With just over 12 hours left before the end of the quarter fund raising deadline, the Bernie Sanders campaign announced at 11:30 AM this morning that it reached the amazing milestone of one million individual contributions; “We’ve just reached our goal of one million online contributions. There’s still 12 hours to send a powerful message about the strength of our movement before tonight’s midnight ET deadline.”
Bernie Sanders is not only the first candidate running for the 2016 presidency to reach one million contributions, but his campaign has reach this milestone earlier than any presidential candidate in history – the goal was last achieved by President Obama in October 2011.
Last quarter Sanders campaign raised $15 million in only two months with average contribution of $34 and 99% of contributions amounting to less than $250. Sanders makes use of the popular site Reddit, a collection of forums, to raise money. His subreddit is the largest of any presidential candidate and boasts more than 110,000 members. To show their enthusiasm today, as the deadline approached, members of his subreddit posted screenshots of their donations as encouragement for others to do the same.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign is truly a grassroots movement founded on the powerful message of economic popularism – the idea that establishment economics is not working to help the poor and the middle class. As Bernie Sanders gets the message out, more and more people from Maine to California are ‘feeling the bern’ as evidenced by this truly amazing milestone that the Sanders campaign reached today
The world appears to have bought itself a little time in the fight to avoid climate catastrophe, according to a new analysis.
Virtually every major country has made pledges to limit or reduce carbon pollution in advance of the Paris climate talks this December. These pledges generally end in 2025 or 2030, and so they only matter if the world keeps ratcheting down its greenhouse gas emissions in future agreements until we get near zero by century’s end. Otherwise we will blow past the 2°C line of defense against very dangerous-to-catastrophic global warming, and hit 3.6°C warming by 2100.
That’s the key finding of a new analysis from Climate Interactive and the MIT Sloan School of Business, tallying up the global pledges to limit carbon pollution leading up to the big Paris climate talks later this year.
Those pledges, called intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), include the European Union cutting total emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, the U.S. cutting net greenhouse gas emissions emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 (including land use change and forestry), and China’s peaking in CO2 by 2030.
The good news, as you can see, is that the INDCs have bought us another five to 10 years of staying close to the 2°C path. I asked Andrew Jones, one of the systems-thinking savants behind Climate Interactive, if that was correct and he said, “Yep, about seven years.” By “staying close” I mean staying close enough to the 2°C path that it remains plausibly achievable – though (obviously) politically still very, very challenging.
Of course, like all emissions models, the Climate Interactive model makes assumptions about what is a plausibly achievable 2°C path given how long we have delayed acting. And that involves deciding how fast the world could plausibly cut its greenhouse gas emissions each year – sustained for many decades. They use 3.5 to 4 percent a year. That is mostly a political-economic judgment, since there is no real way of knowing how fast humanity could act once we become truly desperate to avoid multiple simultaneous catastrophes that are irreversible on a timescale of many centuries.
The point is that a successful outcome of Paris will not “solve the climate problem” and indeed won’t give us a 2°C world, as anyone who is paying attention understands. (Sadly, a lot of folks in the media aren’t paying attention.)
The bad news, of course, is that since about 2007 leading climate experts have been explaining we only have five to 10 years to act. I debunked the myth that they’ve “always” been saying that in my May post, “The Really Awful Truth About Climate Change.”
So what Paris can accomplish is to give us another five to 10 years of … having five to 10 years to act!!! Woo-hoo.
In reality, international climate talks can never buy us more than five to 10 years at a time – until and unless countries are willing to make long-term multi-decade CO2 reduction commitments as the United States tried to do with the 2009 climate bill that was killed in the Senate. Stabilizing at 2°C requires taking global emissions down to near zero steadily by century’s end. Most Paris CO2 commitments are for 2025 or 2030.
Still, this would be an important accomplishment – and one that mirrors the incremental approach the world took to save the ozone layer. As NASA’s Gavin Schmidt told the New York Times, “By the time people get 10, 15 years of actually trying to do something, that’s going to lead to greater expertise, better technology, more experience.” Schmidt, who heads the same climate team James Hansen once did, added, “People will then say, ‘Oh, you know what? We can commit to do more.'”
In a normal year, when California’s record drought isn’t sapping reservoir levels around the state, clearing some debris from an outlet valve of a 5,800-acre reservoir like Mountain Meadows wouldn’t spell catastrophe.
But this year, for thousands of fish left without water to swim in, it did.
The reservoir is located just south of Lassen National Forest in the Northern California town of Westwood. It’s been a popular fishing hole for recreational anglers and an important source of energy for nearby residents.
Owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the reservoir sits at the top of the energy company’s hydroelectric dam system, connected by the Feather River. On Sept. 13, Mountain Meadows Reservoir, also known as Walker Lake, was already sitting at dangerously low levels when a maintenance crew reportedly cleared out a clogged drainage valve.
By the next morning, the water was gone. All that remained was a field of dead fish and angry residents asking what happened.
