Friday Linkage 5/29/2020

Just when you thought things could not go from bad to worse in 2020 the Minneapolis police came to the rescue to reignite the storm over police killings of men of color.  Oh, and the prototype for “Karen” really outdid herself with that show in Central Park.

How is it that it is acceptable for men to cosplay as insurgents, publicly threaten duly elected officials, and verbally threaten police officers all while armed with weapons similar to what is carried by uniformed members of the military with nary a summons while protesters—also exercising their Constitutionally protected right to freely assemble—are met with fully equipped riot police?  Oh wait, one group is mostly comprised of middle-aged white men and the other is comprised of a heterogeneous slice of non-Trump America.  Got it.

Stay safe out there.

On to the links…

US Lets Corporations Delay Paying Environmental Fines Amid Pandemic—In the final eight months of the most corrupt presidential administration in American history—yes, I am projecting how history with judge Donald Trump and the rest of his enablers—there will be a lot more actions like these.

What The Post-Pandemic World Needs Is A Solar Energy Revolution—How about we just subsidize every rooftop solar project in the United States?  Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people put to work installing clean, green solar electricity that will pay dividends for the next twenty five years.  That’s right, nothing like this will ever happen with the McConnell-Trump axis of corruption in Washington D.C.

Coronavirus Cost Colorado’s Solar Industry Thousands of Jobs, but There’s One Bright Spot—Bring in some stimulus subsidies and watch the jobs follow.  All that extra rooftop solar would just be a bonus.

The Climate Case for the Four-Day Work Week—Post-pandemic I hope that we reexamine the behaviors that we took for granted pre-pandemic.  Is this the death of commuting culture in the United States that has driven so much post-World War II development?

It’s Time to Have a Conversation About Smarter Meat Eating—It took coronavirus for us to finally consider the impact of our insatiable desire for meat.  It is killing the planet.  It is killing the workers who process the meat.  It is damaging our health.  Is there anything or anyone it is not harming.

The UK’s CO2 Emissions Dropped To A Hundred-Year Low During Lockdown—This image just blows my mind:

Renewables Crushing Coal in the USA— Won 100 Days Already In 2020—The white space represents a day or days when the production of electricity via renewables was greater than the production of electricity via coal:

Renewable Energy May be Switched Off as Demand Plummets—Think about phrases like “record low consumption.”  How do we carry forward some of these behavioral changes post-pandemic?

Nearly 85% Of Power Capacity Added In India In Q1 2020 Was From Solar & Wind—The problem in India is that there is still a lot of coal being burned alongside a lot of other industrial pollution.

US Wind Power Plants Show Little Decline With Age—Looks like even older wind turbines are still cranking out a lot of the electricity that they were rated for when new.  I guess this kills another old say about the deterioration of generating capacity over time.  How is that shale oil well doing in Year 2?

Will Floating Turbines Usher in a New Wave of Offshore Wind?—Imagine placing a wind farm offshore of the eastern seaboard of the United States with each turbine generating the equivalent of thousands of homes’ electricity demand.  This is major change.

Rooftop Solar & Grid-Scale Storage Move Forward In Hawai’i—Hawaii is our great laboratory for renewable energy.  Due to high prices, an isolated grid, and social pressure there is a chance that Hawaii will go 100% renewable in the near future.  What they learn on the islands are lessons that can be brought over to the mainland.

Xcel Exploring Renewable Natural Gas Options—If this is an economically viable solution, why could it not be scaled across the United States?

World’s Largest All-Electric Aircraft Set for First Flight—It’s a relatively small first step, but anything that can reduce air travel’s emissions is a step in the right direction.  Or we could just stop flying.

The Recycling Dilemma: Good Plastic, Bad Plastic?—The only good plastic is one that does not end up in the waste stream, recycling or otherwise.

Toxic Coast: Cleaning Up a Century of Industrial Waste in New Jersey—New Jersey has been the butt of toxic waste jokes for fifty years and, apparently, with good reason.

