Friday Five: June 27, 2014

It's not that we do dumb things that screw things up...it's that we do smart, well-intentioned things...

That screw things up.
Everything we know about neonic pesticides is awful
"The pesticides don’t just affect pest species. Most prominently, they affect bees and butterflies, which are poisoned when they gather pollen and nectar. But neonics’ negative impacts go far beyond pollinators. They kill all manner of animals and affect all kinds of ecosystems. They’re giving rise to Silent Spring 2.0."

And then we push it to scale and screw it up even more.
The brutal cost of cheap chicken
"American meat eaters live, for the most part, in happy ignorance of the system that grows animals for slaughter. When that ignorance is interrupted with a bit of information about the meat industry, we typically respond with outrage."

And then we build culture around it so that we hold onto it far longer than is practical.
The death of the American mall
"Dying shopping malls are speckled across the United States, often in middle-class suburbs wrestling with socioeconomic shifts. Some, like Rolling Acres, have already succumbed. Estimates on the share that might close or be repurposed in coming decades range from 15 to 50%. Americans are returning downtown; online shopping is taking a 6% bite out of brick-and-mortar sales; and to many iPhone-clutching, city-dwelling and frequently jobless young people, the culture that spawned satire like Mallrats seems increasingly dated, even cartoonish."

Finally, we do everything we can to try to hold onto it, even when it has never made economic sense. (Although, I will say that two of the points of the article: that there might be a way to produce energy without the damaging waste component, and that nuclear energy has to handle almost all of its waste products...they both have merit.  **Most, because they do not have to restore mined areas to pre-mining condition, and they do not have to account for the impact of the waste heat.**)
Is nuclear power ever coming back?
"According to those in the business of generating nuclear energy, other power producers should have to pay full price for the risks associated with their waste products. The way they see it, they’ve made their plants safer by prohibiting the release of critical, planet-damaging byproducts, and others should too."

I find it heartening when simple, time-tested mechanisms provide a path to a healthier future.  We need more electricity cooperatives and clean energy "building and loan" models to expedite the move to clean, community-based energy systems.  We have the knowledge, the technology, and now the economic incentive.  The only obstacle now are well-funded, obsolete industries.
Buying into solar power, no roof required
"The shared approach has its roots in rural electric cooperatives, said Elaine Ulrich of the Department of Energy’s SunShot program, but has only begun to take off in recent years, and still accounts for a tiny fraction of solar production. There are at least 52 projects in at least 17 states, and at least 10 states are encouraging their development through policy and programs, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the main trade group."

Happy Friday!

Friday Five: May 9, 2014

The recent National Climate Assessment contains warnings not of impending issues, but rather concerns that some of the major causes of climate change are already upon us.
Climate change is already causing asthma. Cancer too.
"The National Climate Assessment, which hundreds of scientists helped put together, warns that the effects of global warming aren’t some far-off possibility. They are happening right now, here in the U.S. Those effects include all the familiar problems: drought, wildfires, extreme weather, and sea level rise. But they include something else: Threats to public health."

In addition to the direct health concerns, we will have to adjust the way and location in which we grow the crops that underpin our sustenance and our economy.
Our alarming food future explained in 7 charts
"Richard Cruse, an agronomist and the director of Iowa State University’s Iowa Water Center, has found Iowa’s soils are currently disappearing at a rate as much as 16 times faster than the natural regeneration. According to the National Assessment, days of heavy rain have increased steadily in Iowa over the past two decades, and will continue doing so."

We continue to learn that nuclear and natural gas are not the "bridging fuels" we once thought them to be, and that we would find a more cost-effective plan would focus only on efficiency and renewables.
The rising cost of decommissioning a nuclear power plant
"The Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Rowe, Massachusetts, took 15 years to decommission—or five times longer than was needed to build it. And decommissioning the plant—constructed early in the 1960s for $39 million—cost $608 million. The plant’s spent fuel rods are still stored in a facility on-site, because there is no permanent disposal repository to put them in. To monitor them and make sure the material does not fall into the hands of terrorists or spill into the nearby river costs $8 million per year. That cost will continue for an unknown number of years. David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that even without the ongoing costs of monitoring and security, the average reactor now costs about $500 million to deactivate."

New technology can offer a potential way to mitigate some of the water issues we face due both to climate change and to inherent challenges due to consumption.
UCLA researchers unveil a better way to treat brackish water
"The system treats water at a cost of about $1.50 per 1,000 liters, said Cohen, who has installed desalination technology on U.S. military vessels. By way of comparison, bottled water costs about $1 to $3 per liter."

In the information economy, we no longer need to hold onto outdated and extractive business models, but can use information to link local businesses in a way that taps into the power of aggregated risk management while preserving the personal relationships that truly define a society.
The socio-economic power of renewable energy production cooperatives in Germany
"Energy cooperatives have turned into important supporters of renewable and decentralised energy structures, due to their strong growth since the year 2006, their participation in local renewable energy projects and their democratic awareness. The cooperative form of coordinating local renewable energy projects applies to a decentralised energy system that is managed by many smaller firms - a system concept that is preferred by the majority of German citizens. However, there is not enough knowledge to understand to what extent this organisational form is able to unify a broad group of actors in promoting a renewable energy system (societal power) and to gather capital for elaborating renewable energy supply structures (economic power)."

Happy Friday!