“We’ve been in a really bad drought, so that’s really the main contributor to this whole thing,” said Nils Lunder, director of the Mountain Meadows Conservancy group based in Westwood. “But this was also a poorly managed situation.”
Instead of keeping outflows to a minimum early in the year and letting the lake fill up, Lunder said PG&E kept the lake level low. And with little to no snowpack, inflows over the summer were basically nonexistent.
PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno told CBS News that the company had stopped using the dam for power and had been running outflows at the minimum allowed levels since March. The draining was an unfortunate consequence of the times.
“It’s the situation we worked hard to avoid, but the reality is we’re in a very serious drought, and there’s also concerns for the fish downstream,” Moreno said.
With scientists linking California’s severe drought with human-caused climate change, dried-out reservoirs like Mountain Meadows could become the norm. Water concerns are leading to adaptations in industry and home life, with farmers, residents, and regulators taking steps to reduce use and preserve a resource that is projected to become scarcer as temperatures increase.
For Lunder, the empty reservoir is a chance to start over. For the first time, representatives from PG&E and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will meet with community members to answer questions about what happened.
“Before this, we didn’t have the representation we needed as a community,” Lunder said. “Hopefully, with talking about our concerns, we can avoid this situation in the future.”
We’re all looking for stories of hope – that the world can be changed, that we are not limited by our culture, our backgrounds, our histories – and few stories are as inspirational as that of Lucy Naipanoi, a grandmother of Maasai, one of the last hunter gatherer tribes left on the planet. With the …
Liliana and Luisa Terán, two indigenous women from northern Chile who travelled to India for training in installing solar panels, have not only changed their own future but that of Caspana, their remote village nestled in a stunning valley in the Atacama desert.
“It was hard for people to accept what we learned in India,” Liliana Terán told IPS. “At first they rejected it, because we’re women. But they gradually got excited about, and now they respect us.”
Her cousin, Luisa, said that before they travelled to Asia, there were more than 200 people interested in solar energy in the village. But when they found out that it was Liliana and Luisa who would install and maintain the solar panels and batteries, the list of people plunged to 30.
“In this village there is a council of elders that makes the decisions. It’s a group which I will never belong to,” said Luisa, with a sigh that reflected that her decision to never join them guarantees her freedom.
Luisa, 43, practices sports and is a single mother of an adopted daughter. She has a small farm and is a craftswoman, making replicas of rock paintings. After graduating from secondary school in Calama, the capital of the municipality, 85 km from her village, she took several courses, including a few in pedagogy.
Liliana, 45, is a married mother of four and a grandmother of four. She works on her family farm and cleans the village shelter. She also completed secondary school and has taken courses on tourism because she believes it is an activity complementary to agriculture that will help stanch the exodus of people from the village.
Caspana – meaning “children of the hollow” in the Kunza tongue, which disappeared in the late 19th century – is located 3,300 metres above sea level in the El Alto Loa valley. It officially has 400 inhabitants, although only 150 of them are here all week, while the others return on the weekends, Luisa explained.
They belong to the Atacameño people, also known as Atacama, Kunza or Apatama, who today live in northern Chile and northwest Argentina.
“Every year, around 10 families leave Caspana, mainly so their children can study or so that young people can get jobs,” she said.
Up to 2013, the village only had one electric generator that gave each household two and a half hours of power in the evening. When the generator broke down, a frequent occurrence, the village went dark.
Today the generator is only a back-up system for the 127 houses that have an autonomous supply of three hours a day of electricity, thanks to the solar panels installed by the two cousins.
The indigenous village of Caspana lies 3,300 metres above sea level in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The 400 inhabitants depend on small-scale farming for a living, as a stone marker at the entrance to the village proudly declares. Now, thanks to the efforts of two local women, they have electricity in their homes, generated by solar panels, which have now become part of the landscape. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS
Each home has a 12 volt solar panel, a 12 volt battery, a four amp LED lamp, and an eight amp control box.
The equipment was donated in March 2013 by the Italian company Enel Green Power. It was also responsible, along with the National Women’s Service (SERNAM) and the Energy Ministry’s regional office, for the training received by the two women at the Barefoot College in India.
On its website, the Barefoot College describes itself as “a non-governmental organisation that has been providing basic services and solutions to problems in rural communities for more than 40 years, with the objective of making them self-sufficient and sustainable.”
So far, 700 women from 49 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America – as well as thousands of women from India – have taken the course to become “Barefoot solar engineers”.
They are responsible for the installation, repair and maintenance of solar panels in their villages for a minimum of five years. Another task they assume is to open a rural electronics workshop, where they keep the spare parts they need and make repairs, and which operates as a mini power plant with a potential of 320 watts per hour.
In March 2012 the two cousins travelled to the village of Tilonia in the northwest Indian state of Rajasthan, where the Barefoot College is located.
They did not go alone. Travelling with them were Elena Achú and Elvira Urrelo, who belong to the Quechua indigenous community, and Nicolasa Yufla, an Aymara Indian. They all live in other villages of the Atacama desert, in the northern Chilean region of Antofagasta.
