Thomas L. Friedman | A Scary Energy Winter Is Coming. Don’t Blame the Greens. – The New York Times

By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist

“Every so often the tectonic geopolitical plates that hold up the world economy suddenly shift in ways that can rattle and destabilize everything on the surface. That’s happening right now in the energy sphere.

Several forces are coming together that could make Vladimir Putin the king of Europe, enable Iran to thumb its nose at America and build an atomic bomb, and disrupt European power markets enough that the upcoming U.N. climate conference in Glasgow could suffer blackouts owing to too little clean energy.

Yes, this is a big one.

Natural gas and coal prices in Europe and Asia just hit their highest levels on record, oil prices in America hit a seven-year high and U.S. gasoline prices are up $1 a gallon from last year. If this winter is as bad as some experts predict — with some in the poor and middle classes unable to heat their homes — I fear we’ll see a populist backlash to the whole climate/green movement. You can already smell that coming in Britain. . . .

. . . .  Sadly, in an overreaction to the Fukushima nuclear accident, Germany decided in 2011 to phase out all of its nuclear power by 2022 — nuclear power stations that in the year 2000 generated 29.5 percent of Germany’s power generation mix. All of that has to be replaced by wind, solar, hydro and natural gas, and there is just not enough now.

As Bill Gates points out in his smart book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” the only way to reach our climate targets is to shift production of all the big heavy industries, like steel, cement and automobiles, as well as how we heat our homes and power our cars, to electricity generated from clean energy. Safe and affordable nuclear power has to be part of our mix because, Gates argues, “it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day.” “

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:

Thank you Thomas Friedman, for this entire essay. I read Bill Gate’s book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” and I recommend to to all Americans who can read. For the others, there is already an audio book. Gates has a team of scientists that have reinvented a new nuclear power plant that cannot explode or melt down, and runs on old nuclear waste. What is holding them up, is that no one will let them build the first one. I nominate Connecticut to step up and be first. Gate’s book doesn’t go into his nuclear plant work. My reference for that is a documentary on Netflix called, Inside Bill’s Brain, part three.

David lives in Connecticut, and blogs at InconvenientNews.net.

Eric W. Sanderson | New York City Needs Green Solutions to Flooding – The New York Times

By Eric W. Sanderson

“Dr. Sanderson is a senior conservation ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York and the author of “Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City” and “Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars and Suburbs.” He is working on an atlas and a geographical dictionary of the Indigenous landscape of New York City.

For more than 20 years, I have been studying the historical ecology of New York City and thinking about what it means for the city’s future, and I can tell you one thing: Water will go where water has always gone.

When Hurricane Sandy roared into New York in 2012, where did the sea surge? Into the salt marshes. They may not have looked like salt marshes at the time. They may have looked like Edgemere and Oakwood Beach and Red Hook, but these neighborhoods are marshes first, disguised with landfill and topped with buildings.

And so it was recently with the remnants of Hurricane Ida. It is heartbreaking and tragic that people died in flooded basements, and that so many lost so much property. Where were these flooded basements? Judging by the news reports, mainly dug into the old stream courses and freshwater wetlands of the city. Places such as the block of 153rd Street, surrounded by Kissena Park, in Queens. That’s Kissena Park, named after Kissena Creek, which up until the 1910s met the tidewaters of the Flushing River right about where 153rd Street is.”

Op-Ed: How Congress could curtail the Big Oil gravy train – Los Angeles Times

BY KATIE PORTER AND ROBERT WEISSMAN

SEPT. 22, 2021 3:01 AM PT

“The fossil fuel industry is a poster child for corporate welfare.

Federal subsidies and tax breaks prop up fossil fuel development, even when drilling projects should be too expensive to turn a profit. Below-market leasing rates, royalties and fees subsidize oil and gas companies, encouraging them to exploit our public lands and leaving taxpayers on the hook for the environmental damage.

In the “Build Back Better” Act, Congress has an opportunity to make oil and gas corporations play by the same rules as everyone else. The House has included common-sense oil and gas reforms in its version of the bill, and the Senate should follow suit.

Taxpayers should get a fair return from oil and gas companies that drill on publicly owned lands and waters. The House bill would make this change. Right now, these polluters pay below-market rates to extract resources that belong to all Americans.”

