I’m finishing a new Yale Climate Connections video profiling the challenges that TV meteorologists face in educating their viewers, and sometimes their station managers, on climate change.
They all have unique stories and pathways – but one of the most unique is Eric Sorenson, who, after 22 years of broadcasting in Northwestern Illinois, will be running for an open congressional seat. He explains why, here.
Below, Congressman Jamie Raskin makes the point. We have to save our democracy if we hope to have the tools to save a livable planet. Above, Journalist Emily Atkin told me the same thing a year ago.
When it comes to fighting for democracy and climate change – two of Jamie Raskin’s top priorities – the whole thing feels a bit like a game of chicken and egg to the Democratic congressman.
On the one hand there is the planet, heating up quickly past the limit that is safe and necessary for human survival, while Congress stalls on a $555bn climate package. On the other, a pernicious movement, spurred by Donald Trump and other rightwing conspiracy theorists, to upend voting rights protections and cast doubt on the current election system.
But Raskin, a progressive congressman from Maryland, is clear about which comes first: he said America can’t fix the planet without fixing its government.
–
This concept plays out clearly in the country’s uneven political representation. The majority of Americans think the government should be doing more to reduce the impacts of climate change, including taxing corporations based on their carbon emissions. But issues like partisan gerrymandering, where politicians manipulate voting district lines, often allow rightwing politicians to retain disproportionate power across state governments.
“The key to understanding the collapse of civilizations is that you get a minority faction serving its own interests by dominating government,” he said, referencing Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. “And then everything collapses, usually through the exploitation of natural resources to a point where it’s unsustainable and untenable. That fits pretty perfectly the situation that we’re in with the GOP and climate change today.”
Solar can address two crisis – clean energy, and clean water.
Sea level rise combines with income disparity in coastal areas, to produce “Climate Gentrification”.
Areas of Miami that have traditionally been home to low income communities are seeing price and rental hikes as more wealthy folks, who want to move out of lower lying areas, come in.
Above, PBS examination.
Below, I spoke to two senior Florida Meteorologists who described the issue.
In recent Tucker Carlson specials, the Fox News darling has praised Vladimir Putin, and trashed clean energy (these are not separate activities, btw)
Now, Tucker brings us a special report on unmanly men, and how falling testosterone levels are a crisis. How Tucker Carlson became an arbiter of what is manly and not is a good question, but never mind.
Anyway if you have not seen the surreal trailer, enjoy.
Someone has finally brought a dramatic treatment to one of the key chapters in the sorry story of mankind’s woeful response to climate change.
This conspiracy thriller and cautionary tale tells the story of the 2009 Climategate scandal, when the media storm undermined confidence in the science of climate change. Professor Phil Jones and his team at the University of East Anglia find themselves in the middle of a major investigation with their 30 years of research work being questionedin the first ‘fakenews’ attack.
This conspiracy thriller and cautionary tale tells the story of the 2009 Climategate scandal, when the media storm undermined confidence in the science of climate change. Professor Phil Jones and his team at the University of East Anglia find themselves in the middle of a major investigation with their 30 years of research work being questionedin the first ‘fakenews’ attack.
Here’s hoping this production can make a dent in public consciousness. Without Leo DiCaprio or Jennifer Lawrence in the cast, that’s a heavy lift. Let’s do what we can.
In addition, there will be a three part Frontline examination of Big Oil’s role in squelching discussion and concern about climate change.
This Earth Month, FRONTLINE will present The Power of Big Oil — an epic three-part documentary series investigating the decades-long failure to confront the threat and increasing impacts of climate change, and the role of the fossil fuel industry and one of its biggest players, ExxonMobil.
From a team of award-winning filmmakers and journalists, including Dan Edge, Jane McMullen, Gesbeen Mohammad, Robin Barnwell, Sara Obeidat, Emma Supple and Russell Gold, The Power of Big Oil offers a deeply researched investigation of what scientists, corporations and politicians have known about human-caused climate change for decades, and the missed opportunities to mitigate the problem.