“We saw an ad that said they were looking for women between the ages of 35 and 40 to receive training in India. I was really interested, but when they told me it was for six months, I hesitated. That was a long time to be away from my family!” Luisa said.
Encouraged by her sister, who took care of her daughter, she decided to undertake the journey, but without telling anyone what she was going to do.
The conditions they found in Tilonia were not what they had been led to expect, they said. They slept on thin mattresses on hard wooden beds, the bedrooms were full of bugs, they couldn’t heat water to wash themselves, and the food was completely different from what they were used to.
“I knew what I was getting into, but it took me three months anyway to adapt, mainly to the food and the intense heat,” she said.
She remembered, laughing, that she had stomach problems much of the time. “It was too much fried food,” she said. “I lost a lot of weight because for the entire six months I basically only ate rice.”
Looking at Liliana, she burst into laughter, saying “She also only ate rice, but she put on weight!”
Liliana said that when she got back to Chile her family welcomed her with an ‘asado’ (barbecue), ’empanadas’ (meat and vegetable patties or pies) and ‘sopaipillas’ (fried pockets of dough).
The primary school in Caspana, 1,400 km north of Santiago. Two indigenous cousins who were trained as solar engineers got the municipal authorities to provide solar panels for lighting in public buildings and on the village’s few streets, while they installed panels in 127 of the village’s homes. Credit: Mariana Jarroud/IPS
“But I only wanted to sit down and eat ‘cazuela’ (traditional stew made with meat, potatoes and pumpkin) and steak,” she said.
On their return, they both began to implement what they had learned. Charging a small sum of 45 dollars, they installed the solar panel kit in homes in the village, which are made of stone with mud roofs.
The community now pays them some 75 dollars each a month for maintenance, every two months, of the 127 panels that they have installed in the village.
“We take this seriously,” said Luisa. “For example, we asked Enel not to just give us the most basic materials, but to provide us with everything necessary for proper installation.”
“Some of the batteries were bad, more than 10 of them, and we asked them to change them. But they said no, that that was the extent of their involvement in this,” she said. The company made them sign a document stating that their working agreement was completed.
“So now there are over 40 homes waiting for solar power,” she added. “We wanted to increase the capacity of the batteries, so the panels could be used to power a refrigerator, for example. But the most urgent thing now is to install panels in the 40 homes that still need them.”
But, she said, there are people in this village who cannot afford to buy a solar kit, which means they will have to be donations.
Despite the challenges, they say they are happy, that they now know they play an important role in the village. And they say that despite the difficulties, and the extreme poverty they saw in India, they would do it again.
“I’m really satisfied and content, people appreciate us, they appreciate what we do,” said Liliana.
“Many of the elders had to see the first panel installed before they were convinced that this worked, that it can help us and that it was worth it. And today you can see the results: there’s a waiting list,” she added.
Luisa believes that she and her cousin have helped changed the way people see women in Caspana, because the “patriarchs” of the council of elders themselves have admitted that few men would have dared to travel so far to learn something to help the community. “We helped somewhat to boost respect for women,” she said.
And after seeing their work, the local government of Calama, the municipality of which Caspana forms a part, responded to their request for support in installing solar panels to provide public lighting, and now the basic public services, such as the health post, have solar energy.
“When I’m painting, sometimes a neighbour comes to sit with me. And after a while, they ask me about our trip. And I relive it, I tell them all about it. I know this experience will stay with me for the rest of my life,” said Luisa.
This reporting series was conceived in collaboration withEcosocialist Horizons.Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes
The Associated Press’ style guide is a kind of Bible for many in the media, and there are plenty of journalists will tell you they’ve become so indoctrinated in its rules that they write everything from emails to texts in AP style. So, when the AP makes changes to its recommendations about a highly covered topic like climate change, plenty of people will be talking about it.
Yesterday, the AP made a change to how it recommends its reporters and editors describe the people we’ve been calling ” climate change deniers” or ” climate change skeptics.” In fact, the AP doesn’t recommend either of those terms, but instead favors either “climate change doubters” or “those who reject mainstream climate science.”
It turns out that the phrase “climate change skeptics” was a basically offensive to scientists who consider themselves skeptics. The AP explains:
“Scientists who consider themselves real skeptics – who debunk mysticism, ESP and other pseudoscience, such as those who are part of the Center for Skeptical Inquiry – complain that non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science have usurped the phrase skeptic.”
But, it turns out that those same skeptical scientists, as well as other groups that work on the issue of climate change, aren’t that enthusiastic about the AP’s recommendation to use “climate change doubter” instead. 350.org’s spokesperson Karthik Ganapathy told the Huffington Post that “doubt seems to imply a lack of clarity – and there is a lack of clarity on some things, like what the ideal solution to climate change is, but there’s zero lack of clarity on whether or not it’s happening.”
The Center for Skeptical Inquiry, which lobbied against “climate change skeptic,” likewise doesn’t like the term “doubter” but endorses “those who reject mainstream climate science.” The later phrase is clear, but sadly not concise.
