Protecting and improving the community for the people who live and work here

“We don’t need a miracle. Everything we need to solve climate change is already here.”

How do we decarbonize?

From Saul Griffith on Median:

Summary (2-minute read)

How to decarbonize appears to still be a contentious issue, whereas if we move past the “this, not that” arguments that plague the politics of the carbon transition, reasonable thinking leads to an approach that doesn’t require magical thinking or an over-commitment to any single technology. We don’t need a miracle technology — all we really need to do is to commit to massive electrification. Vested interests, however, want you to continue to believe in miracles because it means we can lean back and wait for the miracle to happen.

The actual miracle is that solar and wind are now the cheapest energy sources, electric cars are better cars than those we already have, electric radiant heating is better than our existing heating systems, and the internet was a practice run and blueprint for the electricity network of the future. Regardless of the minutiae of how we do it exactly, the beginning and the first half of decarbonization will most likely look the same: a commitment to solar and wind, batteries, electrification of homes, heat pumps, electric vehicles, ground-source geothermal and research into better biofuel sources and biofuels from waste, as well as research into better, cheaper, safer nuclear.

A carbon tax isn’t a solution; at best it will just accelerate solutions. It’s likely that un-subsidizing fossil fuels will be just as effective. By the time we have the political stomach for a carbon tax, the cheapest solutions will be electric vehicles, electrified homes, and wind and solar anyway.

We haven’t shown any inclination to drastically cut our consumption in the 40 years since Jimmy Carter asked us to wear sweaters.

Efficiency is great, but, like a carbon tax, it still isn’t a solution. Overwhelmingly, the largest efficiency wins aren’t LED lighting, double-glazed windows and heavier building insulation (each which is good but not nearly enough), but rather the electrification of cars and trucks, the electrification of our homes, and eliminating thermo-electric losses from the burning of fossil fuels to create electricity.

Nuclear power vs. renewables doesn’t become an issue during the first half of the transition to mass electrification, and by then nuclear might be too expensive (compared to wind and solar).

Coal or natural gas with carbon sequestration is expensive and won’t scale to the size of the problem. We know fracking leaks and that sequestered CO2 will leak too. The mere fact that compressed CO2 is much larger by volume than the oil and gas that come out tells us the simple story that we don’t have enough holes to stuff it into. Additionally and specifically, natural gas is a bridge to nowhere; fossil fuels already burned that bridge.

Renewables are disrupting fossil fuels, and if the US does not win that technology game it will no longer be the leading world power. No one is looking forward to that existential crisis.”

NYTimes:

Are there reasons to hope for serious action? 

“The prospect of thousands and even millions of cancer deaths led to the Montreal Protocol. The Cuyahoga River catching on fire, giant algae blooms in lakes and rivers, and widespread contamination of municipal water supplies led to the Clean Water Act of 1972. Oppressive inner-city smog — so bad you could nearly taste it — as well as mounting respiratory illnesses, and dead and dying trees, streams and lakes, helped overcome political and industry foot-dragging and created the landmark 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act and its innovative cap-and-trade system for controlling ground-level pollutants.”

“In addition, there were no relatively expeditious technological fixes for carbon emissions, as there were for fluorocarbons, and as there were for the pollutants addressed in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, like scrubbers for power plants, and catalytic converters and cleaner fuels for cars and light trucks. The global warming problem requires a whole suite of fixes, some of them mammoth, as Mr. Moynihan intuited a half-century ago — carbon-free alternatives to produce electricity; an all-electric vehicle fleet; an end to deforestation; climate-friendly agricultural practices; large-scale dietary changes; and, quite possibly, advanced technologies to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Reimagining the world economy means turning around a very big ship. Not to mention global buy-in”.

“Finally, despite predictable industry warnings of economic ruin, the efforts to protect the ozone layer and clean up the nation’s waters and air faced nowhere near the campaign of denial and disinformation mounted by Exxon Mobil and other big fossil fuel companies — companies that knew perfectly well what their products were doing to the atmosphere — to confuse the public about climate change and to derail serious attempts to address them. This cascade of phony science was not the only reason legislation aimed at reducing carbon pollution foundered in Congress. As Bill Clinton and Mr. Gore discovered after signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, there was little enthusiasm in either party for a treaty that essentially required America and other industrial nations to do most of the heavy lifting while giving other big emitters, among them China and India, a far easier path. Still, industry’s relentless obfuscation played a big role, especially among Tea Party Republicans.”

In answer to: Is there hope?