Grenfell Fears Prevent Timber Building Boom—Is it not ironic that a disastrous fire caused in part by petrochemical-based building cladding is causing delays in the construction of wood buildings?  Never mind study after study showing mass timber construction to have a fire-retardant effect inherent in its design.  Facts never got in the way of a good industry lobby.

Threat to Billions of Ash Trees by Deadly Beetle Could be Thwarted as Scientists Identify Protective Genes—This reminds me of people looking for genes to aid in the fight against chestnut blight in the United States.

A Pizzeria Owner Made Money Buying his Own $24 Pizzas from DoorDash for $16—You have to love “new money” business models.

Friday Linkage 5/22/2020

It’s “furlough Friday” in my household.  Thanks to general economic malaise we get a five day weekend over the Memorial Day holiday.  Too bad it looks like it is going to rain from Saturday through the next week.  May showers bring…oh, that’s not right.

Stay safe out there.

On to the links…

Coronavirus To Cut U.S. Emissions 11% In 2020, But It’s No Climate Victory—If we return to “business as usual” it will be defeat.  If we can make this an inflection point it will be a victory.

How Will Americans Commute After Lockdowns End?—I hope that one of the things we take away from this crisis is just how silly our commuting culture has become in the modern age.  Maybe we will move to a post-modern commuting culture that actually values the endless hours we used to spend in a steel coffin belching climate change causing emissions.  Just a thought.

‘A New Normal’: How Coronavirus will Transform Transport in Britain’s Cities—It seems like this is one of the questions that everyone is asking as we look toward the end of the first phase of the crisis.

Why We Shouldn’t All Move to Montana after the Pandemic—We should not all move to Montana, but some redistribution of economic development away from the coastal cities would be a good thing.

Big Oil Taking $1.9 Billion in CARES Act Tax Breaks—Imagine what almost two billion dollars could do in a different circumstance.  By my back of the envelope calculations it could reforest ~2,000,000 acres of land in the United States.  Yes, two million acres.

Why U.S. Oil And Natural Gas Demand Will Rebound From Coronavirus—The rebound for demand is going to be one of the more interesting things to watch as this calamity plays out.  If demand comes back to 80% of the prior level can the oil and gas industry survive in its current format?

Renewables Surpass Coal in Both the U.S. and U.K. in Historic Firsts—The nails are being driven into coal’s coffin and one of the few things keeping it from being buried are Trump’s little orange fingers prying back the cover.  2021 is the year to declare victory.

The Nature Conservancy To Unlock Solar Potential On Retired Appalachian Coal Mine Land—There is a path forward after coal.

Unacceptable: Reports Indicate EPA will Refuse to Limit Brain-Damaging Chemical in Water—You have to love an administration that allows known brain damaging chemicals to be released into your water.

Liberal-Leaning States Target EPA In New Lawsuit—Prior to the Trump administration the government tended to win something like 90% of these lawsuits.  True to trend, Trump’s people tend to lose 90% of these cases.  At what point do people realize that this guy is really just a loser who has failed upwards his entire life.

A Plague of Delicious Purple Urchins is Taking Over the California Coast and It’s Our Duty to Eat Them—There should be a better answer to plagues of invasive species, but we are stuck with “eat them” as an answer.  Solution to invasive lionfish?  Eat them.  You get the idea.

Giant Lizards Are Spreading in Georgia—Burmese pythons, killer bees, giant snails that eat stucco, and now giant lizards.  Are these the end times?

Friday Linkage 5/15/2020

Mid-May and I am wondering if there is a light at the end of tunnel for this entire COVID-19 situation.

If I listen to Donald Trump or Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds it sounds like we have already beaten the virus.  Yet, everyone seems pretty afraid to just go back to normal.  And rightfully so because this is still a bad situation.

I hope that in a few months we come out into the sunlight, blinking a little bit, and wonder what the heck we just went through while we sort through the self-inflicted wreckage of our own collective hubris.

Stay safe out there.

On to the links…

America’s Meat Shortage is More Serious than your Missing Hamburgers—Our food system is designed for maximum efficiency in producing profit for multi-national corporations.  It is not designed to produce the best quality food nor is it designed to protect the safety of its employees or its consumers.  When you depend on a system that prizes efficient production of profit above all else you get “shit in the meat” so to speak.