Meanwhile, the AP also doesn’t recommend “climate change denier” because it has “the pejorative ring of Holocaust denier.” This recommended change has been met with more resistance.
One can make the case that “denier” has the right corrective sting to deal with people confronted with an overwhelming body of evidence that they are wrong. So often, we associate “denying” with opposing the truth, as someone who is in denial is someone who fails to see reality.
So, how are other publications handling the AP announcement? Grist says they’ll stick with the term “deniers.” Erik Wemple at the Washington Post finds the “argument that the term ‘denier’ can’t be paired with another term without tinging it with Holocaust implications” to be “specious” and seems like a “a dicey precedent.”
Of course, the debate also offers a delicious opportunity to propose other alternatives. Personally, I could go for “unhelpful climate womp womps” or “lying hypocrites who make money from the fossil fuel industry.” Feel free to add yours in the comments!
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In his first public address during his visit to the United States, Pope Francis spent the majority of his time harping on one issue: Climate change.
Speaking before a massive crowd outside the White House Wednesday morning, Pope Francis began his talk by referencing his immigrant heritage, noting, “As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families.” He then offered an aside praising the merits of religious liberty, asking the U.S. government to pay heed to the beliefs of American Catholics and “respect their deepest concerns and their right to religious liberty.”
But just three paragraphs into his prepared remarks, Francis pivoted sharply to the another issue near to his heart – the environment.
it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation.”
“Mr. President, I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution,” Francis said. “Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation.”
Francis twice quoted his own encyclical on the environment, a papal document released earlier this year that made headlines because of its bold call for global action on climate change.
“When it comes to the care of our ‘common home’, we are living at a critical moment of history,” he said. “We still have time to make the changes needed to bring about ‘a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change.’ Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them. Our common home has been part of this group of the excluded which cries out to heaven and which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities and our societies.”
“To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it,” Francis added, quoting the famous “I Have A Dream” speech. “We know by faith that ‘the Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home’. As Christians inspired by this certainty, we wish to commit ourselves to the conscious and responsible care of our common home.”
President Barack Obama, who spoke before Francis, praised the pontiff’s environmentalism.
“Holy Father, you remind us that we have a sacred obligation to protect our planet – God’s magnificent gift to us,” Obama said. “We support your call to all world leaders to support the communities most vulnerable to a changing climate and to come together to preserve our precious world for future generations.”
Francis’ rhetoric isn’t inspiring everyone, however. At least one Catholic Republican – Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) – is boycotting the pope’s speech to Congress on Thursday because he disagree’s with the Holy Father’s stance on climate change.
Chancellor George Osborne has announced that the UK will guarantee a £2bn deal under which China will invest in the Hinkley Point nuclear power station.
Mr Osborne, who is in China, said the deal would pave the way for a final investment decision on the delayed project by French energy company EDF.
He said it would also enable greater collaboration between Britain and China on the construction of nuclear plants.
Reports suggest one such reactor could be built at Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex.
She said China was expected to lead the construction of a Beijing-designed nuclear station at the Essex site.
EDF welcomed news of the government guarantee, but did not say if it put the project back on track.
Earlier this month, EDF admitted the Hinkley project in Somerset, which was intended to allow the plant to generate power by 2023, would be delayed.
In February, the firm announced that it had pushed back its decision on whether to invest in the plant.
It cannot afford the estimated £24.5bn cost of the plant on its own, so has been looking for financial partners to invest, particularly in China. This has proved difficult, which is why the government has had to step in to guarantee part of the cost.
The new power station would be Britain’s first new nuclear plant for 20 years and is expected to provide power for about 60 years.
Speaking in Beijing at a joint news conference with China’s Vice-Premier Ma Kai, Mr Osborne said: “We want the UK to be China’s best partner in the West. [This guarantee] paves the way for Chinese investment in UK nuclear [to help provide] secure, reliable, low carbon electricity for decades to come.”
He also announced a new £50m joint research centre for nuclear energy.
The difficult economics of nuclear powerBy Richard Anderson, BBC business reporter
Nuclear power plants are mind-bogglingly expensive to build.
In China, relatively cheap labour means they typically cost between £6bn-£10bn, with the state-controlled economy providing the necessary regulatory and financial support.
But in the free markets of the West, they cost many times more. No private company can afford this amount of money, particularly given it will be almost 10 years before the plant is operational and can begin generating a cash return.
This is why governments have to get involved, providing subsidies of one sort or another.
Hence George Osborne’s announcement. The government has already guaranteed EDF a price – many would argue a very high price – for the electricity it generates at Hinkley, and now it is enticing the Chinese with investment guarantees.
Mr Osborne said Chinese companies would receive a substantial stake in the project, with the UK government acting as guarantor for the investment.
The guarantee will be provided by the government’s Infrastructure UK Scheme, which provides finance for projects that have had difficulties raising money from private investors.
Ms Rudd told the BBC that nuclear power played an important part in Britain’s energy security.