“Yes: a trifecta of frightening reports in the last year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the need to act before things spin out of control, on deforestation and other damaging land-use practices, on dying reefs and rising sea levels. Plus: a cascade of natural disasters, including catastrophic wildfires and hurricanes. Plus: the dramatic drop in the cost of producing carbon-free energy like wind and solar power. Plus: well-publicized concerns on the part of every contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, and equally well-publicized efforts by state and local officials, to fill the global leadership vacuum left by President Trump.”

The Washington Post :

A growing number of Americans describe climate change as a crisis. 2/3’s say President Trump is doing too little to tackle the problem.

From a poll conducted by The Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation:

“a growing disconnect between Americans worried about the warming planet and Trump administration officials who aggressively scaled back Obama-era environmental regulations and relinquished the nation’s role as a global leader in pushing for climate action.”

“A strong majority of Americans, about 8 in 10, say human activity is fueling climate change, and roughly 1/2 believe action is urgently needed within the next decade if humanity is to avert its worst effects.

Nearly 4 in 10 now say climate change is a crisis, up from less than a quarter five years ago.

From The Sierra Club:

By Chloe Zilliac

“Drilling in the Arctic Refuge would permanently destroy the primary food source of the Gwich’in people, our culture, and our way of life,” Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, said in a statement. “We’re glad to see Goldman Sachs recognize that the Arctic Refuge is no place for drilling, and we hope that other banks, and the oil companies they fund, will follow their lead.”

The new lending policy is a win for environmentalists in the fight to preserve the 1.5 million acres of land on the coastal plains of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which the Trump administration proposed opening for drilling in 2017. Since then, the administration has been working to expedite the environmental review process in order to meet its goal of holding a lease sale in the refuge this year, but in November, the Interior Department announced that it would miss this target.

“the scientific consensus, led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that climate change is a reality and that human activities are responsible for increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere.”

TAKE ACTION

“we need to focus our efforts on the other US funders that are notorious for propping up dirty fuels: Wells Fargo, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley.

Send a message to the CEOs of the other major US banks, telling them that bankrolling Arctic drilling isn’t just bad business — it’s a threat to Indigenous human rights and to the climate.“

Small steps add up.

From the Audubon Society:

“Highly and moderately vulnerable birds may lose more than half of their current range—the geographic area where they live—as they are forced to search for suitable habitat and climate conditions elsewhere.”

Audubon maps out highly 8 highly vulnerable species (along with 23 moderately 24 vulnerability, 61 low vulnerability and stable species) at + 3.0 C:

Two of the highly vulnerable species at +3.0 C:

The interactive website shows bird loss in the NYC area at different temperatures. Scientists:

“Scientists agree that we should take immediate action to hold warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius or else face increasingly dire consequences. If we do nothing, 1.5 degrees is imminent, 2 degrees could happen as soon as 2050, and 3 degrees could occur by 2080.”

Good News:

The Guardian: Nestle’s loses bid to privatize water:

“‘Who owns the water?’ – in this round, the state and public do, because selling containerized water for profit is simply private, not public”

“Michigan’s second-highest court has dealt a legal blow to Nestlé’s Ice Mountain water brand, ruling that the company’s commercial water-bottling operation is “not an essential public service” or a public water supply.

The court of appeals ruling is a victory for Osceola township, a small mid-Michigan town that blocked Nestle from building a pumping station that doesn’t comply with its zoning laws. But the case could also throw a wrench in Nestlé’s attempts to privatize water around the country.”

“What this lays bare is the extent to which private water marketers like Nestlé, and others like them, go [in] their attempts to privatize sovereign public water, public water services, and the land and communities they impact,” Olson said.

Several Native American tribes and the environmental attorney Ross Hammersley are challenging the permit in state administrative court. Hammersley told the Guardian the appellate court finding that Nestlé is not a public water source could help in his case, as could remarks about the company’s impact on the water table.

“[Nestlé] extracting water and sending it to other places where it cannot return to the water table, and, critically, doing so faster than the aquifer can replenish, is an ‘irretrievable’ depletion unless the pumping is reduced or halted,” the judges wrote.”

The Nestle motto: “Enhancing quality of life and contributing to a healthier future.”

and reality:

“It takes at least 2x as much water to make a plastic water bottle as the amount of water contained in it.”

Bad News (though good it is getting more frequent reporting):

NYTimes: “The Amazon is Completely Lawless: The Rainforest after Bolsanaro’s First Year”

Mr. Bolsonaro has again voiced an aggressive, nationalistic view of the Amazon, describing the rainforest as a resource to be exploited.

