Month: April 2023

This is the Time to Stand for Democracy

Joe Biden is the leader we need at this critical period of Defending Democracy Everywhere.

Heather Cox Richardson, American Historian, wrote in A Letter to Americans about Biden’s Announcement, reminding us of how Biden came to the decision to run and to lead the country, and what he has accomplished with the most diverse cabinet in American history, bipartisan major investments in infrastructure and climate adaptation. Another significant achievement is the Justice 40 policy that 40% of investments in the Inflation Reduction Act be in communities which have been left out of the planning and implementation and whose understanding is not in our toolbox but should be. In order to have the strongest strategy for deploying a whole new basis for how we live and what we do with our energy, everyone should be “in on” design and implementation. He has also led the nation to join with other nations in the 30 X 30 initiative to conserve 30% of our land and water by 2030.

Volts Podcast for April 26th. This relates to our present time of transition to the New Grid and all its renewable inputs. The Inflation Reduction Act is front and center. Highly recommended to readers, Volts is moderated by David Roberts who deftly interviews leaders and doers about The Great Energy Transition.

Project Drawdown Discover

Project Drawdown is a leader in climate action with breakouts by sector, action steps in each, and the potential carbon drawdown from the atmosphere. Now the organization has developed a new resource for people to find their own way forward in preparing for climate resilence.

Most of us wake up daily to a “firehose” of information about climate change –enough to make us dive under the covers. But Project Drawdown has prepared a special feature, Discover, which helps you learn more, organize people, find a career, and a number of actions within your community’s life.

Just one example I found for a search for My Community and Electricity sector:

Impact

“Retrofitting buildings with insulation is a cost-effective way to reduce energy required for heating and cooling. If annually, 1.6–2 percent of existing residential and commercial buildings in temperate and tropical countries install insulation with low-carbon materials, we could avoid 15.38–18.54 gigatons of emissions at an implementation cost of US$710.37–791.29 billion. Over the lifetime of the building, heating and cooling savings could be US$19.57–22.92 trillion.”

Filter by I’d like to and Filter by Sector

Check It Out!

Gambling with Generations’ Fate

An article published in the journal Nature delivers a sober but clear message about the myth of carbon dioxide removal as a current strategy to meet net zero carbon emissions that will stabilize warming at 1.5 to 2 degrees warming.

As the industrialized world continues with fossil fuel development claiming they will reach net zero emissions on time through carbon removal, the article by David T. Ho, oceanographer at the University of Hawai’i soberly outlines why that strategy will lead to catastrophic warming.

As we inch toward the 2024 Presidential election, each of us voting age Americans must challenge candidates who are not soberly addressing the issue of climate warming. We have only about 15-20 years to get this right. That is an eye blink.

In America, we have mostly made decisions by our economic bottom line. This has led to the crisis we are experiencing now. That economic practice requires continued growth. We need to develop circular systems of human enterprise that are steady state systems, looping back to conserve and reuse everything as we observe in nature.

This is a time for sober action and innovation — we have to innovate the sh– out of everything we do. I believe this can be a great age of learning and collective action in which we declare what we hold as too precious to destroy.