a couple of months ago i started getting lots of shareholder election letters. so in an effort to cut down on paper mail, i installed the proxy vote app, and tried to submit votes. meanwhile, i noticed that a lot of board questions were around independent auditors and environmental review. most boards recommended vote No. I obviously went against that recommendation and votes Yes to more independence out of spite.
well, i guess some investors were actually able to win two exxon board seats.
In the Netherlands a court ruled that Shell has to reduce its emissions that management wants to. It’s rare that a court ignores current laws and becomes the legislator. Will be interesting to see what happens now. Will it be a positive for the environment? Doubtful. Shell recently sold a texan refinery to improve its emission balance. The refinery is still working just not for Shell anymore but a Mexican company.
Yesterday I also stumbled on that thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxaIqc8o6s
Cliff: A human rights lawyer that helped in a lawsuit against Chevron in Equador is under house arrest for contempt for court. Nobody wants to write about that lawsuit. Even people who initially want to come back later and say that the story is scrapped.
It’s quite sad that lately I learn the most interesting stuff from comedy or satire shows.
Chapo Trap House have been covering that story for months for the record. They’ve had long interviews with the lawyer twice.
Edit: Obviously this doesn’t contradict your point about learning about stuff from comedy shows.
But how many average people ste listening to Chapo? I am not really a podcast guy either. I listen to one if somebody posts a link about an interesting topic but other than that…
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1397987685617254400?s=19
I’d say yes.
There are new super duper high voltage transmission lines that greatly reduce losses, but of course they are in China.
I don’t know about that specific location, but generally off-shore wind energy costs more than on-shore. (Per turbine obviously, but also per kwh)
it’s not really about the steak. it’s about health of the ecosystem to restore depleted farmland. there’s a school of thought out there about building soil carbon through grassland which needs grazing animals to tear up dying grasses into natural compost and provide fertilizer. there’s a lolTed talk about south africa experiencing advancing deserts because population of elephants severely declined, and then made a rebound when they reintroduced grazing. it’s an elegant idea although scientifically there haven’t been enough scrutiny, and most arguments against are economic rather than biological.
you could stop eating meat and hope those factory farms don’t move into big soy or something, or you could cut back a lot on feedlot produced meat and buy more from farms that try permaculture approach, or work on rebuilding soil. buying steak from those guys is more expensive, but still perfectly tasty and supports the people who do it. if it’s within 100 miles of you, i think it’s reasonably better on co2, and i expect it will get better over time.
now that i have a freezer i’m going to buy a share of the most sustainable cow i’ve ever bought.
Watched the new documentary on netflix: Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet.
Not sure how to feel: depressed or angry?
The people in power must have heard this stuff or similar stuff and yet nothing happens. It’s mind-boggling that there is not one government on this planet which takes this serious. What are we going to do once the Amazon reaches its tipping point? Since they also talked about how we tackled the decreasing ozone layer in the 1980s I really want to know: What was different then? How could they agree to act together?
Similar Greta linked an article on twitter: The media is still mostly failing to convey the urgency of the climate crisis | Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope | The Guardian
I think the forum is kinda similar. There are still dozens of posts each day in the covid thread. The majority of posts in the “cooking good food” thread is about meat. We are just not alarmed as much as we probably should be at this time.
It’s like the first wave of covid last year. The number of deaths back then is similar to the number of deaths caused by climate change. It hasn’t hit too close to home for most people yet.
That was an extremely cheap fix compared to climate change. I don’t know what it actually ended up costing to comply with the Montreal Protocol but the EPA’s estimate in the US was $3 billion. The estimated cost of net-zero emissions by 2050, which is necessary to keep warming to 1.5C, is one to two trillion dollars per year, globally.
I only knew the piece about “not the greatest country on earth” but now yt suggested this one:
Well I am not an expert but it wouldnt surprise me if within the next 10 years this is a speech you could give and not being wrong.
I don’t think it was wrong when it was filmed. We’ve crossed so many tipping points in the past 10 years that I can’t even keep track of them.
Doesn’t the existence of grass have a benefit other than just being used as a recreational surface? In Toronto I think they used to have limits on paving over stuff because the natural drainage of water into the grass was environmentally important.
Maybe the point is that in Vegas there is no natural grass so it’s not strictly necessary.
In Vegas every square of meter of grass has an exorbitant water cost in the middle of a desert. I live in a city that is probably always going to have ‘water shortages’ that would go away immediately and forever if we shut off the sprinklers and never used them again.
It’s actually obscene what the US spends in cash and environmental damage to have grass instead of native vegetation.
You have to have vegetation in cities for two main reasons. First, the albedo is much lower reducing temperatures. Second, stormwater runoff has to pass through vegetation to clean it and slow its speed thus preventing flooding and contamination of waterways.
https://twitter.com/KHayhoe/status/1407688001824563200
Also, we scientists are often quite conservative & big synthesis reports like the IPCC are explicitly designed to focus on what everyone can agree on, which has typically been the less alarming possibilities.
That’s always one of the things that infuriates me most. When you see this articles and then they wrote “maybe”. As soon as you write that you have already lost because deniers will always counter with “ok so maybe not is also possible”.
Germany’s biggest party (CDU) has released their election manifesto. It is a whole lot of nothing. More of the status quo. They want to enter a decade of modernization after being in power for the last 16years. A conservative publicist writes a weekly column for a newssite. I dont like him but unfortunately he wasnt wrong with his latest articles. The success of the CDU comes mostly from not wanting any experiments. They know people dont like the unknown so they stick with the same old stuff they know. Climate change requires a lot of change and this creates anxiety. People want to combat climate change but they dont want to pay the price. They are afraid what is necessary could decrease their wealth/economic outlook so they rather vote for the party that promises continuity. Somebody wrote in another thread he lost all hope with the Obama presidency. I think I will lose mine after the next election if the CDU gets over 30+ again and could form a government with the pro-business party FDP. I mean there isnt much hope left either since Biden gets done nothing so far. My brother mocked me recently why I would vote for the Greens. He thinks it makes no sense since nobody else will join the fight. Why should we the only ones that fucks up our economy when everyone else continues business as usual. Interestingly when you see what they eat then its mostly the organic good stuff.
At this point we pretty much either get the climate change equivalent of the COVID vaccine or we’re 100% turbo fucked. I say this despite the fact that we absolutely could turn this thing around pretty damn quickly.
We absolutely could do something about this without even meaningfully reducing living standards. I have no idea what anyone with any degree of power is thinking. This whole thing is long term terrible for anyone heavily invested in the way things are presently. To remain the owner of a fiefdom you must occasionally go out and fight to protect it. This is absolutely one of those times. And yet somehow every lobbyist not directly (and solely because in a sane world you couldn’t work for anyone else if you worked for them) employed by the fossil fuel industry should be actively pushing for sane climate change policy.
Of course here on planet earth the boomers are in charge and they really do plan to just enjoy the next 20 years as much as possible. We need mandatory retirement ages on every position with real responsibility ASAP. This can’t happen again.
can confirm this is more than most seattleites can handle. we’ve been AC holdouts so far, but i might relent and get a geothermal heat pump.