Trump Dismantles Environmental Protections under Cover of Coronavirus—The coronavirus profiteers have lined up at Trump’s hotels to get in good with the most corrupt president in the history of the United States.  These same profiteers realize that this might be the twilight of their influence as broader macro changes are threatening their primacy.

If We Don’t Take Climate Seriously After COVID-19, We’ll Deserve the Consequences—Let’s get some adults in the room and figure out solutions.

India’s Carbon Emissions Fall for First Time in Four Decades—I guess it is good news.  Too bad it took a global pandemic and horrible recession.

Wind & Solar = 11% Of Electricity Generation In January & February In USA—There was a time when renewables were thought to be limited to less than 5% of the total market.  Now we see greater than 10% market share for non-hydro renewables.  I wonder what the numbers will look like in March and April as our collective power down due to coronavirus ripples through electricity markets.

U.S. Drillers Cut Oil & Gas Rigs to Historic Low—Shale oil was on the ropes before COVID-19 and now it appears like the industry is basically pulling up stakes to wait for better times.

Environmentalists Worry Colorado will See a Surge of Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells as Industry Tanks—These companies will find a way to weasel out of any obligations by declaring bankruptcy or just having legislatures change laws.  Have no fear, you will be paying to clean up their mess for decades.

Minnesota’s Great River Energy Closing Coal Plant, Switching to Two-Thirds Wind Power—Another one bites the dust.

These Dirty Power Plants Cost Billions and Only Operate in Summer. Can They be Replaced?—So-called peaker plants should be the next wave of cancelled fossil fuel electrical plants targeted for closure.  These are expensive and inefficient power producers.  Demand shifting, energy storage, and greater efficiency will drive them out of business.

Location Selected for Operations Base which will Serve ‘World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm’—These offshore wind farms in the UK are crazy big.  Millions of homes powered by offshore wind.  It feels like the future is here already.

Future Energy: Zero-Carbon Heating—In the drive to cut our reliance on fossil fuels the need to electrify our home heating is paramount to success.  Thankfully, technologies exist today that will allow us to get most of the benefits without a breakthrough.

Gas Stoves can Generate Unsafe Levels of Indoor Air Pollution—Who thought it was a good idea to have an unsealed natural gas powered flame just burning in a kitchen?  We no longer accept open flames in our furnaces or water heaters, so why is this accepted as a feature of homes?

Plastic Recycling is Broken. Why Does Big Plastic Want Cities to Get $1 Billion to Fix It?—You cannot fix plastic recycling because there is no such thing as plastic recycling.  All that collection in blue and green bins is just another waste stream that makes us feel virtuous.

Florida Beachgoers Left Behind 13,000 Pounds of Trash Last Week on This Beach—Thanks for wrecking everything Florida.

Why You Should Start Squirting a Little Bit of Dish Soap Down the Drain—I one of those zealots who cleans their sink daily after dinner is put away because I cannot stand a dirty sink.  Just clean up after yourselves.

These Insects Are Not ‘Murder Hornets’ So Please Stop Killing Them—2020 has brought us a lot of bad shit, but murder hornets?  Now it just feels like the world is fucking with us for fun.

Friday Linkage 5/8/2020

Where do we go from here?

If you are a Trumplican, it is time to reopen everything.  Consequences be damned!  The economy is worth more than any single life.

Isn’t it ironic that the political party that supposedly defends the sanctity of the life of innocents—at least until these lives are out of the womb and require any sort of assistance—is the same party telling people that there is an acceptable level of death in order to make sure the stock market rebounds.  If you thought the money changers were a bad sort these people are historically awful.

The election is just six months away and I cannot fathom how people could vote for Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell or Joni Ernst or any other member of the Republican death cult.  However, no matter what these people do there is a core of the American population that will not abandon them regardless of how bad things get.

Stay safe out there.

