California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Government Deficit Spending Is Not the Problem: Lack of Labor and Physical Resources Is

by John Lawrence

Since the US dollar is a sovereign fiat currency, the US can never run out of dollars. The debt ceiling is a totally artificial limit which results in the US hoisting itself on its own pitard. According to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as espoused in The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, the only limit on government spending is inflation, and inflation is concerned with the amount and nature of resources available to soak up the money injected into the economic system by the government. According to this theory it makes sense that a lack of labor resources could lead to inflation. Consider that right now there is a shortage of air traffic controllers, and this is leading to a cancellation of flights. If there were more air traffic controllers available, the number of flights could be increased, and more economic activity would ensue. The constraint on flights available because of the lack of air traffic controllers leads to inflation because the money charged for each available flight can be increased. Essentially there is a bidding war for the available flights. If any resource including natural resources like steel and cement is not sufficient for the demand for those resources, then the price of those resources will increase leading to inflation. Right now in the US labor is becoming a scarce resource especially labor of the type necessary in the essential economy, that is the economy of goods and services necessary for the continuation and enhancement of everyday life. As more labor is developed for essentially useless services like the entertainment and social media industries, plumbers, electricians and carpenters are not available for useful services, and, therefore, the cost of those services increases.

Which brings us to Biden's Inflation Reduction Act which allocates $370 billion to rebuild infrastructure and fight climate change. These are all necessary and vital goals, but the question should be asked are the resources for this amount of spending sufficient or will this spending be inflationary. To put it more succinctly is the blue collar labor sufficient for the job? If not, the price of labor will be bid up and the spending will be inflationary. More and more these days students are encouraged to go to college where they end up after graduation working for Wall Street or hedge funds or in the entertainment/social media industry. They are not encouraged to go to vocational technical schools to become carpenters, plumbers and electricians. So they go into industries which are not essential to the real economy. There are shortages of labor for the real economy everywhere we look. In order to overcome these shortages, it would be necessary to step up legal immigration since immigrants by and large fill the jobs Americans don't want to do, and by and large Americans don't want to perform any kind of the less glamorous and remunerative type of labor necessary for production in the real economy. Also outsourcing has made it unnecessary for Americans to perform labor in the real economy. We rely either on immigrants or foreign workers for that.

The next thing is that all this infrastructure rebuilding is going to contribute to global warming as well as reducing it. Rebuilding all the bridges of America will require large amounts of steel and cement. Steel and cement production produce large amounts of carbon dioxide which is emitted into the atmosphere. The International Energy Agency estimates that direct CO² emissions due to crude steel production is approximately 1.4 tons of CO² per ton of steel produced. The cement industry is responsible for about 8% of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions — far more than global carbon emissions from aviation. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, after the U.S. and China. So rebuilding America's infrastructure will contribute to global warming while at the same time attempting to reduce global warming. The fact is that alternatives to steel and cement which do not produce greenhouse gasses are not available. Research on these topics needs to be stepped up. But more research in areas like artificial intelligence, of the kind which has no use in the amelioration of global warming, takes place while productive research into materials to replace steel and cement languishes. Also while more electric vehicles are being produced, the electric energy to power these vehicles is coming from power plants that still use fossil fuels to produce it. One form of greenhouse gas production is being traded for another. Nothing is gained unless all energy generating power plants are using renewable and non carbon dioxide producing fuels.

The problem is that limited resources both in terms of labor and physical resources will hamper efforts both in repairing American infrastructure and building infrastructure which reduces the amount of greenhouse gas production. Stephanie Kelton writes: "That's why MMT recommends a different approach to the federal budgeting process, one that integrates inflation risk into the decision making process so that lawmakers are forced to stop and think about whether they have taken the necessary steps to guard against inflation risk before approving any new spending. MMT would make us safer in this respect because it recognizes that the best defense against inflation is a good offense. We don't want to allow excessive spending to cause inflation and then fight inflation after it happens. We want agencies like the CBO helping to evaluate new legislation for potential inflation risk before Congress commits to funding new programs so that the risks can be mitigated preemptively. At its core  MMT is about replacing an artificial (revenue) constraint with a real (inflation) restraint." The artificial revenue constraint is the debt ceiling!

In the above passage the words "inflation risk" could also be replaced with "greenhouse gas emission risk." The CBO should evaluate both kinds of risks. So as the economy becomes more electrified in terms of electric cars and buildings, we need to think about the fact that the electricity generated by these increased demands needs to come from non carbon dioxide emitting sources. Also substitutes must be found quickly - in other words research needs to be stepped up - to find substitutes for steel and cement. To boot, non polluting energy sources must be found for ships and planes. Both human and physical natural resources must be taken into account. Have all these things been thought through?

New York passes first-in-nation law to ban natural gas and other fossil fuels

The state ban on gas in new buildings could face legal challenges, but it marks a milestone in the energy transition sought by climate activists

By Anna Phillips

May 3, 2023 at 8:57 a.m. EDT from the Washington Post

New York state has passed a law requiring most new buildings to be zero-emissions starting in 2026, with larger buildings to come into compliance in 2029. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

 

New York has become the first state in the nation to pass a law banning natural gas and other fossil fuels in most new buildings, a move that could inspire other states and further erode the residential future of the gas industry.

Late Tuesday night, the New York legislature approved a $229 billion state budget that included a prohibition on gas in most new homes and other construction. It was a major victory for climate activists but is likely to face a court challenge from fossil fuel interests.

The law effectively requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and in 2029 for taller buildings. And although it allows exemptions for manufacturing facilities, restaurants, hospitals and even carwashes, the measure does not do what some climate activists had feared: give cities and counties license to override the ban.

Since the beginning of this year, when a federal official suggested, and then quickly retracted, the idea that the national government might ban gas stoves, debate over the future of natural gas has flared. So it may seem surprising that as New York lawmakers headed into the final stretch of their budget talks this week, their plans to pass a statewide gas ban were essentially a foregone conclusion.

But Democrats, who control the New York Senate and Assembly, have faced pressure from environmentalists for several years to follow through on the state’s climate commitments. And, in the end, it was not negotiations over gas stoves that stirred controversy but a drawn-out fight over bail reform and housing policy that delayed approval of the budget by a month.

The law’s passage, and the approval of a measure that would require the state to build renewable energy when the private sector falls short, have fueled supporters’ hopes for New York to become a national model.

“I hear from local government and state folks frequently that they’re thinking of this sort of policy, and so I’m certain, as other policymakers look to a state that’s found a politically and technically feasible way to go about electrification, that others will be paying attention,” said Amy Turner, a senior fellow at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

In Massachusetts, a law adopted last year has allowed 10 cities and towns to participate in a pilot program banning gas-burning stoves and furnaces from new construction. Environmentalists are eager to see the state go further, using a new building code written to discourage the use of fossil fuels. Advocates are also eyeing Chicago, where the heavily blue city recently elected a liberal mayor.

But the gas industry and its Republican supporters have raised doubts about whether New York’s gas ban can survive legal challenges. Some climate advocates worry that a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that struck down the California city of Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation gas ban could have a chilling effect on other cities and counties.

A fight brewing in Oregon could decide how we heat our homes and cook

Although the court’s decision is not legally binding in most of the United States, hesitation to adopt local gas bans could ripple outward, said Matt Vespa, a senior attorney with the nonprofit organization Earthjustice who noted that restrictions on gas use in buildings typically begin at the local level, then go statewide. In California and Washington state, major cities including San Francisco and Seattle banned gas hookups before the states enacted measures encouraging electrification through their building codes.

There are other routes to all-electric buildings besides the one Berkeley used, Vespa said, but “if you take away the local piece, that does chill upwards momentum, and people have to recalibrate.”

Opponents derided the New York bill’s passage as governmental overreach. Republican Robert Ortt, the minority leader of the New York Senate, issued a statement criticizing the law as a “first-in-the-nation, unconstitutional ban” that “will drive up utility bills and increase housing costs.”

New York’s law does not affect existing buildings, and it specifically exempts renovations. But, over time, it could chip away at the gas industry’s dominance in the state, where 3 in 5 households rely on natural gas for heating, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Only about 1 in 7 households heat with electricity.

The ban also extends to heating oil and propane, raising questions about the future of these fuels in New York state’s more rural communities.

Critics of the law have argued that it limits consumer choice and will increase utility bills by shifting more households to electricity, which is more expensive than gas in much of the state. Supporters counter that because the law affects only new construction, the transition will happen gradually and in tandem with the state’s plans to shift more of its electricity production to greener, and cheaper, sources.

Today, gas fuels 46 percent of New York’s electricity generation, but a landmark climate law passed in 2019 calls for a transition to renewable, emissions-free sources such as solar, wind and hydro power. It requires the state to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Here's How the 'Jet-Owning Oligarchy' Harms Both Planet and Workers

A Cessna Citation jet aircraft is seen at Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in this aerial photo taken near Healdsburg, California on June 1, 2021.

(Photo: George Rose/Getty Images)

 

by Kenny Stancil, May 1, 2023 from Common Dreams

A new analysis catalogs alarming facts about the destructive private jet industry, which is emblematic of runaway economic and carbon inequality.

Research published Monday details how the working class is paying the price, in more ways than one, for the "jet-owning oligarchy" to hop around the globe in their personal luxury planes.

It's well-established that private jet travel by the super-rich is worsening the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis. Adding insult to injury, this conspicuously carbon-intensive consumption is being subsidized by ordinary taxpayers, as the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Patriotic Millionaires make clear in their new analysis.

Entitled High Flyers 2023: How Ultra-Rich Private Jet Travel Costs the Rest of Us and Burns Up Our Planet, the report catalogs alarming facts about the private jet industry and makes recommendations about how to rein in this potent symbol and manifestation of escalating inequality.

To begin with, "private jets emit at least 10 times more pollutants than commercial planes per passenger," the report notes. "Unsurprisingly, approximately 1% of people are believed to be responsible for about half of all aviation carbon emissions."

Amid a surge in wealth inequality since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, "private jet use has increased by about a fifth, and private jet emissions have increased more than 23%," the report points out. "The private jet sector set industry records with regards to transaction and dollar volume in 2021 and 2022."

While a coronavirus-era boom is evident, the industry has been growing steadily alongside wealth inequality since the turn of the century. As the report states: "The size of the global fleet has increased 133% in the last two decades from 9,895 in 2000 to 23,133 in mid-2022. This bonanza was accompanied by an unprecedented number of business jet operations, 5.3 million in 2022."

"If we can't ban private jets, we should at least tax them and require them to pay to offset their environmental damage and subsidies."

According to the report, "The median net worth of a full and fractional private jet owner is $190 million and $140 million respectively." A minuscule 0.0008% of the global population belongs to the jet-owning class, which consists mostly of financial and real estate tycoons.

Last year, billionaire Elon Musk, "the most active high flyer in the United States," bought a new jet and took 171 private flights, or about one every other day, the report notes.

In so doing, he single-handedly "contributed to the consumption of 837,934 liters of jet fuel," states the report, and he "was responsible for 2,112 tons of carbon emissions"—132 times more than the entire carbon footprint of an average person in the United States.

In a statement, report co-author Kalena Thomhave, a researcher with the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, called private jets "a microcosm of our system of wealth inequality even beyond their image of extravagance."

"Private flyers pay just 2% of the taxes that primarily fund the Federal Aviation Administration, yet nearly 17% of flights handled by the FAA are private," said Thomhave. "Meanwhile, private jets contribute disproportionately to carbon emissions while often representing significant tax savings for their wealthy owners."

As the report observes: "Thousands of municipal airports in the U.S. are funded by the public, but many primarily serve private and corporate jets. These airports may not offer scheduled passenger service, but they still offer airport runways subsidized by taxes."

Such regressive taxation is the product of industry lobbying, the report explains:

The largest player in the private jet lobby, the National Business Aviation Association, has spent an average $2.4 million each year since 2008 lobbying the federal government, primarily for tax giveaways. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the industry specifically lobbied for Covid relief, particularly "medium to long-term liquidity assistance and relief from air transportation excise taxes," even though industry demand was quickly climbing.

As wealth inequality soars, so too does the value of the private jet market, which grew from $32.3 billion in 2021 to $34.1 billion in 2022, the report notes. With wealth being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and little to no downward redistribution on the horizon, the private jet industry is projected to expand further in the coming years.

Report co-author Omar Ocampo, a researcher with the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, said that the private jet industry's expected growth this decade "provides us with a great opportunity to levy a luxury transfer tax on private jet sales." He added that "the revenue raised from this tax can be invested towards developing a green transportation system."

According to the report, "A 10% and 5% transfer fee on pre-owned and new private aircraft would have raised $2.4 billion in 2021 and $2.6 billion in 2022."

In addition to imposing a transfer tax on all private jet sales, IPS and Patriotic Millionaires recommend the following steps be taken:

• Levy a private jet fuel tax;
• Institute a "short hop" surcharge;
• Resist efforts to increase passenger facility charges until private jet owners pay their fair share;
• Create a sustainable transportation equity trust fund;
• Increase TSA security oversight of private jets; and
• Pass the Aircraft Ownership Transparency Act.

According to the report, Musk would have paid nearly $4 million in additional taxes last year if a transfer fee and jet fuel tax had been in place.

"Private jet travel by billionaires and the ultra-wealthy imposes a tremendous cost on the rest of us," said Chuck Collins, another co-author of the report.

"Not only do ordinary travelers and taxpayers subsidize the air space for private jets, but the high flyers also contribute considerably more pollution than other passengers," said Collins. "If we can't ban private jets, we should at least tax them and require them to pay to offset their environmental damage and subsidies."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Off the Top of My Head

The World Needs the Cooperation of Russia to Forestall Global Warming

by John Lawrence

Ultimately, geography will determine which countries win and which countries lose as global warming and sea level rise progress. Landlocked countries with little or no exposure to the oceans will win as countries with large shoreline exposures and major coastal cities go underwater. Russia has no major cities that are exposed to sea level rise. Its only ocean exposure is in the far north to the Arctic ocean and a little bit to the northern Pacific ocean. In addition Russia has an abundance of fossil fuels which it is eager to sell to the rest of the world. It has an incentive to increase global warming rather than to mitigate it.

As the Arctic region warms, Russia profits from its northernmost regions becoming more inhabitable. In addition sea routes in the Arctic become more navigable. So Russia is in a position to profit from global warming and to profit financially from hastening global warming by selling fossil fuels. Russia has no disincentive to curtail the sale of fossil fuels which are its major natural resource and source of income. It can undercut and undersell renewables if it wants to. Sanctions have had little or no effect on Russia's internal economy. The departure of Starbucks and McDonald's accomplished nothing. Russia reopened these chains under Russian control with the profits staying in Russia instead of returning to the US. Starbucks became Starubles and McDonald's became Inanov's presumably.

On the other hand consider the world's major cities that are located right on the oceans and are subject to being submerged by global warming. Such cities as New York City, Miami, London, Amsterdam, New Orleans, Venice, Savannah, GA, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Osaka, Dhaka, San Francisco, Sydney, Boston, Lisbon, Vancouver, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Dublin, Honolulu, Lagos, Charleston, Long Beach, Key West and many others in China, Africa, Vietnam, Bangladesh and east Asia. The US and its partners in Europe have major exposure to oceans for many major cities. Billions of dollars in real estate are at stake, not to mention that major trading routes will be disrupted and infrastructure destroyed. Particularly, the US east coast is exposed not only to sea level rise, but to increasingly virulent hurricanes and tornadoes.

So considering the fact that the US has relatively the most to lose from global warming and Russia has relatively the most to win, does it make any sense to make a pariah out of Russia? Regardless of the war in Ukraine, worsening relations with Russia only hasten the day when geography will determine the outcome of the war on climate change. China also has a long shoreline and plenty of major cities that are exposed to the ocean. It would be in China's interest to partner with the US to combat global warming. Yet the US is in the business of making a pariah out of Russia and starting a Cold War with China. So even if  the US wins its wars with Russia and China, it can still lose the war with respect to global warming. In the final analysis Russia and Mother Nature will win. It's all about geography.

Off the Top of My Head

Elon's Folly Contributing to Rocket Fuel Greenhouse Gas Emissions

by John Lawrence

The Starship that exploded soon after launch recently had a methane based fuel. Methane is 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Whatever methane remained in the Starship after launch was fully released into the atmosphere after it exploded. Space tourism will cause even more greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere. At a time when we should have all hands on deck to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, NASA is going full steam ahead with its space exploration program. The astronauts should be repurposed to fight greenhouse gas emissions not to ramp them up. In an article by Mark Piesing for the BBC, titled The pollution caused by rocket launches we find:

In television, and film, spaceflight is usually represented as having little or no impact on the environment. Yet it should be obvious that rocket engines spew out pollution into the atmosphere, like any form of combustion-driven propulsion.

Perhaps the black carbon, or soot, and other emissions didn't matter when only around 70 commercial rocket launches a year took place. Now that number has doubled; it is expected to increase significantly more over the next two decades due to the growth in demand for services like satellite internet services and space tourism.

At least three scientific research papers have already been published this year [2022] on the impact of rocket emissions on the atmosphere, temperatures, and the ozone layer.

So at a time when planet earth is in peril of remaining a habitable planet for the human species, why are we continuing a quest to fire off rocket ships so we can some day put humans on Mars, an uninhabitable planet? It seems like pure folly. By the time they get humans on Mars, the earth will have become an uninhabitable planet also at the rate we're going. The US government should not be contributing to global warming with its space program at a time when it is professing to be curtailing global warming. If we are to save this planet, much more needs to be done than simply making all cars electric by 2050. Many more power plants will have to be built by then to generate the electricity to power all those electric cars. What kind of fuel will they use for all these new power plants? If they don't have enough renewables by then, it will have to be fossil fuels so what has been gained? Nothing.

People have totally compartmentalized the global warming syndrome. On the one hand they are for eliminating fossil fuels. On the other they go ahead with all sorts of activities that increase their use because alternative green forms of energy are not yet available. I guess it's OK to sacrifice a few neighborhoods to tornadoes here and there as long as we can keep the economy humming. We must not sacrifice the American way of life. Too many people might get upset and vote for the other party. Similarly, we can't restrict assault rifles because too many people would get upset and vote for the other party. So Joe Biden is the perfect President for our times. He understands that he can rub his belly and whistle Dixie at the same time. However, the pace of change in energy creation is much too slow even to counteract the population increases. More people on the planet means more demand for energy, and the fossil fuel industry is only too happy to provide it until renewables can totally take over some time in the future, some time that will be too late for a desperate human species.

Off the Top of My Head

Will Renewable Energy Be Sufficient to Stave Off Global Warming?

by John Lawrence

More than a third of the world's energy will come from renewables by 2025. The International Energy Agency says electricity demand is forecast to grow by 3% a year over the next three years compared to 2022. So in 10 years demand will be 30% higher than it was in 2022 Meanwhile, renewable energy generation is increasing about 10% a year. In 10 years renewables will be producing 100% of the energy demand as of today, but, since demand will be 30% higher than today, that leaves about 30% of demand still to be fulfilled by fossil fuels. But electricity generation is not the only source of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Steel and cement production also releases greenhouse gasses. Agriculture, especially cattle farming, releases large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Virtually every aspect of production and consumption releases greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. To reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses, the world's population needs to go to a plant based diet and get away from the demand for meat, especially beef. Substitutes in building materials need to be found for steel and cement. Otherwise the demand for fossil fuels will never go away. Airplanes and container ships release a lot of greenhouse gasses. Might we have nuclear powered container ships in the future? Will there be a substitute for jet fuel?

Meanwhile, the release of greenhouse gasses is increasing. NBC News reported on March 2, 2023:

"Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.

"Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)"

World society needs to make an all out immediate effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, something it's definitely not doing. Instead the human race is preoccupied with war and preparations for war. It is also business as usual for production and consumption especially in the western industrialized societies. There needs to be an immediate cessation of consumption at the level that western societies are used to consuming, but that would bring about an immediate recession in the US whose economy is based 70% on consumption. It seems problematic to suggest that building materials should henceforth be of the kind used in medieval Europe, namely stone which was used to build the great cathedrals. Also earth based materials like adobe would not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions at the same levels that concrete and steel buildings do, not even to mention concrete roads and freeways. It seems all modern methods of production and consumption are based either on fossil fuels or carbon dioxide emissions from steel and cement production. Plastics which are based on fossil fuels need to be immediately replaced with other materials like glass and paper products. Even the wind turbines that produce renewable energy are made almost entirely of steel which generates huge amounts of greenhouse gas. Why couldn't a wind turbine be made of stone except for the moving parts?

Suffice it to say that, when you look at the entire picture, it is not enough just to go to renewable sources for electricity production. For sure that's one component in terms of automobile travel and electricity usage for homes and businesses, but until the problems associated with airplane and ship travel are solved and the problems associated with steel and cement production are solved, we will never reduce the levels of greenhouse gasses being spewed into the atmosphere enough to prevent climate catastrophe. We are moving at a snail's pace when an all out immediate effort is needed.

Industry Knew—and Hid—Dangers of Gas Stoves Over 50 Years Ago

Amid growing research showing the climate and health risks of gas stoves, some advocates and experts want a ban on new fossil fuel-powered appliances.

(Photo: Andrea Todaro/EyeEm)

by Bret Wilkins, March 7, 2023

from Common Dreams

Industry Knew—and Hid—Dangers of Gas Stoves Over 50 Years Ago

"What? They knew? Next you're going to tell me that ExxonMobil knew about climate change and that the tobacco companies knew cigarettes caused cancer," one Democratic senator sarcastically said.

Newly uncovered documents published last week by DeSmog reveal that the leading gas industry trade group knew over 50 years ago that cooking with gas stoves could harm human health and tried to cover up the evidence.

The DeSmogrevelations regarding the American Gas Associationn (AGA) came as the gas industry is pushing back against climate and public health advocates' efforts to ban new gas stoves amid mounting scientific evidence that the appliances threaten the warming planet and people's health.

Rrcent studies—which, among other things, showed that nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ultrafine particles produced by gas stoves cause a range of health problems, including 1 in 8 U.S. cases of childhood asthma—sparked fast and furious backlash from the gas industry and its congressional boosters.

"It's less widely known that the gas industry has long sponsored its own research into the problem of indoor air pollution from gas stoves," wrote DeSmog's Rebecca John. "Now, newly discovered documents reveal that the American Gas Association was studying the health and indoor pollution risks from gas stoves as far back as the early 1970s—that they knew much more, at a far earlier date, than has been previously documented."

According to John:

More than 50 years ago, in 1972, AGA authored a draft report highlighting indoor air pollution concerns similar to those being raised by health experts and regulators today. In particular, this draft report examined what to do about problems related to the emission of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides (collectively referred to as NOx) from domestic gas appliances. This draft, recently discovered in the U.S. National Archives, would eventually become an official report published by the National Industrial Pollution Control Council (NIPCC), a long-forgotten government advisory council composed of the nation's most powerful industrialists.

However, an entire section detailing those concerns, entitled "Indoor Air Quality Control," vanished from the final report. With it went all the important evidence that the gas industry was not only conducting research into what the NIPCC called the "NOx problem" but also that it was actively testing technological solutions "for the purposes of limiting the levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in household air."

"Instead," John wrote, "the final report argued gas' sole drawback was its limited availability, 'not its environmental impact.' It also lobbied for a massive expansion of U.S. domestic gas reserves and the rapid rollout of gas-based infrastructure, under the banner of replacing coal with gas to stem air pollution."

Reacting to the DeSmog report, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) sardonically tweeted: "What? They knew? Next you're going to tell me that ExxonMobil knew about climate change and that the tobacco companies knew cigarettes caused cancer."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

 

 

Brett Wilkins

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

Off the Top of My Head

A 500 Year Event, Gov. DeSantis, or a Once a Year Occurrence?

by John Lawrence

Gov. DeSantis has said repeatedly, "This is a 500 year event" as if once we get the damage cleaned up from Hurricane Ian, we can relax because this kind of devastation won't happen again for another 500 years. I've got news for you, Gov. Desantis. An event like Ian will probably happen again within 5 years, and it will be even worse as the Caribbean warms more making hurricanes even more ferocious. Floridians experienced the deadly, devastating consequences of back-to-back major hurricanes—Irma in 2017 and Michael in 2018—along with near-misses by Matthew in 2016 and Dorian in 2019. They don't sound like 500 year events to me. Let's be honest with each other, Gov. DeSantis. The wreckage from Ian won't even be fully cleaned up before the next major hurricane hits Florida. Thank God, DeSantis is not a climate change denier. However, he is not given high marks for taking action to mitigate the effects of climate change. “I am not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists,” DeSantis told reporters at one 2018 campaign stop. “I am not a global warming person. I don’t want that label on me.” Forget about labels, Gov. DeSantis, you have a major problem on your hands. You better get down on your knees and start worshiping at the church of climate change.

Inside Climate News reports:

"Florida’s climate challenges are among the biggest in the country. Beyond those related to hurricanes intensified by climate change, they include sea level rise, extreme heat, drought and increasing health threats from mosquito-borne diseases. Florida is the most hurricane-prone state, and hurricanes are not only getting more powerful, they are bringing much more rainfall. 

Sunny day flooding is a regular occurrence in some communities because of sea level rise. Some face several feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. 

By its own numbers, the DeSantis administration predicts that with sea level rise, $26 billion in residential property statewide will be at risk of chronic flooding by 2045."

OK, Ian will probably result in more than $26 billion to clean up, and that's not "by 2045". That's this year - 2022. As insurance companies refuse to insure Florida residential property, Florida residents better hope that the Federal government takes up the slack. By the way that's the Federal government that this Republican state tells to stay out of its business. It's always about states' rights until there's some disaster. Then they come running to the Federal government for help. Private flood insurance will soon be a thing of the past. Nearly 80,000 Florida homeowners will have to find new insurance, after Southern Fidelity declared bankruptcy. The Tallahassee based company is the fourth insurer to declare insolvency recently.

