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<p><font size="+2"><i><b>March 3, 2022</b></i></font><br>
</p>
<i>[ now comes rapid change ] </i><br>
CLEAN ENERGY<br>
<b>Russia’s war with Ukraine offers critical lessons for global
energy markets</b><br>
WED, MAR 2 2022<br>
<b>KEY POINTS</b><br>
<blockquote>- The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the EU’s
dependence on Russian natural gas show that a diversification of
energy supplies is critical to establishing energy security.<br>
<br>
- At the same time, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change’s report out on Monday notes that coal and fossil fuels are
“choking humanity.”<br>
<br>
- The confluence of these events spotlight a few key points about
current global energy markets.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/02/russia-ukraine-war-lessons-for-global-energy-markets.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/02/russia-ukraine-war-lessons-for-global-energy-markets.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ predictable degradation ] </i><br>
<b>Climate change threatens nearly one third of U.S. hazardous
chemical facilities</b><br>
March 2, 2022<br>
Nearly one third of the hazardous chemical facilities in the United
States are at risk from climate-driven floods, storms and wildfires,
according to a new analysis by the Government Accountability Office.<br>
<br>
The federal watchdog analyzed more than 10,000 factories,
refineries, water treatment plants and other facilities that
manufacture, store or use dangerous chemicals. They found that more
than 3,200 of them are located in places where they face damage from
sea level rise, hurricane storm surge, wildfires or flooding from
heavy rain.<br>
<br>
"Recent natural disasters have demonstrated the potential for
natural hazards to trigger fires, explosions, and releases of toxic
chemicals at facilities," the report's authors note.<br>
- -<br>
The report suggests multiple ways that the EPA can protect people by
requiring the companies that own these facilities to prepare for
climate-driven weather.<br>
<br>
For example, if a chemical plant stores substances that catch fire
if they are not refrigerated, then that plant needs to be prepared
for the prolonged power outages that climate-driven storms, heat
waves and wildfires can cause. Facilities located in flood zones
need to make sure that they can keep the water out of sensitive
areas.<br>
<br>
Such requirements are already included in regulations for facilities
that handle hazardous chemicals. But the EPA can do a better job
enforcing those regulations, the report finds. For example, the
agency could prioritize inspections at facilities that are located
next to vulnerable communities and at elevated risk from climate
change.<br>
<br>
The EPA issued a response to the report saying the agency "generally
agrees" with the recommendations and laying out a multi-year
timeline for reducing climate-related risk to hazardous chemical
facilities.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/02/1083943889/climate-change-threatens-nearly-one-third-of-u-s-hazardous-chemical-facilities">https://www.npr.org/2022/03/02/1083943889/climate-change-threatens-nearly-one-third-of-u-s-hazardous-chemical-facilities</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<p><i>[ Opinion from the Journal Nature ]</i><br>
<b>Climate change won’t wait for future innovation — we need
action now</b><br>
Governments must focus on solutions that are already working, even
when they aren’t glamorous or supported by powerful lobbyists.<br>
Marie Claire Brisbois<br>
Reading national climate plans feels like perusing corporate
advertising brochures. There is an ever-increasing focus on the
promise of innovation: hydrogen fuel, new nuclear technologies and
carbon capture and storage, the plans claim, will close the gap
between what the world needs and what renewables can provide.<br>
<br>
Yes, alternative energy sources and carbon removal will be crucial
for decarbonization. But let’s not pretend they’ll be here fast
enough to cap temperature rise at 1.5 °C above pre-industrial
levels. Politicians and researchers also need to do more with
techniques that are already established — highly effective,
publicly supported ways to cut energy use.<br>
<br>
One estimate suggests that steps such as increasing use of home