On to the links…

‘There’s a sense that celebrities are irrelevant’: Has Coronavirus Shattered Our Fame Obsession?—We can hope that people stop caring about Kardashians or, gasp, Trumps when this is all over.  Our obsession with celebrity is one of the things that got us into this mess.  When you elect a failed reality television star to lead your country expect the result to be like a failed reality television show.

Local: A Glimmer of Hope for a Post-Pandemic World—I think there is a blueprint here in hyper local craft beer.  These are brewers who sell almost exclusively through their taprooms to their immediate communities eschewing the rate race of commercial accounts and package beer.  Now apply that to a restaurant or a salon.  Imagine the city of the future is really just a series of mashed up little villages.

Need More Outdoor Public Space? Maybe Cities Already Have It.—Golf courses.  Never has so much land been allocated to such a small sliver of the population.  God help you if you consider closing a golf course as visor clad retirees will fill a meeting and yell about access.  As if they were toddling over on foot to play a round.

The Oil Execs on Trump’s “Opening the Country” Council Are Major GOP Donors—He really is the best president that money can buy because he does not care about anything else.  Except for Kentucky Fried Chicken.  The man loves fried chicken.

How Working From Home Will Impact Oil Demand Forever—Even if we do not stay at massive levels of working from home in the future, I have to believe that something structural has changed in our work culture that will allow us to break the daily commute cycle that drives so much demand for energy.

False Solutions to Climate Change: Transportation—If the current crisis has shown us anything it is that maybe there is a way forward where we just drive and fly less.  Fewer miles driven means fewer miles of roads are needed.  And the virtuous cycle continues.

London Looking to Increase Cycling Tenfold after the Coronavirus—The humble bicycle will be our salvation.

The US Wind Industry Installed over 1,800 Megawatts in First Quarter, but the Coronavirus Remains a Risk—Every clean, green megawatt is a good thing.  If we can keep our demand lower these wind megawatts will replace dirty coal megawatts.

Looming Coal and Nuclear Plant Closures Put ‘Just Transition’ Concept to the Test—We are getting to the point in the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables where we are forced to reckon with the economic/social impact of plant closures and the ripple effects through an energy economy.  This is a good problem to have to solve.

City of Houston Surprises: 100% Renewable Electricity — $65 Million in Savings in 7 Years—Houston, the beating heart of the American fossil fuel industry, is a surprisingly progressive place.  Of course, saving millions of dollars will turn even the crustiest wildcatter into a greenie.

Microplastics Found in Greater Quantities than Ever before on Seabed—We will be known as the plastic age when generations of the future dig up the layers of garbage we have left behind.

Bioplastics Developer Raises $133 Million in New Funding in Quest to Replace Single-Use Plastics—I have learned not to get my hopes up when it comes to bioplastic.  Most bioplastic innovations are just ways for the plastic industry to push more plastic into the waste stream at the expense of doing something truly beneficial.

Cutting U.S. Meat Consumption by Half would Reduce Dietary Emissions by 35% within Decade—As the public learns just how brutal the meat packing industry is in America in 2020 maybe we can stop blindly buying cellophane wrapped packages of steaks for the grill.  Each purchase perpetuates a system that debases humans, tortures animals, and is bad for the planet.

Your Perfect Green Lawn Is a Buzz Kill—As I sit here typing I can see a lawn care company applying chemicals to a neighbors lawn in a hopeless attempt to turn a crappy lawn into a green carpet.  The problem is that the underlying soil is junk, but my neighbor has no desire to put in the hard work to rejuvenate the soil.  He just wants to spray some chemicals and hope for the best.  The lawn care industry is only too happy to take his money.

Pakistan Turns Unemployed Workers into Tree Planters—Why can’t we do this in the United States?  Hire people in rural communities to plant trees in burnt over areas.  It’s jobs and climate change mitigation all in one.

Friday Linkage 5/1/2020

I cannot say if April was the longest month I have every endured or if it was the shortest month.

Most days felt like the day before it.

However, not commuting to work has its own joys.

