in the form of flat fees on their monthly electric bills
Base fees are regressive and financially disincentivize progress.
If you want people to use less electricity, remove base fees and increase usage fees.
Another way of looking at it: imagine you had to pay a big fee to enter the grocery store, but once inside, everything was similarly priced. A potato would cost almost the same as a ribeye steak. You’d see lots of people walking out with steak, and as a result we’d have a major increase in agriculutural climate emissions.
Electricity is the same way. When everyone’s paying base fees to artificially lower usage rates, poor people are subsidizing the extravagant usage of the rich.
Remove regressive base fees and charge people for the damage they do.
Proper composting not only destroys seeds, it also kills pathogens like e. coli and salmonella while even breaking down things like diesel and TNT.
There’s a ton of misinformation about composting and I think the central cause is that multiple decomposition methods that produce different results are all lazily called composting by lay people.
As an example, composting uses biological heat produced by thermophilic microorganisms (mostly bacteria) to destroy pathogens etc. and which eat the material to produce compost. Worms, used in vermiculture, do not raise the temperature, have much less success destroying pathogens, and produce worm castings, which are physically distinct from compost and typically sell for around 10x the price.
I’ve even seen discussions where people think that fire, which produces ash, is compost. Like… you can see a pile of compost, and a pile of ash, and literally can’t tell the difference? Add water (and oxygen) to compost and you’ll get compost tea for plants and trees. Add water to ash and you’ll get lye used in drain cleaner products. They are not the same.
She’s rich enough to be able to easily afford ANY travel type possible, without having to even ask the cost, and she chooses the dirtiest and most expensive one.
If she cared about climate change, she would just intrinsically understand that paying someone else to be a good person doesn’t morally justify her being a bad person (aka, how carbon credits are marketed and sold).
Instead of taking a trans-oceanic flight, she could go on a container ship or sailboat. She’s a musician and I bet these experiences would be vastly more inspiring than harassing college kids through lawyers.
For domestic travel she could use a vehicle powered by restaurant waste vegetable oil (WVO) instead of fossil fuel. Or she could take an EV charged by renewable sources. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman did a 13000 mile (21000km) electric motorcycle trip in 2019 from the southern tip of Argentina to Los Angeles called The Long Way Up, their 3rd such superlong trip, and their first on electric vehicles. They loved it and called it the future, and they had support from a prototype Rivian truck, which therefore advanced the space of electric cars as well. MANY people are doing this, some rich, some poor. For our climate emissions, there’s no time left for excuses either for Taylor Swift or for ourselves.
This is almost as green and carbon-free as possible. It’s accessible to normal people, it doesn’t require exotic hardware, labor or permitting, it provides good heat and fresh air, all with little ongoing effort once installed.
Howarth found that LNG’s total emissions are between 24 and 274 percent more than coal’s, depending on how the LNG is transported.
Horrific.
We’re making the same mistake now as we did after the Iraq War. During/after that war, there was a massive push to decrease US reliance on Middle Eastern oil. That was great, but unfortunately, most of the effort centered on domestic oil production, including fracking, which is even nastier than conventional oil production. We should have been building out and transitioning to renewables instead.
Now we have the same basic problem: Europe has realized it can’t rely on Russia for its fossil fuels and is now greatly increasing consumption of LNG, which is even nastier (for climate emissions) than conventional fossil fuels, even apparently coal, which I didn’t know was possible. That’s insane!
Let’s learn from this and build as much wind, solar, and other renewables as quickly as possible.
My background is in permaculture but there’s significant overlap between that and solarpunk. My point of view is that permaculture and/or solarpunk work at the individual level. They work even better at the household level, and even better at the community level, even better nationally, and best internationally.
You don’t have to change the whole world to be successful. You’re not responsible for the entire world, only your own actions. So be a part of the solution, lead by example and persuade others to do the same. But you’re not expected to carry 8 billion humans on your shoulders, all the other animals, the trees, the weight of all of the oceans, etc. People only believe this because it gets repeated incessantly but take a step back and realize how obvious it is that you can’t be expected to be personally responsible for basically all of existence. You’re not omnipotent. Let go of weird expectations that anyway are probably promoted by fossil fuel types to overwhelm people into inaction.