The hardest hit by Ian, of course, were retirees and poor people living in mobile homes. Mobile homes should be outlawed in most parts of Florida. They cannot withstand the powerful hurricanes that are only going to get more powerful as climate change accelerates. Even structurally sound homes will still suffer from water damage and the loss of services like power, water, cell phone towers and more. There will be more water damage from storm surges and fresh water flooding as major storms drop 24 inches or more of water on neighborhoods. All utilities need to be undergrounded, or they will be on the ground more than they will be functional. It will be a full time job just getting water, power, sewer and communications back online, not to mention getting roads cleared of debris and rebuilding bridges and washed out roads. Massive climate disasters are only going to get worse, and we're still putting about 34 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. There's no way that we can survive without a full on effort by all countries of the world to get off fossil fuels ASAP. Yet countries of the world continue to fight, bicker and compete with each other instead of COOPERATING.

Off the Top of My Head

We Need a Department of Peace to Balance and Offset our War Department

by John Lawrence

Let's face it. the Department of Defense is a euphemism. It was called the Department of War until 1949. So let's call it what it really is. Don't get me wrong. There are times when war is necessary as occurred in WW II. However, we spend about $1 trillion on our War Department while spending little or nothing on peace. Is there really a Peace Corps? Yes, and its budget is about $400 million. That's about 4 ten thousandths of the War Department budget. My point is that we should be making at least the same effort towards peace as we're making towards war, and we should be putting our money where our mouth is. This doesn't mean we totally disarm ourselves. It means that we are making an effort towards creating peace in the world if at all possible and are willing to devote an equal amount of resources towards it. In our present state it's all about threatening war in order to to create a state of peace. It's Pax Americana similar to the Pax Romana which meant that you didn't mess with Rome or else you were threatened with violence. Instead of creating peace by means of a threat of war, we should be actively pursuing a peaceful world instead.

What would a Department of Peace actually do? Well, diplomacy would be under this department instead of the State Department for starters. Second, the American equivalent of China's Belt and Road initiative. Building infrastructure around the world just as China is doing. But what's most important at the present time is converting the world to green infrastructure. The middle class in India is growing. They want to live just like Americans. As more Indians enter the middle class they are consuming more fossil fuels to provide the energy to do so. This is contributing to the looming climate disaster. Just what we don't need is more carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere as a result of more people gentrifying into the middle class. Therefore, a Department of Peace, which should include the Peace Corps, would step up the efforts not only to change the fossil fuel habit in the US, but to actively change it around the world. About a half a trillion dollar budget would be about right while decreasing the War (Defense) budget which is 10 times the combined budgets of the rest of the world to half a trillion.

President Biden wants a Civilian Climate Corps reminiscent of the Civilian Conservation Corps which President Roosevelt established to build parks and plant trees during the Great Depression. An excellent idea in view of the fact that planting a trillion trees would suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Unless we do that there is already enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 410 ppm to melt both poles. Why not require participation in the Civilian Conservation Corps for people receiving welfare benefits who aren't otherwise employed or who are unemployable in the prevailing economy. I'm thinking about the homeless and others for whom this might be a first step to getting back on their feet in the so-called real world. I'm in favor of the government being the employer of last resort, and employment in a Civilian Climate Corps is the perfect solution both for them and for the environment.

Building the elements of peace around the world would entail looking out for the health care needs of people outside the US in our era of pandemics. This is also good sense in a selfish way since viruses can transmit world wide in a matter of days if not hours. They don't respect national boundaries. People to people cultural contacts with people of other nations brings about understanding and the realization that, no matter what the religious or ethnic differences seem to be, human beings are all essentially the same deep down and all have the same needs and aspirations. Helping others to realize their aspirations creates peace in the world. Cultural and educational exchanges are an important way to increase mutual understanding. There are many ways to create peace in the world. The US shouldn't be always taking the stance of trying to put down those peoples and countries who don't follow the US way of life. Others might have a different way of setting up their societies, but rather than taking this as a threat, we should engage diplomatically and peacefully if at all possible knowing that in the final analysis, if push came to shove, we also have the means to defend ourselves. A Department of Peace and a Department of War should go hand in hand. Today it is lopsided in favor of war.

Off the Top of My Head

"A Yearlong Wild Goose Chase That Produced Nothing as the Earth Warms to Dangerous Levels"

by John Lawrence

That's how the New York Times characterized the Biden administration's courting of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. He and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema are the 2 Democrats standing in the way of the significant Biden plan to do something about global warming. Of course no Republican Senator will do anything to help even though it's their planet too. Now the Supreme Court has chimed in to the effect that the EPA is not able to do anything either. Meanwhile earth is burning up. I regretted in another post that all the climate disasters so far have been one offs, and nothing would be done about climate change until one event affects at least half the country. Not enough people care if a tornado wipes out a whole city or a whole town burns in a wild fire. But when a climate event affects half the country, people sit up and take notice. In other words enough people have to have their own personal ox gored before anything significant will get done. Now we have that event. This summer's heat has seen temperatures above 100 degrees F affect more than half the country simultaneously. Despite the misery this is causing, I am cheering because this is not a one off affecting a relative minority of people. People will sit up and take notice.

The NY Times reported:

Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who took more campaign cash from the oil and gas industry than any other senator, and who became a millionaire from his family coal business, independently blew up the Democratic Party’s legislative plans to fight climate change. The swing Democratic vote in an evenly divided Senate, Mr. Manchin led his party through months of tortured negotiations that collapsed on Thursday night, a yearlong wild goose chase that produced nothing as the Earth warms to dangerous levels.

“It seems odd that Manchin would choose as his legacy to be the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity,” said John Podesta, a former senior counselor to President Barack Obama and founder of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Privately, Senate Democratic staff members seethed and sobbed on Thursday night, after more than a year of working nights and weekends to scale back, water down, trim and tailor the climate legislation to Mr. Manchin’s exact specifications, only to have it rejected inches from the finish line.

But alas and alack, Mancin has seized on inflation as the perfect excuse to justify his torpedoing of Biden's climate plan. The war in Ukraine which resulted in raising gas prices hasn't helped either. Yet there are things that could be done which would not exacerbate inflation. To subdue inflation, money has to be extracted from the economy. One way to do this is to increase taxes on the rich, something that was part of Biden's plan. But rich man Manchin says No Sir to that aspect. He's not going to put the kibosh on the very industry that made him rich and that would be coal mining. So what would Biden's plan consist of? Giving tax incentives to get more electric vehicles on the road and transformations of key industries to rely more on renewable energy. Sounds pretty basic, doesn't it? The climate problem is like a ship taking on water. If you wait to start bailing long enough no amount of fast and furious bailing is going to save the ship from sinking.

The Washington Post reported that if we had stuck with Biden's plan and it had passed Congress, we might have just about reached our climate goal to slash U.S. emissions by 50 to 52 percent by the end of 2030 which would have maintained consistency with 2015’s Paris climate agreement, in which nations agreed to take significant measures to avoid the levels of global warming associated with severe climate impact. It would have kept total planetary warming to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This level of warming would still have produced unimaginable levels of global distress. Anything beyond that would create hell on earth.

In the documentary Polar Extremes, it is pointed out that at 410 ppm of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, there is already enough to melt ice completely at both poles. If this happens sea levels would rise over 200 feet wiping out about 80 miles of US shoreline on the east coast as well as the entire state of Florida. So it is not enough to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which of course we're still doing. A huge amount would have to be taken out to bring the atmospheric concentration down to about 300 ppm, the level at which polar ice can be maintained. Even at 350 ppm scientific data shows that in previous geological eras polar ice had entirely disappeared. Technological solutions to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere so far have entirely failed or been cost prohibitive. The only natural solution is to plant 1 to 3 trillion trees. This is entirely feasible if we would only collectively get off our asses and do it. But we dither and hesitate, and we're fiddling while earth burns.

One very intelligent observer of the climate scene is Fareed Zakaria. Fareed has some good ideas about what should be done to alleviate the worst consequences of climate disaster. He wrote in the Washington Post:

"“It was getting hotter.” So opens “The Ministry for the Future,” the disturbing novel by science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. The opening chapter, set in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, depicts a heat wave that kills millions across the subcontinent and galvanizes people to radical action.

"Such dire warnings may seem far-fetched today. But the heat waves we are now experiencing are going to get worse. That, of course, will have dire consequences. More likely than mass death is mass migration. As Bill Gates points out, the area around the equator could become too hot for people to work outdoors; that could mean a decline in farming, the most common occupation in low-income countries. Stressed by heat, lack of water and no jobs, millions of people could start moving from these areas to more temperate climates mostly in the north: Europe and the United States.

"Many climate activists are often focused on pledges to get to net zero emissions by some distant date or insist that every new energy source must be entirely green.

"But the reality is that we need to cut emissions now, not promise to do so by 2030. And the only way to do it now, and at scale, is to make some tough choices and trade-offs. We do not have green technology, like clean nuclear fusion and long-duration battery storage, that can fully replace fossil fuels today. We may get them — in 10 or 15 years, perhaps, if we are very lucky. ...

'Let me suggest a few practical ways to make progress in the next five years with technologies we already have.

"We could start by converting the most polluting coal-fired power plants to natural gas, which emits half as much carbon dioxide as coal when combusted. A study surveyed 29,000 power plants around the world and found that 5 percent generate 73 percent of all emissions in the electricity-generation sector. In other words, replacing around 1,500 coal-burning plants would make a huge dent in emissions, a giant cut on par with the boldest plans being discussed today.If the West wants to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, why not put together a coalition that would finance this effort across the planet?

"Then there is the problem of methane leakage from natural gas extraction, agriculture and landfills. This can be solved technically and just needs smart, tough regulations.

"We should extend the life of nuclear power plants and start building smaller and safer ones. Nuclear energy evokes grim images, but the facts speak for themselves. In the 21st century, just a handful of people have died from nuclear accidents around the world, while more than 1,500 people died in oil and gas extraction in the United States alone from 2008 to 2017. Far more people die each year from lung diseases caused by coal pollution, with some estimates running into the millions — and that’s without even factoring in the climate impacts. We should also keep working on developing new modular reactors that have much safer designs and are far less likely to have the same kind of meltdown problems that others have had in the past. And let me remind you, nuclear power plants produce nearly zero emissions.

"Plant 1 trillion trees. The science is simple: Trees absorb carbon dioxide. We are all impressed by Greta Thunberg, but what about Felix Finkbeiner? He’s a young German environmentalist who, at the age of 9, proposed that every country commit to planting 1 million trees and then, at 13, upped the ante and suggested at the United Nations that we target 1 trillion by 2050. Let’s start by curbing deforestation and planting as many trees as we can, as fast as we can."

It is something so simple and natural that it will probably be entirely ignored by the powers that be and the global citizenry. Plant 1 trillion trees or 2 trillion or 3 trillion. It would be a sad outcome for the human race if we neglected to do such a simple thing that would have saved the planet for future generations but instead sat around prognosticating about how to provide a high tech solution. Maybe Ted Kaczynski was right. "In his Manifesto he wrote: "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." "He writes that technology has had a destabilizing effect on society, has made life unfulfilling, and has caused widespread psychological suffering. Kaczynski argues that most people spend their time engaged in useless pursuits because of technological advances; he calls these "surrogate activities", wherein people strive toward artificial goals, including scientific work, consumption of entertainment, political activism and following sports teams." Yes, the Industrial Revolution has been a disaster for the human race, and Kaczynski did not even mention fossil fuels or global warming. Prescient!

Off the Top of My Head

Sea Levels to Rise by 200 Feet if Poles Melt

by John Lawrence

Based on 410 ppm which is the concentration of carbon dioxide right now in the atmosphere, the ice on the poles will go completely away albeit at a glacial pace. Concentrations of carbon dioxide have varied between 100 ppm and 300 ppm for hundreds of millions of years, and earth has gone through hot periods in which there was no polar ice and at least one period where the entire earth was encased in ice. Reliable predictions by scientists show that 410 ppm will guarantee the disappearance of ice from the poles and a 200 foot sea level rise which will wipe out most of the east coast including a total disappearance of the state of Florida. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is continuing to increase. It will continue to increase way above the current 410 ppm. Humans are still pouring billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere year after year. There has been no diminution of this trend. In fact it is accelerating. The world emits about 43 billion tons of CO2 a year. So already there is enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to guarantee that the poles will melt, and the earth will become very hot. And we're still making it worse year after year.

As the oceans warm and the polar ice melts, we are seeing more extreme weather events due to increased water evaporation from the oceans. That increased amount of water in the atmosphere is released in the form of torrential downpours which cause flooding and weather events such as hurricanes. Higher temperatures are also causing droughts and forest fires. Although these events are tragedies for those directly affected, geological history has shown that life can adapt. One of the first major catastrophes the human race will be faced with is the loss of major cities situated close to oceans such as New York, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Miami and New Orleans. However, humans can adapt to this by just moving further back from the shore lines as sea levels rise wiping out most low lying areas. Of course this will increase anti-immigrant sentiment due to the the number or refugees in the world as humans crowd onto remaining habitable areas. At this stage we will still be better off than Venus which has a runaway greenhouse gas effect and a surface air temperature of 800 degrees F. Its atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.

The lesson here is that it is to the advantage of the human race to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as quickly as possible. This means major changes to our civilization which human beings are reluctant to make especially in democracies which are governed by the will of the people. While most will give lip service to preserving the planet for future generations, in fact they don't want to do anything that will change their lifestyles or inconvenience themselves in any way. Only when war and pestilence force humans to diminish their numbers on the planet will the human footprint get down to a certain size which, along with the adoption of renewable energy systems, will allow the planet to sustain enough habitable land mass for the furtherance of human life at least for some people. How fast we proceed with changing the human ecosystem in terms of greenhouse gas reduction will determine what kind of a planet future generations will be forced to live on. At the very least it will resemble a hot house earth, similar to conditions which existed millennia ago in which the polar regions were tropical swamps.

Off the Top of My Head

Did Biden Shoot Himself in the Foot by Putting the Kibosh on Russian Oil?

by John Lawrence

If Putin wanted to ruin the US economy, he couldn't have done it more successfully than if he himself had refused deliveries of Russian oil. The US and European embargo on Russian oil has driven the price of oil on the world market sky high, and Putin is benefiting from the price increase! In fact he has made more money from the sale of oil this year than he did last year! No wonder Putin is smiling. He's laughing all the way to the bank as his war in Ukraine not only devastates Ukraine but drives inflation in the US, UK and the rest of Europe while US sanctions on Russia's economy does little or no damage. Do they really need imports from Europe or the US when China is the world's manufacturer of practically everything, and China is an ally of Russia? Not every financial transaction in the world involves the US dollar. Furthermore, Russia's blockade of Ukrainian grain is causing food prices to rise which makes for another increase in inflation. But even worse than that, countries that depend on that grain consumption will likely find their citizens going hungry further contributing to world political instability.

Biden's insane pandering to Saudi Arabia after declaring them a pariah country will not do much to lower the price of gas even if Saudi Arabia increases production to their limit. They don't have the ability to fully replace the potential supply of Russian oil. So win or lose the war in Ukraine, Putin is having a debilitating effect on the US economy while there is not that much of a debilitating effect on Russia's economy. Another reason this is so is that the Russian ruble is a fiat currency not pegged to the US dollar so the Russian central bank can spend as many rubles as necessary to keep consumers and businesses going. Even MacDonald's has been "Russianized" so that MacDonald's pull out has had little or no effect on the Russian preference for US fast food. Furthermore, Russia and China, among a few other nations, have been hard at work to limit the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) envisions a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty in the region. China's Belt and Road initiative also is furthering the cause of dedollarization of the world economy. However, China's currency is pegged to the US dollar so China needs to hold dollars in its account at the Federal Reserve, but Russia's currency is fully convertible. That's how it can demand that Finland pay for its gas in rubles thus supporting that fully convertible currency. Russia, therefore, is not dependent on the US dollar. It just needs to import anything that it doesn't produce domestically and China can provide that.

Meanwhile, the US is dependent on the supply chain from China which has been disrupted lately causing more inflation. Dependency on China for most of its products while trying to cast China as an adversary is not a very good idea. The proposed Cold War with China is only pushing Russia and China closer together. Meanwhile the war in Ukraine is becoming a money pit for the US government which is spending billions and billions to give Ukraine a never ending supply of weapons. This is also inflationary because, whereas the product is shipped to Ukraine, the money is spent right into the US economy via the US weapons manufacturers. To fight inflation money needs to be extracted from the US economy hopefully by means of taxing the rich and not taxing anyone making less than $400,000 a year as Biden has proposed. Whatever the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Putin has proven that by withholding Russian oil from world markets, he can drive up the price of gas and cause inflation in car centric America.

Off the Top of My Head

What Mass Shootings and Global Warming Have in Common

by John Lawrence

Even if sales of AK-15s were banned today, there would still be enough AK-15s on the streets for mass shootings to continue for decades. Even if no more carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere starting today, there is enough already there to provide weather disasters for decades. Meanwhile, gun sales and carbon dioxide generation are continuing apace. There will be no diminution of gun violence nor will there be any diminution of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. If there were zero gun sales tomorrow and zero carbon dioxide generation tomorrow, there might be a chance for recovery from both travesties, but, no, those travesties will continue along predictable lines. There will be even more mass shootings and assorted other gun violence while gas powered vehicles and power generating plants will continue to pump out carbon dioxide using the atmosphere as a waste dump. Plastic will continue to pollute the oceans. Chemical fertilizer and pest control chemicals will continue to pollute waterways. People pursuing the American Dream will continue consuming products to the point of commercial gluttony and beyond.

The production of steel and cement produces large amounts of carbon dioxide that goes directly into the atmosphere. It's a matter of sheer chemistry. Steelmaking is one of the most carbon emission intensive industries in the world. As of 2020, steelmaking is estimated to be responsible for 7 to 9 per cent of all direct fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions. In order to mitigate global warming, the industry will need to find reductions in emissions. In 2020, McKinsey identified a number of technologies for decarbonization including hydrogen usage, carbon capture and reuse, and maximizing use of electric arc furnaces powered by clean energy. A Swedish company has developed a way of making carbon dioxide emission free steel. The Guardian reported:

The world’s first customer delivery of “green steel” produced without using coal is taking place in Sweden, according to its manufacturer.

The Swedish venture Hybrit said it was delivering the steel to truck-maker Volvo AB as a trial run before full commercial production in 2026. Volvo has said it will start production in 2021 of prototype vehicles and components from the green steel.

Steel production using coal accounts for around 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Hybrit started test operations at its pilot plant for green steel in Lulea, northern Sweden, a year ago. It aims to replace coking coal, traditionally needed for ore-based steel making, with renewable electricity and hydrogen. Hydrogen is a key part of the EU’s plan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

So the chemistry is being changed so that water H₂O is produced as a by product instead of carbon dioxide, CO².

CNBC reported:

Cars and electricity get a lot of attention in conversations about decarbonization, and they should. But building materials like cement and steel also need to be scrutinized.

The production of cement is responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 5.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

On [April 28, 2022], Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bill Gates’ climate finance firm, and DCVC, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, announced they led a $55 million funding round in Brimstone Energy, a start-up aiming to commercialize carbon-negative cement.

“We need to recognize that cement is a massive problem for climate and that nobody has figured out how to address it at scale without dramatically increasing costs or moving away from the regulated materials that the construction industry knows and loves,” Breakthrough partner Carmichael Roberts told CNBC.

So it is not enough to get gas guzzlers off the roads. Gas prices going up is a good thing. It will guarantee that more new car purchases will be hybrid or all electric vehicles. But the world is not changing over to non-polluting forms of energy quick enough. Major climate related disasters are already occurring and will continue to occur. Since we are still adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, these disasters will only get worse as time goes by. Meanwhile, all kinds of other ecological disasters are taking place including the insane and greedy pursuit of insatiable profits in the gun production industry and the buildup of military hardware. In 2019, a report released by Durham and Lancaster University found the US military to be “one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries”. In addition to climate pollution the military is responsible for the development of assault rifles like the AR-15 which was first developed for combat operations. Very conveniently, it is now a profit center for US gun corporations, and in addition to killing combatants on the field of battle, it has brought war time slaughter into children's schools, people's super markets and night clubs. We've come full circle. And in addition the production of steel weapons results in increased carbon emissions.

Off the Top of My Head

Russia Stands to Profit From Global Warming

by John Lawrence

With half the Arctic coastline, Russia is in a position to dominate the Arctic region as sea ice disappears. Ships will soon be able to sail directly across the top of the world, bringing new commercial, political, and economic opportunities for the Arctic region, while substantially reducing transit times between Asia and Europe by up to a third compared with taking the Suez Canal. Also there is $1 trillion worth of precious metals and minerals under the ice, along with the biggest area of untapped petroleum deposits left on the planet. While the rest of the world suffers from global warming, Russia will profit from the opening of the Northern route across the Arctic region and a wealth of natural resources that it will be possible to extract. Siberia could become the world’s next breadbasket. Time magazine reports:

"The Russian government is already positioning itself as a net beneficiary of global warming, writing in its 2020 Arctic Strategy that “climate change contributes to the emergence of new economic opportunities.” With half the Arctic coastline under its control, it’s not hard to see why. Led by Rosatom, a state-owned nuclear technology and infrastructure enterprise, the country has invested approximately $10 billion to develop ports and other facilities along a 3,000 nautical-mile-long shipping lane that stretches from Murmansk, near the Finnish border, to the Bering Strait. The Northern Sea Route offers the shortest passage between Europe and Asia, shaving nearly two weeks off a journey around India, while saving fuel, limiting vessel wear and tear, and reducing emissions. The investments are already paying dividends. In 2010 international cargo shippers made only one full Northern Sea Route transit. In 2021 there were 71, according to Norway’s Nord University’s Centre for High North Logistics.

"Russia is building up its existing 40-strong icebreaking fleet by commissioning at least half a dozen nuclear-powered heavy icebreakers at a cost of $400 million each. When the first of the newest batch—the world’s biggest and most powerful, according to Russian officials—launched its maiden voyage in 2020, Russia hailed it as the start of a new era of Arctic dominance. In 2021, commercial tankers, equipped with special ice-hardened hulls, started transporting natural gas between Russia’s Arctic coast oil installations and Chinese ports in the middle of winter—a strategic advance that results in a timely lifeline for Moscow if European nations follow through on threats to cut off purchases of Russian gas because of the conflict in Ukraine. “The creation of a modern nuclear icebreaker fleet capable of ensuring regular year-round and safe navigation through the entire Northern Sea Route is a strategic task for our country,” said Vyacheslav Ruksha, head of Rosatom’s Northern Sea Route Directorate, in a statement."

The war in Ukraine may pale in significance compared to the climate change issues which Russia is in a position to exploit. While the rest of the world is trying to slow down climate change, Russia just may be trying to accelerate it. The more climate change the better according to them because it will make for an ice free Arctic, an ice free passage across the Arctic via the Northern Sea Route connecting Europe with Asia and the ability to extract trillions of dollars of natural resources. Part of the route goes very close to Nome, Alaska which could bring the US and Russia into direct military contact.

Because of the changes brought about by global warming, It makes it even more important to not make Russia a pariah nation but to bring it into the community of nations. The Northern Sea Route will bring Russia and China even closer together as China also profits from shorter shipping routes to Europe. Rather than helping to get the world off of fossil fuels, Russia will profit immensely from their continued use. They certainly will not look kindly on supplications to limit the exploitation of fossil fuels if the western world considers them to be a pariah nation. The lack of cooperation among major world powers or even major blocs of power would be enough to doom the earth to greenhouse gas oblivion which eventually would destroy Russia and China too although Russia would probably be the last nation to succumb.

Off the Top of My Head

If the Planet Goes Down, It Will Be Irrelevant Whether a Woman Has the Right to Choose or Not

by John Lawrence

Democrats will fail at codifying Roe vs Wade, but Republicans will succeed in codifying anti-abortion rights if a Republican President is elected in 2024. But that's the least important thing that will happen. If Republicans take over the House and Senate in 2022, and a Republican President is elected in 2024, forget the US and the world doing anything about climate change. It will be full steam ahead for fossil fuels, and full steam ahead for the death of the planet. We don't have that much time any more to prevent irreversible change due to global warming. All the deadlines here have past or soon will be past. The relevant headline is Greenhouse Gases Must Begin to Fall by 2025, Says U.N. Climate Report. We are continually being bombarded with political and cultural trivia when the giant in the room is climate change. The prevailing attitude is we'll get around to that eventually, but eventually is almost here, folks. If not much is happening before 2025, we might as well forget it and spend our few remaining years enjoying the human past times of war and trivial pursuits. Eos reported:

"The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report on climate mitigation since the Paris Agreement was released today. This is likely the IPCC’s last word before the window of opportunity to stop warming at 1.5°C disappears, after which scientists said life-threatening climate consequences and feedbacks will intensify.

"Led by hundreds of scientists convened by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the World Meteorological Organization, the summary of the report was approved by 195 governments after 16 days of discussions and one 40-hour marathon session that stretched into Sunday night.

"The report gives the world a failing grade. International policies implemented by the end of 2020 will miss the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming well below 2°C. Current trends suggest that by 2100, the world will warm 3.2°C compared to preindustrial average temperature, with a spread of 2.2°C to 3.5°C possible.

"“Reaching 3.2°C will be nightmarish,” said Andrea Simonelli, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University who was not involved in the report. “The threshold for habitable is already being pushed to the limit in many places.”"

