One of America’s great achievements is the International Space Station (ISS), a remarkable testimony to human ingenuity, fortitude, and prescience. Recently, the crew completed the first of three scheduled spacewalks and scientific experiments are ongoing, like studies of worms to help medicine on Earth find new methods for repairing damaged tissue.
While the fossil fuel industry merrily hums along with blessings from the world’s body politic, especially in America, climate scientists ponder the question: Can global warming be solved… in enough time?
This hand-wringing conundrum has been swirling around for years but nobody has stepped forward with one really good idea that has gained traction — none whatsoever!
Yesterday Gaius did a post about the rate of ice collapse in Antarctica. In light of that piece, I'd like to introduce you to an uncharacteristically good news post at Vice's Motherboard by Nafeez Ahmed, How Solar Power Could Slay The Fossil Fuel Empire By 2030.
America’s national energy policy is not green; it is dark & oily, backward, cloddish, and out of touch with the realities of today’s world of modern technology. It’s archaic.
Congress has at least one foot in the wrong century. This is the 21st not the 20th.
New York State faces a fateful choice over its energy, environmental, and economic future.
It can chose a 21st century upgrade to clean energy and create a sustainable prosperity that protects our climate, cleans our air, and revives our economy. Or it can continue to rely on a 19th and 20th century fossil fueled energy system that will leave it battered by climate change, poisoned by pollution, and economically stagnant while other states and nations pass it by as they adopt the new sustainable technologies of the 21st century.
It's very hard to trace the Koch cash sloshing around American politics; it's meant to be hard. They funnel so much money into so many right-wing groups that it would be a full time job to sort it all out. Perhaps it's safe to assume, though, that the recipients of legalistic bribes from Koch Industries directly are among those most devoted to the Koch war against democracy.
Monday, Oklahoma's Republican governor, Mary Fallin, a lock-step right-wing ideologue and pawn of the Koch brothers, signed a bill fining or taxing Oklahomans who want to use solar power. It had passed both Houses of the Oklahoma legislature, and, in fact the House passed it 83-5. (Now this is a very, very red state but there are still 29 Democrats in the state House--72 Republicans-- and 12 Democrats in the state Senate--36 Republicans). Many of those Democrats, however, aren't Democrats that actual Democrats would recognize as Democrats.
More than a few people have been asserting that Republican Governor Paul LePage, knowing he's already lost his reelection fight, is now only working for an audience of two: Texas neo-fascists David and Charles Koch.
Climate change news is mostly negative, in fact, downright depressing, as glaciers melt away, torrential storms hit coastlines, and embedded droughts scorch countrysides.
But, behind all of the gloom and doom, an upsurge of solar energy is quietly flourishing from California to Queensland to Pretoria. Here’s why: Solar energy is experiencing remarkable technological breakthroughs that will likely lead to a world powered by solar energy at the expense of fossil fuels. And, it could be happening sooner rather than later.
Imagine a 1,160 square mile ice sheet (equivalent in size to Los Angeles, Dallas plus Chicago), which had been stable for thousands of years, suddenly collapsing and crumbling into thousands of icebergs within weeks.
It happened in Antarctica, and the message therein challenges humankind to beware of its own devices, i.e., burning fossil fuels for energy.
