Jeff Berardelli and some good graphics help a wide audience understand climate tipping points.
Month: April 2021
Texas Wants “Ike Dike” Added to Biden Plan
Continue reading “Texas Wants “Ike Dike” Added to Biden Plan”WASHINGTON — As congressional Democrats hash out a plan to spend more than $2 trillion on the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, it’s unclear how much — if any — of that money would go toward a long-sought barrier to protect the Texas Gulf Coast from catastrophic storm surge.
But at least one Houston Democrat is making it her mission to ensure the package includes funding for the latest version of the so-called Ike Dike, a proposed $26 billion project that would fundamentally alter the southeast Texas coastline.
“This is the time to make the case,” said U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher.
Fletcher is telling the Biden administration and Democrats on key committees drafting the infrastructure bill that the Ike Dike isn’t just a project to protect Texas. If storm surge were to head north into the Houston Ship Channel and shut down the Port of Houston — the busiest port in the country and home to much of the nation’s petrochemical industry — it would have “dire” economic consequences for the entire nation, Fletcher recently testified to a House committee.
“The potential environmental and human catastrophe that would come from that storm surge … it’s beyond anything I think our country has ever seen,” Fletcher said in an interview with Hearst Newspapers. “People need to know and understand that.”
However, Fletcher may be facing an uphill battle even with a fellow Democrat in the White House.
President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan doesn’t include specific projects, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says it’s too early to say whether even some of the $50 billion that the plan earmarks to gird against storms would help fund the Ike Dike.
Phony Story is Red Meat for Climate Deniers
So this got a lot of retweets.
The moral of the story here is that, nothing will throw a 4 year old, or a Fox News viewer, into a tantrum faster than suggesting that eating their vegetables would be good for them. (any picture of the crowd at Trump rallies confirms)
But, nonetheless that is not a part of the Biden Climate plan.
Former Trump official and Fox Business host Larry Kudlow attempted to attack Biden’s position.
Although Biden is not backing the “Green New Deal” pushed by progressives, Kudlow attempted to conflate the two by using the phrase “Biden’s Green New Deal.”
In an attempt to gin up fear, uncertainty and doubt about Biden’s proposals, Kudlow discussed the topic of stupidity.
“Speaking of stupid, there’s a study coming out of the University of Michigan which says that to meet the Biden Green New Deal targets, America has to, get this, America has to stop eating meat, stop eating poultry and fish, seafood, eggs, dairy, and animal-based fats,” Kudlow said. “Ok, got that? No burger on July 4. No steaks on the barbecue. I’m sure Middle America is just going to love that. Can you grill those Brussels sprouts? So get ready.”
Then Kudlow inadvertently broadcast his own stupidity.
“You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag. Call it July 4th Green,” Kudlow argued.
Twitter took it from there.
Music Break: Leslie Odom Jr – Speak Now
One of the song nominees – did not win, but moves me.
Lyrics:
Listen, listen
While the storm in your heart is raging
Listen, listen, listen
Listen, listen
To the echoes of martyrs praying
Listen, listen, listen
Listen
Brothers and sisters
Listen, listen, listen
I swear we’ll never find a way to where we’re going, all alone
Don’t take your eyes off the road
Can you hear the bells ring out?
Speak now
Speak now
Can you hear the angels singing loud?
Speak now
Speak now
Listen, listen
To the message of hope in the whispers of ghosts
Listen, listen
Listen
For the children will grow on the seeds that we sow
They listen, they listen
Oh, listen
Brothers and sisters
Listen, listen
I swear we’ll never find a way to where we’re going, all alone
Don’t take your eyes off the road
Can you hear the bells ring out?
Speak now
Speak now
Can’t you hear the angels cry out?
Speak now
Speak now
Don’t you hold your tongue
Speak now (speak now)
Speak now (speak now)
Speak now (speak now)
Oh
Can’t you hear the angels?
Speak now (speak now)
Speak now
Zoomers Take Creative Climate Action Across Boundaries
The kids, it turns out, are all right.
In 1969, Denis Hayes was 25 years old in grad school. After just one semester and a 15-minute meeting with Sen. Gaylord Nelson in Washington, D.C., Hayes traded in his academic books for a picket sign and became a central organizer of the nonprofit group Environmental Teach-In, Inc., which would found Earth Day in 1970.