Despite these dire warnings the human species is still on a binge of colossal pettiness. This means that wars and in particular resource wars will become more severe and common. Already the whole world is in a food crisis due to drought and lack of water for crop irrigation. War also plays a part. Russia and Ukraine together supply more than a quarter of the world’s wheat, and coming disruptions could fuel higher food prices and social unrest. When people start fighting over food, wars will take on proportions that will make the war in Ukraine seem like a minor aberration. Russia and Ukraine together export more than a quarter of the world’s wheat, feeding billions of people in the form of bread, pasta and packaged foods. The countries are also key suppliers of barley, sunflower seed oil and corn, among other products. Food prices have already risen globally as a result of pandemic-related shipping disruptions, rising costs for farmers and adverse weather, and wheat is no exception. Between April 2020 and December 2021, the price of wheat increased 80 percent, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. That was on a par with rising costs for corn and higher than increases for soybeans or coffee.

Now we're talking some serious stuff, not just the future of NATO. The brunt of the food crisis just like the brunt of climate change in general will be felt most by the poorer nations. As a consequence, whatever immigration crisis that is being felt today will be magnified 1000 times at least as starving people seek to come across borders not only in the US but all over the world where prosperous nations border on poverty stricken ones. So crises based on real world problems, rather than on national borders between Russia and Ukraine, will become more severe. Already in California, the water supply for crop irrigation is likely to be turned off by 2025 as Lake Mead and Lake Powell go dry. California supplies about a quarter of the US' fruits and vegetables so the American diet is shortly to be seriously affected and not just by supply chain issues. Recently, a fire in Laguna Niguel destroyed 20 multi-million dollar homes on a day that was not particularly windy or hot. One 10,000 square foot mansion recently was on the market for almost $10 million.

They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Now the human species is fiddling while the whole damn planet is about to go up in smoke. Oh well, it was a nice planet while it lasted. Scientists assure us that there are trillions of other habitable planets out there, but they're so far away.

Off the Top of My Head

How Are We Doing With Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

by John Lawrence

In 2009 President Obama pledged that the United States would cut carbon emissions “in the range of seventeen per cent by 2020". Let's see if the US succeeded. In 2009 the US produced 6772 million metric tons of greenhouse gas equivalents. In 2020 US totaled 5981 million metric tons of greenhouse gas equivalents. 17% of 6772 is 1151. So for Obama's pledge to be fulfilled greenhouse gas emissions for 2020 would have to have been about 5621 million metric tons. His pledge was almost but not quite fulfilled thanks to the fact that the pandemic decreased greenhouse gas emissions from 2019 to 2020 by 11%. In 2019 greenhouse gas emissions were 6571 million metric tons down only 3% from 2009! One might conclude that the pandemic was good for the environment, and also that Obama's pledge would not have been fulfilled except for the fact that so many cars were off the road due to the pandemic. More people worked remotely. This kept cars off the road. Going forward as many people who can work from home should continue to do so in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. In addition conversion to electric vehicles needs to be done posthaste.

The Copenhagen climate conference of 2009 was widely considered a disaster since no country would commit to actual reductions of greenhouse gasses. The Guardian reported:

"The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement in Copenhagen tonight, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

"After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord "recognises" the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but does not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.

"American officials spun the deal as a "meaningful agreement", but even Obama said: "This progress is not enough."

"We have come a long way, but we have much further to go," he added."

At this point in time it seems like a fool's errand to get all the countries of the world to cooperate to save planet earth from becoming uninhabitable for our species at least. With war raging in Ukraine and the world lining up on one side or the other, all hope of cooperation seems lost especially when Russia, the second largest producer of fossil fuels, is widely considered a pariah. Getting nations like Russia whose economy is dependent on the production of fuels which produce greenhouse gasses to cooperate seemed a stretch even before war broke out. Production of fossil fuels means money is at stake as long as there is a market for them, and that market doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. In fact the war has uped the ante for increased production. China and India need energy and they are dependent on the consumption of coal and Russian oil. They will not be cooperative with wealthy western nations to diminish dependency on fossil fuels especially if there is little trust between east and west. It would take Jesus Christ Himself to bring all parties together in a mutually beneficial agreement to save earth from global warming. But I think that God has left it up to humanity to figure this out without divine intervention, and if the human species can't figure it out, it's one more species that will go extinct.

More Fracked Gas Exports Will Worsen Climate Emergency. Send Heat Pumps Instead

A tanker carrying shale gas from Houston, Texas arrives in North Queensferry, Scotland on March 19, 2020. (Photo: Ken Jack/Getty Images)

 

Expanding LNG exports will decrease U.S. energy security and increase climate-harming methane emissions. Rather than toss another lifeline to a dying industry, Biden should help accelerate the energy transition processes already underway in Europe.

 

Anthony Ingraffea,  Robert W. Howarth

April 19, 2022 by The Hill via Common Dreams

The Biden administration is issuing orders to expand the amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) that it exports by over 50% as Europe seeks to reduce its reliance on Russian gas. However, by doing so we are decreasing our own energy security, while increasing climate-harming methane emissions and diverting capital expenditures away from green energy to yet more new fossil fuel infrastructure. There are better ways to aid our European allies in their time of energy need.

There are better ways to aid our European allies in their time of energy need.

The U.S. tripled its worldwide LNG exports between 2019 and 2021. At our current internal consumption rate, the U.S. Energy Information Agency estimates that the U.S. currently has about a 15-year remaining supply of its own natural gas. However, in 2021 the U.S. exported the equivalent of about a 2-month supply of our gas as LNG to Europe and Asia. With the rush to increase our LNG exports, 100-fold since 2015, we are diminishing our energy security at an increasing rate.

Leakage of unburned methane into the atmosphere from the internal U.S. oil and gas supply chain is a major source of a very potent greenhouse gas, about 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. However, the climate impact from that supply chain is worsened when it extends to Europe. Research based on a recent study by the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory shows that at least 230 million additional kilograms of methane leaked from the 28 billion cubic meters of natural gas exported from the U.S. to Europe as LNG last year. That is equal to about 16% of methane emissions from all sources in New York state. However, LNG exports to Europe will be increasing, at an increasing rate, so that leakage will only get worse.

Actual methane leakage from the oil and natural gas supply chain in the U.S. is inevitable and is now known to be far higher than estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At least one-quarter of our total methane emissions is from that supply chain. Sending increasing amounts of that gas for export as LNG adds leakage from pipelines to export terminals, the liquefying process, off-gassing during sea transport in cryogenic tankers and re-gasification and additional pipelining in Europe. Add the carbon dioxide emissions associated with all of these additional energy-hogging processes creates a nightmarish greenhouse gas footprint for LNG exports.

This rapid upscaling of U.S. LNG exports is demanding new pipelines, export facilities, and cryogenic tankers. This deflection of capital expenditures away from green energy deployment has two major results: First, it's a further delay in the green energy transition needed to increase the supply of renewable energy. Second, this increased demand for natural gas production comes at a moment when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the International Energy Agency, and all others truly concerned about climate change are saying no funds should go to new fossil fuel exploration, production, and infrastructure.

The U.S. should be exporting boatloads of high-efficiency electrical appliances and heat pumps to Europe.

It is crucial to emphasize that a well-intentioned move to aid our European allies has serious consequences, intended and unintended. Like the industry's cry for massive blue hydrogen production, which also demands an increase in natural gas production, this rapid increase in U.S. exports of LNG is tossing another lifeline to a dying industry. We cannot fail in our fight against climate change while helping to win a war exacerbated by a Russian natural gas cudgel.

So, what should we do instead? Accelerate the energy transition processes already underway in Europe. Help to decrease its demand for Russian natural gas. Most of the imported natural gas is used to generate heat for residential and commercial use, space and water heating, and cooking and drying. Therefore, electrify all these uses and gain the tremendous embedded efficiency increases: Electrification actually reduces the total energy demand for these end-uses. The U.S. should be exporting boatloads of high-efficiency electrical appliances and heat pumps to Europe. Simultaneously, accelerate the production of renewable energy to replace Russian natural gas. More boatloads from the U.S. of wind turbines, PV electrical components, and battery storage systems. As E.U. Climate Policy Chief Frans Timmermans said, "The answer to this concern for our security lies in renewable energy and diversification of supply."

The European energy crisis brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has made clear that the key to energy security for all nations is the realization that nobody owns the infinite and free supplies of solar, wind, and hydro energy. They cannot be weaponized. We need to do all we can to export to Europe what will win the energy war in the long run while not imperiling the rest of the world with more greenhouse gas emissions.

---

© 2021 The Hill

Anthony Ingraffea

Anthony Ingraffea is the Dwight C. Baum professor of engineering emeritus and Weiss presidential teaching fellow at Cornell University.

Robert W. Howarth

Robert W. Howarth is the David R. Atkinson professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University.

Off the Top of My Head

US Weapons Manufacturers Profiting From War in Ukraine

by John Lawrence

So far the US has spent $13.6 billion on the war in Ukraine. The money includes weapons, military supplies and one of the largest infusions of U.S. foreign aid in the last decade. But it also covers the deployment of U.S. troops to Europe and money for domestic agencies to enforce sanctions. Stock prices for Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are up. They are making money from all the Javelins and Stinger missiles they are selling to the US government which is giving them to Ukraine free of charge. Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin Corp jointly produce Javelins, while Raytheon makes Stingers. EU countries are buying even more US weaponry from the US military-industrial complex. Germany even wants F-35 aircraft from Lockheed Martin. U.S. weapons exports rose 2.8% to $175 billion in fiscal 2020. The Ukraine war is a field day for the weapons industry. As far as they're concerned, the more arms shipments to Ukraine the better. They are bullish. CEOs will probably get a substantial increase in pay, and the weapons contractors will be able to buy back more of their own stock boosting stock values even more. The US policy so far is no boots on the ground, but plenty of taxpayer money going up in smoke, money that could have been spent on bettering the lot of the American people.

The is always money available for war, but when it comes to Biden's Build Back Better package, Congress gets very stingy. So a localized war is more important than the fate of the whole planet due to global warming. Or it's more important than affordable health care. Or it's more important than imposing a tax on multi-billionaires who, by the way, are not paying for the war because they pay no taxes. If they have defense contractors in their portfolio, they are profiting from the war. Politico reported:

More than 25 nations have joined in purchasing and delivering weapons to support Ukraine’s war effort. The U.S. has sent billions of dollars in missiles, ammunition and other items to the front. The EU signed off on a €500 million ($551 million USD) package — a first for the 27-country European bloc — to help arm Ukraine. And both Finland and Germany have rewritten long-standing policy that barred exporting weapons into war zones.

At the same time, there are tens of thousands of troops being activated and deployed by NATO countries in Eastern Europe.

Using a resource guide retrieved from the Forum on the Arms Trade that mostly relies on official government statements and reports in the media — and backfilled with our own independent research — POLITICO has worked to track and compile weapons and materials that have been announced or directed to Ukraine by various countries since January.

This non-exhaustive list focuses on lethal weapons and some non-lethal material. It does not count humanitarian and developmental aid that has been sent to Ukraine in the same period. Arms trade research organizations have noted the timeline and official receipt of equipment is hard to confirm due to security concerns. In some cases, such as with France and Turkey, an official tally has not been made public.

While US taxpayers are paying for the war in Ukraine and for the delivery of weapons to Europe, Saudi Arabia and other places in the world, billionaires are paying nothing. Congress will not even pass a tax on billionaires so that they would be forced to pay, as Biden says, "their fair share." Their fair share is zero, zip according to Congress which is basically on the side of the billionaires. So planet earth diminishes in importance, as far as global warming is concerned, because fighting and paying for war is so much more important. In fact not only is war more important than peace, which doesn't move the stock market, it's more important than renewable energy. All of a sudden there is a need for more oil, more fossil fuel, all of which produces more greenhouse gasses. The attitude is if we need to destroy planet earth in order to win this war, then that is the price we'll have to pay.

Off the Top of My Head

Why We Must Go Nuclear Now

by John Lawrence

If we have a hope for combating climate change, we must convert electrical power generation to nuclear. Nuclear power generation does not release greenhouse gasses, is always on (in contrast to wind and solar) and has the potential capacity to fulfill most of our energy needs. The latest generation of nuclear reactors has solved most of the problems of previous generations involving safety and nuclear waste. Alan Boyle wrote:

BELLEVUE, Wash. — TerraPower, the Bellevue-based nuclear power venture co-founded by Bill Gates, has won an $8.55 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to work on safer methods to recover uranium from used nuclear fuel.

TerraPower’s recycling process is among 11 projects that will receive a total of $36 million in federal funding from the department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, or ARPA-E. The grants are aimed at supporting technologies that would limit the amount of waste produced by advanced nuclear reactors.

““Developing novel approaches to safely manage nuclear waste will enable us to power even more homes and businesses in America with carbon-free nuclear energy,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said today in a news release. “ARPA-E is doing just that by supporting companies and universities that are working on next-generation technologies to modernize advanced reactors and strengthen the nation’s clean energy enterprise.”   

TerraPower’s grant is the largest of the 11 announced today for ARPA-E’s ONWARDS program. The acronym stands for “Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactor Disposal Systems.”

TerraPower is working with GE-Hitachi on a demonstration nuclear reactor that’s due to be built in Wyoming and go into operation by 2028, producing up to 500 megawatts of power. The latest designs feature all digital technology which brings nuclear reactor design up to the current state of the art. France gets 70% of its power from nuclear. We need to take a page out of their book. Nuclear can co-exist and support renewable energy generation on the power grid. The most important thing is to replace fossil fuel power generation which now powers about 60% of US energy needs. The question is can this be done in the time frame that we have to work with before it's too late. We need to make huge strides before 2025. That's only 3 years away. Not enough time to prevent global warming to reach problematic levels. However, better late than never. If we proceed post haste, we can prevent the worst effects of climate change. But we have to start now, and consider this effort at the level of a world war which it literally is.

What You Really Need to Know About the Latest IPCC Climate Report

An emergency worker stands near a wildfire in the village of Kuel, Russia on August 8, 2021. (Photo: Ivan Nikiforov/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

We need to make sure this report is not shelved. It needs to be talked about in every corner of the world, and most importantly: acted on.

 

Kaisa Kosonen

April 10, 2022 by Greenpeace

The world’s top climate scientists just delivered their rescue plan for humanity, directly to our governments. The Working Group III Report contribution to Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focuses on how to reduce further warming and follows the first two reports of the assessment, on the physical science and climate change impacts. It’s a thick report on climate solutions that can and must be put into action right now.

And here’s where you and I come in: we need to make sure this report is not shelved. It needs to be talked about in every corner of the world, and most importantly: acted on.

The starting point you already know: the climate action our governments and the financial sector have taken by now keeps being too little too late, and we need much, much more, and fast. Not a single country is yet doing enough. And it’s a critical decade when we make or break this.

So then, what is the action needed right now? Here are our 6 takeaways from the IPCC report on mitigation that we think you should know:

1. We have the solutions we need to limit warming to 1.5°C! 
This is the best news: we have the solutions to slash more than half of global emissions in just eight years, and to continue from there towards net zero emissions, as is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C. In this critical decade by 2030, the biggest contributions to net emission reductions would come from solar and wind energy, conservation and restoration of forests and other natural ecosystems, climate-friendly agriculture and food, and energy efficiency. More than half the potential by 2030 comes with low costs (below 20 USD/tonne) or even negative costs! Costs below zero means that investing in solutions, like solar and wind, will bring cost savings compared to continuing current ways.

2. We can get much more with less.
By 2050, huge potential exists, overall, in demand-side strategies that could cut emissions by 40-70% compared to current policies. This means designing and repurposing infrastructure, advancing technology adoption and enhancing socio-cultural factors that enable and reward sustainable ways of life from walkable and bikeable cities and shared and electrified mobility to self-sustaining homes, healthy plant-based diets, avoided flights, and to consumption requiring less material input as we reuse, repair and improve recycling. Rather than leaving it to individuals and their choices, we need systems approaches that advance climate-friendly choices for all, while prioritising the rights and needs of those who are yet to reap the benefits of development. The poorest quarter of the population worldwide lack decent homes, mobility and food and will need additional energy, capacity and resources for human wellbeing.

3. Money needs to be redirected from problems to solutions.
To achieve the needed emission cuts, annual investment flows towards clean energy, efficiency, transport, agriculture and forests will need to increase at least 3-6 fold up to 2030. There is sufficient global capital and liquidity to close these investment gaps, but it’s not heading the right way. As of today, more private and public money still flows to fossil fuels than to climate solutions, due to misaligned incentives both outside and within the financial sector. Removing fossil fuel subsidies could, alone, reduce emissions by up to 10% by 2030. Access to finance remains a big barrier especially for developing countries, and the promised levels of climate finance (100 billion USD/year) from developed countries have not been met.

4. Current national targets and policies are a recipe for failure and must fundamentally improve.
While many countries have improved their climate plans, not a single country is yet reducing emissions at a speed required by the 1.5°C goal. Misaligned policies lead to misaligned financial flows, into the fossil fuel economy, when in reality there’s no room for any new fossil fuel infrastructure. There are already enough coal plants and other fossil fuel infrastructure in place to take us above 1.5°C, if allowed to be in full use until the end of their projected lifetime. Instead, global fossil fuel use needs to cease to about one tenth by 2050, if we are to follow a pathway that avoids overshooting 1.5°C and doesn’t bet on sucking large amounts of extra carbon back from the atmosphere. Avoiding short-term action by relying on long-term plans that assume that somehow, somewhere, somebody will remove our emissions back from the atmosphere in large amounts, sometime in the future, is a risky plan. Such carbon dioxide removals, at the scale assumed by many pathways, are an uncharted territory and come with many uncertainties and risks. Some amount of carbon dioxide removal will be necessary, to compensate for those emissions that can’t be avoided, but the need for it can be limited with urgent emission cuts.

5. Those with high emissions have higher potential and responsibility for emission cuts too
Households with income in the top 10% contribute about 36-45% of global emissions. Two thirds of them live in developed countries and one third in other economies. Those with high emissions have a higher potential for emissions reductions too, while maintaining good living standards and well-being. Equity and justice are, overall, essential considerations for effective climate policy and for securing national and international support for deep decarbonisation, given the differences in current and historical emissions contributions, degree of vulnerability and impacts, as well as capacities within and between nations. Accelerated international cooperation, including on finance, is a critical enabler of low-carbon and just transitions.

6. The seeds of transformative change have already been planted. Now it’s all hands on deck.
Shifting to a sustainable future will require transformative changes that disrupt existing trends. It takes technological, systemic, and cultural changes, for which we need both consistent action from politicians and other decision makers, as well as public pressure and social movements.

That solar, wind and storage solutions have now made a disruptive breakthrough in costs, performance and adoption, much faster than anticipated by experts and earlier mitigation models, can be a gamechanger. Together these solutions could now, through electrification, start pushing fossil fuels out of the system in energy, transport, buildings and industry at a speed and scale once considered unthinkable, If enabled by further determined action. This breakthrough did not happen by a coincidence. It was driven by policy, innovation and public pressure for change (thanks to people like you!). 

The challenges that need to be overcome, overall, are not small. Meeting the Paris Agreement goals would strand fossil fuel assets, with the economic impacts amounting to trillions of dollars. Hence, countries, businesses and individuals, who stand to lose wealth, may resist change. Therefore, ensuring the decision-making process is not unduly influenced by actors with much to lose is key to managing transformation.

Societal awareness and support for climate action have been on the rise. And so are cases of climate litigation against states, the private sector and financial institutions, as citizens are increasingly turning to courts to access justice and exercise their right to a healthy environment.

In just three years since 2017 the number of climate litigation cases nearly doubled. And the IPCC finds that “there is now increasing academic agreement that climate litigation has become a powerful force in climate governance.”

So now, what’s the plan?

These were some of our highlights from the IPCC report. But there’s much, much more! And it’s all highly recommended reading.

But then what?

It’s a unique moment to be alive. Both the problems and the solutions are bigger than ever before. But so is the power of determined people who unite for change.

We have eight years to halve global emissions. And the decisions that either enable or prevent those emission cuts will be made much earlier.

We have already achieved one key milestone, with the breakthrough of solar and wind. Now we must up our game, big time, to push fossil fuels out of the way, to heal our food system, to protect our forests and land, and to fight for a future that meets the rights and needs of all rather than the greeds of the few.  

This is the moment to rise up, be bold and think big. And there’s a role to play for everyone.

---

© 2021 Greenpeace

 

Kaisa Kosonen

Kaisa Kosonen is a Senior Political Advisor at Greenpeace International based in Helsinki, Finland

Dozens Arrested as Scientists Worldwide Mobilize to Demand 'Climate Revolution'

Scientists engage in civil disobedience on the steps of the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, Spain on April 6, 2022. (Photo: Scientist Rebellion)

 

"If everyone could see what I see coming," said one scientist, "society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years."

 

Jake Johnson

April 7, 2022

More than 1,000 scientists across the globe chained themselves to the doors of oil-friendly banks, blocked bridges, and occupied the steps of government buildings on Wednesday to send an urgent message to the international community: The ecological crisis is accelerating, and only a "climate revolution" will be enough to avert catastrophe.

"World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane."

What organizers described as "the world's largest-ever scientist-led civil disobedience campaign" kicked off just days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report detailing the grim state of efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C by century's end, a target set by the Paris accord.

As one of the report's authors put it during a press call earlier this week, "Unless there are immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, 1.5°C is beyond reach."

Warning that the IPCC report's language was watered down at the behest of governments unwilling to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, scientists and their allies took that message further during their direct actions on Wednesday, operating under the slogan "1.5°C is dead, climate revolution now!"

"I'm taking action because I feel desperate," said U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who along with several others locked himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A recent report found that the financial giant is the biggest private funder of oil and gas initiatives in the world.

"It's the 11th hour in terms of Earth breakdown, and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity," Kalmus continued. "World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane. The science clearly indicates that everything we hold dear is at risk, including even civilization itself and the wonderful, beautiful, cosmically precious life on this planet. I actually don't get how any scientist who understands this could possibly stay on the sidelines at this point."

The Los Angeles demonstration was accompanied by other protests across the U.S., the largest historical emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide and home to some of the most powerful fossil fuel companies in the world.

In Washington, D.C., climate scientists chained themselves to the White House fence and were ultimately arrested as they demanded that U.S. President Joe Biden declare a "climate emergency," a step that would unlock a range of tools needed to combat global warming.

"We have not made the changes necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C, rendering this goal effectively impossible," said Dr. Rose Abramoff, one of the scientists arrested at the White House. "We need to both understand the consequences of our inaction as well as limit fossil fuel emissions as much and as quickly as possible."

"I'm taking action to urge governments and society to stop ignoring the collective findings of decades of research," Abramoff added. "Let's make this crisis impossible to ignore."

Similar acts of civil disobedience were held across the globe as scientists took to the streets to demand that governments ramp up their transitions to renewable energy as the climate crisis intensifies extreme weather, endangers critical ecosystems, and takes lives worldwide.

In Madrid, Spain, scientists splashed red paint on the walls and steps of the Congress of Deputies to decry lawmakers' inaction in the face of the existential climate threat. More than 50 scientists were arrested during the demonstration, according to organizers.

Scientists also mobilized in Germany, blocking a bridge near the country's parliament building.

In an op-ed published in The Guardian on Wednesday, Kalmus warned that "Earth breakdown is much worse than most people realize."

"The science indicates that as fossil fuels continue to heat our planet, everything we love is at risk," he wrote. "For me, one of the most horrific aspects of all this is the juxtaposition of present-day and near-future climate disasters with the 'business as usual' occurring all around me. It's so surreal that I often find myself reviewing the science to make sure it's really happening, a sort of scientific nightmare arm-pinch. Yes, it's really happening."

"If everyone could see what I see coming," Kalmus added, "society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years."

---

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Off the Top of My Head

What Are the Implications of Russia's Pariahdom for Global Warming?

by John Lawrence

All western politicians and pundits (with the possible exception of Tucker Carlson) agree that Russia is and shall ever be a pariah state. Putin is a pariah who should be tried for war crimes. So how is the world and the community of nations going to combat our truly mortal enemy - global warming? As a major producer of fossil fuels, in order to get off the fossil fuel bandwagon, we would need Russia's cooperation. If Putin is to be a pariah, he could care less about global warming. He's probably thinking about all the resorts he could build in Siberia! Besides that, as the world warms, the tundra in Siberia is thawing releasing tons of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. In recent years, climate scientists have warned thawing permafrost in Siberia may be a “methane time bomb”. But now a study by three geologists says that a heat wave in 2020 has revealed a surge in methane emissions “potentially in much higher amounts” from a different source: thawing rock formations in the Arctic permafrost. Russia and Putin could have the last laugh as the rest of the world goes up in flames and Russia adapts to a more moderate climate.

The Washington Post reported:

"The difference is that thawing wetlands releases “microbial” methane from the decay of soil and organic matter, while thawing limestone — or carbonate rock — releases hydrocarbons and gas hydrates from reservoirs both below and within the permafrost, making it “much more dangerous” than past studies have suggested.

"Nikolaus Froitzheim, who teaches at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Bonn, said that he and two colleagues used satellite maps that measured intense methane concentrations over two “conspicuous elongated areas” of limestone — stripes that were several miles wide and up to 375 miles long — in the Taymyr Peninsula and the area around northern Siberia.

"The study was published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Surface temperatures during the heat wave in 2020 soared to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1979-2000 norms. In the long stripes, there is hardly any soil, and vegetation is scarce, the study says. So the limestone crops out of the surface. As the rock formations warm up, cracks and pockets opened up, releasing methane that had been trapped inside."

