Category: Less of What We Don’t Need
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The Digital World’s Real Impact on the Environment
URLCryptocurrency mining is often characterized as an act of solving a set of complex equations, evoking images of a Red Bull-guzzling genius hunched over a calculator searching for the Bitcoin-creation formula. But actually it’s less about calculation than it is about trial and error — making guesses in hopes of landing on a random, 64-digit…
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Four scientists, a few small nations, and making unthinkable climate action possible
A remarkable mid-January legislative hearing by the Joint Climate and Energy Committees of Ireland’s Oireachtas (legislature) grabbed our attention as we listened from afar, here in the United States. Four eminent climate scientists made blunt, strong, urgent policy recommendations of a sort policymakers rarely, if ever, hear from scientists. Testimony and Q&A went on for…
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Cuba Shows How to Take Action on Climate Change
Cuba, a small island besieged by the United States, is taking concrete measures to reorient its economy in the fight against climate change. It’s an example that the whole world should take seriously. Cuba may be responsible for only 0.08% of global CO2 emissions, but this Caribbean island is disproportionately hard-hit by the effects of…
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Degrowth Is About Global Justice
Who’s driving the ecological crisis? It is overwhelmingly the rich countries of the Global North: the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. These countries are collectively responsible for 92 per cent of excess emissions…. Rich countries consume on average 28 tonnes of material stuff per person per year – which is…
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Bright Green Lies Torpedoes Greens
Bright Green Lies (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2021) grumbles and growls like a rambunctious thunderstorm on an early spring day opening up darkened clouds of acid rain across the world of environmentalism, including celebrated personalities. According to Bright Green Lies authors Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert: “We are writing this book because we want…
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Path to Extinction or Path to a Livable Future?
As climate change leads humanity’s march to Armageddon, data surfacing during late 2021 suggests that the march could be much briefer than previously thought. “Nature is starting to emit greenhouse gases in competition with cars, planes, trains, and factories,” asserts Robert Hunziker. The Amazon has switched from soaking up CO2 to emitting it. Likewise, the…
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US Plastics Industry Will Have More Emissions Than Coal by 2030
With dozens of new plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities in the works, the U.S. plastics industry will release more greenhouse gas emissions than coal-fired power plants by 2030, say the authors of a new report. Emissions from the plastics sector equaled that of 116 coal-fired power plants last year, according to the report out Thursday…
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Climate goals will fail as long as cryptocurrency exists
The minimum energy usage attributable to Bitcoin activity, as of this week, is 43.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year, and its estimated actual energy demand is 176.83 TWh per year, according to Digiconomist. For comparison, that estimate is the equivalent of a bit more than 16 weeks of average energy usage in the entire Philippines (based…
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From Popovers to Popunders: The Kind of Decarbonization That Can Succeed
So much carbon dioxide has now accumulated in the atmosphere that it’s no longer possible to prevent a dangerous rise in global temperatures through purely technological means. In other words, it’s too late to prevent catastrophic ecological damage and human suffering simply through building more renewable electric capacity and improving energy efficiency. Humanity can keep…
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Don’t Expect Real Climate Solutions from COP26. It Functions for Corporations
The politicians’ third and more complex deception is in the technology-centered “decarbonization” measures they embrace in the name of “green growth.” These rely on tweaking, rather than transforming, the big technological systems through which most fossil fuels are consumed — tThe politicians’ third and more complex deception is in the technology-centered “decarbonization” ransport networks, electricity…