After the first Earth Day, a momentous accomplishment in and of itself, Hayes and his colleagues continued their activism by campaigning against the “Dirty Dozen”of incumbent anti-environment congressmen. Ultimately defeating seven out of the 12 congressmen, the group’s advocacy was also integral to the passage of the Clean Air Act shortly after the 1970 midterm elections.
Today, youth activists are following in Hayes’s footsteps to be the driving force behind environmental activism in the United States and abroad. Fifty years after the first Earth Day, in a January 2020 poll, 80% of voters aged 18 to 29 said that global warming is a “major threat to human life on earth.” In February of last year, 77% of right-leaning 18- to 35-year-olds said climate change is important to them, highlighting the cross-partisan nature of the youth climate movement.
Despite this youth consensus, the congressional debate over climate solutions has too often stalled. There has been little legislation passed and almost no concrete progress against a warming climate in recent years. But if our national level politics can be defined by stagnation, our generation is demonstrating at the local level that change is possible. If Congress needs ideas, it should look to Generation Z.
In August of last year, nearly 100 ideologically diverse students came together for the 2020 Youth Environmental Summit, where they learned how to maximize their activism and connect with folks across the political aisle. In New York City, student activists have been calling for more comprehensive climate change lessons to be included in the state curriculum since 2014, and three years later, new guidelines were released for New York science teachers to follow. Other climate activists, both on the Right and Left, have taken meetings with legislators and school officials to hash out solutions to the climate challenges we face.
The importance of this local grassroots action, often led by younger generations, cannot be overstated. Young people have proven adept at building coalitions and making a real difference in communities. Not only is Gen Z the most diverse generation in U.S. history, but young people have innovative ideas and are more willing to work across differences than their elders.
We can come together for our communities in meaningful ways and still stand firm in our respective ideologies. We have a choice: continue stubborn stagnation or extend olive branches through initiatives we can agree on. Earth Day 2021, a celebration of the planet we all share during a political crossroads similar to that of the first Earth Day in 1970, is the perfect time to work through our differences and set a new precedent for environmental activism.
Benji Backer is the president and founder of the American Conservation Coalition. Andrew Brennen was a 2020 education fellow at National Geographic, focusing on youth movements, and is the co-founder of Kentucky Student Voice Team.
Continue reading “Zoomers Take Creative Climate Action Across Boundaries”THE BOY NEXT DOOR PHENOMENON’: Young Americans are more optimistic about the future and far more approving of U.S. leadership under President Biden than during ex-president Donald Trump’s tenure, according to a new Harvard Youth Poll released on Friday.
Biden has hit the highest favorability rating — 63 percent — among college students who are registered voters of any president in the youth poll’s 21-year history, according to the poll.
Subsidizing Texas’ “Free Market” Fail
Holy crap what a story.
When that big freeze hit Texas in February, the Lone Star State couldn’t help but share its pain.
With its ill-equipped natural gas systems clocked by the cold, Texas’s exports across the Rio Grande froze up and 4.7 million customers in northern Mexico went without electricity — more than in Texas itself. The spot price of gas jumped 30-fold as far west as Southern California. And all the way up by the Canadian border, gas utilities in Minnesota that turned to the daily spot market to meet demand say they had to pay about $800 million more than planned over the course of just five days as the Texas freeze-up pinched off supplies.
“The ineptness and disregard for common-sense utility regulation in Texas makes my blood boil and keeps me up at night,” Katie Sieben, chairwoman of the Minnesota Public Utility Commission, said in an interview. “It is maddening and outrageous and completely inexcusable that Texas’s lack of sound utility regulation is having this impact on the rest of the country.”
The Texas market is so large — second only to California’s — and its natural gas industry is so predominant that when things go wrong there, the impacts can be felt across the country. And in a state that eschews regulation, driving energy producers to cut costs as deeply as they can to remain competitive, things went spectacularly wrong the week of Valentine’s Day.
