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Arabica Robusta

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate review - Naomi Klein's powerful and ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...g-review-naomi-klein-john-gray

renewables wind climate change

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Much of this book is concerned with showing that powerful and well-financed rightwing thinktanks and lobby groups lie behind the denial of climate change in recent years.
  • Klein interprets the marginalisation of climate change in the political process as the result of the machinations of corporate elites. These elites “understand the real significance of climate change better than most of the ‘warmists’ in the political centre, the ones who are still insisting that the response can be gradual and painless and that we don’t need to go to war with anybody… The deniers get plenty of the details wrong… But when it comes to the scope and depth of change required to avert catastrophe, they are right on the money.”
  • Klein is a brave and passionate writer who always deserves to be heard, and this is a powerful and urgent book that anyone who cares about climate change will want to read. Yet it is hard to resist the conclusion that she shrinks from facing the true scale of the problem. When I read The Shock Doctrine (Guardian review headline: “The end of the world as we know it”), I was unconvinced that corporate and political elites understood what they were doing in promoting the wildly leveraged capitalism of that time, which was already beginning to implode. The idea that corporate elites are in charge of the world is even less convincing today. The neoliberal order has recovered, and in some countries even achieved a spurious kind of stability, but only at the cost of worsening global conflicts.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Another problem with pinning all the blame for climate crisis on corporate elites is that humanly caused environmental destruction long predates the rise of capitalism.
  • Though she identifies the prevailing type of capitalism as the culprit in the climate crisis, Klein doesn’t outline anything like an alternative economic system, preferring instead to focus on particular local struggles against environmental damage and exploitation. In many ways this makes sense, but in a global environment of intensifying scarcities, giving priority to local needs is unlikely to be a recipe for harmony. Whether in the Congo in the 1960s or Iraq at the present time, internecine conflicts – exploited and aggravated by the geopolitical stratagems of great powers – have led to a condition of endemic war.
  • Throughout This Changes Everything, Klein describes the climate crisis as a confrontation between capitalism and the planet. It would be more accurate to describe the crisis as a clash between the expanding demands of humankind and a finite world, but however the conflict is framed there can be no doubt who the winner will be. The Earth is vastly older and stronger than the human animal.
Jeff Johnson

Pickens sees answer to energy crisis in the wind (Los Angeles Times) - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...ens23-2008jul23,0,993562.story

alternatives crisis pickensplan electricity wind

shared by Jeff Johnson on 24 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Jeff Johnson on 24 Jul 08
     
    The billionaire oilman and onetime corporate raider says the U.S. must wean itself from foreign oil, and he's betting some of his fortune on harnessing domestic energy alternatives.
Jeff Johnson

Energy: America's Untapped Oil Reserves (Newsweek) - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/146161

crisis oil oil shale potential windfall resources usa

shared by Jeff Johnson on 23 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Jeff Johnson on 23 Jul 08
     
    Royal Dutch Shell, the international oil giant, thinks the solution to America's oil crisis may lie in the heart of Colorado. Since 1981, the company has quietly funded a multi-million dollar research project that many call a quest for energy's Holy Grail. The mission: to discover a way to safely and economically extract fuel from oil shale, a type of sedimentary rock found in Wyoming, Utah, and especially Colorado's Western Slope. The potential windfall is staggering
Colin Bennett

Solving the Energy Crisis - 10,000 Humongous Foil Balloons (GALLERY) - 0 views

www.trendhunter.com/...-10000-humongous-foil-balloons

renewables

shared by Colin Bennett on 20 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Party balloons may be the next big thing in solar power. Cool Earth has made some giant balloons with gizmos inside that will convert the collected sun and focus it onto a cell. They have been given a big chunk of moola to make 10,000 balloons to cover 80 acres in California and hopefully in a couple years be generating 10 megawatts of power.
Colin Bennett

Could sea power solve the energy crisis? - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...main.jhtml

wave ocean OTEC renewables technology future

shared by Colin Bennett on 08 Jan 08 - Cached
  • The French inventor Georges Claude is largely forgotten today; if he is remembered at all, it is as the creator of the neon lamp. Yet one of his projects from the 1920s could resolve the global energy crisis - by harnessing the power of the oceans.
Colin Bennett