Source: Op-Ed: How Congress could curtail the Big Oil gravy train – Los Angeles Times

U.N. General Assembly: China to limit coal plant production – The New York Times

“President Xi Jinping of China told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that his country would stop promoting the growth of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel overseas, in a major step to address climate change: China, he said, “will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”

Mr. Xi’s announcement, in prerecorded remarks, was a surprise move designed to lift his country’s standing on global efforts to rein in global greenhouse emissions.

China currently produces the largest share of emissions. It is by far the biggest producer of coal domestically, and by far the largest financier of coal-fired power plants abroad, with an enormous 40 gigawatts of coal power planned.”

Amazon becomes the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy

“The company’s total renewable energy investments to date will supply 6.5 gigawatts (GW) of electricity production capacity—enough to power 1.7 million U.S. homes for one year.

Amazon announced plans to add 26 utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, totaling 3.4 GW of electricity production capacity, bringing its total investment in renewable energy in 2020 to 35 projects and more than 4 GW of capacity—the largest corporate investment in renewable energy in a single year. These new projects will make the company the largest-ever corporate purchaser of renewable energy.”

Source: Amazon becomes the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy

Margaret Renkl | Defending Nature Is a Form of Social Justice – The New York Times

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

“NASHVILLE — Two good things happened here recently that I didn’t see coming. First, our Metro Council passed a bill, which Mayor John Cooper signed, that increases protections for trees on city land. Second, the proposal for an outrageously terrible subdivision in Whites Creek, one of the few remaining rural tracts of Davidson Country, was rejected by the Metro Planning Commission.

Positive as the recent environmental news here may be, small-scale victories like these don’t normally rise to the level of national attention. But as a measure of what is possible, they have given me more hope for the future than I’ve had in a long time.

That’s because these particular environmental wins were not the result of lawsuits or transfers of political power. They were the result of widespread and nonpartisan public outcry. And they tell us of what can happen in any city, anywhere, when people start recognizing trees as a kind of civic infrastructure and the natural world as a public good.”

Spencer Bokat-Lindell | Is There a Nuclear Option for Stopping Climate Change? – The New York Times

By Spencer Bokat-Lindell

Mr. Bokat-Lindell is a staff editor.

This article is part of the Debatable newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“Humanity’s failure to avert the crisis of a warming climate is sometimes framed as a grand technological problem: For centuries, countries relied on fossil fuels to industrialize their economies and generate wealth, and it was only in recent years that alternative ways of powering a society, like solar and wind energy, became viable.

But when it comes to electricity, at least, that story isn’t true. Today, the United States gets 60 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels and just 20 percent from renewables. The final 20 percent comes from nuclear power, a technology that has existed since the 1950s, produces no carbon dioxide and has killed far fewer people than fossil fuels.”

Paul Krugman | Who Created the Renewable-Energy Miracle? – The New York Times

“As terrible as many things in the world are, climate is unique in posing an existential threat to civilization. And it’s horrifying that so many political figures are dead set against any serious action to address that threat.

Despite that, there’s still a chance that we’ll do enough to avoid catastrophe — not because we’ve grown wiser but because we’ve been lucky. We used to believe that achieving big reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would be difficult and expensive, although not nearly as costly as anti-environmentalists claimed. Over the past dozen years or so, however, we’ve experienced a technological miracle. As nicely documented in an article by Max Roser, the costs of solar and wind power, once dismissed as foolish hippie fantasies, have plunged to the point that quite modest incentives could lead to a rapid reduction in use of fossil fuels:

Fake Meat vs. Real Meat – The New York Times

By Anahad O’Connor

Published Dec. 3, 2019Updated Dec. 2, 2020

“The meat industry has a warning for consumers: Beware of plant-based meat.

That is the message behind a marketing campaign by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a public relations firm whose financial supporters have included meat producers and others in the food industry. In recent weeks the group has placed full-page ads in The New York Times and other newspapers raising health concerns about plant-based meat substitutes like the Impossible Burger and the Beyond Burger, which are designed to look, taste and even appear to bleed like real meat.”

(443) Is It Too Late To Stop Climate Change? Well, it’s Complicated. – YouTube

David Lindsay

A young technician came by from a local vendor to service my 3 in1 printer. He said he understood climate change was a serious problem. I asked him is source of information, and he said, Youtube videos by some group he recommended but couldn’t recall. He looked it up on my computer, and it was Kursgesagt, and below is one of their videos. It turns out, it is run by Breakthrough Energy, which was founded by Bill Gates and friends.
Regarding Bill Gates, I just read his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, the solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need. It is excellent. So by the way, is this quirky video, which is stocked full for facts from an organization called Our World and Data.