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)."
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