Be responsible for your own actions, be part of the solution, and let go of the rest.
The report looked at “major,” “severe,” and “extreme” scenarios. The authors found that the “major” case would cost the world $3 trillion over a five-year period, which they estimated has a 2.3% chance of happening per year. Over a 30-year period, those odds equate to about a 50% probability of occurrence —...
And will you always be allowed enough water for it?
That’s an essential element to consider, and the answer is: locally appropriate plants, compost, mulch, rainwater harvesting, and greywater. All of these things will work regardless of municipal water shortfalls, political problems, etc.
Examples of locally appropriate plants: local so-called “native” perennials, and annuals that are well situated for local conditions. For example, tepary beans are great in desert areas while typical beans from most seed packets are not. And conversely, tepary beans don’t fare well outside of a desert. Plants evolved growing without us. Picking the right varieties and then giving them a boost with mulch and greywater gives awesome results.
“Twenty-five percent [of people consider] natural gas to be renewable, in this millennial and gen Z bucket,” an unidentified PERC board member said. “There’s a perception out there—not reality, but that’s perception. We can attach to that for propane.”...
Propane isn’t a fossil fuel, it’s a byproduct of fossil fuel processing/refinement, and understanding this matters. You can’t mine or harvest propane like coal or petroleum because propane is not a fossil fuel. It’s a byproduct. Once we stop using fossil fuels, propane will go away.
Propane has an extremely low GWP (global warming potential) compared to other refrigerants. Anyone who has a refrigerator, freezer, air conditioner, or heat pump, is using refrigerants. The most common refrigerants are R-22 (chlorodifluoromethane) with a GWP of 1810 (1810 times worse than CO2) and R-410a with an approximate, difficult-to-calculate GWP of 2088. There’s also R-32 (difluoromethane) with a 100-year GWP of 675. Depending on who you ask, propane has a 20-year GWP of 0.072 and a 100-year GWP of 0.02, or a GWP of 3. In any case, that’s WAY lower than what we’re already using.
Probably the most ineffective way to attack fossil fuels is by attacking propane, while the most effective way to attack fossil fuels is to build wind and solar to make fossil fuels irrelevant. My rooftop solar produces over 200% of our usage, for example. That’s a lot of coal my neighbors aren’t indirectly burning.
We should very aggressively build wind, solar, and other renewables to replace fossil fuels. Until then, in the reality that we’re living in, it would be harmful and kind of useless to attack propane.
BTW, do you want people burning more charcoal in their backyards? Because that’s what they’ll do if you snap your magic fingers and eliminate propane, and the fossil fuel industry will either put their fossil fuel byproducts into something else anyway or just release it into the atmosphere where it does its climate change damage. So you get the choice between: A) the current climate damage or B) the current climate damage and more.
But I agree it’s embarrassing that people think so-called “natural gas” is renewable. That’s almost surely in part because it has “natural” in the name, and that’s why I support just calling it by its real name, which is methane.
SunZia is a megaproject by almost any measure. Pattern executives estimate that SunZia will generate enough power for three million homes. That’s three times as much energy as what’s produced by the largest wind farm currently in operation, the 1-GW Great Prairie Wind project in Texas. There are only six power plants in the entire country with a larger listed capacity than 3.5 GW.
Wow!
I would love it if we could treat this as a competition, to see who can build the lowest carbon-cost electricity service. A region of India has a competition like this, where villages do earthworks projects for rainwater infiltration and reforestation. The result is massive positive change. The same competitive spirit could be extremely powerful if applied to energy generation.
Climate resilience: Has the time come to start demanding lighter-coloured streets in hotter climates?
At this stage, the challenge with climate change is not just preventing it from happening by cutting emissions. We also need to make our cities resilient to the climate change we've already locked in.
That's where lighter coloured paving for streets, rather than dark asphalt, can help:
"Sebastian Pfautsch doesn't hesitate when asked what he would change first to cool Australian cities in summer.
"And it's not what you might expect. It's not the seemingly endless expanse of black roofs, soaking up the sun beneath a shimmering haze.
"It's the roads. About a third of any outer suburb is thermally dense black asphalt that can reach 75 degrees Celsius, according to Professor Pfautsch, an expert on urban heat at the University of Western Sydney.