Prospects for the Global Wind Energy Industry Are Still Strong Despite Recession, Says ... - 0 views

www.investorideas.com/...050409b.asp

wind

shared by Colin Bennett on 05 May 09 - Cached
  • Colin Bennett on 05 May 09
     
    BOULDER, Colo. -- May 4 2009 - The wind energy industry has been battered by the global economic crisis, with market participants being dealt a severe blow by the credit crunch that began in 2008. However, the future prospects for wind energy remain bright, according to a new report from Pike Research. The cleantech market intelligence firm forecasts that total installed wind generation capacity will reach 320 gigawatts (GW) in 2015, representing a 165% increase over 2008 levels.
Gina-Marie Cheeseman

Increasing Efficiency In Wind Power - - 0 views

www.triplepundit.com/...g-efficiency-in-wind-power.php

wind energy efficiency

shared by Gina-Marie Cheeseman on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • Gina-Marie Cheeseman on 22 May 09
     
    Despite the current economic crisis, there is good news for the U.S. wind power sector: R&D is paving the way for increased efficiency in wind power.
Arabica Robusta

The Anthropocene Myth | Jacobin - 0 views

www.jacobinmag.com/...cene-capitalism-climate-change

renewables wind climate change

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Who’s driving us toward disaster? A radical answer would be the reliance of capitalists on the extraction and use of fossil energy. Some, however, would rather identify other culprits. The earth has now, we are told, entered “the Anthropocene”: the epoch of humanity. Enormously popular — and accepted even by many Marxist scholars — the Anthropocene concept suggests that humankind is the new geological force transforming the planet beyond recognition, chiefly by burning prodigious amounts of coal, oil, and natural gas.
  • The important thing to note here is the logical structure of the Anthropocene narrative: some universal trait of the species must be driving the geological epoch that is its own, or else it would be a matter of some subset of the species. But the story of human nature can come in many forms, both in the Anthropocene genre and in other parts of climate change discourse.
  • Giving short shrift to all the talk of a universal human evildoer, she writes, “We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe — and would benefit the vast majority — are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • So how do the critics respond? “Klein describes the climate crisis as a confrontation between capitalism and the planet,” philosopher John Gray counters in the Guardian. “It would be be more accurate to describe the crisis as a clash between the expanding demands of humankind and a finite world.”
  • It is perfectly logical that advocates of the Anthropocene and associated ways of thinking either champion false solutions that steer clear of challenging fossil capital — such as geoengineering in the case of Mark Lynas and Paul Crutzen, the inventor of the Anthropocene concept — or preach defeat and despair, as in the case of Kingsnorth.
Sergio Ferreira

Over-population, climate catastrophe, energy crisis but the 2030 future is bright! - 1 views

3eintelligence.blogactiv.eu/...-but-the-2030-future-is-bright

future 2030 asia

shared by Sergio Ferreira on 27 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Remember the hippie movement of 1967? Those naive, young but well-meaning guys and boys who believed in “making love, not war” at a time when the US was fighting one of its dirtiest wars in Asia? Well, I guess a lot of these guys and boys now are running big businesses (or advising them) and still seem to have the same vision of humanity than in those times.
Phil Slade

My bright idea: Michael Grätzel | Technology | The Observer - 1 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ael-gratzel-bright-idea-energy

electricity

shared by Phil Slade on 04 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Phil Slade on 04 Jul 10
     
    "Michael Grätzel is a man with a mission. As the inventor of a low-cost solar cell, he wants to help the world avoid an energy crisis by harnessing the power of the Sun. His translucent Grätzel cells use a combination of titanium dioxide and organic dyes to convert sunlight into electricity, providing a cheaper and more environmentally friendly source of energy than silicon solar cells."
Energy Net

Worldchanging: Bright Green: A New, Bold Plan for a Carbon-Neutral UK by 2030 - 0 views

www.worldchanging.com/...011289.html

policy uk

shared by Energy Net on 29 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Energy Net on 29 Jun 10
     
    "Carbon neutrality by 2030 is the new standard for climate policies, and again the UK is leading North America in the climate debate with a bold national-level proposal about how to get there. The Centre for Alternative Technology just launched zerocarbonbritain2030 (ZCB2030), a collaborative project showing one possible scenario for making the entire UK carbon-neutral by 2030. ZCB2030 is a well-researched, well-written, and well-designed report on a set of possible pathways to a zero carbon Britain by 2030 (The goal, though bold, is not unique: Alex Steffen called for a very similar position for Seattle, a target which the Seattle City Council has included in their legislative priorities this year; and a variety of other nations and cities are approaching the same target, from Copenhagen to New Zealand). In 384 pages, CAT presents a comprehensive look at the kind of systemic changes needed to achieve dramatic emissions reduction in just 20 years in such areas as farming, energy generation, building codes, transportation planning, and economic frameworks. This report truly addresses the scope, scale and speed of the climate crisis and the solutions needed to create a bright green future. "
Hans De Keulenaer