“We want low-carbon electricity and if we’re going to hit our ambitious [emissions reduction] targets then we have to have nuclear,” she added.
Analysis
By Robert Peston, BBC economics editor
What is most striking about George Osborne’s Chinese tour is he is doubling his political and economic bet on the world’s number two economy at a time when that economy is looking its most fragile for 30 years.
Today’s manifestation of the China bet is confirmation of a long-trailed loan guarantee – initially worth £2bn but likely to rise substantially – to bind in Chinese and French nuclear giants to their promised massive £24.5bn investment in the Hinkley Point C new nuclear plant.
This is certainly long-term strategic planning for more power security by Osborne and the government (well they would say). With oil fluctuating at between $40 and $50 a barrel, Hinkley’s prospective electricity looks scarily expensive.
The government has said Hinkley will provide up to 7% of Britain’s electricity needs from 2023.
EDF, which will continue to control the venture, has agreed to provide electricity from Hinkley at a guaranteed minimum price of £89.50 per MW/hr for 35 years.
Ms Rudd rejected criticisms that this was too expensive, saying nuclear power was “reasonably priced” compared with other low carbon sources of power.
‘Rip-off’
Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, said the chancellor’s announcement was “further progress towards a final investment decision” on the plant.
He said: “The chancellor’s approval of the infrastructure guarantee is a clear sign of the government’s commitment to Hinkley Point C. The government’s determination to bring about a renewal of infrastructure and to attract inward investment to the UK are demonstrated by this good news.
But Greenpeace’s chief scientist Dr Doug Parr described the £2bn guarantee from George Osborne as “signing up the country for the ultimate rip-off deal”.
He added: “Instead of locking two generations of UK consumers into paying billions to foreign state-owned firms, Osborne should invest in the flexible, smart, and truly clean energy system that can power a 21st Century Britain without leaving a pile of radioactive waste as legacy.”
Other critics have raised concerns about the design of the new reactor, which will use new so-called EPR technology. Similar reactors being built in France and Finland are both late and way over budget.
The union Unite welcomed the government’s commitment to non-carbon nuclear power, but it said it should not allow China to build a plant in the UK, describing its nuclear technology as “unproven”.
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Pope Francis acknowledged, first of all, that climate change is real. He also said that technology alone would not solve the problem and human behaviour must change to ensure that the world’s poor don’t suffer due to the consumption of the rich. The Islamic Climate Declaration recognises the scientific consensus on climate change is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere so that global warming does not exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The declaration is clear that a 1.5 degree Celsius warming would be preferable. It calls on people and leaders of all nations to aim to phase out greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and commit themselves to 100% renewable energy at the earliest possible.
In a recent interview to American science magazine Popular Science, climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe explained why religion is backing the fight against climate change. “Science can tell us why climate change is happening, and what might happen next,” she said. “But what we should do about it isn’t a science question. It’s a question of values.”
The Holy See and Islamic leaders have not been the first moral authorities to caution against climate change. Ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2014, the World Council of Churches and Religions for Peace, both prominent interfaith organisations, held their own summit to push for progress at the negotiations in Lima that December and after. In previous years Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh leaders have declared their war on climate change.
Hindu Declaration on Climate Change
Issued at the Parliament of World Religions in Australia in 2009, the Hindu Declaration on Climate Change drew on the Hindu tradition that links man to nature through physical, psychological and spiritual bonds. “The nations of the world have yet to agree upon a plan to ameliorate man’s contribution to this complex change,” the declaration stated. “This is largely due to powerful forces in some nations which oppose any such attempt, challenging the very concept that unnatural climate change is occurring. Hindus everywhere should work toward an international consensus.” Issued just as the Copenhagen round of the Conference of Parties was beginning, the declaration had little impact on the talks that ended with a weak agreement and little binding action.
Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change
In 2009, the Dalai Lama was the first person to sign the Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change that endorsed the catastrophic tipping points of global warming. NASA climatologists had predicted that the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 350 parts per million, a line that has already been breached. In May this year, atmospheric carbon crossed 400 ppm for the first time.
“We are challenged not only to reduce carbon emissions, but also to remove large quantities of carbon gas already present in the atmosphere,” the Buddhist declaration said. It also emphasised the need to change the priorities of the world economies. “The key to happiness is contentment rather than an ever-increasing abundance of goods. The compulsion to consume more and more is an expression of craving, the very thing the Buddha pinpointed as the root cause of suffering.”
The Dalai Lama has gone even further to say that the focus in Tibet, which is stuck in a losing battle for independence, should be climate change and not politics.
Sikh Statement on Climate Change
“Our Mother Earth, Mata Dharat, has gone through undeniable changes at the hands of humans. It is abundantly clear that our action has caused great damage to the atmosphere and is projected to cause even more damage if left unhandled,” said a statement released by a group called EcoSikh in September 2014. Calling on Sikhs to be the frontrunners of change and inviting the tenet of selfless service, the group asked Sikhs to reduce their carbon footprints, recycle, invest in renewable technologies and also put pressure on governments to take action to mitigate carbon emissions.