insulation, public transport, appliance repair and animal-free
protein could reduce emissions by 40–80% in the building,
transport, industry and food sectors (F. Creutzig et al. Nature
Clim. Change 12, 36–46; 2022). Measures to cut energy use can make
citizens healthier and happier, and can ease the burden of the
rising cost of energy. But they are neglected.<br>
<br>
US President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan heavily finances
technologies to produce clean hydrogen and supergrids (which carry
large amounts of electricity), with expectations of high economic
returns. The UK Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution
also targets innovations, from carbon capture to electric
vehicles. These plans acknowledge the crucial but boring role of
reducing energy use, but do little to bring it about. On 28
February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a
report on the impacts of climate change and how to mitigate them;
I predict that responses will emphasize flashy innovation over
familiar established strategies...<br>
This dynamic was evident on Transport Day at the COP26
climate-change conference in Glasgow, UK, last year. The official
agenda featured technologies such as electric vehicles and new jet
fuels. Cycling, walking and public transport were mentioned only
when a bottom-up effort by 350 organizations squeezed one line
into the official declaration. By then, it was too late to steer
the conversation.<br>
<br>
Why do governments neglect proven practices to bet big on
technological fixes unlikely to arrive on time? I study the
intersection of power, politics and environmental decision-making,
and that’s the question I’ve focused on for more than a decade.<br>
<br>
Of the hundreds of strategy plans I’ve analysed over the five
years I’ve been studying energy, almost every single one ensures
three things. First, that global citizens will still buy a lot of
energy. Second, that control of energy resources will remain
concentrated among a few industry players. Third, that
energy-intensive companies and their shareholders will still make
huge profits.<br>
<br>
It’s no secret that energy industries are powerful political
actors, or that governments overwhelmingly measure national
progress by economic growth. Less well-known is that this
encourages politicians to produce climate strategies that
prioritize high economic returns over absolute carbon reductions.
There are examples from around the world of industry lobbying to
weaken carbon targets, to block the phasing out of coal and even
to label fossil-fuel-guzzling natural-gas plants as green
investments.<br>
<br>
Unglamorous solutions have few politically powerful advocates.
Their economic benefits come more from reducing costs than from
increasing growth, and tend to be spread across sectors and accrue
to less-powerful interests. For example, proposed programmes to
retrofit homes in the United Kingdom and Spain to be more energy
efficient are projected to create half a million jobs each, most
of which would be in small or medium-sized enterprises. National
savings as air pollution falls are realized in health and
environment budgets, not growth projections...<br>
Governments do sometimes prioritize broad benefits. Italy is
offering tax deductions of 110% to finance home energy retrofits.
Cities including Paris, Milan, Detroit and Montreal are scraping
together money to fund cycle lanes and pedestrian spaces. But
these small interventions are not enough. Few governments are
making serious financial investments.<br>
<br>
Here’s where the research community can step up. One way to
counter the fixation on profitable rather than proven climate
solutions is for analysts and researchers assessing policy options
to build in metrics of environmental sustainability, social
connection, health and other indicators of well-being. There are a
wealth of relevant measures, such as the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development’s Better Life Index. These should be
implemented and advanced widely.<br>
<br>
An emerging research base suggests that governments can maintain
logistical and social services even when economic output is
static. We need more social-science research on how to encourage
political support for policies that don’t promote growth.