Tackle Climate Change: European leaders clash over pledges on global warming - 0 views

www.tackleclimatechange.co.uk/...ers-clash-over-pledges-on.html

crisis recession europe climate sustainability pledges policy

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 13 Dec 08 - Cached
  • Failure is not an option, they say. But Polish veto threats, Italian resistance, and German insistence that it will not jeopardise jobs to help save the planet, suggest that the action plan will be diluted. The risk is the EU will draw withering criticism from climate campaigners and signal weakness and indecision to the US, China, India and other key players in the global warming fight.
Colin Bennett

Clean energy $ not enough to protect climate - 0 views

www.greenbang.com/gh-to-protect-climate-analysis

carbon investment renewables

shared by Colin Bennett on 05 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Colin Bennett on 05 Mar 09
     
    While the global economic crisis will likely reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the impact over the long term is counterproductive to battling global warming, the Global Futures 2009 report asserts. Reduced funding for low-carbon energy technologies makes it less likely the world will reach the $500 billion-per-year investment needed by 2020 to ensure carbon emissions peak no later than that year.
Colin Bennett

The Oil Drum | Understanding the current energy crisis in South Africa - 0 views

www.theoildrum.com/3576

demand south-africa

shared by Colin Bennett on 04 Feb 08 - Cached
  • South Africa has been experiencing blackouts over the last three weeks or so, and is forecast to have electricty shortages until at least 2013, see S Africa eyes rationing to end power cuts (Financial Times, 24 Jan.) for a brief overview. Here Simon and Jeremy discuss the issues in more detail.
Hans De Keulenaer

Future Scenarios - Introduction - 0 views

www.futurescenarios.org

climate future peak oil roadmap scenarios

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 02 Jun 08 - Cached
  • The simultaneous onset of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilisation. Global oil peak has the potential to shake if not destroy the foundations of global industrial economy and culture. Climate change has the potential to rearrange the biosphere more radically than the last ice age. Each limits the effective options for responses to the other. The strategies for mitigating the adverse effects and/or adapting to the consequences of Climate Change have mostly been considered and discussed in isolation from those relevant to Peak Oil. While awareness of Peak Oil, or at least energy crisis, is increasing, understanding of how these two problems might interact to generate quite different futures, is still at an early state.
Hans De Keulenaer

Welcome to brave new world « 3E Intelligence - 0 views

3eintelligence.wordpress.com/...welcome-to-brave-new-world

2050 climate future roadmap

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 05 May 08 - Cached
  • It does not happen often that I agree with the American Enterprise Institute but Steven Hayward’s analysis of the “real cost of tackling climate change” in the Wall Street Journal of 28 April is spot on: an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will have dramatic implications for our way of life. Hayward has at least the courage (which cannot be said for our politicians) to tell the public what this 80% cut will mean for citizens’ daily lives. In not one political document have I ever seen a serious impact assessment of the 80% target. The fear of being the bearer of bad news is one which characterises all policymakers (even the ones who know that the climate crisis will hit hard).
Hans De Keulenaer

R-Squared Energy Blog: Storing Renewable Energy - 0 views

i-r-squared.blogspot.com/...storing-renewable-energy.html

intermittency renewables storage

shared by Hans De Keulenaer on 16 Jul 07 - Cached
  • Molten salt is already used in some applications in the chemical industry to dampen temperature fluctuations in reactors.
  • davidchapman on 17 Jul 07
     
    The important point, missed in this page and the comments on it, is that the energy is stored as latent heat of fusion. The mass is effectively a constant temperature heat sink/source over a wide range. There is nothing new in the world of course - this approach was extensively studied at BICC Research in the early 70's for peak lopping/load shifting for heating systems. The materials studied then had melting points in the 30 - 40 C range, but I don't remember the latent heat values. At that time it was rejected as too large and heavy - then the oil crisis passed. How does it compare with flow cells?
davidchapman

Biodiesel Report Reveals Strategies for Market Success - 0 views

www.renewableenergyaccess.com/...story

bioenergy biofuels renewables

shared by davidchapman on 31 Jul 07 - Cached
  • davidchapman on 31 Jul 07
     
    Kline, a worldwide consulting and research firm, yesterday announced the launch of a new line of research studies called Kline FlashPoint. The first report, "Biodiesel: Helping to Solve the Oil Crisis, but at What Cost?" offers a strategic overview and assessment of the complex global biodiesel market and provides recommendations for companies that are evaluating their options for participation.
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