Everyone is starting to go a little stir crazy in the house, but I do not share the governor of Iowa’s opinion that it is time to start reopening.  I fear that we are staring a flare up of cases across the state.

Stay safe out there.

On to the links…

Iceland Ends Its Minke Whale Hunt—At least there is one bit of good news out there.

The Novel Frugality—Every time there is a major downturn in economic fortunes there is a rush to discuss how Americans will become more frugal.  When the economy snaps back there is a rush to buy another flat screen television because one just cannot survive with a sixty inch model when seventy inches is so much better.

How Pepsi and Coke make Millions Bottling Tap Water, as Residents Face Shutoffs—In America if an individual commits an offense it is criminal.  However, if a company commits an offense there is suspension of enforcement because corporations have become more valuable than people.

Donald Trump Is Exploiting the Coronavirus Pandemic to Sell Campaign Swag—I am waiting for the claim that a red MAGA hat will keep you safe from the coronavirus.  I am sure that Sean Hannity and Alex Jones would be all over promoting this for a cut of the proceeds.  Granted, Donnie Two Scoops is not someone who likes to share profits with anyone.

Full Steam Ahead—My guess is that oil and gas companies are staring at the next nine months as the last gasp of a pliant administration.  Once the worst president in American history returns full-time to Mar a Lago for tacky brunches and sub-standard rounds of golf there will be less inclination in Washington D.C. to just let oil and gas companies do whatever they want.

For Oil and Its Dependents, It’s Code Blue—There has never been an event with demand destruction this severe this quickly.  Oil tankers are literally floating off the coast of the United States with no place to unload oil.  Texas—Texas!—just recommended a 20% reduction in oil production.  This is uncharted territory.

Plastics Industry Requests $1 Billion Bailout From Fed—This is just what we need.  More plastic to be dumped into landfills.  And we get to pay for it with tax dollars.

How Coronavirus Has Changed the Way We Think About Disposable Plastics—Without proof the plastic industry and its retail partners have been pushing the story that disposable plastic items are safer, in terms of coronavirus exposure, than other forms of packaging including paper and reusable.

Empire State Blows Past Offshore Wind Limit With 1,000 (More) MW—Offshore wind is where the action is going to be for the next decade or so as established renewables like onshore wind, residential solar, and utility scale solar complete build outs.

Britain Breaks Record for Coal-Free Power Generation—The transformation in the graphic below is just amazing:

Sweden Shuts Down Its Last Coal Plant Two Years Early—The hits just keep on coming for coal.

LA’s Mountains Make Another Case For Electric Cars—Clear skies and long forgotten views remind us that the problem is with how much driving and flying we do.  If there is anything good to come out of the current crisis it is that people will realize just how bad daily driving is for the planet.  The proof is in the views.

Paris Has a Plan to Keep Cars Out After Lockdown—We will take back our cityscapes from automobiles and return the common space to actual people.  It will not happen overnight and it will not happen everywhere, but the future is one where people matter more than automobiles.

Permian Basin Methane Emissions Found to Be More Than 2x Previous Estimates—As if you needed another reason to figure out how to eliminate fossil fuels from your daily life.  It is not just the burning of these fuels that is a problem, but the entire chain of production from well to exhaust.

Are Gas Furnaces and Boilers the New Diesel Cars?—In the hunt to electrify everything—because as this article states electricity is the only fuel that can be produced cleanly—our homes will be the great challenge.  If you think automobile ownership cycles are long, just get a load of how long people keep a furnace.

The Pandemic Will Change American Retail Forever—American retail needed to change.  Our development pattern for the last fifty years or so has been ever more retail.  Even as we built multiple times more retail per capita than any other country there was a thirst to build ever more.  Now is the time to reconfigure and repurpose.

Scientists Agree: Coffee Naps Are Better Than Coffee or Naps Alone—I am down with coffee naps.  This might be my new isolation routine.

Friday Linkage 4/24/2020

Earth Day came and went this week.  Did you notice?  Or were you, like me, trying to stay sane during the never-ending shelter in place, safer at home, whatever we are dealing with right now?