“…for months he has also dismissed Indigenous people’s concerns about increasing invasions of protected land by loggers and miners, even as Indigenous groups have pleaded with the government for protection from growing violence.

It was the highest loss in Brazilian rainforest in a decade, and stark evidence of just how badly the Amazon, an important buffer against global warming, has fared in Brazil’s first year under President Jair Bolsonaro.

“Deforestation and fires have always been a problem, but this is the first time it has happened thanks to the discourse and activities of the federal government,” said Marina Silva, who as environment minister in the mid-2000s cracked down on illegal activity in the Amazon, contributing to an 83 percent fall in deforestation from 2004 to 2012.”

The furor reached such a pitch that Brazil’s businesses became worried about the potential impact. “Did we have our image harmed? Yes. Can we recover it? Yes. The government has to align its discourse to what the world wants,” said Blairo Maggi, a billionaire soybean producer and former agriculture minister known as the Soy King.

“The farmers, associations and industry will have to redo what has been lost,” he said. “We retreated 10 steps; we will have to work to get back to where we were.”

The push into the Amazon has also been driven by demand from abroad. Every year, Brazil exports nearly 15 million tons of soy, much of it to China, and more than $6 billion worth of beef — more than any other country in history. Cattle ranches account for up to 80 percent of deforested land in the Amazon, according to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Major beef and soy firms have been fined millions for buying commodities sourced from illegally deforested land, but such rules have proved difficult to enforce.

From Al Jazeera News:

“Countries cannot wait for the end of 2020 to step up action. They, every city, business, region and individual need to act now.”

“The annual Emissions Gap Report paints a grim picture of the rise in global warming, and points the finger at G20 countries, especially China and the United States the two top greenhouse gas emitters, along with Russia and the European Union, which are doing too little to tackle the climate crisis… India is the fourth-largest emitter”

G20 countries are collectively responsible for 78 percent of all emissions, but they are not doing enough to contain global warming

“Emissions need to go down by 55 percent by 2030,” said the report’s Christensen. “There is no way we are going to make it if we don’t step up action as of next year with ambitious plans.”

“G20 countries are collectively responsible for 78 percent of all emissions”

From the NYTimes: 

“Mumbai got more rain this year than it had in 65 years”

India’s Ominous Future: Too Little Water, or Far Too Much

“THE MONSOON IS CENTRAL TO INDIAN LIFE AND LORE. It turns up in ancient Sanskrit poetry and in Bollywood films. It shapes the fortunes of millions of farmers who rely on the rains to nourish their fields. It governs what you eat. It even has its own music.

Climate change is now messing with the monsoon, making seasonal rains more intense and less predictable. Worse, decades of short-sighted government policies are leaving millions of Indians defenseless in the age of climate disruptions – especially the poor.”

Years of drought, crops ruined by pests and unseasonably late rains, exceptionally fierce monsoons, lakes that once held the rains clogged with plastic and sewage. Groundwater drawn faster than nature can replenish it, people settling for fetid streams, sacred rivers covered in toxic foam from industrial runoff, kitchen taps dry for months…

The neighborhood is looking forward to the move-out of the storage [we store materials for the entire borough of Manhattan] and the reclamation of this building for its original community purposes and to create that beehive of activity which would provide the real safety of this area of this Park neighborhood.

And to reclaim park space for park purposes with the removal of truck and car parking and traffic here.

For this and this and this!! – Representing what this neighborhood has asked for (the larger the word the more requested)

From NYC Parks Department website:

This project will reconstruct a comfort station in Building A in Sara D Roosevelt Park.

Or the Stanton ParkHouse!

THIS:

NOT THIS:

Key climate emergency issue!

Tuesday, December 3rd at 12:00pm -1:15pm.

Location: Stern School of Business (44 West 4th Street) in room 2-80.

-please bring an ID!

With our very own Rob Watson!

The Topic:

Our panelists will talk about what zero waste is; showcase the various applications of zero waste at the local, state, and national levels; and discuss how these initiatives intersect with business and policy, and the challenges and opportunities that arise.

Lunch will be provided!

Speakers include:
Sarah Edwards, Director, Eunomia Research & Consulting Inc.

Julie Raskin, Executive Director, Foundation for NY’s Strongest, NYC Sanitation

Rob Watson, Founder & Co-Chair, SWEEP Solid Waste Standard

FREE but please register here.

“You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. ‘Artist’s conceptions’ and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use.”

-The Life and Death of American Cities