Have the western politicos miscalculated or are they just playing into the Russian playbook in which the Russians are thinking 3 moves ahead on the chess board? The politicos and pundits all agree that Russia's financial lifeline is the sale of oil and gas and that the west must do everything it can do to shut off those sales starving Russia financially. But wait a minute. What they fail to understand is that Russia does not need the sale of gas or any other commodity to survive financially because the ruble is a fiat currency. The Russian central bank can print as many rubles as it likes with the only constraint being inflation. The US dollar is also a fiat currency and the US Federal Reserve can print as many dollars as it likes, the only restraints being political and again inflation which the US is now experiencing to a greater degree than Russia is. In fact the printing of Russian rubles will only tend to balance their economy and prevent it from going into recession. Meanwhile, the west, Germany in particular, struggles with replacing Russian gas and oil with gas and oil from other sources in a futile attempt to starve Russia financially. Ellen Brown has pointed out why sanctions may even be good for Russia because it forces Russia to develop sectors of its own economy rather than relying on imports from the west.

Besides Russia has a lot of friends in the world, some of them like Hungary who are even NATO members. Viktor Orban, Hungary's authoritarian leader and key Putin ally, calls Zelensky an 'opponent' after winning reelection. So while the US and Britain mainly fulminate over Russia's Putin being a pariah, not everyone in the non-western world agrees. Russia still has plenty of friends, just not in the US or Britain. Which brings is back to our original question, how can we solve the problem of global warming without Russia's cooperation even if we are not friends with them? Is it worth it to destroy the whole planet earth because of two countries engaging in a war no matter how brutal and ill founded? The west must eventually come to terms with Russia and with Putin if Putin is still the Russian leader when the war ends or watch while planet earth, not just Ukraine, goes up in flames.

Off the Top of My Head

According to Biden's BBB Plan, Buyers of Electric Vehicles Would Receive up to $12,500 in Tax Credits

by John Lawrence

So where is this incentive to buy electric vehicles now that gas (in CA) is about $6 a gallon? Now is the time when we need this subsidy, but, alas, the Democrats couldn't even stick together to pass this and other incentives and measures to get off fossil fuels. How about this as an incentive: preventing daily tornadoes in the heartland of the US? As extreme weather gets more extreme, Congress can't even pass programs to combat global warming and the consequent damage that's being done to people's lives and the economy in general. Not to mention the fact that major portions of the population will not be able to get property insurance which is happening right now and will only get worse. If you have a lot of brush around your house, you're an insurance liability. If you live in a flood plain, you're an insurance liability. We are told by people who know that we only have a few years to do something before we can expect catastrophic consequences from climate change and global warming. Yet we are taking our time getting off fossil fuels. There is even regret that we didn't go ahead with the Keystone pipeline.

The New York Times reported:

"In the coming decades, as global temperatures continue to rise, hundreds of millions of people could struggle against floods, deadly heat waves and water scarcity from severe drought, the report said. Mosquitoes carrying diseases like dengue and malaria will spread to new parts of the globe. Crop failures could become more widespread, putting families in places like Africa and Asia at far greater risk of hunger and malnutrition. People unable to adapt to the enormous environmental shifts will end up suffering unavoidable loss or fleeing their homes, creating dislocation on a global scale,[according to a recent UN report]."

We do know the things we need to be doing. It's just that we're not doing them or doing them at such a slow pace that we will still experience the worst effects of climate change. If you think the refugee problem is bad now, climate change will exacerbate and accelerate the refugee problem. People will be fleeing their homes and homelands when it becomes apparent that they can't make a living there. They will be coming to parts of the world where countries are wealthy enough to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Basically, that means that people will flee poor countries and attempt at all costs to enter rich countries. That's why the US, as the richest country in the world, should be going full speed ahead to transition away from fossil fuels and into a new era that consists of renewable energy production and more environment friendly lifestyles. Instead, Americans are determined to lead lifestyles of maximum consumption right up to the hilt of their financial resources and beyond in a last gasp of over consumption.

Common Dreams reported:

In the wake of a United Nations report that activists said showed the "bleak and brutal truth" about the climate emergency, a leading economist on Friday highlighted a step that supporters argue could be incredibly effective at combating the global crisis: nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Pollin, an economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and high gas prices exacerbated by Russia's war on Ukraine.

"If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC's findings seriously," Pollin wrote, "it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far, both within the U.S. and globally. Within the U.S., such measures should include at least putting on the table the idea of nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry."

Asserting that "at least in the U.S., the private oil companies stand as the single greatest obstacle to successfully implementing" a viable climate stabilization program, Pollin made the case that fossil fuel giants should not make any more money from wrecking the planet, nationalization would not be an unprecedented move in the United States, and doing so could help build clean energy infrastructure at the pace that scientists warn is necessary.

The expert proposed starting with "the federal government purchasing controlling ownership of at least the three dominant U.S. oil and gas corporations: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips."

"They are far larger and more powerful than all the U.S. coal companies combined, as well as all of the smaller U.S. oil and gas companies," he wrote. "The cost to the government to purchase majority ownership of these three oil giants would be about $420 billion at current stock market prices."

So for roughly half of the defense budget, the US taxpayers could own the oil industry and phase it out at the speed required to save the planet from the worst effects of global warming. Instead we're treated to the Big Oil CEO's defiance that they are not price gouging because prices are set by the world market. Does anyone question why prices have to be set by the world market? No. Obviously, the world market exists to serve the interests of the oil producers, not oil consumers. Maybe the US should get off the world market because we produce enough oil to meet all current consumer demands. So why do we even need the world market? The world market exists to serve the interests of the OPEC nations who won't even open their spigots in a time of crisis, and it exists to serve the interests of the western Big Oil corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell.

Americans would like to have one more blast of consumption rather than buckle down and do what's necessary to combat climate change, an effort that would be at least as great as the effort and sacrifice put forth to fight World War II. Billionaire's would rather blast off into space than use their money to fight climate change. Their lifestyles are major contributors to the emission of greenhouse gasses. They don't want to be told that they can't overconsume with numerous 27,000 square foot mansions and a fleet of luxury cars. That's the American Dream, or is it. It's soon going to turn into the American Nightmare but probably not for them. They have the resources to escape the worst effects of global warming. Instead the nightmare will be mostly visited on the least among us as well as randomly due to tornadoes, floods and fires.

Stopping Climate Change Is Doable, but Time Is Short, U.N. Panel Warns

Gas and flares emitted from the oil fields of Umm Qasr port near Iraq’s southern port city of Basra, in February.Credit...Hussein Faleh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Brad Plumer and Raymond Zhong

April 4, 2022, 11:00 a.m. ET from New York Times

Nations need to move away much faster from fossil fuels to retain any hope of preventing a perilous future on an overheated planet, according to a major new report on climate change released on Monday, although they have made some progress because of the falling costs of clean energy.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, warns that unless countries drastically accelerate efforts over the next few years to slash their emissions from coal, oil and natural gas, the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, will likely be out of reach by the end of this decade.

That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the dangers of global warming — including worsening floods, droughts, wildfires and ecosystem collapse — grow considerably. Humans have already heated the planet by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, largely by burning fossil fuels for energy.

But the task is daunting: Holding warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius would require nations to collectively reduce their planet-warming emissions roughly 43 percent by 2030 and to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s, the report found. By contrast, current policies by governments are only expected to reduce global emissions by a few percentage points this decade. Last year, fossil fuel emissions worldwide rebounded to near-record highs after a brief dip as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The report, which was approved by 195 governments and lays out strategies that countries could pursue to halt global warming, comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused oil and gas prices to skyrocket, diverting political attention from climate change. In the United States and Europe, leaders are focused on shoring up domestic fossil fuel supplies to avoid painful price spikes and energy shortages, even if that means increasing emissions in the short term.

Yet climate scientists say there is little margin for delay if the world wants to hold global warming to relatively tolerable levels.

“Every year that you let pass without going for these urgent emissions reductions makes it more and more difficult,” said Jim Skea, an energy researcher at Imperial College London who helped lead the report, which was compiled by 278 experts from 65 countries. “Unless we really do it immediately, it will not be possible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.”

The report, which was approved by 195 governments and lays out strategies that countries could pursue to halt global warming, comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused oil and gas prices to skyrocket, diverting political attention from climate change. In the United States and Europe, leaders are focused on shoring up domestic fossil fuel supplies to avoid painful price spikes and energy shortages, even if that means increasing emissions in the short term.

Yet climate scientists say there is little margin for delay if the world wants to hold global warming to relatively tolerable levels.

“Every year that you let pass without going for these urgent emissions reductions makes it more and more difficult,” said Jim Skea, an energy researcher at Imperial College London who helped lead the report, which was compiled by 278 experts from 65 countries. “Unless we really do it immediately, it will not be possible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.”

But even if that goal becomes unattainable, scientists said, it will still be worthwhile for countries to slash emissions as quickly as possible to prevent as much warming as they can. Every additional rise in global temperatures increases the perils that people face around the world, such as water scarcity, malnutrition and life-threatening heat waves, the U.N. panel has found.

“Every fraction of a degree matters,” Dr. Skea said. “Even if we go beyond 1.5, that doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and despair.”

Scientists say that global warming will largely come to a halt once humans stop adding heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, a concept known as “net zero” emissions. If, for instance, nations reach net zero emissions by the early 2070s, the report says, they could likely stop global average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

The new report contains glimmers of optimism. Over the past decade, many nations have adopted more ambitious climate policies, scaled back plans for new coal plants and expanded their use of renewable energy through subsidies and regulations. Although emissions from fossil fuels are still growing worldwide, the rate of growth slowed in the 2010s, compared with the 2000s, the report said, and humanity now has a much better shot at avoiding some of the worst-case global warming scenarios once widely feared by scientists.

Clean energy technology has advanced far more quickly than expected, the report said. Since 2010, the costs of solar panels and lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles have plunged by 85 percent, while the cost of wind turbines has fallen by more than half.

Rapidly shifting away from the fossil fuels that have underpinned economies for more than a century will require nations to do much more, however. Over the next decade, governments and companies would need to invest three to six times the roughly $600 billion they currently spend annually on encouraging clean energy and cutting emissions, the report said.

But the cost of inaction is also substantial, in terms of deaths, displacement and damage. In the United States last year, damages from floods, wildfires, drought and other disasters related to weather and climate totaled approximately $145 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency said that “extremely high” levels of disasters were becoming “the new normal.”

“Reducing emissions substantially is much less painful than you would think, and probably beneficial in the short term,” said Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, who contributed to the report.

The new report examines dozens of strategies proposed by scientists and energy experts to help nations make the transition.

First, countries would need to clean up virtually all of the power plants worldwide that generate electricity for homes and factories. That means relying more on energy sources such as wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal or hydropower. Most of the world’s coal and natural gas plants would either need to shut down or install carbon capture technology that can trap emissions and bury them underground. Such technology has been slow to take off because of its high costs.

The next step would be to reconfigure transportation, industry and other segments of the global economy to run on clean electricity rather than fossil fuels. Cars powered by gasoline could be replaced with electric vehicles charged by low-carbon grids. Gas-burning furnaces in homes could be swapped out for electric heat pumps. Instead of burning coal, steel mills could shift to electric furnaces that melt scrap.

At the same time, nations could take steps to reduce their total energy demand. That could entail expanding public transit, upgrading insulation so homes consume less energy, recycling more raw materials and making factories more energy efficient. At the high end, such demand-side policies could help cut emissions in key sectors as much as 40 to 70 percent by 2050, the report notes.

But many economic activities can’t be easily electrified. Batteries are still too heavy for most airplanes. Many industries, like cement and glass, require extreme heat and currently burn coal or gas. For those emissions, governments and businesses will have to develop new fuels and industrial processes, the report said.

Off the Top of My Head

Two Truths About War and One About Planet Earth

by John Lawrence

1) Truth is the first casualty of war. 2) War is hell. 3) Planet earth can't survive without the cooperation of all nations. Despite the outcome of the war in Ukraine, the whole planet will go up in flames unless all nations can cooperate to solve the problem of global warming. If peace among all nations on earth is not possible, then we can kiss planet earth good-bye as a habitable refuge for humans and other forms of life. The cockroaches may survive, but there is no guarantee even for them. While we humans are busy fighting wars, the planet is warming, and there is not a lot of time to fix this problem before it gets to the point of being unfixable. Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose by 6% in 2021 to 36.3 billion tons, their highest ever, as the world economy rebounded strongly from the Covid-19 crisis and relied heavily on coal to power that growth, according to a new IEA analysis released this March 2022. So we're going in the wrong direction heading for a cliff full steam ahead. Not only are we not turning around this catastrophe, we're accelerating it.

"The increase in global CO2 emissions of over 2 billion tons was the largest in history in absolute terms, more than offsetting the previous year’s pandemic-induced decline, the IEA analysis shows. The recovery of energy demand in 2021 was compounded by adverse weather and energy market conditions – notably the spikes in natural gas prices – which led to more coal being burned despite renewable power generation registering its largest ever growth"

So now with the sanctions on Russian gas, there is a likelihood that even more coal will be burned as gas prices soar around the world. We are shooting ourselves in the foot! More natural gas usage, even Russian natural gas, should be encouraged because it produces less greenhouse gas emissions than does the burning of coal. So whoever loses the war in Ukraine, the biggest loser of all will be planet earth. Combined with the methane emissions estimates that the IEA published last month and estimates of nitrous oxide and flaring-related CO² emissions, the new analysis shows that overall greenhouse gas emissions from energy rose to their highest ever level in 2021.

The IEA report emphasized:

"The use of coal for electricity generation in 2021 was intensified by record high natural gas prices. The costs of operating existing coal power plants across the United States and many European power systems were considerably lower than those of gas power plants for the majority of 2021. Gas-to-coal switching pushed up global CO² emissions from electricity generation by well over 100 million tonnes, notably in the United States and Europe where competition between gas and coal power plants is tightest."

So now because of sanctions on Russian natural gas, even more power plants across the US and Europe will be switching to coal! We should be closing all coal powered plants and even those powered by natural gas replacing them all with renewables, geothermal and nuclear. There are alternatives available, but the human race would rather be all concerned about war fighting and not at all concerned about the fate of the planet and the fate of the human race. When it comes to war, there is an unlimited budget. When it comes to peace, there is hardly any money available. Why? Because war is profitable. Defense contractors will be making record profits in the United States and Europe and their stock prices will soar. Meanwhile, there is a paltry budget for switching to renewable energy.

Fossil Fuels Are Funding and Fueling War

Thousands of people form a huge peace sign to protest against the invasion of Ukraine and to express their compassion for the innocent victims of the war in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square. (Photo: © Bence Jardany / Greenpeace)

 

To help ensure peace and stop the climate crisis, governments need to cut their dependency on fossil fuels and phase them out immediately.

 

 

Marie Bout

April 2, 2022 by Greenpeace

“Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots: fossil fuels and our dependence on them” said Ukrainian climate scientist Svitlana Krakovska as Russia, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers, was invading her country.

This addiction to fossil fuels places energy security and climate action at the mercy of geopolitics. Governments cannot claim to stand for peace if they continue to finance war.

 

At the time, she was addressing The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from her home in Kyiv, and had to withdraw from the approval session of the latest report as bombs hit her city.

A month later the war in Ukraine is now a humanitarian crisis: more than 3.7 million people who have fled the country, and roughly 13 million people are estimated to be unable to leave with limited access to food, water, and medical care.

Fossil fuels are fuelling the war in Ukraine

There’s a direct relationship between fossil fuels and the Russian war machine. Rosneft, one of Russia’s main petroleum companies, is reported to be one of the main suppliers of fuel to the Russian army. Rosneft also supplies petroleum to companies like BP. So every time Russian oil or gas are bought it’s not just contributing funds to the war chest, it may be keeping military machinery running. Rosneft and subsidiary company Rosneft-Aero and Transneft reportedly delivered fuel to the Russian Army before and during the invasion.

To stop this war we need a global divestment from, and an embargo on, Russian fossil fuels as soon as possible, as well as urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to those in need.

Fossil fuels have a history with war

The struggle over energy resources has been a conspicuous factor in many recent conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Gulf War of 1990-1991, and the Sudanese Civil War of 1983-2005. Greenpeace has spoken out about such conflicts in the past, especially during the last Iraq war. 

The 1990 Gulf war was largely a conflict about oil. The issues which provided Iraq with the pretext for its invasion of Kuwait were oil pricing policies and oil revenues. Though oil was not the sole reason for Iraq’s actions, it was a powerful motivator for swift action from the United States and its allies who moved quickly to protect its own and OECD countries’ access to important oil supplies. And the large-scale exploitation of oil by foreign companies operating in southern Sudan has increased human rights abuses there and has exacerbated the long-running conflict in Sudan, resulting in two million people dying and four million displaced since 1983, as well as recurring famine and epidemics.

According to research in 2021 by Greenpeace Italy, Greenpeace Spain and Greenpeace Germany, almost two-thirds of all EU military missions monitor and secure the production and transport of oil and gas to Europe. The governments of Italy, Spain and Germany have invested more than €4 billion to protect climate-damaging fossil fuels since 2018.

Fossil fuel companies cannot be trusted

Early in the war in Ukraine, oil companies jumped on the opportunity to expand their operations, using a looming energy crisis as a reason to pedal their polluting business. Shell even bought oil from Russia after the invasion, and only apologised and pledged to cut ties with Russia after huge public backlash that could affect their bottom line. Now other oil companies such as BP and Total Energies promise to be divesting from Russia, after being directly linked to the Ukraine war. 

Like big tobacco, these companies jump on any opportunity to keep selling their dirty products. Unless we continue to expose their dirty business model, they will continue to profit off conflict and climate crisis.

Fossil fuel trade is propping up an unjust system

To help ensure peace and stop the climate crisis, governments need to cut their dependency on fossil fuels and phase them out immediately. Today, the world economy is still running largely on fossil fuels which continue to make up for over 80% of the global energy mix. 

This addiction to fossil fuels places energy security and climate action at the mercy of geopolitics. Governments cannot claim to stand for peace if they continue to finance war. And shifting from Russian oil and gas to oil and gas from other countries with questionable human rights records, like Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, will only shift geopolitical power from one abuser to another. 

These power imbalances can lead to countries acting with impunity. At the recent COP26 global climate talks, leading oil and coal producers like Saudi Arabia and Australia stymied efforts to include fossil fuel phase-out in the final text, and countries like Russia and the United States are not members of the International Criminal Court which prosecutes war crimes.

Renewable energy is a pathway to peace

In order to get to a more just and peaceful world, we need countries to cut their fossil fuel dependency. To transition quickly, wealthy countries must first reduce their energy demand and maximise energy efficiency. Then move fast to fill their remaining energy needs with renewable energy. 

Unlike fossil fuels, renewable energy is less likely to feed geopolitical power struggles or inequality, as its infrastructure has the potential to be largely localised. This could in turn help to reduce trade with countries with questionable human rights records. Localised renewable energy could also help to protect consumers from price shocks like the global energy crisis we are seeing today.

Safeguarding energy security and the climate

The combination of renewable energy and energy efficiency is a better choice for energy security. If the potential of these two are combined, total global energy demand could be reduced by up to a quarter by 2030. Energy efficiency measures would account for half to three-quarters of the total energy savings, with renewables delivering the rest. This could have huge implications for safeguarding the climate, with fossil fuels being the number one contributor to global heating.

A fast and just transition to renewable energy is possible. Installing renewable capacity is much faster than building new fossil fuel infrastructure – In the UK it takes on average 28 years to develop a new oil well, versus two years to build a solar farm. And if the world invests in more renewable energy it will become an even cheaper, more viable option. Morocco and Egypt are rapidly scaling up their renewable energy capacity, and showing how collaboration can help everyone go farther and faster together.

This is a chance for governments to break the cycle of fossil fuel destruction and transition to a green peaceful future. Governments must act for peace and a safe climate with a transition to efficient and renewable energy as quickly as possible.

---

© 2021 Greenpeace

Marie Bout

Marie Bout is Global Climate Communications Strategist at Greenpeace International.

Off the Top of My Head

Plastic Waste and Climate Change: Both Problems Created by Oil

by John Lawrence

Every year 400 million people dispose of tons of plastic waste in the Ganges or in dumps near it to be washed down the river during the monsoon season. The river carries an estimated 6200 metric tons of plastic waste to the sea annually. Plastic is made from oil. Greenhouse gas emissions are caused by oil. Oil is ruining the planet. Yet we are addicted to oil. Oil is killing us on land due to climate change and killing us in the sea as sea life ingests plastic trash. Meanwhile, Indians bathe in the polluted Ganges thinking its waters are the purest in the world. The problem is primarily packaging most of which is discarded immediately after use. Globally, it accounts for 36 percent of the nearly 500 million tons of plastic manufactured annually. In the United States, a person creates an average of 286 pounds of plastic waste a year - the highest rate in the world and more than 6 times India's rate of 44 pounds per person. Civilization and its comforts and conveniences are literally killing the planet, and, therefore, us.

National Geographic reported:

"Most of the research about plastic waste has focused on plastic already in the oceans and its potential for harm—it poses a lethal threat to a wide range of wildlife, from plankton on up to fish, turtles, and whales. Less is known about how the waste gets to the ocean. But it’s clear that rivers, especially rivers in Asia, are major arteries.

"In 2019 the National Geographic Society sponsored a research expedition to one of those rivers: the Ganges, which flows across northern India and Bangladesh, through one of the largest and most heavily populated river basins in the world. A team of 40 scientists, engineers, and support staff from India, Bangladesh, the United States, and the United Kingdom traveled the full length of the river twice, before and after the monsoon rains that dramatically swell it. Sampling the river and the land and air around it, and interviewing more than 1,400 residents, the team sought to find out where, why, and what kind of plastic was getting into the Ganges—and from there into the Indian Ocean."

The growing impurities in the environment are probably contributing to the increase in degenerative diseases like cancer. We eat fish and other seafood products like sushi after sea creatures have ingested plastic waste. We use the rivers and oceans as places to dump our trash, and then we eat animals which inhabit those trash pits. Not too healthy. Like climate change, plastic waste is a side effect of our hydrocarbon habit—most plastics are made from oil and gas—and its impacts, as well as the solutions to the problem, are both local and global. Humans have existed for a couple hundred thousand years, but it has been only about 120 years or 4 generations during which time humans have essentially destroyed planet earth and its ecosystems. Oil and its byproducts like plastic are turning planet earth into a trash dump from which it's not likely to recover in view of the fact that little if anything is being done about it.

What needs to be done immediately? Conversion of all power plants to renewables or nuclear. Conversion of all vehicles to electric. Conversion of agriculture to sustainable and primarily meatless. Conversion of building materials like cement and steel to other materials which don't cause greenhouse gas emissions, such materials as stone and adobe like have been used for centuries. Think of the medieval cathedrals still in use today.

Off the Top of My Head

Almost as Many Have Died During the Covid Pandemic as in All American Wars

by John Lawrence

Maybe we should have invested more in public health than we have in the military. Compared to the trillions spent on the military, only a pittance has been spent on public health, let alone on promoting peace in the world. 1.1 million have died in all American wars since the founding of the republic. About 927,000 and counting have died from the current pandemic even though a revolutionary mRNA vaccine is available. 675,000 died during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 sans vaccine. So many more people have died from pandemics in the US than have been killed in wars. Yet war and the preparations for war are pursued relentlessly while efforts for peace languish. This is not only dumb; it's sick. It goes to show that homo sapiens is one of the stupidest and least empathetic species that has ever evolved. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but the human race is right on course fiddling while the earth burns due to climate change. We will continue to fiddle and equivocate playing one upsmanship with each other as the earth deteriorates into an uninhabitable planet. No wonder the billionaires are making plans to get off.

Of course the power structure doesn't really care what happens on planet earth after they die. They will miss by virtue of their own natural deaths the worst of it. They will have lived the American Dream while bequeathing to their grandchildren the American Nightmare. As we continue to pour billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we are more concerned about the economy that we are about human survival and what sacrifices that will mean. In November, researchers at the Global Carbon Project estimated that global carbon-dioxide emissions from energy and industry rose 4.9 percent in 2021, after a 5.4 percent decline in 2020. China, India and the European Union all had major increases, suggesting that any climate effect from the pandemic was fleeting. So not even a worldwide pandemic can significantly alter the relentless pursuit of economic growth which produces mega tons of carbon dioxide. Residents of planet earth refuse to change their lifestyles and their aspirations for what they conceive to be a "better life."

In the US consumerism is force fed through advertising just like in France ducks are forced fed to produce foie gras. Facebook makes billions of dollars not selling a product but selling advertising. Amazon at least provides products and the service of delivering those products. The advertising industry is the equivalent of the forced feeding of ducks only the ducks are American consumers who would rather not change their lifestyles of accumulation even if it means that their grandchildren will die a miserable death on a burned out planet. Meanwhile, nations exacerbate tensions among each other and foment wars, the preparations for which cost trillions of dollars which, therefore, are not spent on climate mitigation.

Lifestyles not only of the rich but of the middle class would have to change if the earth is to survive climate change. The production of steel and concrete by current methods produce tons of carbon dioxide. The generation of electricity by coal and gas produces tons of carbon dioxide. Agriculture, mainly cow farts, produces tons of methane. As the earth warms sea levels rise, the Arctic thaws and even more methane is released. It's so anthropogenic! We would be better off going back to the horse and buggy days. The American fetish for progress has produced an ecological disaster. The American lifestyle is an environmental disaster. Meanwhile, the power structure in the US and elsewhere seems bound and determined to accelerate the process of environmental destruction while extreme weather events are passed off as "seen nothing like it but vowing to rebuild." That's the American can-do spirit!