Continue reading “PBS has the Real “Don’t Look Up” Movie for Earth Day”The docuseries spans more than 40 years and multiple presidential administrations, drawing on newly uncovered documents and more than 100 interviews with key players, including scientists who worked inside and outside the industry, politicians, executives, and lobbyists — some speaking for the first time who express regret.
Had not heard this one, but Merle’s voice here is everything.
Above, University of Michigan researcher Sarah Mills discusses the surveys she has done in wind turbine areas with local farmers, who derive drought proof income from their wind turbines.
Below, Don Schurr, former President of the Greater Gratiot County (Michigan) Development Corporation, explains how giving farmers freedom to diversify their income is a bulwark against urban sprawl and the breakup of farms and farm communities.
Media finally picking up on the prevalence of misinformed and often privileged Facebook warriors `holding up clean energy with bogus claims (see WSJ article below). This is a major part of the work I’m currently doing.
The Hampton’s kerfuffle described in the Wall Street Journal this week, is a clear case of privileged twits asserting their “right” to never be inconvenienced by all the things that us “little people” take for granted. What’s not normally understood is that there is a similar dynamic here in the midwest – where the fights most often break down to the landowners, usually farmers, who are trying to diversify their income in an always challenging industry, vs newcomers usually with a ranchette on an acre or two, sometimes a horse, who view the farmers not as stewards of the land, bedrock of the community, and (often) 3 to 5th generation residents of the area, but rather merely as groundskeepers whose job it is to maintain an unchanging backdrop for newcomer’s “lifestyle”.
Add to that some fossil fuel operatives with a mission to add as much misinformation (see video below) and manipulate as much culture-war confusion as possible, and you’ve got a toxic mix.
Their strategy is always to intimidate local township boards into creating an ordinance that gives a one acre owner veto power over the surrounding square mile of other people’s agriculturally zoned land.
You may know Marty Lagina from his History Channel show The Curse of Oak Island – but Marty made his money first as an Oil/gas guy, but more recently developing wind and solar projects in the upper midwest.
I interviewed him a few years ago about the conflict between overbearing NIMBYs and longtime landowners.
A dozen giant wind turbines are on track to start spinning roughly 50 miles offshore from some of the country’s ritziest beach towns. That is unless last-ditch efforts by local residents can stop one of the country’s first offshore wind projects.
South Fork Wind will power 70,000 homes around East Hampton, N.Y., when it starts generating electricity next year. Construction began recently after a six-year approval process from federal, state and local governments.
One of the few remaining snags could be a group of residents of the exclusive hamlet of Wainscott who don’t want the cable carrying power from the windmills to be buried under a street that runs to the beach. Even though digging has begun, they are still waging legal battles on several fronts that could delay construction or further complicate the project.
Local opposition to renewable-energy projects from large-scale solar farms to windmills on land and sea is delaying and sometimes halting the shift away from fossil fuels.
More than 200 wind and solar projects face local opposition, according to Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, which backs green projects through a pro bono partnership with the law firm Arnold & Porter. That is up from roughly 165 in September. The Sabin Center worked for a group of residents who argued in favor of South Fork.
The rising opposition could be due to the rising number of projects. Analysts say it is too early to tell whether renewable-energy projects face the same level of opposition as oil-and-gas drilling, pipelines and electricity transmission lines.
Continue reading “Privileged, Facebook Driven NIMBYs Blocking Clean Energy”Shifting to renewable energy has gained increased urgency as evidence of climate changemounts. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven up prices of oil and gas, making renewables more attractive while highlighting the risks of being dependent on foreign sources of energy.
Not really a fair comparison, Matt Teske on Twitter made a comparison of Miles/gallon (~25) to miles/kwh( ~3) – he says, “So, to go the same distance on gas with electricity you need 8.33 kWh. At $0.15 this totals to $1.25.”
OK but without getting too literal about it, electricity is cheaper. It’s looking like we are on the upward sweeping “S curve” – but there’s a daunting “valley of death” moment right now.
