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©Ashley Cooper
April 13, 2022 Climate Change / CO2 Emissions / Energy / Environment / Failed Policies / International / News & Updates / Renewable Energy / Science & Society / Special Interests / Time for Action is Now
There’s still a way to reach global goal on climate change

If nations do all that they’ve promised to fight climate change, the world can still meet one of two internationally agreed upon goals for limiting warming. But the planet is blowing past the other threshold that scientists say will protect Earth more, a new study finds.

The world is potentially on track to keep global warming at, or a shade below, 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial times, a goal that once seemed out of reach, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

That will only happen if countries not only fulfill their specific pledged national targets for curbing carbon emissions by 2030, but also come through on more distant promises of reaching net zero carbon emissions by mid-century, the study says.

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March 28, 2022 Climate Change / Correcting False Information / Energy / Environment / News & Updates / Renewable Energy
Misinformation is derailing renewable energy projects across the United States

Last year, a Department of Energy study found that setback regulations now represent the single-greatest barrier to securing locations for wind projects in the U.S. Setbacks limit how close wind projects can be to buildings, and Mills says they often make sense to reduce things such as noise and “shadow flicker,” the moving shadows and strobing sunlight that turbines can cast onto buildings. But she says misinformation can fuel setbacks that are more stringent than needed and sometimes act as outright bans on renewable energy.

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March 28, 2022 Climate Change / CO2 Emissions / Economy / Energy / Environment / Failed Policies / International / News & Updates / Special Interests
“Perverse:” Australian fossil fuel subsidies will top $22,000 a minute this year

Research director at the think tank, Rod Campbell, described the subsidies of fossil fuel use and production as “perverse”, at a time when a growing number of Australian communities are being devastated by climate-change fuelled disasters like flooding and bushfires.

“This is bad economics and even worse climate policy. We are witnessing Australia’s flood-stricken communities trying to pick up the pieces while fossil fuel interests are cashing in the tune of over $22,000 a minute,” Campbell said.

“Worse still, these subsidies are growing and show no sign of slowing down. It is the Federal Government driving increases in fossil fuel subsidies, with $6.7 billion worth of new measures committed since the 2019 election.”

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March 26, 2022 Climate Change / Economy / Energy / Energy Efficiency / Environment / International / News & Updates / Renewable Energy / Science & Society / Sustainability
Energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins: ‘It’s the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest way to address the crisis’

Nicknamed the “Einstein of energy efficiency”, Lovins, an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, has been one of the world’s leading advocates and innovators of energy conservation for 50 years. He wrote his first paper on climate change while at Oxford in 1968, and in 1976 he offered Jimmy Carter’s government a blueprint for how to triple energy efficiency and get off oil and coal within 40 years. In the years since there is barely a major industry or government that he and his Rocky Mountain Institute have not advised.

But for much of that time efficiency was seen as a bit of an ugly sister, rather dull compared with a massive transition to renewables and other new technologies. Now, he hopes, its time may have come. Lovins is arguing for the mass insulation of buildings alongside a vast acceleration of renewables. “We should crank [them] up with wartime urgency. There should be far more emphasis on efficiency,” he says.

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March 23, 2022 Circular Economy / Climate Change / Correcting False Information / Energy / Environment / Failed Policies / Future Costs / Integrated Waste Management Systems / Landfill / Legislation / Methane / News & Updates / Policies / Recycling / Resource Management / Waste / Waste-to-Energy
County wants input for plan to develop Cedar Hills Regional Landfill

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Advocates of sustainable energy and waste management have been critical of the King County Solid Waste Division’s apparent push to expand the landfill. In September 2021, the Institute for Energy and Resource Management issued a public statement calling the King County Solid Waste Division’s environmental impact statement a “boondoogle,” and accusing the county of “going through the motions but having the conclusion decided well before hand.”

President of the Institute for Energy and Resource Management, Philipp Schmidt-Pathmann, has been increasingly vocal in his criticism of the King County Solid Waste Division and what he believes has been a lack of investment in recycling infrastructure and systems improvements. He cited stagnate rates of recycling in the region over the years.

Schmidt-Pathmann also has expressed his disbelief in the county’s studies, which claim the possibility of high rates of methane recapture from the landfill. Schmidt-Pathmann believes that the county has overinflated the rates of methane that can be captured as a way of making a landfill look like a more viable and sustainable waste management method than he believes it truly is.

He expressed his skepticism regarding the county’s reported rates of methane capture in a letter to the director of the King County Solid Waste Division in November of 2021.
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