Skip to main content

Home/ Clean Energy Transition/ Group items tagged deforestation

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Sergio Ferreira

Norway to become Carbon neutral by 2030 - 0 views

euobserver.com/25481

carbon 2030 norway

shared by Sergio Ferreira on 21 Jan 08 - Cached
  • As the world's fifth-largest exporter of oil and Western Europe's biggest exporter of natural gas, Norway has found itself under increasing pressure to improve its environment profile. The new plan includes offsetting Norwegian emissions by stopping deforestation in developing countries and planting trees. On the domestic front, money is to be earmarked for investment in renewable energy and new taxes on fuel introduced as part of a 'carrot and stick' strategy promoting more environmentally friendly behaviour and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
  • become a leader in the global technology race in the new experimental and costly technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS)
Arabica Robusta

Water, Capitalism and Catastrophism » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names th... - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...r-capitalism-and-catastrophism

water climate change

shared by Arabica Robusta on 19 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Taking the holistic view, one can understand how some of the most basic conditions of life are threatened by a basic contradiction. Civilization, the quintessential expression of Enlightenment values that relies on ever-expanding energy, threatens to reduce humanity to barbarism if not extinction through exactly such energy production.
  • or every farmer or rancher who has leased his land for drilling, there are many homeowners living nearby who get nothing but the shitty end of the stick: pollution, noise and a loss of property value.
  • What gives the film its power is the attention paid to people like Stevens who organized petition drives and showed up at town council meetings to voice their opposition to fracking. They look like Tea Party activists or Walmart shoppers, mostly white and plain as a barn door, but they know that they do not want drilling in their townships and are willing to fight tooth and nail to prevent it. For all of the left’s dismay about its lack of power, the film’s closing credits reveal that there are 312 local anti-fracking groups in Pennsylvania made up of exactly such people who will likely be our allies as the environmental crisis deepens.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In the collection “Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth”, Eddie Yuen takes issue with an “apocalyptic” streak in exactly such articles since they lead to fear and paralysis. A good deal of his article appears to take issue with the sort of analysis developed by Naomi Klein, a bugbear to many convinced of the need to defend “classical” Marxism against fearmongering. Klein is a convenient target but the criticisms could easily apply as well to Mike Davis whose reputation is unimpeachable. Klein’s latest book has served to focus the debate even more sharply as her critics accuse her of letting capitalism off the hook.
  • While I am inclined to agree with Malm that it is the drive for profit that explains fracking and all the rest, and that the benefits of energy production are not shared equally among nations and social classes, there is still a need to examine “civilization”. If we can easily enough discard the notion of the “Anthropocene” as the cause of global warming, the task remains: how can the planet survive when the benefits of bestowing the benefits of “civilization” across the planet so that everyone can enjoy the lifestyle of a middle-class American (or German more recently) remains the goal of socialism?
  • Ironically, this was the same argument made in the NY Times on April 14th by Eduardo Porter in an article titled “A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development”. He refers to the West’s environmental priorities blocking the access to energy in countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia now flocking to China’s new infrastructure investment bank that will most certainly not be bothered by deforestation, river blockage by megadams, air pollution and other impediments to progress.
  • Yuen’s article is filled with allusions to Malthusianism, a tendency I have seen over the years from those who simply deny the existence of ecological limits. While there is every reason to reject Malthus’s theories, there was always the false hope offered by the Green Revolution that supposedly rendered them obsolete. In 1960 SWP leader Joseph Hansen wrote a short book titled “Too Many Babies” that looked to the Green Revolution as a solution to Malthus’s theory but it failed to account for its destructive tendencies, a necessary consequence of using chemicals and monoculture.
  • To think of a way in which homo sapiens and the rest of the animal and vegetable world can co-exist, however, will become more and more urgent as people begin to discover that the old way of doing things is impossible.
davidchapman

Biofuels, not wind and solar power are Shell's energy future | Business | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...royaldutchshell-energy

wind biofuels shell hydropower

shared by davidchapman on 18 Mar 09 - Cached
  • davidchapman on 18 Mar 09
     
    Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation.
1 - 4 of 4
Showing 20▼ items per page