ALTERNATIVES
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….
Read More about Reality check: Fossil fuel expansion crushes renewables
Culture/Cognition
Gail Tverberg writes: The Politically Correct (PC) worldview has been called the “religion of success”. In this post, I explain why many popular (or politically correct) understandings are just plain wrong. I cover many controversial topics, including environmentalism, peer-reviewed literature, climate change models, and yes, religion. I expect that the analysis will surprise almost everyone….
Read More about Why political correctness fails – Why what we know ‘for sure’ is wrong
Chief economic advisor Dr. Arvind Subramanian delivered the 16th Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture
ALTERNATIVES
A recent lecture by Dr. Arvind Subramanian, the Indian government’s chief economic advisor, offers clues on its thinking on coal vis-a-vis renewable energy, crucial for meeting its stated climate goals. In this stinging rejoinder to the lecture, energy expert Prof. Mahesh Bhave shows conclusively why mainstream economists like Dr. Subramnian simply do not ‘get’ energy….
Read More about India’s chief economic advisor is clueless about energy. And that’s worrying.
ALTERNATIVES
Richard Heinberg writes: Over the past century-and-a-half, fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption; and these in turn led to population increase, pollution, and loss of natural habitat and hence biodiversity. Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is only a symptom….
Read More about Why climate change isn’t our biggest environmental problem, and why technology won’t save us
An aerial view of Welspun's giant solar park in Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh
Conflict/Dispossession
Frontline reports: Across the country, large tracts of land are being earmarked for exclusive solar power parks. The rocky terrain of Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch district has emerged as the largest solar power-generating hub in India, but the nomadic communities that have lived there for generations find themselves dispossessed of land and reduced to abject poverty….
Read More about India’s dispossessed confront a new threat: solar parks
ALTERNATIVES
From Vikalp Sangam: NITI Aayog has invited suggestion and feedback on its Draft National Energy Policy. Here’s the detailed response sent by a group of civil society groups. Also linked here is energy expert Bhamy Shenoy’s critique of the draft Policy, which he says does not reflect the crucial recent transformations in the energy sector….
Read More about Civil society comments on NITI Aayog’s draft National Energy Policy
A hyper-image of a lanthanum carbonate, a rare-earth used in renewable energy generation
ZEISS Microscopy/Eco-business.com
ALTERNATIVES
In this essay, a contribution to the‘Pathways to the Post-Carbon Economy’ symposium by Insurge Intelligence, the author argues persuasively that the much-hyped “renewable energy technologies” cannot play any role in solving the multifaceted global crisis of today; on the contrary, investing in them is a waste of time, effort, energy and, most important of all, scarce resources….
Read More about The global crisis and the role of so-called renewable energies in solving it
ALTERNATIVES
From The Guardian: In 2006, former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore triggered a worldwide debate about climate change with his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Now, he’s back with a rousing follow-up for the age of climate change denial under Trump. Fellow climate champion and U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders recently discussed the film with Gore….
Read More about Bernie Sanders and Al Gore on solving the climate crisis
ALTERNATIVES
From IEEE Spectrum: At the beginning, engineers at RE<C, Google’s now defunct renewable energy initiative, had shared the attitude of many environmentalists: They felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, society could stave off catastrophic climate change. They now know that to be a false hope—but that doesn’t mean the planet is doomed….
Read More about Google engineers say today’s RE technologies won’t save us. So what will?
CLIMATE CRISIS
From Common Dreams: Humanity has just three years left to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions before risking a climate-safe world. After roughly 1°C of global warming driven by human activity, ice sheets are melting, summer sea ice is disappearing in the Arctic and coral reefs dying from heat stress— entire ecosystems are starting to collapse….
Read More about Deadline 2020: Just three years before global climate tipping pointConflict/Dispossession
From Truthout.org: This superbly researched 2015 paper explains why China’s unfolding environmental crisis is so horrific, so much worse than “normal” capitalism almost everywhere else, and why the government is incapable of suppressing pollution even from its own industries. It should serve as a warning for India, whose official policies increasingly mimic the ‘China model’….
Read More about Spotlight: China’s communist-capitalist ecological apocalypse
ALTERNATIVES
From World Economic Forum: People often have an idealised view of solar as the perfect clean energy source. Direct conversion of sunlight to electricity, no emissions, no contamination, perfectly clean. This however overlooks the messy reality of how solar panels are produced, right from the extraction of materials to scaling up the power generation process….
Read More about Solar power: Do the ends justify the means?
CLIMATE CRISIS
From The Wall Street Journal: While most big oil companies foresee a day when the world will need less crude, timing peak oil demand has proven controversial. Most Big European producers predict that a peak could emerge as soon as 2025 or 2030, and are overhauling long-term investment plans to diversify away from crude oil….
Read More about Get ready for peak oil demand
ALTERNATIVES
Prem Shankar Jha in The Wire: When nearly 350 million vehicles have to be charged every day, not only will an entire nation-wide, and therefore expensive, recharging infrastructure have to be built, but the power these vehicles will consume will have to be generated first. Nearly all of this will have to come from coal….
Read More about India has a better option than electric carsCLIMATE CRISIS
From Deccan Herald: There’s a great deal of disagreement between those who predict the end of oil era and those who believe in the need to look for more oil reserves. Since India’s ready to invest a huge amount in transforming its economy, there’s an urgent need to find out which scenario will pan out….
Read More about Is it the beginning of the end of oil era?
Caglecartoons.com
CLIMATE CRISIS
From Yale Environment 360: World leaders insist Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement will not deter other nations from carrying out their commitments. But the departure of America creates new challenges. The concern is whether the rest of the world will prove as determined to abide by the Paris-accord as some analysts claim….
Read More about With the U.S. out of Paris, what is the future for the global climate fight?
James Fryer/ Gear Patrol
Consumerism/Lifestyle
Nitin Sethi writes: Whatever a government might do to run the economic engine of the country or its politics, it has to continuously claim that it is a win-win for both the environment and development. It will talk about its moves to set up zero-effect and zero-defect industries. We all know such an idea does not exist….
Read More about World Environment Day is now little more than a greenwashing opportunity
ALTERNATIVES
From The Conversation: This latest study looked at the trends driving decarbonisation in three key sectors of the global energy system – power, transportation and buildings. It found that, in these fields, it has taken only a few players to set in motion the kind of transformations necessary to meet the Paris Climate Agreement’s targets….
Read More about It only takes a few countries to kickstart a decarbonisation revolution
Paresh Nath/The Khaleej Times
Conserve/Resist
Nityanand Jayaraman writes: June 5 was World Environment Day. Over the last few days, this author, an environmental activist, has been asked by many people to lay out things that people can do without really straining their daily schedules. These simple things may not exist anymore. Instead, here are six things for everyone to consider….
Read More about Why the fight for environmental justice is also a fight for social justice
A mega power plant would have eliminated Vilambur's strong local economy that includes charcoal producers
Dhruv Malhotra © Wilson
ALTERNATIVES
Keith Schneider writes: It is almost impossible for a single place to embody the full array of emerging factors around climate, carbon, water, finance, culture and cleaner technology that have utterly changed how India and the world view the value and risks of coal. But if such a place exists, it’s Vilambur in Tamil Nadu….
Read More about Ground Report: India’s slow but sure shift away from coal