Researchers must supply case studies, models and ways to craft
policy around energy use that consider people as citizens, not
simply consumers.<br>
<br>
Unglamorous solutions are effective; critics can’t say they are a
bad idea. Instead, they argue that green innovation is the only
way to mobilize the private capital and ingenuity needed to solve
the climate crisis. But the evidence is clear: the planet needs us
to do more to implement what’s already working.<br>
<br>
Nature 603, 9 (2022)<br>
doi: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00560-2">https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00560-2</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00560-2">https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00560-2</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><i>[ listen to the Red Cross ]</i><br>
<b>Red Cross International Joins Groups Calling Climate Change a
"National Security" Concern</b><br>
by Anna Penner<br>
March 1st 2022<br>
The Red Cross warns the threat of climate change to global
stability and safety must not be taken lightly. A new report by
the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) finds that
83% of all disasters in the last decade were climate-related
events, affecting 1.7 billion people and killing 410,000.<br>
<br>
Based on the report, the humanitarian organization providing
emergency assistance and disaster relief "is calling for global
leaders to take action [on climate change] by ensuring that money
is there to invest in disaster risk reduction, early warning
systems, and community resilience."<br>
The report found that over the past decade, 83 per cent of all
disasters were caused by extreme weather and climate-related
events like floods, storms and heatwaves...<br>
- -<br>
Globally, these disasters have killed more than 410,000 people and
affected a staggering 1.7 billion people.<br>
<br>
Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak alone, more than
100 weather-related disasters have occurred, affecting around 50
million people.<br>
<br>
The IFRC found that of the 2,850 disasters triggered by natural
hazards over the past ten years, the most frequent were floods. At
this current rate, 147 million people may be at risk of flooding
by 2030 - but if we act now, we can prevent disasters before they
happen.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://worldwarzero.com/magazine/2022/03/red-cross-joins-groups-calling-climate-change-a-national-security-concern/">https://worldwarzero.com/magazine/2022/03/red-cross-joins-groups-calling-climate-change-a-national-security-concern/</a><br>
- -<br>
<i>[ Who is the Red Cross? ]</i><br>
<b>About the IFRC</b><br>
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC) is the world’s largest humanitarian network and
is guided by seven Fundamental Principles: humanity, impartiality,
neutrality, independence, voluntary service, universality and
unity.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.ifrc.org/world-disasters-report-2020">https://www.ifrc.org/world-disasters-report-2020</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><i>[ Japan reading Marx ]</i><br>
<b>Japanese scholar looks to Marx's theory to explain pandemic,
climate change</b><br>
Sunday Feb. 27, 2022<br>
Iwasaki Atsuko<br>
NHK World Producer<br>
A Japanese academic has penned a surprise bestseller that is
prompting a new generation of readers to consider the ideas of
German philosopher Karl Marx.<br>
<br>
Saito Kohei says the coronavirus pandemic has emerged as evidence
of "a paradox" of global capitalism. His "Capital in the
Anthropocene" has sold about 400,000 copies in Japan since its
2020 publication.<br>
<br>
In it, he takes Marx's warning about unrestrained capitalism
issued 150 years ago, to explain the climate crisis we now face.<br>
<br>
Saito, a 35-year-old associate professor at Osaka City University,
had already made a name for himself as a translator of Marxist
ideas for the modern world.<br>
<br>
In 2018, he won the Deutscher Memorial Prize—an annual award that
honors new and innovative writing about Marxism—for a book titled
"Karl Marx's Ecosocialism" that draws on some of the philosopher's
unpublished notes.<br>
<br>
Author Saito Kohei argues that to fully understand the scope of
Marx's critique of political economy, we should not ignore its
ecological dimension.<br>
NHK World interviewed Saito to find out more about how he believes
Marx's ideas can explain the modern world in which he says
capitalism has reached its limit.<br>
<br>
<b>Limits of Capitalism</b><br>
"This age, Anthropocene, is a geological epoch during which human
economic activities are affecting the entire earth, destroying the
planet. Through global capitalism, we have achieved a prosperous
society by mining new resources, and promoting mass production and
consumption. But we know now that has caused a paradox," he says.<br>
<br>
"It's a paradox that has emerged in the shape of the coronavirus
pandemic. The bad news is that COVID-19 is not the last, or the
worst, of the crises we face. Climate change is something even
more severe.<br>
<br>
"Capitalism forges ahead as developed countries relentlessly open
up new frontiers to get access to cheap labor and natural
resources. Capitalism as defined by Marx is this endless process
of increasing values and wealth."<br>