Minnesota’s biggest gas companies are putting forward plans to recoup their expenses by adding a surcharge to customers’ bills, which the state utility commission would first have to approve. Normally, such adjustments to account for winter prices go into effect in September, but Minnesota’s biggest gas utility, Houston-based CenterPoint Energy, says the financial pinch is so great it wants to start billing customers next month — and charging them nearly 9 percent interest until the extraordinary costs are paid off.
At the same time, the company’s CEO, David Lesar, has been assuring investors that the company has access to plenty of cash and its weather-related costs nationally are not a concern.
In state after state, from the Gulf Coast to the Rockies, from the Ozarks to the shores of Lake Superior, utility regulators have launched investigations into what went wrong, and gas companies have moved to pass on their exceptional costs to customers. Investigators say they are on the lookout for evidence of price-gouging and market manipulation. In Minnesota, where the temperature dropped below minus-20 degrees in February and scarcely a single customer lost gas or electricity, state officials are struggling to come up with an equitable solution to a debacle made in Texas.
Gas prices in Minnesota rose to 70 times their normal level, as deliveries to the state’s main trading hub dropped by 39 percent.
Solution for LA Water Woes: Toilet to Tap
Mom’s Using “Outside Voice” to Speak up on Climate
“Building Back Better’s” Big Benefits
Above, outlines of Biden’s carbon reduction plan.
Below, building a better grid could return investment 3 to 1, and keep electric rates low.
Clean Energy Battle in the Heartland
All the good intentions for 100 percent clean energy will come to naught if the battle to deploy renewables across the heartland is not won.
Right now, astro-turf groups, manipulated by fossil fuel lobbyists, are doing all they can to slow the inevitable transition.
Adrian Daily Telegram (Michigan):
With disbelief, I watch townships and villages in our area deciding against the installation of renewable energy facilities. The arguments lack any comprehension, logic and foresight and will leave these communities behind in what will inevitably come whether the decision makers in these communities want it or believe it — or not.
A fast transition to clean renewable energy, specifically solar and wind energy, is needed to avoid the worst consequences of climate change and it becomes increasingly a no-brainer as the cost for solar and wind energy drop continuously making it cheaper than any other energy form.
Since money rules the world, the naysayers are on lost ground here, and history will just roll over them. In addition to denying these arguments of necessity and economy, the refusal of solar and wind installations is often based on the sentimental and nostalgic belief that valuable and precious farmland should not be converted to solar and wind facilities.
There are also some serious misunderstandings and misconceptions behind these arguments. Traditional and diverse small-scale farming and homesteading was destroyed long ago and changed into large scale mono-culture operations heavily dependent on fossil-fuel driven machinery, fertilizers and pesticides in an often industrial scale. These operations destroy the fertility of our soils, reduce biodiversity and leave us with polluted soils, water, and air — all to produce surplus of corn and soy to be fed to animals instead of people, to be burned as “biofuel” or to produce so much milk that it ends up as milk powder for export. This is not the cultural heritage of traditional agriculture but the pure opposite.
In contrary to this misguided form of agriculture, wind parks and solar farms do not destroy the fertility of soils, do not reduce biodiversity and do not pollute the soil, water, and air. In contrary, modern management concepts allow the same land to be used for small scale agriculture such as sheep grazing on grassland enriched with native plant species or beekeeping which improve soil fertility and biodiversity and cause no pollution.
In the future, we might even be able to raise all solar panels higher above the ground and allow any form of cultivation of the land below. Pilot trials for this in various countries of the world showed that many crops grow better under solar panels allowing higher agricultural yields AND additional from producing clean renewable energy — not to speak about the benefits for the society and Earth community.
I close with a plea to the naysayers, deniers and nostalgists to embrace the future in which we will mend some of the worst mistakes humanity has done and be on the forefront of these inevitable developments instead of getting further behind.
Thomas Wassmer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biology
Siena Heights University, Adrian
Ben Moran in Cleveland.com:
Continue reading “Clean Energy Battle in the Heartland”MINERVA, Ohio — Like many in Ohio, my family is weighing our desires for independence and financial stability as we chart the future of our small farm. We want a property plan that puts our land to good use and turns a reasonable amount of work into a stable income. Building a community solar farm provides the future we’re hoping for, but families like mine can’t do so without a change in Ohio law.