...
"Lighter-coloured roads may make intuitive sense, like wearing a white shirt on a hot day, but how effectively do they reduce surface and ambient air temperature?
"In 2020, two separate cool roads trials in Sydney and Adelaide set out to conclusively answer these questions.
"The Sydney trial, which took place at about 10 sites in the Western Sydney suburbs of Blacktown, Campbelltown and Parramatta, recorded an average surface temperature reduction of 5.6C and 2C for day and night respectively.
"For context, tree shade reduced the surface temperatures of roads by 16C."
Lots of potatoes, some bell peppers, strawberries, a leek, tomatoes, 3 apples (1 not pictured), and 1 apex predator. This food will give us apple pie, grits and curry with the tomatoes, stir fried peppers, strawberries in oatmeal, leak soup, and a bunch of meals from the potatoes....
Hey I am currently in the privileged position to think about what I do with the money I saved as an emergency fund. Do I put it in an account that gets interest so less gets lost to inflation?...
This is my main plan. Buy land and use it to run eco businesses like organics recycling (taking yard scraps etc. and turning it into compost and biochar); green energy production (solar and wind); and a permaculture microfarm and plant nursery for locally-appropriate plants and trees.
22M acres is 34375 square miles or 89031 square kilometers. The goal is to pick the best 700,000 acres (1094 sq miles / 2833 km2) for solar development spread over 11 western states.
Looking for perspectives about the above. On my meanderings around the web I’ve found cybersecurity is all the rage now, cybersecurity experts are desperately needed. Looks a bit like a protection scheme to me - first have everyone save their data in the cloud and buy a smart fridge, then flood everything with ethical hacking...
We use a simple homemade compost toilet, saving 150kg of climate change emissions per person each year, and instead of creating sewage, we create compost.
You’d think in Canada someone would have figured out a way to harness that cold from outside for part of the year.
Look into the “cool cupboard” associated with David Holmgren, who talks about it in his book Retrosuburbia. IIRC it uses simple geothermal and natural convection to keep certain foods cool.
I live in a cold place and lately I’ve been taking water jugs outside to freeze, then bring them in once I go out in the morning. With them, the fridge hardly runs any more. I’d prefer something automatic like a cool cupboard for certain things and a well insulated fridge running straight on DC solar.
This is a feedback loop, as snow reflects sunlight (heat) back into Space, so a lack of snow exacerbates climate change, thus increasing the areas getting less snow, thus warming the planet more, thus…
I used to live in an area with many lakes, and each January there was a weekend-long event out on the ice with games, ice swimming challenges, food etc. When I was growing up you could drive pickup trucks on the ice and leave wooden ice fishing shacks on the ice for weeks at a time or longer. In the last decade or so the event has been increasingly cancelled as the ice is often not even safe enough to walk on (let alone turn into a parking lot for trucks). Hell, they even had a gigantic bonfire with dozens of Christmas trees. Next day, you couldn’t even tell there had been a fire there on the ice. All of that is going away.
We have to race full speed ahead at decarbonizing our own personal lives and our shared electric grids.
I really enjoy “A Psalm for the Wild-Built” by Becky Chambers. It’s a nice, serene escape to what could be. What other books help you relax and maintain a positive outlook?
I LOVE Becky Chambers! Working my way through the Wayfarers books and will read A Psalm soon. Super excited about it.
The books that help me keep a positive outlook are generally non-fiction books that help readers to become part of the solution in some way. Quoting David Holmgren in his book Retrosuburbia, “Focusing on our own behaviour avoids being disempowered by a sense that society seems generally blind and/or mad in relation to the real issues of our time.” So in addition to the fiction of Becky Chambers I’d add:
We have lots of moral options for traveling over land, and even some options for relatively short oceanic trips, like across the Atlantic from W. Europe to/from N. America....
The documentary “I am Greta” shows one of her trips across the Atlantic Ocean in a solar-powered sailboat. It looked pretty scary tbh. She’s already hard as nails.
Who should pay for climate solutions? The debate is heating up (www.latimes.com)
Archived copies of the article: archive.today web.archive.org ghostarchive.org
Can cooked seeds sprout?
My city collects waste food for composting. There is /no seeds/ rule, likely because whoever uses the compost wants to control what they grow....