I kind of feel like every day the past month has been Earth Day in some respects.  Oil and other fossil fuels are in the tank because no one is driving or flying.  Retail sales are down, save for groceries, since no one needs anything other than food and drink to get them through the day.  It’s like all the behaviors people said needed to be changed to help the planet came about in a month or so due to coronavirus.

Now, these changes are not sustainable and most trends are likely to revert back to pre-coronavirus norms.  However, there is a blueprint and more so an example of what can be accomplished with just behavioral changes.

Stay safe out there.

On to the links…

New Data Show Air Pollution Drop Around 50 Percent In Some Cities During Coronavirus Lockdown—I find it a little funny that people are surprised that if we stop driving and flying the attendant air pollution drops.  Duh.

Florida: Endangered Sea Turtles Thriving Thanks to Covid-19 Restrictions—Well, if we just leave the animals alone they can thrive.

Renewable Energy Way Up During COVID19 Shutdowns—As people use less electricity overall the percentage that is generated by renewables is going up.  Why?  If you have to pick a source to shut down, you are going to pick the one that costs money to fuel.  Solar and wind get their fuel for free.

Bikes Sales Surge to Coronavirus-Hit Americans Wary of Public Transit—Bicycles are truly the cockroaches of transportation.  No matter what the disaster, the humble bicycle is the first method of transportation to come back following people on foot.

It’s Possible To Cut Cropland Use in Half and Produce the Same Amount of Food, Says New Study—Maybe if we did not plant millions of acres for animal feed and ethanol we could just let nature do its thing.

‘Coronavirus Profiteers’ Condemned as Polluters Gain Bailout Billions—I believe that we are in the “twilight” of the power of these old line industries that value profit above everything else, including the long term sustainability of a livable planet.  Coronavirus has laid bare their wanton disregard for anything other than money.

How A $110 Trillion Green Recovery Can Save The World: New Report—Instead of throwing good money after bad on fossil fuels maybe there is a better way.

We can Restock the Oceans by 2050, Netting $10 for Every $1 Spent on Conservation — Here’s How—This is some return on investment.

Keystone XL Permits Fail To Pass Muster In Federal Court—Geez, you would think with people having to pay you take oil right now that building a boondoggle pipeline to transport expensive tar sands oil from Canada would be a non-starter.  However, leave it to the oil and gas industry to keep pounding on a dead horse.

Big Banks Pull Financing, Prepare To Seize Assets From Collapsing Oil and Gas Industry—Big banks versus big oil is the battle I want to see.  It’s like Celebrity Death Match for the 21^st Century.

Trump’s EPA Weakens Justification for Life-Saving Mercury Pollution Rule—In Trump’s America mercury is good for you.  At the very least, your health is not as important as the ability of rapacious coal companies to pump out pollutants in a last gasp of money grabbing.

Austria’s Last Coal-Fired Power Station Closes as the Country Pushes Renewables—One by one countries are closing down their last coal plants as the shift to greener energy is happening.

Clear Skies Over Germany Lead To Record Amount Of Solar Energy—It is like a virtuous feedback loop.  Less pollution leads to more renewable energy which further crowds out polluting power plants leading to even less pollution.  You get the idea.

LOL the White House’s Economic Council for Restaurants Is Just a Bunch of Chains and Four Fine Dining Chefs—Remember, losses are for the little people.  If you are a big business or a famous person the government will bend over backwards to make things all right for you.

Amazon Invests $10 Million to Help Conserve Forests as Part of Climate Change Plan—How much cardboard do you think Amazon uses in a day?  Would this even cover a month’s worth of forest destruction for cardboard?

Thanks to Bookshop, There Is No Reason to Buy Books on Amazon Anymore—There were already some great independent bookstores with solid online presences, e.g. Powell’s in Portland, but this is good news.  As Amazon is positioned to lay waste to all retail maybe there is hope that something else can survive and thrive.

The Tire Industry Pushes Back Against Evidence of Plastic Pollution—It’s not just the emissions from your car’s tailpipe that are a problem.  The tires are shedding microparticles of rubber.  The brakes are releasing small clouds of particulate.  The oil pan is leaking droplets of oil all over town.  It’s high time we just stop the automobile madness.