Off the Top of My Head

How to Solve the Homeless and Climate Change Crises in One Fell Swoop

by John Lawrence

It has been estimated that there were 6 trillion trees on earth before the industrial revolution. Today there are only half that number. Trees are the most natural and proficient way to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So part of the solution for global warming is to plant 3 trillion more trees. At the same time there are approximately half a million homeless Americans. It is estimated that 150 million people are homeless worldwide. Habitat for Humanity estimated in 2015 that 1.6 billion people around the world live in "inadequate shelter". These figures probably include the 80 million refugees worldwide. So why not pay this under utilized labor force to plant trees like the U.S. did in the 1930s when it created the Civilian Conservation Corps? What is needed is a worldwide Civilian Conservation Force. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a work relief program that gave millions of young men employment on environmental projects during the Great Depression.The CCC helped to shape the modern national and state park systems we enjoy today. People in the CCC were given adequate food and shelter in addition to a stipend to plant trees among other things to benefit the environment. Today addressing climate change is critical. At the same time most homeless people are contributing nothing of value to society although some of them do have jobs. But most are not only homeless but hopeless. Giving them a critical role in solving the global warming crisis would not only help to save planet earth, but would give the homeless an important mission.

Considered by many to be one of the most successful of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the CCC planted more than three billion trees and constructed trails and shelters in more than 800 parks nationwide during its nine years of existence. This is exactly what is needed today - PLANTING BILLIONS OF TREES! So why not do it, but on a world wide basis? Instead the US offers young non college bound people an incentive to join the military. Recruits with less than two years experience earn an annual salary of $19,660 plus a generous benefit package. Isn't saving the earth as a habitable place for future generations more important? So why not make the benefits for a renewed CCC at least equally generous?

This is something that has a precedent in US history, but saving earth as a habitable environment for future generations is evidently not as important as spending a trillion dollars a year to preserve the US military establishment so it can threaten to destroy other nations and peoples. In addition the role of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency and the fact that major world institutions are based on the US dollar allows the US to threaten other countries and individuals with sanctions. It's a one two punch that makes it less likely that anything of significance will be done to make the earth habitable for future generations. Instead the US military is a major source of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere. The Cost of Wars Project found that US military pollution had accounted for 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which amount to 257 million passenger cars annually. They compared this astonishing output as higher than the emissions from whole countries like Sweden, Morocco, and Switzerland. Research shows the US military is one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries.

At a time when cooperation among nations is paramount to the solution of the climate change crisis, the US is hell bent on military confrontation with other countries particularly Russia and China. Instead of creating peace in the world, the traditional preoccupation with solving problems by means of the military is still the order of the day. Therefore, it isn't likely that there will be a solution to the climate change crisis. Instead a bunch of wishful thinking and misplaced hopes will lead to a gradual diminution of habitability on planet earth.

First Draft of COP26 Decision Text Slammed as 'Love Letter' to Fossil Fuel Industry

Climate campaigners demonstrated near a global climate summit known as COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland on November 1, 2021. (Photo: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Greenpeace)

 

"To keep 1.5 alive," said the head of Greenpeace, "fossil fuels phase-out" must be added, and "countries must come back next year to close the gap."

 

Jessica Corbett

November 8, 2021

As a new analysis revealed Monday that fossil fuel industry lobbyists have a larger presence at the COP26 than any country, global campaigners criticized the first draft of the final decision text for the United Nations climate summit for failing to even mention phasing out coal, gas, and oil.

"What the hell have they been doing? We are out of time. Glasgow must mean a total and immediate fossil fuel phase-out."Greenpeace International, in a statement, highlighted that "this glaring omission" comes despite expert warnings about the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground that have mounted in the leadup to the ongoing summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

"What's very concerning here in Glasgow is that the first draft of the climate pact text is already exceptionally weak. Usually, the text starts with some ambition, which then gets watered down," said Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan.

Parties to the 2015 Paris climate agreement aim to keep global temperature rise this century "well below" 2°C, with a target of limiting it to 1.5°C. "To keep 1.5 alive," Morgan said, "fossil fuels phase-out" must be added to the decision text, and "countries must come back next year to close the gap."

The London-based Environmental Justice Foundation blasted the draft text as "a love letter" to the fossil fuel industry, with CEO and founder Steve Trent warning in a statement that "without a fossil fuel phase-out, 1.5°C is well and truly dead, taking with it countless lives, whole cultures, and entire nations."

"Negotiators now have just five days to prevent this partisan COP from degenerating into a love-in between the rich nations of the Global North and the fossil fuel industry," he continued, noting the new analysis about lobbyists' attendance. "Rather than the voluntary targets, gaping loopholes, and distant deadlines that we have seen in PR-stunts announced so far, the final text must include transparent, measurable milestones and clear, time-bound targets."

"My advice to negotiators now is do not fall prey to the weasel words of those countries in thrall to the fossil fuel industry, such as Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Brazil," he added. "Listen to the voices of those who are already on the frontlines of the climate crisis, listen to the experts who have repeatedly stated that we must leave fossil fuels behind."

Bangladeshi climate activist Tonny Nowshin emphasized that "this crisis is manmade" and "there's a certain, small percentage of the world's population responsible."

"We need to start holding the oil and coal companies accountable and we need to make them pay reparations for their profit," Nowshin asserted. "All this suffering is at the cost of their profit."

Arshak Makichyian, a 27-year-old Russian activist attending COP26, said that "it is astonishing to me that in all these years that world leaders have had to deliver the big solution to climate change—over my whole life—not once have they mentioned the cause of the problem."

"My future is resting on just 850 words—but we need four more: phase out fossil fuels," he added of the draft text. "What the hell have they been doing? We are out of time. Glasgow must mean a total and immediate fossil fuel phase-out. That's it."

During a press conference Monday, Alok Sharma, a British politician serving as president of the U.K.-hosted COP26, said that "nowhere is immune to climate change and this is precisely why we must come together to forge global agreement here in Glasgow."

"Finding consensus is not going to be straightforward," he said, kicking off the summit's second week. "But the progress made last week demonstrates that a constructive spirit amongst negotiators exists."

While Sharma celebrated last week's developments—which included a pledge to end public funding for fossil fuel projects abroad, a coal reduction plan, and a deforestation commitment—Kate Blagojevic, head of climate at Greenpeace U.K., called out the host country for its failures.

"The U.K. presidency has let the most vulnerable nations down by supporting such a weak first draft text," Blagojevic said. "Alok Sharma can still fix this and insist world leaders up their game through stronger commitments on phasing out fossil fuels and significantly increasing pledges on adaptation finance in the next draft. And that action can start in the U.K. today by ruling out all new fossil fuel projects, including the Cambo oil field, and making sure the U.K.'s climate finance contributions don't eat into the aid budget."

The campaigners' comments on the draft text came on COP26's "Adaptation and Loss and Damage Day," topics which "are more important than ever," according to Sharma, who noted that "over the last year we have seen extreme weather changes across the world."

One of the priorities of COP26, as reflected in the draft text and ongoing discussions, is ensuring that rich countries which have created the climate emergency provide financial support to Global South nations who are already disproportionately affected.

"We need to see the developed countries cut their fossil fuels now because if not, we are heading to a disaster," said Ugandan activist Rose Kobusinge. "We're heading to a disastrous time whereby the most vulnerable women and children and the most vulnerable Indigenous communities are going to perish."

Fellow Ugandan Edwin Namakanga, a Fridays for Future activist who arrived at COP26 on a Greenpeace ship last week, said Monday that "in my lifetime, I've seen firsthand the destructive impact of the climate crisis, which everyone knows is driven by fossil fuels."

"The result from Glasgow must be the end of new fossil fuels, and there must be proper financial support for countries in the Global South," Namakanga said. "We need solidarity and [a] just transition to renewable energy, because anything less is a death sentence for whole peoples, countries, and areas."

---

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Why Coal is So Hard to Get Rid Of

by John Lawrence

To forestall climate change we must get rid of coal yet coal is the cheapest and most abundant source of energy for power generating plants worldwide. China is building coal fired generating plants in India as India develops into a middle class country. As COP26 aims to banish coal. Asia is building hundreds of power plants to burn it. Millions of tons of coal each year will be imported to fuel a giant power plant that will burn the fuel for at least 30 years to generate power for the more than 70 million people that live in India's Tamil Nadu state. This plant is one of nearly 200 coal-fired power stations under construction in Asia, including 95 in China, 28 in India and 23 in Indonesia, according to data from U.S. nonprofit Global Energy Monitor (GEM). While the US is primarily responsible for the billions of tons of carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere, developing countries don't want to hinder their emerging development since they aren't the ones that contributed most of the CO₂ so far. Asia is home to 60% of the world's population and about half of global manufacturing, and coal's use is growing rather than shrinking as rapidly developing countries seek to meet booming demand for power.

Reuters reported:

"In 2020, more than 35% of the world's power came from coal, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Roughly 25% came from natural gas, 16% from hydro dams, 10% from nuclear and 12% from renewables like solar and wind. This year, coal demand is set for a new record, driving prices to all-time highs and contributing to a worldwide scramble for fuel.

"Record coal demand is contributing to a rapid rise in emissions in 2021 after a fall last year, when restrictions on movement for billions of people to slow the pandemic caused fuel use to plummet. While some of the new coal plants under construction will replace older, more polluting stations, together they will add to total emissions. "The completion of the capacity that is already under construction in these countries will drive up coal demand and emissions," said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clear Air.

"The carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the new plants alone will be close to 28 billion tonnes over their 30-year lifespans, according to GEM."

While India will continue to pollute with coal, their emissions will be dwarfed by China, the top global coal miner, consumer and emitter, whose leader, President Xi Jinping, is not expected to attend COP26. More than 1,000 coal plants are in operation, almost 240 planned or already under construction. Together, coal plants in the world's second-largest economy will emit 170 billion tons of carbon in their lifetime - more than all global CO₂ emissions between 2016 and 2020.

The solution is that the advanced countries like the US have to spend the money to rapidly convert Asia's fossil fuel energy plants to non polluters. Wind and solar are not enough to fill the bill. In order to get off fossil fuels quickly, nuclear power is the only feasible solution, and these plants must be funded and constructed in Asia by the US and the European Union. Bill Gates had plans to build an advanced digital nuclear test plant in China which were nixed by the Trump administration which was a global warming denier. What the rest of the developed world worries about is whether or not Trumpism will come back in the next election. If the earth is not to burn up from global warming, cooperation between the US and China is paramount. Yet the Pentagon continues to advocate for a Cold War with China, and even Biden's administration is ready to cast doubts warily on China. Yet there is no other way. We need to take resources away from the US military establishment which wants to keep itself in business by creating the pretext for war with China while turning China and Russia into pariahs and enemies of the western world. This is a huge mistake if we want our grandchildren to live on a habitable and sustainable planet.

Off the Top of My Head

Biden's Goal of 50% Electric Vehicles by 2030 in Peril Because of American's Freedom of Choice

by John Lawrence

Fast forward to 2029 and we find ourselves in the situation that many Americans are insisting on purchasing gas fueled vehicles because of their freedom of choice. Even though the government has subsidized electric vehicles to the tune of $10,000 per vehicle, and electric vehicles outperform gas powered ones in every category, even though electric vehicles have more bells and whistles than the same identical gas powered one, Americans are insisting that their freedom of choice is more important than helping President Biden reach his goal of 50% electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Wolf Blitzer's son, Chip Blitzer  interviewed Joe Blow of Shrevesport, Louisiana. Blitzer: "Why do you want to purchase a gas powered vehicle when the electric one is cheaper and a better performer?" Blow: "My Daddy drove a Ford F-150 with an internal combustion engine which was the pride of America as did his Daddy before him. The internal combustion engine is what built this country. It's how we won every war we ever fought in. My Daddy was a roustabout in the oil fields and my family has a long history of fossil fuel products. You won't ever catch me in an electric vehicle as long as I have my freedom of choice."

President Biden is considering mandates to get gas powered cars and trucks off the road, but some southern Governors are balking at that. Governor P.T. Abernathy of Texas said this: "The Federal government is overstepping its bounds when it comes to telling us here in the south what kind of vehicles we can drive. I've always preferred a gas powered vehicle myself, and, as long as I'm Governor, I will let our citizens decide for themselves what kind of vehicle they want to drive. It's unAmerican to dictate to American citizens that they have to drive an electric vehicle. We also won't be following Federal government incentives to get people to move out of flood plains." Back in Shrevesport Mr. Blow had this to say. "I ain't moving out of my house even though it is in a flood plain. My Grandpappy built this house. We Blows have lived here for generations, and no Federal government is going to order me to move out of my house." It is notable that 2 years ago, FEMA gave Blow $350 K to rebuild his house after Hurricane Upsilon totally destroyed it. Yet Blow said at the time: "I've never seen anything like it before in my life, but I will rebuild. I'm not going anywhere. This is America."

We note that in blue states people are 90% compliant with Biden's goal. They are buying electric vehicles at a fast rate taking advantage of the generous government incentives in doing so. Red state Governors on the other hand are imploring their residents to support the oil and gas industry by buying gas powered vehicles making it less likely that Biden will reach his goal of 50% electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Despite the cleaner air that has come with more electric vehicles on the road not to mention helping in the effort to forestall and mitigate global warming, many in southern states primarily are insisting on their right to choose as Americans citizens. Ex-President Donald Trump said at a CPAC convention: "Global warming is a hoax. We have so many wonderful oil and gas resources in this country that we'll never have to import another barrel of oil. Yet these socialists like Biden want to cripple that industry destroying the livelihoods of red blooded Americans to feed their families." As a result of American hesitancy to go ahead and buy electric vehicles, Biden will probably not be able to reach his goal. One guy from Alabama said: "Have these electric vehicles even been FHA fully approved. I heard that they were just provisionally approved. When there is full FHA approval, then I might consider buying one. In the meantime I'll just stick with my F-150 with the American internal combustion engine, the engine that made America great. Don't tell anyone, but I take off that godforsaken catalytic converter every time I buy a new pickup. Internal combustion rules, baby! Let 'er rip!"

Off the Top of My Head

Good on President Biden for Using His Visit to the Flood Zones to Give a Tutorial on Climate Change

by John Lawrence

Previously, after a natural disaster no one mentioned climate change. There was much bemoaning and commiserating, but Biden took a different tack. He lectured the American people about climate change and how it contributed to the disasters that had befallen the unfortunate. What's more he said they would continue and get worse unless we undertake to do something about it. No more attributing the disasters to one in 500 year events. That language is totally out the window. No more statements like "I've never seen anything like this my entire life." Get used to it. People are going to see a lot more of these climate disasters from now on. As President Biden said, we can't prevent these disasters from happening on a regular basis, but we can do something about them getting a lot worse. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is running ads on TV about how wonderful the oil and gas industry is, and they are lobbying their evil little hearts out to get politicians on their side.

“The nation and the world are in peril,” President Biden said after touring storm damage in New York and Jersey. “And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”

"Folks — and we have to take some bold action now to tackle the accelerating effects of climate. If we don’t act — now I’m going to be heading, as Chuck knows, as the senator knows, I’m going to be heading from here to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP meeting [United Nations Climate Change Conference], which is all the nations of the world getting together to decide what we are going to do about climate change. And John Kerry, the former secretary of state, is leading our effort, putting it together.

"We are determined, we are determined that we are going to deal with climate change and have zero emissions, net emissions by 2050. By 2020 [sic] (he meant 2030), make sure all our electricity is zero emissions. We’re going to be able to do these things. But we’ve got to move. We’ve got to move. And we’ve got to move the rest of the world. It’s not just the United States of America.

"And so, folks, this summer alone, communities with over 100 million Americans — 100 million Americans call home — have been struck by extreme weather. One in every three Americans has been victimized by severe weather. The hurricanes along the Gulf, the East Coast, up through this community. And I saw the human and physical cost firsthand, as I said, in Louisiana.

"And, folks, the evidence is clear. Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here, it’s not going to get any better. The question: Can it get worse? We can stop it from getting worse.

"And when I talk about building back better — and Chuck is fighting for my program, for our program on the Hill — when I talk about building back better, I mean you can’t build to what it was before this last storm. You got to build better so that if the storm occurred again, there would be no damage. There would be.

"But that’s not going to stop us, though, because if we just do that, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse. Because the storms are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so, folks, we’ve got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red.

"The nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact. They’ve been warning us the extreme weather would get more extreme over the decade, and we’re living in it real time now."

Biden is telling it like it is. The American people are in for a lot more of these climate disasters, and we can't stop them immediately. It's going to take decades to get this problem under control, and that's only if we go full steam ahead by taking measures to get it under control. Meanwhile, there are measures which can be taken to mitigate the costs both human and financial from these climate disasters. People must move out of flood plains and areas prone to forest fires. We must underground utilities so that the power doesn't go out during hurricanes and wildfires. That goes for cell phones and cable TV too. People have to have secure means of communication even during a climate disaster. Building codes need to be upgraded. Water management needs to improve so that torrential rains do not just become runoff that turns into floods. That water is precious and needs to be transported to parts of the country that are in more or less perpetual drought. The power grid needs to be hardened. Transportation needs to be electrified. Power generation needs to use renewable sources, and advanced nuclear needs to be developed. Ways of making steel and concrete need to be developed that don't use fossil fuels and the methods of doing so need to be scaled up and spread throughout the whole world. Agriculture needs to be made organic and factory farms eliminated. It's not enough for the US and the developed world to do the right things. Green infrastructure must be developed and spread to the whole world. We must partner with China in a Green Belt and Road Initiative. They are very advanced in building infrastructure throughout the world. While the US has been fighting needless wars, China has been building infrastructure albeit not green infrastructure. From now on coal fired power plants in India and China need to be eliminated and replaced with renewable energy and advanced nuclear power generation.

As Biden Tours Ida Damage, Protesters Demand End to Fossil Fuels

Climate campaigners demanded an end to fossil fuels as President Joe Biden visited communities in New York and New Jersey hit by the remnants of Hurricane Ida on September 7, 2021. (Photo: Alex Beauchamp/Food & Water Watch)

 

It's time President Biden doubled down on his campaign commitments to end our reliance on fossil fuels by stopping the leasing of public lands for fossil fuel extraction and halting the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure projects."

 

Jessica Corbett

September 7, 2021, from Common Dreams

When President Joe Biden on Tuesday toured communities in New York and New Jersey devastated by the remnants of Hurricane Ida last week, he was greeted by protesters pointing to the deadly storm as just the latest proof of the need to immediately phase out fossil fuels.

"Fossil fuels are destroying our climate with direct impacts in our own backyard," said Food & Water Watch Northeast region director Alex Beauchamp in a statement. "It's time President Biden doubled down on his campaign commitments to end our reliance on fossil fuels by stopping the leasing of public lands for fossil fuel extraction and halting the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure projects."

Despite Biden's promises to ban new oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, his administration has resumed lease sales, in compliance with a federal court order—eliciting intense criticism from climate campaigners who argue that the world can't afford any more fossil fuel extraction. "No fossil fuels!" demonstrators chanted Tuesday. "Biden, keep your promise!"

The activists in New York and New Jersey also called for action by the states' Democratic governors, Kathy Hochul and Phil Murphy.

Hochul "must do her part to end the fossil fuel projects like the NRG Astoria plant moving forward mere blocks from Biden's visit today, to ensure New York doesn't bring any more disastrous fossil fuel projects onto the grid," said Beauchamp. "The fossil fuel age is over—our leaders must commit real action to moving us into an era of clean energy."

Tuesday's demonstrations included members of Food & Water Watch, New York Communities for Change, and other organizations.

Some demonstrators drew attention to a specific project that Biden has been blasted for not blocking: Enbridge's Line 3 tar sands pipeline.

Several progressive congresswomen joined Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in Minnesota over the weekend to meet with Indigenous water protectors leading the fight against Line 3. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) had planned to join in before her district was hit by Ida.

In the wake of destructive flooding across the Northeast, Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly linked Ida to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

The president on Tuesday acknowledged Ida in the context of the climate emergency when appearing with New Jersey officials, according to NPR.

"For decades, scientists have warned that extreme weather would be more extreme and climate change was here. And we're living through it now," he said. "We don't have any more time."

"Every part of the country is getting hit by extreme weather. And we're now living in real time what the country's going to look like," Biden added. "We can't turn it back very much, but we can prevent it from getting worse."

As part of Democrats' efforts to advance climate policy and Biden's Build Back Better agenda, federal lawmakers are working to pass a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package—but with an evenly divided Senate, every member of the party, including right-wingers like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), will need to support the final measure in the upper chamber.

Democrats' control of the House is also narrow, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Tuesday that "there is no flexibility" on the price tag for the climate and social spending plan because she cares "about delivering on these benefits."

As The Guardian reported Tuesday, Biden will have to "referee" Democrats who disagree over the size and scope of the reconciliation package, which party leaders are aiming to pass this month.

According to Ellen Sciales, communications director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, "President Biden's visit to the site of climate disasters today makes clear that he wants to be the Climate President, but now we must ask—is he willing to let Joe Manchin stand in the way of his legacy?"

"The Build Back Better agenda he's proposed is the bare minimum of what is needed for history to judge this presidency in any sort of positive light," she said. "Biden must do everything in his power—from using his bully pulpit to moving members of his party—to pass at least a $3.5 trillion dollar reconciliation package. He can begin to stop this endless suffering, if he chooses to."

Sciales, whose family home flooded because of Ida last week, also warned that "if Biden does not deliver on at least a $3.5 trillion investment through budget reconciliation, while he has a potentially fleeting Democratic majority, future generations will ask why he didn't do more when we still had the chance."

---

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

 

How Sweden Delivered The World’s First Fossil Fuel-Free Steel

Aug 19, from Forbes

David Vetter

Senior Contributor

This post has been updated.

A shipment of fossil fuel-free steel, produced by a joint venture between three Swedish firms, was ... [+] HYBRIT/Magnus Kryssare

Sweden has delivered the world’s first shipment of steel produced without the use of fossil fuels, a major milestone on the road towards cutting carbon emissions from industry.

A shipment of the steel was delivered to Swedish truck maker Volvo AB, but industrial quantities of the stuff won’t be available until 2026.

The news is significant in the context of efforts to limit climate change. While much emphasis has been placed on the role of fossil fuels in electricity generation, research published by Carbon Brief shows that just 553 conventional steel plants worldwide are responsible for 9% of all carbon dioxide emissions, owing to the large quantities of fossil fuels—in particular coking coal—used to produce the alloy. The IEA forecasts that steel production globally will grow by a third through to 2050.

Speaking at a press conference, the Swedish minister for business, industry and innovation Ibrahim Baylan said he was “happy to be minister for enterprise and energy in a country where industry is bubbling with energy for a [green] reset.”

Baylan further noted: “Industry and especially the steel industry create large emissions but are also an important part of the solution.”

The steel was created by a joint venture between Swedish steelmaker SSAB, energy company Vattenfall, and iron ore miner LKAB. A technology dubbed HYBRIT—a contraction of Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology—replaces fossil fuels both in the production of the iron pellets that are the key ingredient of steel, and in the removal of oxygen from the iron by replacing carbon and coke with green hydrogen. SSAB then uses that iron to produce steel slabs for delivery.

Baylan further noted: “Industry and especially the steel industry create large emissions but are also an important part of the solution.”

The steel was created by a joint venture between Swedish steelmaker SSAB, energy company Vattenfall, and iron ore miner LKAB. A technology dubbed HYBRIT—a contraction of Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology—replaces fossil fuels both in the production of the iron pellets that are the key ingredient of steel, and in the removal of oxygen from the iron by replacing carbon and coke with green hydrogen. SSAB then uses that iron to produce steel slabs for delivery.

Comparison of conventional fossil fuel-based steelmaking process versus the new approach from ... [+]

HYBRIT

The whole country of Sweden produced just over 45 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2020, but across all its operations SSAB was responsible for almost 9 million. HYBRIT claims that by eliminating fossil fuels from the steelmaking process, it could reduce Sweden’s total CO2 emissions by “at least” 10%.

 

Martin Lindqvist, CEO of SSAB, told media: “The first fossil-free steel in the world is not only a breakthrough for SSAB, it represents proof that it’s possible to make the transition and significantly reduce the global carbon footprint of the steel industry. We hope that this will inspire others to also want to speed up the green transition.”

Anna Borg, CEO of Vattenfall, which is also responsible for some of Europe’s largest wind farms, said HYBRIT “shows how partnerships and collaboration can contribute to reducing emissions and building competitiveness for industries.”

SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall say they will begin full industrial production of the new steel in 2026. Earlier this year, Volvo announced that it would be the first manufacturer to produce vehicles from fossil-free steel.

While this project might be the first to deliver, it’s far from the only project working on the challenge to create “green steel.” Other Swedes are racing to be the first to create industrial quantities, with H2 Green Steel claiming it will be up and running by 2024.

Outside Europe, China’s Baowu, the world’s largest steelmaker, has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and is beginning to develop hydrogen technologies as a way to cut fossil fuels out of production. India’s Tata steel has developed what it calls the HIsarna process, which still uses coal but claims to reduce emissions by 20%. Meanwhile, Japan’s COURSE 50 project uses a range of technologies to reduce emissions from the blast furnace.

Update 08/23/2021 BST0933: This post has been updated to clarify that the HYBRIT process covers the iron pelletizing and ironmaking stages of the process.

Off the Top of My Head

The Manufacture of Steel and Cement Releases Huge Amounts of Greenhouse Gasses

by John Lawrence

It's not enough to electrify cars and make power plants carbon free. About one third of greenhouse gasses are produced by manufacturing processes - mainly in the manufacture of steel and concrete. In order to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions, we need to come up with new ways to manufacture steel and cement. Fortunately a Swedish company has come up with a way to manufacture steel without at the same time releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Ironically, wind turbines which produce fossil fuel free energy require large amounts of fossil fuels in the manufacture of their steel. For every ton of steel produced in the world, almost two tons of CO₂ are emitted as well. To really combat climate change, major manufacturing processes need to be revolutionized as well.