Taylor Swift threatens legal action against student tracking her private jet (www.theguardian.com)
How To Heat Your House with a Greenhouse (www.youtube.com)
This is almost as green and carbon-free as possible. It’s accessible to normal people, it doesn’t require exotic hardware, labor or permitting, it provides good heat and fresh air, all with little ongoing effort once installed.
Chart: Is LNG worse for the climate than coal? Research suggests that liquefied natural gas can have a bigger emissions footprint than coal, undermining LNG’s status as a “bridge fuel.” (www.canarymedia.com)
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/716629be-a5e7-4565-9de0-3bafc478ebe7.webp
Solarpunk Naiveté? (www.solarpunkpresents.com)
What are the odds that extreme weather will lead to a global food shock? The insurance giant Lloyd’s evaluated the risks in a recent study. (yaleclimateconnections.org)
The report looked at “major,” “severe,” and “extreme” scenarios. The authors found that the “major” case would cost the world $3 trillion over a five-year period, which they estimated has a 2.3% chance of happening per year. Over a 30-year period, those odds equate to about a 50% probability of occurrence —...
The propane industry is trying to dupe you | Documents and recordings obtained by HEATED detail a multi-million dollar plan to spin the fossil fuel as "clean" and "renewable" (heated.world)
“Twenty-five percent [of people consider] natural gas to be renewable, in this millennial and gen Z bucket,” an unidentified PERC board member said. “There’s a perception out there—not reality, but that’s perception. We can attach to that for propane.”...
Biggest US wind project is under construction in New Mexico (www.eenews.net)
Yesterday's freegan haul (slrpnk.net)
Lots of potatoes, some bell peppers, strawberries, a leek, tomatoes, 3 apples (1 not pictured), and 1 apex predator. This food will give us apple pie, grits and curry with the tomatoes, stir fried peppers, strawberries in oatmeal, leak soup, and a bunch of meals from the potatoes....
As anarchists: Do you buy shares, get money from interest, invest or save for retirement?
Hey I am currently in the privileged position to think about what I do with the money I saved as an emergency fund. Do I put it in an account that gets interest so less gets lost to inflation?...
The US government opens 22 million acres of federal lands to solar (electrek.co)
22M acres is 34375 square miles or 89031 square kilometers. The goal is to pick the best 700,000 acres (1094 sq miles / 2833 km2) for solar development spread over 11 western states.
Solarpunk ethical work within IT?
Looking for perspectives about the above. On my meanderings around the web I’ve found cybersecurity is all the rage now, cybersecurity experts are desperately needed. Looks a bit like a protection scheme to me - first have everyone save their data in the cloud and buy a smart fridge, then flood everything with ethical hacking...
There Are Better Ways to Build a Toilet (www.bloomberg.com)
Get Pocket link
We’re over-freezing our food. Turning up the temperature slightly could avoid 17 Mt of CO2 (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
“This temperature corresponds to 0 degrees Fahrenheit, so it was “probably a round, easy number to remember”...
Build It Solar: The Renewable Energy site for Do-It-Yourselfers (builditsolar.com)
I’ve done some projects listed here, including some that have no cost whatsoever. Nice resource!
World Daily Surface Air Temperature (climatereanalyzer.org)
Daily temps from 1940 to now. You can see that 2023 far exceeded anything prior, and that 2024 is far hotter than 2023.
Don’t Be Fooled, Snow Is Becoming a Thing of the Past | the long-term trend is warmer winters with less snowfall (www.bloomberg.com)
Where is the ice? Great Lakes ice cover is nearly non-existent and reaches 50-year record low | CNN (edition.cnn.com)
Electricity Maps (app.electricitymaps.com)
See near real time carbon intensity of electricity generation around the world.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built
I really enjoy “A Psalm for the Wild-Built” by Becky Chambers. It’s a nice, serene escape to what could be. What other books help you relax and maintain a positive outlook?
Biochar books
Any recommendations on books about biochar?...
Crossing the Pacific?
We have lots of moral options for traveling over land, and even some options for relatively short oceanic trips, like across the Atlantic from W. Europe to/from N. America....
U.K. charges Greta Thunberg as governments crack down on climate protests (wapo.st)