Orthodox Christians, Protestants, Baha’I and Jewish leaders have, in their turn, accepted the science of climate change and called on the faithful to save the earth. What the Pope and Islamic leaders have added is the influence of over 1.2 billion Roman Catholics and 1.6 million Muslims worldwide, which is almost half the world’s population. For now, climate change seems to be the one science that world religions don’t seem to have a problem with, whether it will make a difference or not at the “make-or-break” Paris negotiations in December.
When Pope Francis chose to champion the battle against climate change via papal encyclical in June this year, the act was lauded as the one that could galvanise the world community far more than 30 years of pleading by climate scientists. Now Muslim leaders across the world have echoed the moral call against climate change with their Islamic Climate Declaration issued last week calling for a fossil-fuel phase-out.
The U.S. Navy is investing in what will be the largest solar farm in the world in order to provide power for 14 of its bases.
The climate of Arizona, where the two earlier phases of the Mesquite solar farm are already up and running, provides 300 days of sunshine a year. And the Navy’s deal to extend the farm is the largest purchase of renewable energy ever made by a U.S. federal government agency.
The solar farm project is one of a growing number being installed across what is known as the American Sun Belt-the southern states of America, which have expanding populations, plenty of sunshine but also large areas of arid and unproductive land.
The price of solar panels has now fallen so far worldwide that, in sunny climes, they can compete on cost with any other form of energy generation. This new generation of huge solar farms produces as much power as a large coal-fired plant.
China and India are also building similarly massive installations, taking advantage of their own sun belts and desert regions. It is doubtful that Mesquite 3, huge as it is, will manage to remain the world’s largest for long.
Barren Land
In the same week that the U.S. Navy disclosed its plans, the central Indian state of Madya Pradesh announced it was to construct a 750 MW plant (one megawatt is roughly enough to supply 1,000 typical British homes) on barren, government-owned land in the country’s Rewa district.
It is claimed that it would be the world’s largest solar plant and the state’s energy minister, Rajendra Shukla, says the plan is to have the plant up and running by March 2017.
A number of other giant projects are also in the pipeline in India, as part of government plans for a dramatic expansion of the industry, although they have yet to be constructed.
Mesquite 3, which will be sited 60 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona, will provide the Navy with 210 MW of direct power. This means the installation of more than 650,000 extra solar panels, which will move to track the sun as it crosses the sky, to get the maximum value from the intense desert sunshine. The Navy says it will save $90 million in power costs over the 25-year lifetime of the contract.
Some solar power plants in India have caused controversy because they need teams of people to wash off the layer of dust and particles from air pollution to keep the panels efficient. This uses a lot of scarce water.
However, in the cleaner desert air of Arizona, this is not a problem. The Navy boasts that Mesquite 3 will require no water, so saving “this precious resource for other needs.”
The building of the plant will require 300 construction workers but it will create only 12 long-term jobs. The plant also avoids controversy because it is sited on “previously disturbed land” and so is not damaging a pristine environment. It is also near existing power plants and transmission lines, so the plant will not need additional infrastructure.
Reduced Emissions
The Navy estimates that the station will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 190,000 tons annually—the equivalent of taking 33,000 cars off the road.
Ray Mabus, the Secretary of State for the Navy, who opened the project, has been pushing hard for renewables to be used for military power generation.
The new contract adds to a 17 MW installation at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and another of 42 MW at Kings Bay, Georgia. The Navy says that, in total, its renewable energy procurement will be 1.2 GW by the end of 2015, which is well ahead of target.
It will use the power for Navy and Marine Corps shore installations in California and surrounding states.
Opening the project at one of the installations, the Naval Air Station North Island, in California, Mabus said the project was “a triumph of problem solving” and would help increase the Department of the Navy’s energy security by diversifying the supply.
The Valhalla Movement takes very seriously the sensitivity involved in “charity” and make a large effort to detect an organization’s altruism before participating. We have personally been introduced to ACT, a team that partners with indigenous folks to protect the Amazon Rainforest. Their members are effective change-makers in line with our mission and we vouch for them.
In August 2015, a groundbreaking event took place in the village of Ulupuene in the Brazilian Amazon: internet connectivity arrived.
Through a collaborative partnership between the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), Associação Indígena Ulupuene (AIU), and the nonprofit Synbio Consultoria em Meio Ambiente, the Waurá indigenous people of Ulupuene now have access to the web and can reach like-minded communities and organizations around the world to enlist support for the protection of the community’s rainforests and ancestral lands. The project was fully funded by ACT.
Though installation planning commenced in 2013, the village’s remote location in the Xingu Indigenous Reserve protracted the process, with coordination of logistics with outside actors constituting the greatest source of delay.
Numerous providers were consulted, including those offering radio transmission-prohibitive because of the necessity of building a 60-meter radio tower-and government-provided service, for which a very lengthy waiting list exists. Ultimately, satellite-mediated internet was deemed most viable.