Sweden’s SSAB says it has “produced the world’s first fossil-free steel” and has started delivering it to the Volvo Group, its first customer. Cars and trucks are made with lots of steel. Volvo has announced plans to manufacture cars using fossil fuel-free steel by 2026. Fossil fuel free steel has been developed by a consortium of three Swedish companies, two of which are owned by the Swedish state. The Hybrit project was set up in 2016. The idea underpinning Hybrit is to use “100% fossil-free hydrogen” rather than coal and coke in steel production. The goal is to develop the technology so it can be demonstrated at an industrial scale. It’s hoped this could happen as early as 2026. The question is can this process be scaled up on a world wide scale so that the production of steel in its totality can be made fossil fuel free?

The cement industry dumps more than 2 billion tons of carbon into the air each year to make its ubiquitous building material, roughly three times as much as the aviation industry. Plastics are made from fossil fuels, but replacing plastics should be as simple as going back to materials that were used before plastics were invented. In fact going back to the way of life of the 19th century, before oil was discovered, would eliminate a lot, but not all, greenhouse gasses. There is still coal which was ubiquitous in the 19th century. As far as transportation, before the advent of the fossil fuel powered car, horse drawn conveyances were ubiquitous. This produced a lot of horse manure which was a problem in urban settings. People concerned about that breathed a sigh of relief when cars entered the scene because that eliminated the horse manure problem while at the same time creating the greenhouse gas problem which was unseen and unrecognized at the time. As it turns out horse manure is a very good fertilizer and can be put to a constructive use while carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks are deleterious.

But we can't go back to the 19th century. Modern development, using tons of steel and cement, will continue apace. We need to do what the Swedes did, and that is to develop manufacturing processes using hydrogen rather than carbon. We need to get smart about eliminating greenhouse gas emissions wherever they occur. It's not enough just to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. We need to create manufacturing processes free of fossil fuels as well. Also we need to find a substitute for plastics. Many are currently being developed. The question is can they be scaled up in time. The same can be said for eliminating industrial farming and finding plant based substitutes for cows and pigs. The economy of the world needs to be reoriented from the pursuit of profit and even of development to the pursuit of creating an earth suitable for human habitation because with out that the human race has nothing.

Nature’s Own Fuel Could Save Us From the Greenhouse Effect and Electric Grid Failure

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Ellen Brown, Web of Debt blog

Hemp fuel and other biofuels could reduce carbon emissions while saving the electric grid, but they’re often overlooked for more expensive, high-tech climate solutions.

On July 14, the European Union unveiled sweeping climate change and emissions targets that would, according to Gulf News, mean “the end of the internal combustion engine”:

The commission’s draft would reduce permitted emissions from new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to zero from 2035 – effectively obliging the industry to move on to battery-electric models.

While biofuels are a less high-tech, cheaper and in many ways more effective solution to our dependence on petroleum, the United States and other countries are discussing similar plans to the EU’s and California is already on board. But in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times and related video, Evan Halper argues that we may be trading one environmental crisis for another:

The sprint to supply automakers with heavy-duty lithium batteries is propelled by climate-conscious countries like the United States that aspire to abandon gas-powered cars and SUVs. They are racing to secure the materials needed to go electric, and the Biden administration is under pressure to fast-track mammoth extraction projects that threaten to unleash their own environmental fallout.

Extraction proposals include vacuuming the ocean floor, disturbing marine ecosystems; and mining Native American ancestral sites and pristine federal lands. Proponents of these proposals argue that China controls most of the market for the raw material refining needed for the batteries, posing economic and security threats. But opponents say the negative environmental impact will be worse than the oil fracking that electric vehicles are projected to replace. 

Not just the batteries but the electricity needed to run electric vehicles (EVs) poses environmental concerns. Currently, generating electric fuel depends heavily on non-renewable sources. And  according to a March 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office, electric vehicles are making the electrical grid more vulnerable to cyber attacks, threatening the portions of the grid that deliver electricity to homes and businesses. If that is true at current use levels, the grid could clearly not sustain the load if all the cars on the road were EVs.

Not just tribal land residents but poor households everywhere will bear the cost if the proposed emissions targets and EV mandates are implemented. According to one European think tank, “average expenses of the poorest households could increase by 44 percent for transport and by 50 percent for residential heating.” As noted in Agence France-Presse, “The recent ‘yellow vest’ protests in France demonstrated the kind of populist fury that environmental controls on motoring can provoke.”

People who can barely make ends meet cannot afford new electric vehicles (EVs), and buying a used EV is risky. If the lithium battery fails, replacing it could cost as much as the car itself; and repairs must be done by pricey dealers. No more doing it yourself with instructions off the Internet, and even your friendly auto repair shop probably won’t have the tools. Except for the high-end Tesla, auto manufacturers themselves are largely losing money on EVs, due to the high cost of the batteries and low consumer demand. 

Off the Electric Grid with Clean Biofuel

Whether carbon dioxide emissions are the cause of climate change is still debated, but gasoline-fueled vehicles do pose environmental hazards. There is an alternative to gasoline that does not require sending all our combustion engine vehicles to the junkyard. This is alcohol fuel (bioethanol). Not only are greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol substantially lower than from gasoline, but as detailed in a biofuel “explainer” on the website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

As we search for fuels that won’t contribute to the greenhouse effect and climate change, biofuels are a promising option because the carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit is recycled through the atmosphere. When the plants used to make biofuels grow, they absorb CO2 from the air, and it’s that same CO2 that goes back into the atmosphere when the fuels are burned. In theory, biofuels can be a “carbon neutral” or even “carbon negative” way to power cars, trucks and planes, meaning they take at least as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as they put back in.

A major promise of biofuels is that they can lower overall CO2 emissions without changing a lot of our infrastructure. They can work with existing vehicles, and they can be mass-produced from biomass in the same way as other biotechnology products, like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, which are already made on a large scale.… Most gasoline sold in the U.S. is mixed with 10% ethanol.

Biofuels can be created from any sort of organic commercial waste that is high in carbohydrates, which can be fermented into alcohol locally. Unlike the waste fryer oil and grease used to generate biodiesel, carbohydrates are supplied by plants in abundance. Methanol, the simplest form of alcohol, can be made from any biomass – anything that is or once was a plant (wood chips, agricultural waste of all kinds, animal waste, etc.). In the US, 160 million tons of trash ends up in landfills annually. Estimates are that this landfill waste could be converted to 15-16 million gallons of methanol. 

In the third in a series of national assessments calculating the potential supply of biomass in the United States, the US Energy Department concluded in 2016 that the country has the future potential to produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass resources annually without adversely affecting the environment. This amount of biomass could be used to produce enough biofuel, biopower, and will bioproducts to displace approximately 30% of 2005 U.S. petroleum consumption, said the report, without negatively affecting the production of food or other agricultural products. 

Energy Independence

A documentary film called Pump tells the tale of the monopolization of the auto fuel industry by the petroleum cartel, and how that monopoly can be ended with a choice of biofuels at the pump. 

Henry Ford’s first car, built in 1896, ran 100% on alcohol fuel, produced by farmers using using beets, apples, corn and other starchy crops in their own stills. He envisioned the family piling into the car and driving through the countryside, fueling up along the road at independent farms. But alcohol was burdened with a liquor tax, and John D. Rockefeller saw a use for the gasoline fuel that was being discarded as a toxic waste product of the kerosene market he had cornered. In 1908, Ford accommodated Rockefeller’s gasoline fuel by building America’s first “flex-fuel” car, the Model T or “Tin Lizzie.” It could be made to run on either gasoline or ethanol by adjusting the ignition timing and air fuel mixture. Rockefeller then blocked competition from Ford’s ethanol fuel by using his power and influence to help pass Prohibition, a Constitutional amendment banning the sale and transport of alcohol. 

The petroleum monopoly was first broken in Brazil, where most cars are adapted to run on bioethanol made from sugar cane. Existing combustion engines can be converted to use this “flex fuel” with simple, inexpensive kits. The Brazilian biofuel market dates back to the oil crisis of the 1970s, when gas had to be imported and was quite expensive. With the conversion to biofuels, Pres. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva achieved national energy independence, giving a major boost to the struggling Brazilian economy. 

The U.S. push for biofuels was begun in California in the 1980s, when Ford Motor Company was enlisted to design a flex fuel car to help reduce the state’s smog problem. But again the oil industry lobbied against it. They argued that bioethanol, which in the U.S. is chiefly made from corn, was competing for corn as a foodstuff at a time when food shortages were a major concern. 

David Blume  counters that it is not a question of “food or fuel” but “food and fuel.” Most U.S. corn is grown as livestock feed, and the “distillers grains” left after the alcohol is removed are more easily digested by cows than unprocessed grain. Distillers grains have another advantage over hay as a livestock feed: its easier digestion reduces the noxious cow emissions said to be a significant source of greenhouse gases. 

Fuel from a Weed: The Wide-ranging Virtues of Hemp

Opponents, however, continue to raise the “food versus fuel” objection, and they claim that biofuels from corn are not “carbon neutral” when the steps used to create them are factored in. Even the fertilizers needed to grow them may emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases.  But corn is not the only biofuel option. There are plants that can grow like weeds on poor soil without fertilizers. 

Industrial hemp – the non-intoxicating form of cannabis grown for fiber, cloth, oil, and many other purposes – is a prime candidate not just for fuel but to help save the environment. Hemp has been proven to absorb more CO2 per hectare than any forest or commercial crop, making it the ideal carbon sink. It can be grown on a wide scale on nutrient poor soils; it grows remarkably fast with almost no fertilizer or irrigation; and it returns around 70% of the nutrients used in the growth cycle back to the soil. Biofuels usually require substantially more water than fossil fuels, but hemp needs roughly half the amount needed for corn. Hemp can also be used for “bioremediation” – the restoration of soil from toxic pollution. It helps remove toxins and has been used by farmers to “cure” their fields, even from radioactive agents, metals, pesticides, crude oil, and toxins in landfills. 

An analysis published in the journal Science in 2019 concluded that a worldwide tree planting program could remove two-thirds of all the CO2 emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. As reported in The Guardian in 2019, one trillion trees could be restored for as little as $300 billion – “by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed.” The chief drawback to that solution is that trees grow slowly, requiring 50 to 100 years to reach their full carbon sequestering potential. Hemp, on the other hand, is one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available, growing to 13 feet in 100 days. It also requires much less space per plant than trees, and it can be grown on nearly any type of soil without fertilizers. 

In a 2015 book titled “Cannabis Vs. Climate Change,” Paul von Hartmann notes that hemp is also one of the richest available sources of aromatic terpenes, which are known to slow climate change. When emitted by pine forests, terpenes help to cool the planet by bouncing energy from the sun back into space. In a mature hemp field, the temperature on a hot day can be 20 degrees cooler than in surrounding areas.   

Reviving an American Staple

Hemp has many uses besides fuel. Long an American staple, its cultivation was mandated in colonial America. It has been used for centuries in pharmaceuticals, clothing and textiles; it is an excellent construction material; its fiber can be used to make paper, saving the forests; and hemp seeds are , providing protein equivalent by weight to beef or lamb. 

The value of industrial hemp has long been known by the U.S. government, which produced an informational film in 1942 called “Hemp for Victory” to encourage farmers to grow it for the war effort. Besides its many industrial uses, including for cloth and cordage, the film detailed the history of the plant’s use and best growing practices. 

Henry Ford used hemp as a construction material for his Model T, and Porsche is now using hemp-based material in the body of its 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport track car to reduce its weight while maintaining rigidity and safety. “Hempcrete” (concrete made from hemp mixed with lime) is a “green” building material used for construction and insulation, including for building “tiny homes.” 

Hemp can replace so many environmentally damaging industries that an April 2019 article in Forbes claimed that “Industrial Hemp Is the Answer to Petrochemical Dependency.” The authors wrote: 

[O]ur dependency on petrochemicals has proven hard to overcome, largely because these materials are as versatile as they are volatile. From fuel to plastics to textiles to paper to packaging to construction materials to cleaning supplies, petroleum-based products are critical to our industrial infrastructure and way of life.

… Interestingly, however, there is a naturally-occurring and increasingly-popular material that can be used to manufacture many of the same products we now make from petroleum-derived materials …. That material is hemp.  

… The crop can be used to make everything from biodegradable plastic to construction materials like flooring, siding, drywall and insulation to paper to clothing to soap to biofuels made from hemp seeds and stalks. 

The authors note that while hemp was widely grown until a century ago, the knowledge, facilities and equipment required to produce it efficiently are no longer commonly available, since hemp farming was banned for decades due to its association with the psychoactive version of the plant.      

Fueling a Rural Renaissance

In an effort to fill that vacuum, a recent initiative in California is exploring different hemp varieties and growing techniques, in the first extensive growing trials for hemp fiber and grain in the state since the 1990s. The project is a joint effort among the World Cannabis Foundation, hemp wholesaler Hemp Traders, and Oklahoma-based processor Western Fiber. The Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute, a nonprofit that supports research into organic farming, has also partnered on a USDA-supported research project on the use of hemp in the development of biochar (charcoal produced by firing biomass in the absence of oxygen). On July 31, the World Cannabis Foundation will host a field day and factory tour in Riverdale, California, where an old cotton gin has been converted to hemp textile manufacture. The event will also feature presentations by a panel of hemp experts. 

How to decarbonize 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually with hemp technology and regenerative farming will also be the focus of a COP26 “fringe festival” called “Beyond the Green,” to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November along with COP26, the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference.  

A 2018 article summarizing research from the University of Connecticut concluded that hemp farming could “set a great example of a self-sustainable mini ‘ecosystem’ with minimal environmental footprint.” Henry Ford’s vision was to decentralize industry, with “small [factory] plants … on every stream,” a rural renaissance fueled not with oil but with alcohol. Hemp fuel and other forms of bioethanol are renewable energy sources that can be produced anywhere, contributing to energy independence not just for families but for local communities and even for the country. And it doesn’t place the burden of addressing climate change on the middle or working classes.

Why Are We Fueling Our Own Extinction?

"Extinction Rebellion London" by Alexander Savin is licensed with CC BY 2.0.

'While the rest of us understand supply and demand theory, our politicians, slick from all that oil money gushing into their hands, seem unable to firmly grasp this basic theory.'

 

Simon Whalley

July 10, 2021

It seems abundantly clear that something any man, woman or child with a reasonable understanding of the scientific method will agree on is that we need to stop burning fossil fuels if we are to avoid the breakdown of ecosystems and runaway global warming. If you aren’t convinced, maybe the CEO of the world’s second-largest publicly traded oil and gas producer, Royal Dutch Shell, can convince you. In 2020, Ben van Beurden said “The future of energy needs to evolve as something else, and we find a role for ourselves in it.” This is the same company that knew its product was causing the planet to warm, and yet for decades spent vast sums obfuscating the truth by funding myriad climate change denying think tanks and lobbying politicians across the globe. Ben van Beurden himself admitted his company’s guilt when he said, “Yeah, we knew. Everybody knew, and somehow we all ignored it.” It was only in 2019 that Shell finally opted to leave the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers lobbyist group, citing an incompatible position on climate change as their reason for exiting.

Why are we still funding our own extinction by subsidizing the very industries to blame for our predicament?

So, it is clear that we need to move away from burning any type of fossil fuel as a matter of urgency. Let’s try a little thought experiment. Imagine you are a world leader that deeply cares about your nation and its people, as we are all sure, our world leaders today do. It is your job therefore to transition your nation away from fossil fuels in a quick fashion in order to avoid planetary collapse. Which of these two courses of action would you take?   A) Continue to subsidize fossil fuel companies in order to reduce the cost of their products and increase their consumption, or B) start to remove these subsidies in order to increase their cost and decrease their consumption while subsidizing the new energy sources that will replace oil, gas, and coal to make sure the population can afford them? You would think that most world leaders would opt for option B, knowing that this is the only way to reduce fossil fuel consumption However, this isn’t what is happening. Today, the global fossil fuel industry is subsidized to the tune of more than $5 trillion a year. Amazingly, at the high end, the annual investment needed to fulfill all the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals sits at exactly $5 trillion a year, less than the amount currently handed out to the industry that is causing the crisis and has lied to us for decades in order to keep our custom. Some will say that this view is simplistic, but the reality is very clear, we have to move away from fossil fuels as soon as possible. The way to do that is obviously not by making them cheap to use. If it sounds simplistic, it’s because it is a simple supply and demand theory. Increased price leads to decreased consumption and vice versa. Business 101. With this in mind, why are we still funding our own extinction by subsidizing the very industries to blame for our predicament? Could the answer be a simple case of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours?”

In the 2020 election between Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump, the fossil fuel industry spent at least $359 million on federal campaign donations and lobbying. There is so much dark money entering the political sphere each year that the true amount is likely much more. Mr. Trump himself explained the system very well in his 2015 presidential campaign when he was questioned about his reasons for giving political donations to the Democrats. He answered:

“You better believe it... I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that's a broken system.”

So broken that in the 2016 election, Trump was handed just $361,000 by the mining industry for his political campaign and in return, the Obama era environmental regulations, intended to prevent discharge of toxic contaminants into river systems, were rolled back. The savings to the coal industry are estimated at $175 million. Money well spent and Trump, unsurprisingly comes cheap, as Mitt Romney was handed $1.5 million in the same campaign cycle. In 2020, Royal Dutch Shell contributed $5,550,000 to political lobbyists. It is unclear what they expected in return. 

InsideClimate News estimated that Exxon and other oil companies had spent more than $5 billion to sow doubt amongst the population regarding the certainty of climate science and to fight clean energy policies. Almost a billion dollars was spent on campaign contributions between 2000-2016. In total, the fossil fuel industry outspent renewable energy by more than 13-1. 

The right honorable Senator James Inhofe from Oklahoma, infamous for disproving climate science by brandishing a snowball on the Senate floor, received $2,239,385 from the interests he protects. These politicians, if nothing else, provide excellent Return on Investment (ROI). If you are wondering what fossil fuel interests get in exchange for these donations, you can probably guess. In the 113th Congress (2013-2014), the fossil fuel industry spent $350,587,282 on lobbying and campaign contributions. In the same Congress, $41,840,275,998 surged in the other direction in the form of federal production and exploration subsidies. This represents an 11,900% ROI. For every $1 spent by the industry, $119 in subsidies find their way back into the coffers of the industry. Can you imagine a better business model?

Civil disobedience is a far better plan than funding our own extinction.

The situation is similar in Australia which is the largest exporter of coal on planet Earth. Here, the company Mineralogy gave more than $83 million to the United Australia Party in 2019 to prevent Labor from winning the election. This was the largest ever political donation in Australia and it was given by Clive Palmer, a climate skeptic, whose company is pushing to open gigantic coal mine operations in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. Mr. Palmer was not alone as $867,000 flowed from mining and energy companies to political parties across the spectrum. Due to poor restrictions on dark money, it is estimated the actual figure could be five to ten times higher. In return for campaign financing, the Australian taxpayer lavishes billions on the industry in tax-based subsidies, direct contributions, loans, project approvals, and lax environmental laws. 

Research from Greenpeace U.K. identified the leading Conservative party was handed one million pounds of fossil fuel money in 2019 and the Liberal Democrats also received two large donations from the industry. Again, it was unclear what the industry expects in return, but the U.K. treasury has given the oil industry tax breaks worth £2.3 billion and energy subsidies of £12 billion. This might have something to do with it. 

Globally, it was found the richest twenty nations had promised more than $150 billion in investment towards the number one cause of the climate crisis, the fossil fuel industry, in the first six months of 2020 alone. The G20 represents 80% of global emissions and this money makes a mockery of any plans for a green recovery from the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

While the rest of us understand supply and demand theory, our politicians, slick from all that oil money gushing into their hands, seem unable to firmly grasp this basic theory that is taught in all high school economics classes. Isn’t it about time we re-educated them? Civil disobedience is a far better plan than funding our own extinction.

---

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Off the Top of My Head

The Threat That Russia Poses That No One is Talking About

by John Lawrence

While diplomats quibble over Russia's interference in our elections and incursions into Ukraine, they are missing the largest reason why Russia is a threat to humanity and that is the fact that Russia's economy depends on the export of fossil fuels. Russia has the largest reserves and is the largest exporter of natural gas. It produces 12% of the world's oil and has a similar share of global oil exports. This is the reason why the US, the EU and the world community needs to stop sanctioning and censuring Russia and take it under its wing if the world wants to eliminate fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses. Global warming will continue apace unless Russia and China are on board, and in Russia's case at least, the transformation to clean energy will affect its economy in significant ways. Otherwise, Russia will just say to hell with it and export all the fossil fuels it possibly can knowing that global warming will only make Siberia and northern Russia more desirable tourist destinations.

The petroleum industry in Russia is one of the largest in the world. Russia has the largest reserves and is the largest exporter of natural gas. It has the second largest coal reserves, the eighth largest oil reserves, and is one of the largest producers of oil. It is the third largest energy user. Russia is the world's second largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. As the world shifts to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels, what will happen to the economies of Russia, Saudi Arabia and other major oil exporters such as Venezuela? How is the world, especially the Western world, going to convince Russia, with the largest oil reserves in the world, to keep its oil in the ground? Reuters reported:

"Over the past decade, Russia launched a major oil pipeline to China, which today is shipping 600,000 barrels per day (bpd), and opened the new port of Kozmino on the Pacific, exporting over 600,000 bpd. Russia is also shipping 200,000 bpd to China via a pipeline crossing Kazakhstan.

"Next month, Russia plans to expand the pipeline connecting its east and west Siberian fields with China, Kozmino and local refineries - known as the East Siberia–Pacific Ocean (ESPO) - by another 100,000 bpd.

"The link will then reach its full designed capacity of 1.6 million bpd.

"Over the past decade, China has become by far the largest buyer of Russian oil via new routes, securing 800,000 bpd of supplies by pipelines and buying large volumes from Kozmino.

"The expansion of the ESPO link should further cement Russia’s role as China’s top supplier ahead of rivals such as Saudi Arabia and the United States."

Clearly, it's in the US' interests to make friends with Russia and China because they are both in a better position to withstand the ravages of global warming than is the US with its hurricanes coming off the Gulf of Mexico and its drought and forest fires in the west. In the geopolitical game, both Russia and China have tremendous advantages. The US will continue to see a flow of refugees as hurricanes destroy Central American nations. Low lying areas of the US such as Florida, Louisiana and New York City will see increased flooding. Higher temperatures will make living in parts of the US let alone the land mass on its southern border untenable. If the US is serious about ameliorating global warming, it needs to bring the entire planet on board. Without Russia, China and India getting serious about climate change, the whole effort is doomed and these so-called enemies or competitors with western values will have won the day more or less by default. The US will suffer the worst consequences. All Russia has to do to secure that outcome is to continue producing and exporting fossil fuels.

Therefore, it is a losing game to quibble about human rights abuses especially in light of the fact that the Russians and Chinese by and large seem to be more loyal to their countries than does the US population which is not at all on the same page. The US is a divided nation that can't even agree on who won the last election. Its sanctions on other nations are having little actual effect except to piss off those nations' leaders. The US military adventurism is draining the country of resources best utilized elsewhere. Joe Biden is doing his best to right the ship of state, but it's a herculean task given the fact that the Republican establishment is dead set on regaining power and reversing all the progress that Joe Biden can possibly make with his limited time in office. The rest of the world sees that lack of steadiness in steering the ship of state and takes it under advisement.

Human Induced Climate Change: Do We Have Time To Save Planet Earth?

Introduction

The upward trend of intensifying climate warming and future consequences of same are indeed startling! It’s a fight between humans and the physics of deadly climate change – which becomes irreversible unless CO2 (carbon dioxide)and CH4 (methane) emissions are drastically reduced globally. The resultant climate is efficiently melting the Arctic which contains huge quantities of CO2 and trillions of tons of CH4 below the permafrost. And CH4 is 72 times more toxic than CO2 in the first 20 years of its lifetime, thus creating a double heat-producing warfront. The process starts when CO2 and CH4 translate into heat-trapping gases; then into melting ice; then into rising fires, floods, and oceans; then into destruction of food supplies: then into inability of plant, animal and human life to survive.

CO2 is produced both naturally and by human activities. Naturally produced by forest fires. Droughts caused by a warming climate increase the frequency and intensity of wild fires, and extreme droughts have a significant effect on atmospheric CO2 levels because plants and animals need water as well as CO2 to grow (the respiration of plants and animals.)

A Layman and Scientific View of Uncontrollable CO2 Emissions

Human activities produce climate change by: the burning of fossil fuels for road and air transportation, power generation, heating and cooling of buildings; manufacturing and making cement; deforestation to support agriculture; forest clearing for housing; and by other land use changes or practices. Human activities and population growth are effectively moving carbon far more rapidly into the atmosphere than it is removed naturally. The result is that humans are adding ever growing amounts of extra CO2 into the atmosphere, in fact 51 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalents a year including the other greenhouse gasses - methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons.

In layman terms, the atmosphere acts like a blanket which inhibits heat loss. Similarly, the warm human body loses heat to the cold air. The blanket inhibits and slows this body heat loss. Thus, you can stay warmer under a blanket.

The Earth loses heat to the cold universe. But, as noted, the atmosphere acts like a blanket which inhibits this heat loss. Therefore, the Earth’s surface remains warmer than it would be without the atmosphere. The surface loses heat to the atmosphere – but less than it would otherwise lose directly to space. Just as you lose less heat with the blanket than you would to the air without the blanket.

In scientific terms, in both the blanket and atmospheric cases, the heat always flows from warm to cold. That’s consistent with the 2^nd law of thermodynamics. But the processes of heat transfer are quite different. For the blanket effect, it is mainly heat conduction; for the atmospheric greenhouse effect it is radiation.

