The premise of climate change is simple. The temperatures of the air we breathe and the oceans we swim in are rising. This global warming may cause severe changes to Earth’s weather patterns and landscape. The major area of disagreement, of course, is whether humans are responsible for climate change.
According to the environmental organization 350.org, human activity, specifically the burning of billions of tons of fossil fuels, is causing climate change. 350.org promotes a finding by NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen that we must reduce the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere from its current level of 400 parts per million to below 350 in order to halt climate change and preserve our planet for future generations.
On the other hand, there are those who do not accept the anthropogenic causes of climate change. They acknowledge that pollution is bad for our local forests and streams. Most even accept that benzene and other chemicals found in gasoline and motor vehicle exhaust are extremely harmful to human health. What they won’t accept, in my view, is any action that could destabilize the US economy. They acknowledge that oil, coal, and natural gas may not be the cleanest of energy sources, but they’re effective and cheap, so oh well, we just have to keep using them.
I would highly encourage anyone who subscribes to this latter point of view to watch Peter Byck’s 2010 documentary Carbon Nation. In the film, Byck does not focus on the harmful effects of climate change, but instead asks the viewer to consider the idea that green energy is good for the economy. For example, it would take just 92 square miles of solar panels to meet the electricity needs of the entire United States! That’s right, solar panels covering just 1/10 of Rhode Island could power every light bulb in America. Or, consider what happens when you simply add a half-inch of compost to soil where cattle graze. Over a three year period, this technique allows for the sequestering of four to five thousand pounds of carbon, the creation of 35 to 50 percent more forage, and the retention of an additional 27,000 gallons of water per acre! Imagine what that would do for your average cattle farmer.
Don Berwick not only knows that green energy is good for the economy, but he also cares deeply about preserving our beautiful Commonwealth for future generations. He supports environmental tax reform that would increase our state’s GDP by $450 million per year and create over 10,000 jobs. Furthermore, Don would appoint a Director for Climate Preparedness to ensure that we are ready the next time a superstorm hits our shores, work to clean our air and water, put more electric vehicles on our roads, and create incentives to convert food and yard waste into energy. Carbon neutrality in America is not something that we in Massachusetts can achieve on our own, but if we choose to join the vanguard of the environmental movement, as we did in marriage equality and health care reform, good things will follow.
Your chance to ask Don questions about the environment, energy, and other issues you are passionate about.
http://www.berwickforgovernor.com/online-town-hall
Disclosure: I volunteer for the Berwick campaign.
I’d suggest a separate diary.
I’ll post another reminder about it tomorrow morning.
…there do seem to be those who also deny the fact of climate change, let alone the causes.
Guess I could have included that group too. Let’s hope that like the folks who deny evolution is real, they will one day become more open-minded and listen to reason.
Pie in the sky, maybe, but I’m glad somebody’s trying it out:
It’s very cool, and sometimes research like this results in intermediate tech or cool spin offs, but the day we have PV embedded in streets anywhere but in very specific and unusual locations (fn 1) is the day we have electricity that’s too cheap to meter.
PV is too expensive to install it in places where it’ll be shaded by street trees, buildings, autos, and roadway grime. When it is no longer too expensive for that, it will still be cheaper to put it on roofs and brownfields.
The other benefits of the solar street are cool, but can all be done without the solar panels for much cheaper. If those benefits (buried conduit, stormwater processing, the ability to change the on-road lighting) are valued by society, we can do all of that now without hexagonal swiss-army-knife tiles.
And finally — snow melt? Are you kidding? The amount of energy necessary to to that is mind-boggling. To give you a sense, a 100 MW steam plant in Holland Michigan uses the waste steam to melt sidewalk and roadway snow in their downtown. Steam generation is roughly 1/3 efficient, so they’re taking the remaining 2/3 of energy in waste heat and melting snow. Cool, right? Yabut — that’s energy that would otherwise be wasted. To take usable energy and use it to melt snow is orders of magnitude more expensive than plowing it in terms of dollars and carbon emissions. We’ll use resistance heating to melt snow on roadways only when electricity is too cheap to meter, and that day ain’t coming for decades, at least.
Footnote 1: examples might include places where there is very little terra firma (Alaska), very little usable rooftop space but relatively unshaded streets (maybe a few roads in Manhattan on south and west side), and places which highlight cool future tech (Disney’s Epcot Center).