<br>
Saito says developed countries have passed on the costs of their
growth, like pollution, carbon emissions and destruction of the
ecosystem -- on other regions.<br>
<br>
"In this age of the Anthropocene, there are no more frontiers left
to cultivate. Now, we see tornadoes in the United States and
extreme weather in Europe, just like in any other part of the
world. Even if you live in a developed country, there is no escape
from a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic, or climate change.<br>
<br>
"What if capitalism still tries to expand just to maintain its
system? That's where we need to apply an emergency brake," says
Saito.<br>
<br>
Saito Kohei says a paradox of modern society is evident in the
coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis.<br>
Saito has openly expressed skepticism about "green new deal"
policies that try to promise both economic and environmental
benefits.<br>
<br>
"Consumption of energy and resources keeps increasing as an
economy develops. To tackle climate change, we need to drastically
cut carbon dioxide emissions. But I don't think we can manage
economic growth at the same time. Those of us who live in
developed countries, must find a way to slow down to steady-state,
sustainable economies," he says.<br>
<br>
"If we produce large quantities of electric vehicles, or solar
panels, or wind turbines, we will need to exploit limited
resources, like lithium, that are mainly sourced from less
developed parts of the world. I am concerned that such a situation
could eventually give rise to a new form of imperialism."<br>
<br>
<b>Marx and "eco-socialism"</b><br>
Saito and other scholars are studying Marx's unpublished
manuscripts written in his late years. The notes include Marx's
study of natural science. Specifically, they show his keen
interest in the types of societies that existed before the rise of
capitalism, including a self-governing agricultural commune in
Russia and a medieval community in Germany.<br>
<br>
"In these notes, I see Marx trying to draw a vision of a society
after capitalism. There is an idea that could be referred to as
'eco-socialism,' which places importance on sustainability and
social equality," he says. "I'm trying to imagine a future society
by returning to his philosophy."<br>
<br>
Saito says Marx has an idea called "commons" that refers to things
that are essential for our daily lives, like water, electricity,
education, and medical care. They were managed together by a
community, accessible to anyone and anyone before capitalism.<br>
<br>
"We now find ourselves in a position where capitalism has
commodified or enclosed everything on earth for profit-making
accessible only for the wealthy," he says.<br>
<br>
Karl Marx coined the term "commons" for things essential to our
daily lives that are managed by the community. Saito says most
have now been appropriated for profit-making.<br>
Saito says Marx believed there should be a measure to control and
reestablish these "commons," but not through privatization nor
nationalization. Saito says he believes that citizens should now
share and manage these public goods of "commons" in a democratic
way, rather than left to the market.<br>
<br>
"Marx also viewed the earth as one 'common', but he was concerned
that the forces of production and consumption could eventually
destroy that status," says Saito.<br>
<br>
"Based on his thought, I think that there may be enough existing
wealth now for people's demands to share. If we could increase the
number of these 'commons,' we could achieve a sustainable and
equitable society that Marx dreamed of."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1921/">https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1921/</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> </p>
<br>
[ fascinating science presented at COP 26 video ]<br>
<b>Greenland’s Future</b><br>
Nov 10, 2021<br>
International Cryosphere Climate Initiative<br>
Greenland is now losing ice mass at three times the rate of the
mid-1990’s, and may soon be the largest single contributor to global
sea-level rise. Some studies have found that Greenland’s tipping
point may occur at around 1.6°C of sustained warming. What does the
future hold for Greenland’s 6-7 meters of sea-level rise?<br>
<br>
Main Presenters: Dr. Mark Serreze, Director of the National Snow and
Ice Data Center; and Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette, University of
Massachusetts Amherst.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv7eHPqkzZI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv7eHPqkzZI</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[The news archive - looking back at a key moment ]</i><br>
<font size="5"><b>March 3, 2003</b></font><br>
<br>
March 3, 2003: The Guardian reports on GOP operative Frank Luntz's
infamous memo urging Republicans to place renewed emphasis on
alleged "uncertainties" in climate science, to dull public support
for efforts to stem carbon pollution.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange">http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/hPdCkUiHCg4">http://youtu.be/hPdCkUiHCg4</a>
[link closed]<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/_WiTVL9iT1w">http://youtu.be/_WiTVL9iT1w</a>
[link closed]<br>
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