Sun energy arrives in the form of visible light and ultraviolet radiation. The Earth then emits some of this energy as infrared radiation. GHGs in the atmosphere “capture” some of this heat, then re-emit it in all directions – including back to the Earth’s surface. Through this process, CO2 and other GHGs (e.g., CH4) keep Earth’s energy cycle balance at a surface temperature of 33C (59.4 F) warmer than it otherwise would be without them.

However, more and more quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere from burning higher amounts of fossil fuels and the emergence of positive feedbacks increase the greenhouse “heat capture” warming effect – bringing the energy cycle balance way out of balance. More thermal energy is trapped by the atmosphere, making the planet become warmer than it would naturally. To repeat, GHGs absorb a wide range of energy – including infrared radiation energy (heat) emitted by the Earth – and then re-emit it. The net effect is that less total infrared radiation escapes out to space, thereby warming up the Earth’s air.

For one million years in preindustrial times up to 1750, CO2 atmospheric concentrations averaged 280 ppm annually. Since then, the concentration has increased to a HUGE 417 ppm today and is rising +2.2 ppm/year. An increase of 137 ppm (1750 vs. 2020), of which 109 ppm (80%) occurred in the Tiny, TINY geological timeframe of 60 years (1960- 2020). This CO2 explosion was intensified by a comparable explosion in world population from 2.4 billion in 1950 to 7.8 billion in 2020, also in a Tiny, Tiny period of 70 years.

That population explosion is the result of and a contributor to the enormous technological, economic, industrial advances since 1960 – leading to record-high CO2 emissions being trapped in the atmosphere the last 60 years at a level not seen on Mother Earth for one million years! Annual CO2 emissions are now around ±38 billion tons, rising to ±48 billion tons including other GHGs (e.g., methane).

We are trending towards an existential climate crisis of the Earth warming up 3C to 4C, to 5C (worst scenario) by 2050 or 2060. For all living species, that hard to-survive planet “heating-up” reality is menacingly on a path to irreversibility in the next 30 years. It’s truly an uphill global struggle NOT to exceed a 2C temperature rise in 2050. Biden’s team is aware what this challenge calls for.

The global average surface temperature across land and ocean has increased 1.19C since the pre-industrial era (1880-1900). That may seem small, but it means a significant increase in accumulated heat. In 2019, 85% of the Earth’s surface was much warmer than the average surface temperature during 1951-1980. Through November 2020, global warming ended up the hottest on record for the planet – that’s despite a recent La Nina that caused cooler than average sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific ocean slightly lowering the global average temperature for a short period.

The overall upward trend in the globally averaged land and ocean surface temperature shows that more areas are warming than cooling. The extra heat has been powerfully driving regional and seasonal temperature extremes and variations, causing massively destructive fires and tornadoes, intensifying rainfall, reducing snow cover and sea ice, changing habitat ranges for plants (e.g., food) and animals.

What Does All This Mean?

Research in 2020 has shown that global warming by far is not slowing down. It’s still growing. A critical task that ‘must’ be activated is a well-coordinated, rapid multi-faceted green energy transition to a 60% green energy norm by 2030, to an 85% green energy norm in 2050. This requires reducing current CO2 concentrations of +417 ppm to below 350 ppm in next 30 years. This in turn means bringing down the annual average CO2 increase of +2.2 ppm today to ZERO by 2050.

Sadly, the speed, scale, technical strength, innovation pace, and cooperation among nations are still far from being on track to meet a maximum surface warming of NOT more than 2C in 2050. To achieve that target, policy actions and technology for getting out of fossil fuels FAST must be accelerated. Some promising multi-faceted Bottom-Up and Top-Down actions, big and small, for dramatically replacing, removing, storing, reducing CO2 and CH4 gases from the air and production processes include:

• accelerating advanced development of effective carbon capture and storage systems, including, for example, CO2 recycling for covered food production systems

• addressing the low cost carbon-capture potential of a widespread cultivation of industrial hemp; it grows incredibly fast in all sorts of soil conditions making it a very powerful carbon sink superior to trees

• rapid development of an exciting new power cycle technology (the Allam Cycle) that can produce low cost, reliable, flexible power from natural gas – while also generating no atmospheric emissions and capturing all CO2 emissions

• developing renewable energy boosters that overcome the intermittency of wind and solar, wind-solar hybrid generation, offshore floating wind mills

• taking advantage of a valuable by-product of geothermal power, ‘lithium’ which is a critical component of large scale battery technologies used in battery energy storage systems and electric vehicles

• developing advanced fuel cells and ‘green hydrogen’ created by the process of electrolysis of water

• investing in very advanced, clean, safe nuclear fusion or preferably fission or thorium-based power plants or possibly geothermal plants

• expanding significantly the planting of trees and strictly limiting deforestation

• eating plant-based foods and lab-based meat; adopting a far more efficient lifestyle versus feeding plants to animals and then eating the animals; de-concentrating animals and huge animal waste on industrial farms

• expanding on a large scale bicycle pathways in towns and medium-sized cities

Undertaking an aggressive combination of these ‘going green’ actions for getting out of fossil fuels by stopping GHS emissions aggressively before the warming irreversibility sets in in 2050 or 2060. A way of accomplishing this comes from Imperial College (in London) climate scientist Joeri Rogelj, who has a key role writing the next key climate evaluation report for the International Panel on Climate Change: He says, “It is our best understanding that, if we bring CO2 down to net zero, the warming will level off. The climate will stabilize in a decade or two. There will be very little to no additional warming. Our best estimate is zero.” Prof. Rogelj’s words show just how serious the CO2 emissions problem is.

CONCLUSION: CO2 has a lifespan of a 100 years, to 1,000 years, up to 10,000 years before it exits the atmosphere. A reduction in emissions today will lower far into the future the heating-up of our planet, but will not yield the reduced, cooler temperatures needed in the next ±10 years This means that heat-trapping greenhouse gases released today from cars, trucks, buses, airplanes, industrial plant activities, power plants, agricultural animal wastes, etc. are determining the survival existence of future generations of all living species.

These CO2 emission forces have been dramatically intensified and reinforced by the massive rise in population since 1950. Here’s a staggering picture of the historical 1850–2020 and projected 2020–2050 world population growth.

• 1.2 billion in 1850, a 500 million 58% rise 1750-1850 (100 years)

• 2.4 billion in 1950, a 1.2 billion 100% rise 1850-1950 (100 years

• 7.8 billion in 2020, a 5.4 billion 225% rise 1950-2020 (70 years)

• 9.8 billion in 2050, a 2.0 billion 26% rise 2020-2050 (30 years)

Note: 2.4 billion in 1950, a 7.4 billion 308% rise 1950-2050 (100 years)

Little wonder, when one relates above to the simultaneous leap in economic and industrial growth 1950-2020

(vs. 1850-2050), CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere in record Earth time to super ultra-dangerous concentration levels. The inevitable result? A mounting excessive overheating of the planet’s atmosphere, land, and oceans. One climate expert sums up in Plain English this sunlight “heat radiation-in” and sunlight “heat radiation-out” Earth heating- up imbalance that’s worsening right before our very eyes:

“Simply by being present in the atmosphere, CO2 absorbs infrared light radiation emitted by the Earth. You can liken this to what happens when you put a “blanket” over yourself. The fibres of the blanket, and the air trapped between those fibres, absorb the heat from your body and trap it near you, preventing it from quickly escaping into the larger volume of air in the room.

So, by absorbing the infrared light radiation, CO2 keeps the heat in the atmosphere longer; and the more CO2 you add to the air, the “thicker” the “blanket” becomes. We KNOW that the planet’s CO2 “blanket’ is more than a third thicker than it was before the industrial revolution. We KNOW that we are the ones thickening it. We KNOW that CO2 traps infrared light radiation. And we KNOW that the atmosphere and the ocean global temperatures are rising.”

We are going to have to evolve – much quicker than we can fathom perhaps – to a fundamental way of being a civilization that first protects the planet’s health to insure our own sustainable future. To avoid a massive die-off or a complete collapse, a dramatic reconfiguration of human society over the next 30-40 years is an absolute necessity. This cries for prioritizing, integrating the fundamental energy and lifestyle changes scientists are recommending.

Time is not on our side. Planet Earth reacts unkindly to manipulators or moderates who play with or deny risks of a once in a million years planetary climate change threat – hitting Earth hard in a TINY geological time period.

---

SEE: “Global Warming: How Hot Exactly Is It Going To Get?” by Kate Marvel, May 12, 2019

A study just released last July 8, 2019 by MIT geophysics Professor Daniel Rothman shows that carbon levels today could be fast approaching a ‘tipping point’ threshold that may trigger extreme ocean acidification. A threshold similar to that built up over many centuries that ultimately contributed to the Permian mass extinction 250 million years ago where 90% of life on Earth died out. During extensive ocean model testing by Professor Rothman and his MIT team, carbon was continuously pumped into the oceans. The ocean model eventually reached a threshold that triggered what MIT called ‘a cascade’ of chemical feedbacks, or ‘excitation,’ causing extreme acidification, greatly worsening the warming effects of the originally added carbon.

Frank Thomas The Netherlands May 3, 2021

Attachment:

Below is a short Overview of where selected countries are today based on 2019 per data of total CO emissions and CO2 emissions per capita. (Source: European Commission – 2020 Report):

COUNTRY 2019            CO2 Total Emissions         2019 CO2 Tons Per Capita

% Share of World Emissions

United States                         5.1 billion tons = 13.43%                     16.1 tons

Canada                                  588 million tons = 1.54%                     15.7 tons

Europe-EU-27=UK               5.6 billion tons = 8.70%                       5.5 tons

UK                                         365 million tons = 0.96%                     5.5 tons

Germany                                703 million tons = 1.85%                     9.1 tons

France                                    324 million tons = 0.85%                     5.0 tons

Netherlands                            156 million tons = 0.41%                     9.1 tons

Belgium                                 104 million tons = 0.27%                     9.0 tons

Italy                                        332 million tons = 0.87%                     5.6 tons

Spain                                      259 million tons = 0.68%                     5.4 tons

Scandinavia                           32.5 million tons = 0.08%                     6.3 tons 

---

China                                     11.5 billion tons = 30.26%                     8.1 tons

South Korea                           652 million tons = 1.71%                     12.7 tons

Australia                                433 million tons = 1.14%                     17.3 tons

Japan                                     1.2 billion tons = 3.05%                         9.1 tons

India                                      2.6 billion tons = 6.83%                         1.9 tons

The World 38 billion tons = 100% 4.87 tons

Note: China is designing and building very FAST a whole new generation of coal plants to cover current and expected ±10 year Gap in their inability to convert to 100% renewables.

By: Frank Thomas, The Netherlands, May 3, 2012

 

Off the Top of My Head

Inflation Probably Not a Problem If Biden Programs Are Carefully Targeted

by John Lawrence, March 14, 2021

Critics have said, "Oh, My your children and grandchildren are going to have to pay back all these trillions of dollars that have been spent by both the Trump and Biden administrations on COVID relief and to get the economy going again." Not True! Modern Monetary Theory has shown that the Federal Reserve can just create the money and the Treasury Department can just spend it without ever worrying about paying it back. Finance is not the problem. The problem is potentially inflation which economist Larry Summers has sounded the alarm about. Most of Biden's relief bill is targeted at the poor which means that that money will be sucked up to pay past due rent and mortgage bills as well as providing a decent lifestyle which should not be inflationary except if you believe the nonsense of the neoliberal Phillips curve which supposedly proves that a certain segment of the population has to live in poverty and penury in order to fight inflation. That has also been debunked by Modern Monetary Theory although most politicians are still on the wavelength of neoliberal economics which has been shown to be fallacious in this and many other regards.

State and local governments likewise will just suck up the money in the relief bill to bail themselves out of debt and provide an adequate level of social services. This also is not inflationary because the money will not be just sloshing around in the economy with nowhere to go. What is inflationary is tax breaks for the rich, but this money can be sucked out of the economy by taxing the rich. What Larry Summers fails to take into account is that the US and much of the rest of the world has a two tier economy. The rich and upper middle class are doing very well, thank you, while the lower middle class and the poor are suffering. The COVID pandemic illustrated this in even starker terms with the so-called K-shaped recovery. The upper classes made money; the lower classes are on the verge of losing whatever financial gains they had made during the Trump economy. Inflation is caused by too much money sloshing around in the economic system. Most of that inflationary money is held by the rich in assets like stocks and real estate. Money injected into the economic system targeted at the poor is immediately sucked out of the system to pay debts and to provide basic necessities. There is enough physical and material capacity in the system to provide basic necessities so this money is not inflationary.

Inflation is caused when there is too much money chasing too few goods. As long as there is the material and human capacity, money directed at those sectors of the economy will not cause inflation. The real problem in future Biden administration bills involving infrastructure and the Green New Deal is that the materials to build out infrastructure, namely, steel, cement and plastics, require fossil fuels to manufacture and the manufacturing processes themselves are inherently carbon dioxide emitting. This comes about from basic chemistry which involves the carbon and oxygen atoms every step of the way. Most basic materials are composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, and the chemistry involved in manufacturing releases large amounts of carbon dioxide. The manufacture of solar panels requires mining high quality quartz and combining it with coal. It's hard to get away from fossil fuels as the Michael Moore movie, Planet of the Humans, pointed out. For this reason spending large amounts of money on infrastructure involving cement, steel, plastics and other materials could actually produce more global warming rather than preventing it. The finances are available; the proper materials are not. The manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels require the release of large amounts of greenhouse gasses.

Because of these fundamental limitations regarding materials, it doesn't make sense to throw trillions of dollars at either infrastructure or global warming mitigation. That would be either inflationary or misguided in the sense that large projects in these areas could produce even more global warming. As Bill Gates has pointed out, money should be invested in promising startups and research that can solve these basic problems and into digital nuclear which is the only renewable energy source that won't result in a lot of greenhouse gasses being created in the first place. Advanced nuclear is the most promising source of clean energy. Gates has invested in a company TerraPower which does research on advanced nuclear reactors. Their mission statement reads:

"TerraPower was founded by Bill Gates and a group of like-minded visionaries that decided the private sector needed to take action in developing advanced nuclear energy to meet growing electricity needs, mitigate climate change and lift billions out of poverty. Advanced reactors and other isotopic applications are now possible with technology and enhanced computing capabilities that were unimaginable a few decades ago. At TerraPower, we are innovating in nuclear to improve the lives of people everywhere and to build the clean energy of tomorrow – today."

So when the Biden administration gets around to their initiatives on infrastructure and global warming, they need to heed Bill Gates' warning about traditional manufacturing methods involving cement, steel and plastic. Energy from solar and wind are inadequate to solve the problem for many reasons. Large scale demonstration and build out of nuclear energy reactors should be the order of the day, They are the only clean energy source that has the potential for diminishing the world's reliance on fossil fuels.

Off the Top of My Head

Green New Deal: We Have a Problem and Its Not Money

by John Lawrence, March 5, 2021

Modern Monetary Theory has shown that a nation with a sovereign currency such as the US dollar need never fear running out of money, and that Federal spending does not depend on tax receipts. However, it does depend on whether the human and material resources are available. Just pouring money on the problem will cause inflation unless it is soaked up by available resources. The problem is that the material resources are not available. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, the problem cannot be solved by the renewable energy resources that are now available, namely wind and solar. Building wind turbines requires immense amounts of concrete for the bases and steel for the turbines, and the manufacture of those resources emits tons of greenhouse gasses. Manufacturing solar panels requires mining of quartz sand and coating with ethylene-vinyl acetate. This manufacturing requires energy—most often derived from the burning of fossil fuels, as the Michael Moore film, Planet of the Humans, has pointed out.

Solving the problem of global warming can't be undertaken by using the available resources of concrete, steel and plastic the manufacture of which emits huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. So even though the financial resources are available, the material resources are not. The human resources, however, are arguably available. Wray and Tcherneva  write in a paper How to Pay for the Green New Deal:

"In the neoliberal era, we chronically operate below full employment. That is obvious in Euroland, which is probably operating 25 percent or more below full capacity. Even the US today has substantial excess capacity, in spite of claims that we have achieved full employment. Over the past quarter century, we have had to readjust our estimate for the natural rate of unemployment—the rate below which inflation is supposed to pick up—in every recovery, because inflation never arrives as unemployment falls. Most recently, in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, economists claimed that the natural rate of unemployment had increased to over 5 percent. Yet, the unemployment rate kept coming down, while inflation never materialized. We will not know precisely where the inflation barrier is until we ramp up aggregate demand."

So given that human resources are available, it is clear that the material resources are not. Bill Gates recommends spending the money on research to develop new non-greenhouse emitting substitutes for steel, concrete and plastic. That would require high level scientists who might be less available than low level workers. Assuming a full court press requiring large numbers of university and scientific human power, this project is probably feasible although it would not require trillions of dollars of financial resources at least in the initial phases. Later development would require more and finally building out renewable energy resources using these newly developed materials would require more money. So the problem is not that finance is not available. The problem is dispensing it in appropriate amounts over time. There is one promising energy source that would not require such a huge investment in research and development because that has largely been done and that is what we might call digital nuclear. Bill Gates has invested in a company called TerraPower which claims:

"With the growing demand for electricity, TerraPower entered the nuclear energy arena to lift billions out of poverty. Advanced reactors and other isotopic applications are possible with technology and enhanced computing capabilities that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. At TerraPower, we are ready to build the clean energy of tomorrow – today. TerraPower leads in advanced nuclear energy because it has spent the last decade investing in innovative technologies to solve some of the biggest challenges facing humanity."

Two things are clear. Much work has already been done on an advanced nuclear reactor that solves the problems of dangerous explosions such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima and also the problem of spent fuel radioactive storage. Using high level computing power and advanced digital technology which wasn't available to previous generations of nuclear reactors, Gates maintains that a safe design for nuclear power generation is close to being available. Considering the problems with solar, wind and biofuels which have a longer time horizon before being solved, it seems that nuclear is further along in its development phase and also has greater potential for being a carbon free source of energy. “Nuclear has actually been safer than any other source of [power] generation,” Gates told [CNBC's Andrew] Sorkin. “You know, coal plants, coal particulate, natural gas pipelines blowing up. The deaths per unit of power on these other approaches are — are far higher,” Gates said, a fact he also references in his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

In their section, “COSTING” THE GREEN NEW DEAL," Wray and Tcherneva write:

"Milton Ezrati, writing for Forbes, offers his own estimates for the various components of the GND, citing different sources (Ezrati 2019). Here we only use his estimates for “greening” projects. Based on estimates by physicist Christopher Clark, the cost of expanding renewable energy to 100 percent would be $2 trillion over 10 years. The smart power grid would cost an additional $400 billion over 10 years (estimate from the Electric Power Institute).13 Upgrading and retrofitting buildings would cost between $2.5 trillion and $3.9 trillion ($3.2 trillion midpoint estimate) over 10 years. The total cost of greening projects comes to $5.6 trillion over 10 years ($560 billion per year, or 2.87 percent of 2017 GDP)."

This is only one of the costing estimates that Wray and Tcherneva provide, but these costing estimates need to be further examined in terms of how much fossil fuels are necessary to build them out and manufacture them. Materials that require large amounts of carbon dioxide emission for their manufacture must be rejected. In the final analysis the Job Guarantee (JG) that Wray and Tcherneva advocate is partially limited to "what Tcherneva calls “care for community” and “care for people” projects: service projects related to senior and youth care, teacher’s helpers, neighborhood and park cleanup, artistic projects, and so on. Thus, the JG program can provide resources needed for green projects in an amount equal to 1 percent of GDP (and resources equal to another 1 percent of GDP for other care services). These would largely be in upgrading buildings and homes to improve energy efficiency, although some could be used in nontechnical maintenance of energy projects (landscape maintenance, for example)." So the mix of high level workers like scientists could be combined with a significant number of low level workers to provide a comprehensive approach."

The bottom line is that we had better get cracking, financing a Green New Deal is no problem because as Modern Monetary Theory has shown, the money is available, but resources must be carefully allocated to avoid the pitfalls of inflation and making the problem worse by using large amounts of traditional materials like concrete, steel and plastics. Nuclear is probably the best bet for power generation and it must be deployed quickly especially in India and China where coal fired power generating plants are still being deployed at a rapid rate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwbDETx3zo0

 

Off the Top of My Head

Bill Gates Needs to Get Up To Speed on Modern Monetary Theory

by John Lawrence, February, 28, 2021

Bill Gates is a smart guy. He has singlehandedly been the most influential person on pandemics and now on climate change with his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. In this book the most important thing he points out in my opinion is that it is not enough to put electric cars on the road and to use renewables to power electricity generating plants. There is also much carbon dioxide emission coming from manufacturing and agriculture. In particular the manufacture of cement, steel and plastic produce as much or more carbon dioxide ton for ton as those products themselves. In addition beef and dairy cows produce a lot of methane due to the fact that they are ruminants with a certain kind of digestive system. Gates believes that much innovation, research and development is needed to come up with substitute products in all these areas as well as electrifying everything and running it all with renewables including a new digitized nuclear system.

The one thing that this polymath doesn't seem up to speed on is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) which is important because all this innovation, research and development requires vast amounts of money. He personally can't provide it all although he has used his fortune in very constructive ways in terms of health care around the world and also seeding promising startups. The Gates Foundation is concerned with all these problems on a world wide basis and not only in the US. He is a globalist and not an America First type of guy which is altogether appropriate because pandemics and particularly global warming are universal problems affecting every country and all people on earth, and their solutions require a world wide approach.

Bill Gates like some economists is somewhat concerned about inflation after all these trillions of dollars are spent by the US government first on COVID relief and then on infrastructure and a Green New Deal. If they study MMT they would know that MMT shares that concern, but addresses it in terms of the amount of idle resources there are in the economy. For instance, if there is 5% unemployment (what is considered full employment by conventional economists), there are still over 15 million people available for work. If there are material resources available such as cement, steel and glass, the price of these items is not likely to be bid up causing inflation. However, while some material resources are readily available, their substitutes which don't cause carbon dioxide emissions in the manufacturing process are not. A large infrastructure project which requires huge amounts of concrete with rebar such as is necessary in constructing a bridge, for example, will also cause large amounts of carbon dioxide to be emitted into the atmosphere. As Gates points out, making things which require cement, steel and plastic adds about 31% of the total of greenhouse gasses which are emitted annually. For every ton of steel produced we emit 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide. For every ton of plastic, the figure is 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide, and for every ton of cement, we emit a ton of carbon dioxide.

With figures like that how is the US going to do a $4 trillion (which is the amount our infrastructure is in deficit) infrastructure project without producing even more billions of tons of greenhouse gasses (GHGs)? We need huge R&D projects funded by the government first before we can scale up the production of carbon free products which replace these traditional construction materials. Financing the R&D is not a problem as these human resources are widely considered to be available. This would cause no inflation. Getting the material resources when little or none of them is available would cause inflation. Nevertheless, the US ramped up production of ships and airplanes for World War II without causing much inflation. To deal with global warming or climate change is a thornier problem. If money is just poured into the economy on a non-targeted basis, it will cause inflation so it makes sense at least initially to pour the money into R&D as Bill Gates suggests. Doing a large infrastructure project without using the proper materials could make global warming even worse.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Should Blue Collar Workers Have to Pay Taxes to Bail Out White Collar Student Loan Debt?

by John Lawrence

Short answer: There is no need for the Federal government to tax in order to spend. That has been demonstrated by Modern Monetary Theory. However, taxation, if imposed in order to fight inflation, needs to be imposed primarily on the rich and upper middle class, not on the poor or lower middle class. The smart thing for the Biden administration to do would be to decrease taxes on the lower middle class ^i.e. blue collar workers before 2022 thus drawing them away from the Trump camp. In general the American people need to be educated that deficits don't matter except just as accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. Biden's COVID relief initiative of $1.9 billion will not raise taxes nor will his follow-on trillion dollar initiative for the build-out of green infrastructure.

The question, "Can We Afford to Pay for the Green New Deal?" is equivalent to the question "Can We Afford to Pay the Costs of Avoiding Annihilation?". In the past we have been able to afford a massive build-up to pay for the Second World War. The climate challenge is the moral equivalent of war. If we lose this war we lose not just our freedom. We lose the habitability of the entire planet. Various attempts have been made to cost out the components of a Green New Deal. Green power generation and transportation are not sufficient in themselves to get to net zero carbon emission, but they are a start. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, major industrial processes also generate much greenhouse gas emission. For instance, every ton of cement that is produced contributes one ton of carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere. Every ton of steel produced results in 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, and every ton of plastics produced emits 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide. So it's not enough just to deal with green transportation (electric vehicles) and green power generation (solar and wind).

The cost of "greening" these industrial processes is pretty steep. Capturing carbon dioxide at the site of the manufacturing process is possible, but there is no cheap way to do it. Bill Gates is investing in promising start-ups and is counting on innovation to come up with new processes and materials which will not result in so much carbon dioxide being released into the air. Gates points out that we need to electrify every possible manufacturing process and make sure that all that electricity is generated cleanly. He advocates a new generation of nuclear power sources as wind and solar can not possible fill every energy need mainly because they are intermittent. Nuclear can fill the gap for consistent power generation when solar and/or wind are offline. Smart nuclear power which Bill Gates has been instrumental in developing would solve the problems encountered so far of explosion and what to do with nuclear waste. As a last resort Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide from the air is possible but also costly.

What it all boils down to is this: we will need on the order of a trillion dollars a year for 10 years commitment to address climate change if we have a prayer for avoiding the worst consequences. What's more a lot of this commitment must be made in cooperation with China which is one of the worst polluters. Rivalry and even a Cold War must be set aside if the world is to avoid the worst outcome from global warming. India and China are building coal fired power generation plants at a rapid pace because coal fired power plants are so cheap comparatively and those countries are developing so quickly. It's not enough just to "green" the US. It has to be cooperation on a world wide basis. Competition has to be set aside and replaced by cooperation. The ownership of intellectual property is irrelevant when it comes to saving the planet.