Ten Weeds You Can Eat—I have not gotten to this point yet, but it might happen.  You never know.

Friday Linkage 4/17/2020

Can you imagine how much Trumplican heads would have exploded if Presidents Obama or Clinton had a press briefing where either of those men claimed, “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total.”

Granted, the most incompetent President in the history of the United States has already backpedaled.  This is not because he does not believe what he said earlier, but rather he does not want to take responsibility for any possible surge in COVID-19 infections that may occur as states “reopen.”

This is the Trump doctrine in full display.  Claim absolute hegemony, take credit for any positive trend over the course of the last decade, deflect blame for any negative trend onto your predecessor, and figure out a way to milk a buck out of the office.  Anything else is just noise.

Stay safe out there.

On to the links…

Chart Shows Rise in Wind, Solar; Overall Drop in Energy Use—The so-called Sankey diagram is one of those pieces of information that gets used in just about every presentation about power consumption and generation.  The number that always gets me is the wasted energy under the title “rejected energy.” If we could just waste less it would be a massive improvement.

How Coronavirus is Changing Electricity Usage, in 3 Charts—So we are using less electricity, in total, and using it more evenly across the day.  This shows us that changes in our behavior can help accelerate the renewable energy future.

Carbon Emissions from Fossil Fuels could Fall by 2.5bn Tonnes in 2020—Maybe this will the moment when we realize that we can reconfigure modern civilization to accommodate a dramatically lower amount of fossil fuel use.  Myabe…

COVID-19 Pollution Cut Is Not A World Without Cars: It’s Without Oil—The air is cleaner.  Cities are more livable.  This is a world without both traffic and oil.

Gasoline Demand Collapses To A 50-Year Low—This is turning into a real life version of The World Without Us.

This Is the “Most Economically Important” Fern on Earth—There are solutions to climate change in the natural world.  We just need to have an open mind and look around.

Another Record Year For Low-Cost U.S. Natural Gas – And Why That’s Good News—Natural gas kills coal.  When natural gas prices spike in the future—and anyone who has ever watched natural gas for any period of time know this will happen—cheap renewables will kill natural gas.  Survival of the fittest, baby.

Why 30 Million Solar Rooftops Should Be In The Next Relief Bill—Just imagine all of those rooftops generating clean, green electricity from the funky yellow sun.

Inside Clean Energy: Rooftop Solar Wins Big in Kansas Court Ruling—When solar can get a win in Kansas you know things are going your way.

The Western U.S. Has Some Of America’s Strongest Clean Energy Goals. It Needs More Grid Flexibility To Achieve Them.—It’s not that we cannot get to aggressive renewable energy targets.  It’s that our current infrastructure is not designed to handle more renewable energy.

Coal Companies Want YOU To Pay Their Debts—Late stage capitalism is all about privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.  Corporations will never get “wiped out” the same way that an individual can because Congress would never let that happen.

One Weird Trick To Achieving American Energy Dominance—The more we electrify the less we are beholden to oil and gas.  The transportation sector is now the most important frontier for electrification over the next decade.

To Cut Carbon Emissions, a Movement Grows to ‘Electrify Everything’—Or just electrify everything.

A Shockingly Long List of Corrupt Officials and Political Allies Pardoned by Trump—Grifters are going to grift.  Trump is corrupt as the day is long and he does not care what anyone thinks as long as he can make a buck.  I will give you short odds that he pardons Joe Exotic just to see his face on television a little more.

Fred Singer, a Leading Climate Change Contrarian, Dies at 95—There is a long list of scumbags who have taken industry’s money for years in order to sow doubt about settled science regarding climate change. However, few did more harm than S. Fred Singer.  The world is a better place without him spewing his particular brand of misinformation.

The Rise and Fall of China’s Cycling Empires—Investment hysteria and tech style bubbles came for the bicycle.

This is How America Drinks Now—We are shut in and drinking without social pressures.  Sometimes box wine is the hero we need.