Because configuration and registration required preexisting phone and internet connections, the equipment was set up in the neighboring town of Canarana. After technical adjustments, the satellite antenna travelled 250 miles in Synbio’s truck to Ulupuene where the Waurá, in anticipation, had already built a traditional communal “office”. Several community members already owned tablets and smartphones and were eager to receive news from beyond the reserve.
Kumehin is now able to access the internet via her tablet.
Fittingly, upon inauguration, ACT co-founder Liliana Madrigal congratulated village chief Eleokar Waurá via the web, sending her best wishes to the community and emphasizing the many ways that the technology can be used for the benefit of the village and the protection of the forest. Eleokar thanked the partner institutions and expressed how the arrival of this tool had inspired his community.
The average person in the U.S. uses between 80 and 100 gallons of water per day, with the largest uses of household water occurring in the toilet and the shower. Even though showers are one of the highest wasters of water, however, they are probably one of the personal experiences people would be willing to make the least compromises with. Nebia is a company that promises to not only improve your showering experience, but also help you use 70 percent less water.
After raising more than $2.5 million on Kickstarter, 17 days before the end of the campaign, the team is ready to start manufacturing, with the first showerheads expected to ship in May, 2016.
The six-person team behind Nebia, which includes several thermal fluid experts, has spent the last five years doing research, solving equations, and building prototypes in order to arrive at a new type of nozzle that, according to them, brings the first innovation in the industry in over 50 years. Meanwhile, the company has attracted investments from Tim Cook of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Alphabet.
The result is impressive. On average, Americans take about eight minutes to shower, which results in using 20 gallons of water. With Nebia, for the same amount of time, one will use up only six gallons, or 70 percent less water. With an initial price of $299, for the average U.S. home, Nebia pays for itself in less than two years.
CEO and co-founder Philip Winter told TechCrunch that “If everyone in California were to switch over to this showerhead, we think we could reduce the state water’s use by 1.5 percent.” In the future, the company also wants to make the technology cheaper and available to developing countries where water is scarce.
“The last half century of nozzle technology has completely changed what we can do with droplet size and distribution, however this technology has only been applied to very specialized fields, like rocket engines and medical devices. We used these same tools and technology to develop Nebia. What we do is atomize streams of water into millions of tiny droplets. By doing this we can achieve 10 times the surface area of water compared to a regular shower and use a fraction of the volume,” says co-founder and CTO Gabriel Parisi-Amon.
According to the creators, Nebia is easy to install – users simply unscrew their existing shower and screw on Nebia with a wrench, plumbers tape, and an included adhesive, without the need to break tiles or call the plumber. The showerhead can slide up and down, pivot at an angle, and includes a portable wand.
The southern Indian city of Kochi is now the proud home of the world’s first solar-powered airport.
On Aug. 18, the Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL)-India’s fourth largest international airport in terms of passenger traffic-commissioned a 12 mega watt (MW) solar power project. The airport already had a 1MW solar power plant, which can produce 4,000 units of electricity daily.
With its new solar plant, the airport can now produce 60,000 units of electricity every day, which is more than enough to meet its daily requirement.
“We initiated a pilot project in February 2013 as part of our plan to shift to renewable energy by setting up a 100 kilo watt unit,” VJ Kurian, managing director of CIAL told Quartz in a telephone interview. “When we found that feasible, we set up a 1MW unit in November 2013.”
“We did not want to be identified as just another airport and be confined to it,” Kurian added.
After the airport found the 1MW project financially viable, it invited tenders to set up a 12MW project within the airport complex. “Work on the 12MW project started in February 2015 and was completed in less than six months” Kurian said.
Spread across 45 acres of land-equivalent to 25 football fields-the project was built by German engineering company Bosch for Rs62 crore ($9.5 million). The area for the solar unit was earlier designated for setting up a cargo handling facility.
Since the airport expects to produce more than what it is likely to consume, CIAL is planning to feed some of the power into the state grid.
“Over the next 25 years, this green power project will avoid carbon dioxide emissions from coal fired power plants by more than 3 lakh metric tons, which is equivalent to planting 3 million trees or not driving 750 miles,” CIAL said in a statement.
Meanwhile, close on the heels of Kochi, another Indian airport has also laid out plans to focus on solar. On Aug.18, Kolkata’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, said that it plans to set up a 15 MW solar power plant on 60 acres of land.
India is currently in the midst of ramping up its solar power generation. The Narendra Modi government has plans to increase the country’s solar power capacity from the existing 4GW (gigawatt) to 100GW (gigawatt)by 2022.
To fund such an ambitious expansion, the government expects an investment of $100 billion in the sector in the next seven years. Some of Asia’s biggest billionaires-including SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, Gautam Adani and Anil Ambani-have already promised massive investments in the sector.
Alongside, smaller establishments like Kochi’s airport are also joining the party.