A national budget for a Green New Deal shouldn't contribute to inflation since there are currently so many unemployed people available for work, and particularly because so many of the small businesses that were lost during the pandemic are not coming back. Also further robotizing of manufacturing processes will eliminate whatever blue collar workers are left working in those fields. In World War II there was some postponement of consumption in order to fight inflation. That may be necessary for the moral equivalent of war which the Green New Deal represents. If so, workers in certain nonessential industries may have to be repurposed and retrained for industries involved in combating climate change.

Off the Top of My Head

Despite All the Talk, Practically Nothing Has Been Done About Global Warming

by John Lawrence

Every year 51 billion tons of Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) go into the atmosphere. There has been no decrease in that number despite the Paris Accords, despite more hybrid cars, despite the build up of solar and wind renewables. 197 countries adopted the Paris Agreement at the COP21 in Paris on 12 December 2015, over 5 years ago and yet there has been no improvement in the number of tons of GHGs dumped into the atmosphere per year. Well, a couple of tons less this year due to the pandemic. In general it is slightly increasing according to Bill Gates in his new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster." At the rate we are going, there is no way that the earth can escape the dire consequences of global warming. Should we just give up and enjoy the few remaining years of a habitable earth? I don't think so. What will it take to forestall catastrophe? Basically, it will take a Green New Deal or should we call it the Green Equivalent of World War II?

During World War II there was a huge amount of government deficit spending. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that this is no problem because a government such as the US which issues its own sovereign currency can never run out of money whether or not there are tax receipts to cover the spending. The problem is inflation which occurred in WW I despite more modest outlays. In the WW II years there were wage and price controls which effectively controlled inflation. There was also rationing. These measures made sure that all resources both human and material were devoted to the war effort. Everyone was on the same page. Is that possible for a Moral Equivalent of War (MEOW) today? Would people be willing to give up anything so that resources could be devoted to a MEOW as far as Global Warming is concerned? Many Americans are not even willing to wear a mask during a pandemic, and many also believe that global warming is a hoax. Would they sacrifice for a MEOW?

Bill Gates has invested his money in a variety of start-ups which have some promise of addressing the global warming issue. One of them is Direct Air Capture (DAC) in which carbon dioxide is removed directly out of the air. This is a feasible alternative which is already in use on a small scale. The problem is that it's the most expensive alternative out there. A combination of other methods to ameliorate GHGs in the atmosphere would not only be more feasible but cheaper. He estimates that removing 51 billion tons of GHGs per year would cost $5.1 trillion per year. This would be an upper bound on the cost of getting to zero GHG emissions. Actually this does not seem too unreasonable given the fact that between 2008 and 2015, the Fed’s balance sheet, its total assets, ballooned from $900 billion to $4.5 trillion. That means that the Fed "printed" $3.4 trillion with its Quantitative Easing (QE) program. The Fed has "printed" $3.5 trillion just in the year 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic to keep the economy from falling apart. This is the amount of money authorized by Congress in several spending bills. Add to that Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill and you get a total of $5.4 trillion. And yet there has been no inflation.

So there is a little hocus pocus going on in the relationship between the Fed and the Treasury. The Fed by law is not allowed to buy US debt directly from the Treasury department. How it works is Congress authorizes a spending bill. The Treasury issues a Treasury bond if there aren't enough taxes to cover it. That bond is sold to the "primary dealers" which are mainly big Wall Street banks, and then the Fed buys the bond on the "open market" which means it buys them from the primary dealers. So by a roundabout method, the Fed buys up US debt by means of "printing" money although it's actually by means of a few keystrokes on a computer crediting the Treasury's account at the Fed and the Fed takes the bonds onto its balance sheet from which theoretically it could sell them some day. One little distinction: this is not QE. QE was a term coined when the Fed "printed" money to bail out the big banks aka providing liquidity. The Fed took all the toxic junk of mortgage backed securities and other assets onto its balance sheet and gave the banks all the money they needed to cover bets on credit default obligations and interest rate swaps and other casino garbage. So while it amounts to the same thing - the Fed "printing" money and adding it into the economy - the money injected now is going into the real economy whereas the QE went into the Wall Street economy.

But I digress. So Bill Gates says it would require at most $5.1 trillion to get our GHGs down to zero on an annual basis. In other words keep the goddam fossil fuels, cow farts and Keystone pipeline and just get those DAC machines humming. Seems reasonable to me. The Fed can just print up that $5.1 trillion and we're home clear. J.D. Alt estimates that solving the global warming crisis will cost $60 trillion over 10 years which is about the same amount per year that Bill Gates estimates although supposedly we will reach some point at which renewables and other technologies will result in zero emissions so we will not have to go on spending that amount in perpetuity. So why don't we just go ahead and do it? The Fed could just print the money. No inflation is in sight. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that any country with a sovereign currency (such as the US dollar) can never run out of money and as long as the resources are available (both human and material) the financial resources will always be available. The only problem is the stupidity of most of the US Congress (mainly Republicans) whose only response to any Democratic initiative is just to Just Say No as well as their economic ignorance. So it is of paramount importance that next year after the pandemic is over and before Republicans take over (hope not) one of the branches of Congress in 2022, that Congress passes a $5 trillion per year Green New Deal or a $50 trillion GND spread over 10 years.

Off the Top of My Head

China Has Been Taking Over the World ... Peacefully

by John Lawrence, February 11, 2021

As Trump was retreating from multilateralism with his America First approach, China was winning friends and influencing people by building infrastruture in countries around the world with its Belt and Road initiative. This model put excess Chinese labor to work pulling their families out of poverty and set up the groundwork for increased trade and friendly relations with with other countries. Latest example: Latin America. Meanwhile, the US has not even been able to build infrastructure in its own country. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publishes The Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which grades the current state of national infrastructure categories on a scale of A through F. In 2017, the U.S. infrastructure earned a D+ average. Stay tuned for a new report later this year. Infrastructure looms large because now it must be built out as green infrastructure replacing fossil fuel infrastructure.

In Latin America, America's so-called back yard, 19 countries have signed up for China's Belt and Road Initiative. The value of trade between China and Brazil, Latin America's largest country is $100 billion. China is South America's largest trading partner. Only Paraguay is not on board because they're the only South American country that recognizes Taiwan and not Beijing as the legitimate Chinese government. In 2019 Chinese companies invested $12.8 billion in Latin America concentrating on regional infrastructure such as ports, roads, dams and railways. Meanwhile, America was focused on its entertainment and consumerist economy, now partially defunct due to COVID. Chinese purchases of minerals and agricultural commodities helped South America get through the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. While the US had an orgy of financial speculation that created the 2008 financial crisis, China was powering on keeping its shoulder to the wheel, ear to the ground and nose to the grindstone building infrastructure and providing full employment for the Chinese people. As the US was relying on its military power to maintain its influence in the world, China was employing peaceful means to expand its influence. In 2020 the US spent $738 billion on defense, an additional $35 billion on nuclear weapons and and additional $80 billion on intelligence programs, none of which by the way provided intelligence on the assault on the Capitol although it had been discussed widely and openly on the web in prior weeks. Meanwhile, China's 2020 defense budget was $178 billion.

China's Cosco Shipping is building a new $3 billion port in Peru, and there are plans for a transcontinental railroad linking South America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Diplomatic opportunities for China have also been opened up due to COVID since China produces most of the world's PPE. The US was caught flat footed because it had to go hat in hand to China for PPE not much of which is manufactured domestically. Mask diplomacy has caused Washington to worry that China is gaining influence during the pandemic as China has provided PPE to 150 countries and 7 international organizations around the globe. While the US struggles to get vaccine into the arms of Americans, China has agreed to provide Pakistan with half a million doses of its Sinopharm vaccine free of charge. Time magazine reported:

"Yet China has won influence not by wielding sticks but by deftly distributing carrots. In Brazil, the region’s largest economy, bilateral trade with China rose from $2 billion in 2000 to $100 billion last year. Today, Brazil sends 30% of all exports to China, including 80% of its soybean crop and 60% of its iron ore. These entanglements are typically tightest with nations with goods to sell; China has supplied over $17 billion in financing to Argentina since 2007, according to Inter-American Dialogue, and is the world’s top importer of Argentine soybeans and beef.

"China is also now a preferred lender across the region. It hosts two international development banks–the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) in Shanghai–that are both expanding their remit across the region. “Infrastructure development has shrunk the distance between Asia and Latin America,” AIIB president Jin Liqun tells TIME in his Beijing headquarters."

While China was deftly distributing carrots, the US was wielding sticks with Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo bullying the rest of the world to get them to fall in line behind the US. The US needs to cooperate with China to stave off the next big crisis - global warming - not start a new Cold War in an effort to overtake or compete with China. For the most part China has already won any competition to speak of by gaining cooperation and friendship with the rest of the world and achieving the world's largest economy while the US still struggles with COVID, its economy in shambles. "No country has put itself in a better position to become the world's renewable energy superpower than China,"says a recent report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation. In Brazil China's State Grid Corp. is the largest power generation and distribution company, while China's Three Gorges, the world's largest hydropower provider, controls 17 out of 48 hydro plants and 11 wind farms.

Joe Biden is doing his best to backtrack from Trump's disastrous America First policy, but American foreign policy is still on the track that it views China as a competitor rather than a nation that should be cooperated with in order to meet the challenge of global warming. Rather than gearing up for a military confrontation or quibbling and squabbling over human rights, the US must adopt a less belligerent foreign policy and learn to get along with the other nations of the world even those who have not been historic allies. The US should cut back on its bloated military and military-complex spending and devote the savings to virus research and green infrastructure implementation at home and around the world in cooperation with China and other nations.

'Invisible killer': Fossil Fuels Caused 8.7m Deaths Globally in 2018, Research Finds

by Oliver Milman, Tue 9 Feb 2021 03.00 ES

from the Guardian

Pollution from power plants, vehicles and other sources accounted for one in five of all deaths that year, more detailed analysis reveals

Two men walk along Rajpath amid smoggy conditions in New Delhi last month. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found.

Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower.

The enormous death toll is higher than previous estimates and surprised even the study’s researchers. “We were initially very hesitant when we obtained the results because they are astounding, but we are discovering more and more about the impact of this pollution,” said Eloise Marais, a geographer at University College London and a study co-author. “It’s pervasive. The more we look for impacts, the more we find.”

The 8.7m deaths in 2018 represent a “key contributor to the global burden of mortality and disease”, states the study, which is the result of collaboration between scientists at Harvard University, the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London. The death toll exceeds the combined total of people who die globally each year from smoking tobacco plus those who die of malaria.

Scientists have established links between pervasive air pollution from burning fossil fuels and cases of heart disease, respiratory ailments and even the loss of eyesight. Without fossil fuel emissions, the average life expectancy of the world’s population would increase by more than a year, while global economic and health costs would fall by about $2.9tn.

The new estimate of deaths, published in the journal Environmental Research, is higher than other previous attempts to quantify the mortal cost of fossil fuels. A major report by the Lancet in 2019, for example, found 4.2m annual deaths from air pollution coming from dust and wildfire smoke, as well as fossil fuel combustion.

This new research deploys a more detailed analysis of the impact of sooty airborne particles thrown out by power plants, cars, trucks and other sources. This particulate matter is known as PM2.5 as the particles are less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter – or about 30 times smaller than the diameter of the average human hair. These tiny specks of pollution, once inhaled, lodge in the lungs and can cause a variety of health problems.

“We don’t appreciate that air pollution is an invisible killer,” said Neelu Tummala, an ear, nose and throat physician at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. “The air we breathe impacts everyone’s health but particularly children, older individuals, those on low incomes and people of color. Usually people in urban areas have the worst impacts.”

Instead of solely relying upon averaged estimates from satellite and surface observations that account for PM2.5 from a range of sources, the researchers used a global 3D model of atmospheric chemistry overseen by Nasa that has a more detailed resolution and can distinguish between pollution sources. “Rather than rely on averages spread across large regions, we wanted to map where the pollution is and where people live, so we could know more exactly what people are breathing,” said Karn Vohra, a graduate student at University of Birmingham and study co-author.

The researchers then developed a new risk assessment based on a tranche of new research that has found a much higher mortality rate from fossil fuel emissions than previously thought, even in relatively low concentrations. Data was taken from 2012 and then also 2018 to account for rapid improvements in air quality in China. Deaths were counted for people aged 15 and older.

The results show a varied global picture. “China’s air quality is improving but its fine particle concentrations are still staggeringly high, the US is improving, although there are hotspots in the north-east, Europe is a mixed bag and India is definitely a hotspot,” said Marais.

A coal power plant in Niederaussem, western Germany. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images

The death toll outlined in the study may even be an underestimate of the true picture, according to George Thurston, an expert in air pollution and health at the NYU school of medicine who was not involved in the research. “Overall, however, this new work makes clearer than ever that, when we talk about the human cost of air pollution or climate change, the major causes are one and the same – fossil fuel combustion,” he said.

Philip J Landrigan, director of the program for global public health and the common good, said: “Recent research has been exploring the use of newer exposure-response functions, and several recent papers that use these newer functions have produced higher estimates of pollution-related mortality than the Global Burden of Disease analyses.” He added: “I consider it important that different risk assessment models are now being developed, because their development will force re-examination of the assumptions that underlie current models and will improve them.”

Ed Avol, chief of the environmental health division at the University of Southern California (USC), said: “The authors have applied improved methodologies to better quantify exposures and better document health outcomes in order to reach the unsettling (but not surprising) conclusion that fossil-fuels-combustion-related air pollution is more damaging to global human health than previously estimated. The remote satellite imagery exposure specialists and health epidemiologists on the research team are highly competent investigators and among the most talented scholars in this dynamic field.”

“Fossil fuels have a really large impact upon health, the climate and the environment and we need a more immediate response,” said Marais. “Some governments have carbon-neutral goals but maybe we need to move them forward given the huge damage to public health. We need much more urgency.”

 

Off the Top of My Head

The Left/Right Political Spectrum Is Irrelevant at This Point

by John Lawrence

The Extreme Right position on the pandemic is just to let it rip. This would mean ongoing disaster for the whole world into the indefinite future. The Extreme Left would advocate government spending as much money as necessary to defeat the pandemic and get the economy back to normal. The middle of the road would advocate doing half as much as necessary to sort of but not really get the pandemic under control. Result: the coronavirus would be mutating and popping back up for years just as SARS COVID-9 is a mutation of the original SARS virus and is related to the MERS virus. Whether the mutations occur in animals or in humans, it doesn't matter. Viruses mutate and doing a half ass job in getting rid of this pandemic which is the political "middle" insures that there will be more pandemics in the future. Not allocating increased funding for the study and research of viruses insures that there will be more threats to human lives and economies.

The Extreme Right position on global warming is to do nothing about it. That includes encouraging consumption of fossil fuels and not caring how many greenhouse gasses are emitted into the atmosphere. This virtually guarantees that the earth will become uninhabitable in 50 years or less. The Extreme Left position would be to do as much government spending as necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero in about 10 years. This would prevent global temperatures from rising more than the amount that would destroy the habitability of the earth. The middle position would be to spend a piddling amount to combat global warming. The result would be that the earth would become uninhabitable in a slightly longer time frame.

Republicans want to limit Federal government expenditures to solve problems while maximizing the private sector in the economy. Problem is that dealing with the pandemic and climate change are problems private enterprise is not capable of solving or even leading the way. Is there a role for private enterprise? Certainly, but government must play the leading role or these major problems as well as a number of others will not be solved. Private enterprise won't engage in any activity for which there are no profits to be made. Some problems like the pandemic and global warming are not likely to yield much in the way of profits. Ergo, private enterprise will not be interested in dealing with them.

The COVID relief package that Biden has put forward is totally dependent on Democrats controlling both Houses of Congress. That in turn was totally dependent on the Georgia runoff elections for two Senators which produced two Democrats. Otherwise, there would be no COVID relief package or follow on projects to deal with global warming because not enough Republicans will be voting for any of Biden's projected spending to solve these problems. So the Extreme Left position of these issues which are totally necessary if they are to be dealt with successfully would not have been possible. Even successfully dealing with these two existential problems was hanging by a thread because the election of two Democratic Senators from the state of Georgia was heretofore unheard of. But now there is a chance.

What really needs to happen with regard to government spending is that the public, and that includes Senators and Representatives, need to be educated on how the economy really works. Deficit spending is not really a problem. Read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton. Republicans rely on the ignorance of the public while suggesting that adequately dealing with global warming or the pandemic will raise their taxes. It does not have to increase taxes which is the conventional understanding about it. The Federal government does not need to pay back Federal deficits because the US dollar is a sovereign currency. The Federal Reserve can just "print" the money - although it doesn't actually print it - it creates it by a few keystrokes on a computer. A household or private firm must pay back its loans. Even US states must pay back loans usually by raising taxes. Th Federal government does not have to raise taxes nor does it have to pay back loans. Treasury bonds can just end up on the Fed's balance sheet where in fact most of them do end up. So a government, any government, which has a sovereign currency can create as much money as necessary to solve any problem. The only caveat is that money creation under certain conditions can induce inflation.

Too much money sloshing around in any sector can produce inflation in that sector. What the US economy has created recently is asset inflation but not inflation in the real economy. Tax breaks for the rich has resulted in the bidding up of assets. Take the stock market, for example. Major corporations have used their tax breaks not to build production facilities but to buy back their own stock. This raises the stock price: ergo, asset inflation. The same holds for the real estate market. People, with more money than they are willing to put to productive use, use it to bid up the value of real estate. Ergo, inflation. This makes housing less affordable. The real economy has under utilized capacity in terms of all the unemployed and underemployed labor. Government spending which soaks up this capacity and puts it to productive use in converting to a reusable energy economy and upgrading to green infrastructure should not produce inflation. Neither will more government money spent on research on viruses produce inflation. What else produces asset inflation is money spent on the military-industrial complex. Think $600 toilet seats.

The US public needs to be enlightened on how the economy really works at the macro level. That being understood would take all the wind out of the sails of Republican objections to government spending. It does not have to raise your taxes because the US government can never run out of money. An understanding of Modern Monetary Theory leads to that understanding.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Joe Manchin is Crucial to Biden's Climate Plan

by John Lawrence, January27, 2021

Joe Manchin is a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, probably the most conservative Democrat in the Senate. So why would Joe, who has already signaled his opposition to getting rid of the filibuster, and represents a coal mining state, go along with Biden's climate plan? The answer is that Biden's plan for converting to renewable energy will create a helluva lot of jobs in West Virginia transitioning all those coal related jobs to renewable energy jobs. Make no mistake. Joe Manchin will become a team player after these assurances of massive job creation in West Virginia. Similarly, Biden will target other fossil fuel generating states and communities with massive renewable energy projects so that workers in the fossil fuel industry will be placated and mollified. They will become his biggest fans as millions of good paying, union jobs are created for them. The oil industry's attempts to push back will be futile. They can save money by not lobbying because it won't get them anywhere. Joe Biden holds all the cards.

The genius of going all out for climate change is that Biden is making it an issue of job creation. Not that climate change in and of itself is not the main issue of paramount importance. It's just that reframing it as a jobs issue will take the air out of the oil industry profiteers who are making millions off of the status quo. They like things just the way they are despite the global warming catastrophe that awaits us if we don't act post haste. Joe Biden: "When I think of climate change, I think of jobs." Making John Kerry a Climate Change Envoy to the rest of the world is important because climate change cannot be forestalled within the borders of the US alone. There must be a coordinated, cooperative effort, and, in particular, China, Russia and India must be brought into the deal. What, you mean we can't afford to have any more enemies? We must make friends out of enemies using diplomacy rather than the bullying tactics of the Trump administration if we and the rest of the planet are to survive. Yes and it will nullify the ratinale of the bloated military-industrial complex. Instead of defunding the police, we should defund or reduce the funding of it to help pay for the Green New Deal.

So how are we going to pay for it? That seems to be the outstanding question. Thankfully, we have a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve as Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellin. She knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak, at the Fed. She knows that taxes do not have to be raised to pay or it, at least taxes on the poor and middle class. Taxes on the rich need to be raised, but more to reduce inequality than to pay for the response to climate change. Modern Monetary Theory has demonstrated that the US can never run out of money because it is a sovereign currency issuer. The Fed, as Janet Yellin well knows, can just create the money with a few keystrokes on a computer. This power, however, cannot be used irresponsibly. Inflation must be dealt with, and there are a number of arrows in the Fed's quiver to do this as was done during the build-up to WW II. As Stephanie Kelton has pointed out in her book The Deficit Myth, deficits don't matter. They are simply an accounting entry on the Fed's balance sheet. An unlimited amount of money was available when the banking crisis that caused the Great Recession in 2008 occurred. The Fed doesn't need tax receipts in order to create money which can then be transferred to the Treasury's account at the Fed. However, such transfers do have to be authorized by congress whereas the bank bail-outs did not require such authorization since the Fed is the loaner of last resort to the banks. The Fed can provide liquidity to the banking system whenever it thinks that that is prudent.

In the How to Pay for the Green New Deal the authors write: "Further, in what follows we do not assume that we need to raise taxes simply because government spending rises. The position we take is that taxes should be raised to fight inflation that would result from excess demands on resources. We would not raise taxes merely to balance spending with tax revenue. If more spending does not generate inflationary pressure, we do not need to raise taxes. In any event, we argue below that tax hikes are not necessarily the best way to counteract inflationary pressures should they arise." So tax increases are not necessary to fund a Green New Deal except possibly if the increased government spending would cause increased inflation, but there are other tools available to deal with inflation. Tax increases on the rich, however, are necessary in order that inequality doesn't get even worse than it is now. A recent report showed: "At $4.1 trillion, the total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires is two-thirds higher than the $2.4 trillion in total wealth held by the bottom half of the population, 165 million Americans." Creating new jobs to fight global warming ill help to mitigate both the climate crisis and the inequality crisis, but taxes on the rich will both decrease the need for money creation by the Fed and help to fund a Green New Deal.

Off the Top of My Head

World War II Required Sacrifices to Combat the Nazis. Why Are So Few Willing to Sacrifice to Combat the Pending Climate Disaster?

by John Lawrence, January 26, 2021

It will take the equivalent of the World War II effort to combat climate change, but millions of Americans won't even wear a mask to protect their fellow citizens. So is the effort to combat climate change DOA? Some people think we must approach the Green New Deal as the real MEOW—the Moral Equivalent of War. Money should be no problem as J. D. Alt asserts in Paying Ourselves to Save the Planet. This should appeal to all those who will be making good money from a full employment economy. The problem is, as it was in the WW II effort, that resources must be diverted from the consumer economy. During WW II, Americans were asked to make sacrifices in many ways. Rationing was  one of those ways. Supplies such as gasoline, butter, sugar and canned milk were rationed because they needed to be diverted to the war effort. If workers in good paying jobs are using their paychecks to consume more, the price of consumer goods will be bid up, and there will be massive inflation so the Freedom to Consume may have to be limited. After all, there is no Freedom to Consume in the Constitution.

Because war time workers were restricted in their consumption patterns, they were forced to save. That would probably be a good idea for our debt ridden society, but will it work if massive numbers of people think that that would interfere with their freedom to consume? After WW II was over, the pent up demand which was caused by forced saving was unleashed to yield the greatest consumer society in history. All kinds of consumer appliances including television were now available to patriotic citizens who helped win WW II. Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray say in their paper, "How to Pay for the Green New Deal":

"War spending plus the New Deal reforms led to an unprecedented increase in the size of the government and its deficit (government spending reached a peak of half of GDP, and the deficit reached 26 percent of GDP in 1943 ). Can we compare that to the alternative which might have been global domination by fascism, including elimination of the United States and western democracy? It was only WWII that freed the government’s budget on the necessary scale. This was justified on the basis that there was no alternative—either global subjugation to Nazis or “whatever it takes” (to borrow a phrase) spending. We chose survival. We learned that “taxes for revenue are obsolete,” as Beardsley Ruml put it. And we came out of WW II stronger and richer than ever before. Some of this was thanks to the New Deal institutions as well as the infrastructure created in the run-up to the war; some of it was due to industrial might created by the war machine; and some of it was due to the good wages and benefits on which economic growth could be sustained after the war. It is preposterous to think that we should have just surrendered in order to forego the financial cost of the war."

So is the survival of the planet as a habitable place for human beings to live as important as living on a habitable planet under the Nazis? I should think so, but since climate change is not a clear and present and obvious danger, many people can not even be convinced that the effort to combat global warming is even necessary or, if it is necessary, they could care less because they personally will have vacated the planet by the time existence here gets really hellish. The authors cited above say: "The task ahead of us is bigger. The stakes are higher. The future of humanity lies in the balance. Half measures will not do. It might take all our available resources—and then some—to win
this battle. The experts say we have most of the technology we need. We have unused resources to put to use. We can shift others from destructive uses to be engaged in constructive endeavors. We can mobilize the population for greater effort with the promise of greater equality and a shared and sustainable prosperity. We can make a good effort. We might win."

Modern Monetary Theory has made it clear that the money is available and that taxes need not be raised as long as inflation is controlled. The successful efforts of the New Deal and WW II point the way. Deficit spending is not a problem as it wasn't then. The aftermath of   WW II saw the greatest increase in consumer spending and prosperity in American history. The same can be true after a Green New Deal is implemented and infrastructure around the world has been rebuilt in such a way that we have no further greenhouse gas emissions. That is a metric that can be known, measured and realized. It will take a world wide effort and cooperation, not competition or rivalry, to win the battle against global warming. As the pandemic has demonstrated, we are all in this together.