Climate Crisis

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Oddly enough, I’ve read obituaries with fascination from the time I was quite young. And yet, in all these years, I’ve never really reflected on that fact. I don’t know whether it was out of some indirect fascination with death and the end of it all or curiosity about the wholeness […]

China

Death Knell for Big Carbon? Globally, All New Electricity Demand was Met by Renewables in first 1/2 of ’22, with Fossil Fuels Flat

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In the first half of 2022, there was no increase in the world’s use of fossil fuels, and all new electricity demand was met by renewables. The world is nearing a tipping point, estimated by the International Energy Agency to come in 2025, after which all new electricity demand will […]

Brazil

Lula’s Triumph in Brazil is a Victory for the Amazon and for the Planet

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was elected on Sunday to his second (non-consecutive) term as president, in a victory for planet earth as well as for Brazil. He first served 2003-2010. Since 2019, Brazil’s president has been the far right demagogue Jair Bolsonaro, who just lost to the leftist da […]

Climate Crisis

Surging numbers: Driving an Electric Vehicle doesn’t need to cause Range Anxiety

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Hailey Forbis | – ( Cronkite News) – SANTA MONICA, Calif. – With more electric vehicles humming down highways, states are under increasing pressure to install more public charging stations to make sure the juice keeps flowing. The challenge is particularly acute in California, which adopted a rule in August to gradually phase out […]

Arctic

3-Alarm Fire on Planet Earth: Current Climate Policies will Heat it by extra 5.4° F. (3C) by 2100, for 1st time in Millions of Years

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – William J. Ripple et al. writing in BioScience warn that we are deep into a climate emergency, which they call “code red on planet earth.” They point to the increased frequency and severity of weather-related disasters, producing “untold human suffering.” Human-driven global heating, especially in the Arctic, which is warming […]

Climate Crisis

Renewable energy Exports key Pillar for Ukraine’s reconstruction – Chancellor Scholz

Benjamin Wehrmann

By Benjamin Wehrmann | – ( Clean Energy Wire ) – Energy exports to western Europe are one of the pillars a future Ukrainian economy could rest on, Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at a conference in Berlin on the war-torn country’s financial assistance needs to rebuild its economy. Renewable […]

Batteries

IEA: Peak Fossil Fuels will come in 2025, as Renewables are Turbo-Charged by Russia-Ukraine War and Energy Crisis

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Fatih Birol, among the world’s foremost energy economists, has a new report at the International Energy Agency, which he directs. In it, he argues that recent developments such as the Ukraine War energy crisis are good news for low-carbon energy such as wind and solar and bad news for fossil […]

Climate Crisis

Ukraine is Perfect for Wind Power, which would Help it and Europe Escape Russian Fossil Gas Blackmail

Dave Bradley

Buffalo, NY (Special to Informed Comment) – Until recently, the reasons for Europeans to switch the sourcing of electricity from coal, methane (“natural”) gas and nuclear reactors were the usual – climate sanity, sea level rise, ocean acidification (via CO2), and fossil fuel resource depletion. In addition, nuclear energy provokes eternal worries about the safety […]

Climate Crisis

The Fossil Free Research Movement is taking Universities by Storm

Waging Nonviolence

By Nick Engelfried | – ( Waging Nonviolence ) – When over 40 Cambridge students and academics occupied the elite U.K. university’s BP Institute earlier this year, they were escalating one of the newest, fastest-growing campaigns focused on dissociating higher education institutions from fossil fuels. For just over an hour, activists from the grassroots initiative […]