon budget estimates released recently.
From Financial Times: Antarctica is changing fast, including sections of the massive ice sheet that covers it. This holds so much water that if it ever melted completely, global sea levels would rise by nearly 60m. The race to understand Antarctica has become more urgent. Also watch, the documentary ‘The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning.’
We’re not going to get a decarbonized energy system by 2050. We’re going to fail the climate targets, probably by a large margin, and I suspect that a warming of about 3 degrees centigrade is going to be almost inevitable. It’s perfectly possible that self-amplifying feedback mechanisms under way will amplify this change even more.
Most courses on energy deal with it in an instrumentalist manner, as if it were another substance that humans can tap and use for their benefit. Platform for Sustainability and Equity and Ecologise are pleased to announce an online course that places energy at the centre of all transformations— abiotic, biotic and in human society.
We know that economies need to grow, or they collapse. The wage disparity that high-wage countries have been experiencing in recent years is evidence that the world economy is already reaching energy limits. There are no longer enough jobs that pay well to go around. Any drop in energy supply will likely worsen the situation.
Amory Lovins, Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, is one of the world’s leading energy experts and a key figure behind China’s ongoing transition to renewable energy. His appointment as a strategic advisor to NITI Aayog suggests that India’s top development policy agency maybe finally be rethinking the country’s present fossil fuel-based energy path.
Gail Tverberg writes: World leaders manipulate the world economy like a giant video game. The object is to keep it growing, but what do they do when the economy hits limits? They could take their foot off the throttle operated by low interest-rates and more debt. Or they could “take the wings off” the economy.
From Grist.org: Two Antarctic glaciers act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world’s oceans —an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet. Finding out how fast these glaciers will collapse is one of the most important scientific questions in the world today.
From The Guardian: Of all the most polluting nations –United States, China, Russia, Japan and the EU bloc– only India’s carbon emissions are rising: they rose almost 5% in 2016. India’s population and emissions are rising fast, and its ability to tackle poverty without massive fossil fuel use will decide the fate of the planet.
From Greenpeace International: In June this year, a courageous 26-year old Hamilton law student, Sarah Thomson, spent five days in court challenging the New Zealand government over climate change targets she called “unambitious and irrational”. Now, she’s made history, after the country’s High Court issued a game-changing verdict that has implications for climate legislation worldwide.
Delhi’s killer smog has been blamed on many things, but rarely on highly polluting industrial fuels like petcoke. India is the world’s biggest importer of this dirtiest of fuels, banned in most countries. Last month, the Supreme Court banned it in the NCR; but given the big players involved, who will ensure the ban’s implemented?
From The Guardian: James Hansen, former Nasa scientist and one the most respected names in climate science, has called for a ‘litigate-to-mitigate’ strategy, a wave of lawsuits against governments and fossil fuel companies for delaying action on the mortal threat of global warming. Hansen himself is involved in a 2015 climate lawsuit against the US-government.
Dana Nuccitelli writes: On 5 November 1965, US president Lyndon Johnson’s science advisory committee sent him a report on the environment, which included a section on atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate change, written by prominent climate scientists. Reviewing it today, one can’t help but be struck by how well they understood climate change back then.
As India like the rest of the world shifts from fossil fuels to renewables, India should also launch a new initiative for this dramatic transition. One of the guiding principles for energy transition should be India’s civilizational value of “simple living and high thinking” and not to maximize gross national product as other countries do.
Barry Saxifrage writes: What determines our climate fate is how much climate-polluting fossil fuels we burn. Renewables are great, but only if they actually replace oil, gas, or coal. Sadly, rising renewables haven’t stopped our fossil fuel burn. Instead, we keep expanding both renewables and fossil fuels at the same time, in a new business-as-usual.
Kumar Sundaram writes in The Ecologist: Dubbing nuclear energy as a solution to climate change has been a key strategy of the Indian government for selling nuclear projects to the public as well as justifying the spree of nuclear agreements with other countries. Here are three reasons why this is not feasible, desirable and cost-effective.
The short film Carbon focuses on global warming and takes a look at what the future could hold for us if we don’t act today. The Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Prachi Desai and Jackky Bhagnani starrer deals with serious environmental issues like Global Warming & pollution and their impact on our world. Watch the full movie here.