By 2050, an area of forests the size of India is set to be wiped off the planet if humans continue on their current path of deforestation, according to a new report. That’s bad news for the creatures that depend on these forest ecosystems for survival, but it’s also bad news for the climate, as the loss of these forests will release more than 100 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The report, published Monday by the Center for Global Development (CGD), found that, without new policies aimed at cutting back on deforestation, 289 million hectares (about 1,115,840 square miles) of tropical forests will be cleared away. That’s a chunk, the report states, that’s equal to one-seventh of what the Earth’s total tropical forest area was in 2000. And, according to the report, the 169 gigatons of carbon dioxide that this deforestation will unleash is equal to one-sixth of the carbon budget that humans can emit if they want to keep warming below 2°C – the level that’s generally viewed as the maximum warming Earth can endure while still avoiding the most dangerous climate impacts (and even 2°C is seen by many experts as too high).
The study, unlike other recent studies on deforestation, projects that in a business-as-usual scenario, in which the world doesn’t make any effort to reduce deforestation, tropical deforestation will increase, rather than decrease. According to the study, tropical deforestation rates in such a scenario will likely climb steadily in the 2020s and 2030s and then speed up around 2040, “as areas of high forest cover in Latin America that are currently experiencing little deforestation come under greater threat.”
The study does point to one change in policy that would cut deforestation rates and help alleviate climate change: a price on carbon. According to the report, a price of $20 per ton of carbon would keep 41 gigatons of carbon dioxide from being emitted between 2016 and 2050, and a price of $50 per ton would keep 77 gigatons from being emitted.
“Our analysis corroborates the conclusions of previous studies that reducing tropical deforestation is a sizable and low-cost option for mitigating climate change,” the study’s authors write. “In contrast to previous studies, we project that the amount of emissions that can be avoided at low-cost by reducing tropical deforestation will increase rather than decrease in future decades.”
The study also noted that, if all tropical countries put in place anti-deforestation laws that were “as effective as those in the Brazilian Amazon post-2004,” then 60 gigatons of carbon dioxide would be kept out of the atmosphere. Brazil took action against deforestation in 2004 and 2008, and deforestation rates in the country have fallen from 27,000 square kilometers (about 10,424 square miles) in 2004 to 7,000 square kilometers (about 2,700 square miles) in 2010. According to the Climate Policy Initiative, this slowdown in deforestation rates helped keep about 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide in these forests and out of the atmosphere.
Forests can act as major carbon sinks, but for some forests, that role may be changing. A study from this year published in Nature documented the “long-term decline of the Amazon carbon sink,” which the study says could be occurring due to changes in climate. The study also points to increasing tree mortality rate – via deforestation – as another factor in the forests’ decreasing ability to store carbon.
Monday’s study noted that decreasing emissions from deforestation is a relatively cheap way for countries to reduce their overall emissions. If countries implemented a system in which wealthy countries paid tropical countries to keep their forests intact, those payments by wealthy countries would constitute a cheaper way to fight climate change than some alternatives.
“Conserving tropical forests is a bargain,” CGD research fellow and report co-author Jonah Busch said in a statement. “Reducing emissions from tropical deforestation costs about a fifth as much as reducing emissions in the European Union.”
Other studies have warned of the danger the world is in if countries don’t curb rates of deforestation and forest degradation. A study published this week in Science warned that, without policy changes, the world’s forests will become increasingly broken into unconnected patches – a fragmentation that will endanger the species that live in the forests.
“I fear a global simplification of the world’s most complex forests,” Simon Lewis, lead author of the study and tropical forest expert at the University of Leeds said in a statement. “Deforestation, logging and road building all create fragmented patches of forest. However, as the climate rapidly changes the plants and animals living in the rainforest will need to move to continue to live within their ecological tolerances. How will they move? This is a recipe for the mass extinction of tropical forest species this century.”
Google wants to help you harness the power of the sun. A new service called Project Sunroof aims to provide a “treasure map” of solar energy with the help of Google Maps. Sunroof gives homeowners detailed information about how much solar power their roof can generate and how much money they could save on electricity costs by adding solar panels.
Sunroof uses data from Google Maps that previously had no practical application. For instance, Sunroof uses Maps’ 3D-modeling to calculate the amount of space a building’s roof has for solar panels. The service also analyzes the positioning of the sun over the course of a year, as well as the type of cloud cover and temperature the neighborhood usually experiences. It even considers the amount of shade cast by nearby objects.
Switching to solar energy can be a win-win scenario for many households. Harnessing a free power source can help save money on the electric bill while ever-so-slightly decreasing the world’s dependance on greenhouse-gas-producing fossil fuels. But it’s possible your home doesn’t get enough sunlight, and it can be hard to know exactly how much money you’ll save. Sunroof can tell users how many hours of usable sunlight they’ll get a year, as well as how much available space they have for solar panels on their roof.
If a family decides those cost-saving benefits are good enough, Sunroof will suggest installers nearby who can load the panels. Installing solar panels isn’t cheap, costing upwards of $20,000, but the average homeowner can save about $20,000 by switching to solar energy – if their home is in the right spot.
Right now, Project Sunroof is only available for people living in Boston, San Francisco, and Fresno, but Google plans to expand the service to the entire country.
