Yes! Society, People, Civic! One of the ESGs.
Things we can do, NOW, to phase them out.
– Grass Roots Efforts
Hard to talk to China. So let’s talk to USA! ………………….and Europe
This blog, wasterush.info, looks for the encouraging things that we humans can do to harmonize with planet Earth. The problem that stands out and never seems to stop is fossil fuel. Here too, there are ways to work on phasing them out. Now!
in this post
- Adaption OR Solution?
- Solutions rather than adapting?
- Your neighbors are talking about climate change…..
- Solutions, Solutions to the Phase out of fossil fuels:
- Kicking oil companies out of schools
- Fossil Fuel Phaseout – From Below – Grass Roots Efforts
- How shareholders are pushing big banks for climate action
- Why I’m Capping a Leaking Gas Well for My Birthday!
- Playing My Part
- These Groups Want Disruptive Climate Protests. Oil Heirs Are Funding Them.
- The FT Climate Game …….. for investors
- Waste to Energy posts
Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash
Internal climate Refugees
The Biggest Refugee Crisis Yet. Not Conflict, not Politics, not Race or Religion.
CLIMATE is going to move the most people.
Think about the huge migrations of people caused by failing crops and extreme weather. For now we will overlook the climate refugees that are trying to get into the USA.
Let’s look at the Climate refugees IN the USA.
“Internal displacement”
Build Back? In an area that could burn again?
Adaption OR solution?
A whole community?????
Rising Risks to Real Estate? how to adapt
How will climate change affect your home?
Get an instant risk assessment
Climate Change Made Tangible
We empower property buyers, owners, and brokers by exposing and quantifying the risks related to the climate crisis through our proprietary risk assessment and report. ClimateCheck gives you a crystal-clear picture of climate risk in the United States.
We take complex climate data and boil it down to an actionable 1-100 score for heat, storm, fire, drought, and flood hazards. 1 means you are exposed to relatively low risk. 100 means extreme risk.
- Overall Risk
A 0-100 rating based on your home’s future risk of climate change-related hazards compared to other homes in the United States. - Heat Risk
We estimate heat risk based on the typical number of extremely hot days that you can expect in the future. - Fire Risk
Your fire risk is based on projections for the average proportion of the area surrounding your home that will burn annually.
- Storm Risk
Climate models project that both the frequency and amount of precipitation are likely to increase throughout most of the US. - Drought Risk
We estimate drought risk based on water supply stress, which measures how much of the available water in a location is used by human activity. - Flood Risk
Your flood risk rating is a combination of the risk from several causes of flooding: coastal (storm surge and sea level rise), flooding from bodies of water overflowing, and surface water floods.
People are moving to this Midwest city for one particular reason, Apr 14, 2021
Solutions rather than adapting?
Things we can do, NOW, to phase out Fossil Fuel.
– Grass Roots Efforts
Mar 18, 2022 In the face of the emerging global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the IEA’s 10-Point Plan to Cut Oil Use proposes 10 actions that can be taken to reduce oil demand by 2.7 million barrels a day and if started immediately, could make a big change already in the next 4 months, with immediate impact – and provides recommendations for how those actions can help pave the way to putting oil demand onto a more sustainable path in the longer term.
Help inform your Neighbors!
Here’s a secret about your
neighbors talking
about climate change…..
July 2022 -...So everyone is having a lot of conversations about climate change, right?
Probably not, in fact. According to a recent survey by researchers at Yale, only 35 percent of Americans say they talk about global warming occasionally. This newsletter is going to explain why that is, and how you can talk about it effectively. …
…a lot of climate-minded people don’t realize that they’re in the majority. Surveys in the United States, China and Australia show that people tend to underestimate how many of their peers accept the reality of climate change.
People in Indiana, a moderately conservative state, for instance, estimated in a recent survey that only about 60 percent of their neighbors accepted the basic facts about global warming. In fact, after the survey they found, the true number was around 80 percent. …
…Nathaniel Geiger, a professor at the Indiana University institute cited a 2019 study in the journal Environment and Behavior that said people who know their friends and family care about climate change are more likely to support policies that address the problem.
So, don’t be afraid to talk about it. According the research, it could make a big difference.
Sir David Attenborough, UN Champion of the Earth – Lifetime Achievement
How Can we Save OUR Planet?
The plan FOR our planet is remarkably simple. Reduce our impact by making sure that everything we do, we can do forever!
“For the biggest gains we could concentrate our efforts on four goals:
>Phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with renewables. This will not only slow [or stop] the warming of the planet and the acidification of the ocean, but it will lead to clean air for all of us.
>Upgrading to efficient food production and reducing our consumption of meat will require far less space to provide for ourselves leaving more for grasslands, reducing deforestation and our demand for fresh water and feeding more people with healthier more affordable food.
>Working together to properly manage our ocean a global network of no fishing zones and a treaty on the use of international waters would restore the health of the ocean so it actually produces more fish for us all to eat.
>Working hard to keep hold of the wild populations we still have encouraging nature wherever we can in the ocean on land we no longer need and even in our cities.
If we make these changes we’ll be a long way to becoming a species in balance with nature once again. We will have taken a remarkable journey from a million people struggling to survive to several billion living long healthy lives on a stable planet able to provide for all our needs. Only at that point will the Anthropocene: the age of humans, be truly underway. At that point we will be proud to call it “our planet”. How do we create a future in which both people and nature can thrive? We open our eyes to this moment in history. Think on a planetary scale! Embrace the challenge we face and do something we humans are very good at, Change the World!“
Sir David Attenborough
Solutions, Solutions to the Phase out of fossil fuels:
Kicking oil companies out of schools
Over the past decade, students around the world have successfully pressed many universities to sell off their fossil fuel investments.
Faculty and senior staff at the University of Cambridge are poised to vote on a measure that would require the university to stop accepting funding from coal, oil and gas companies. It would be the first leading university to do so, and a vote could happen as early as this autumn. …
…More than half of universities in Britain, and dozens in the United States, have committed to divesting their endowments from fossil fuel companies. Cambridge did that in 2020, saying that the move demonstrated its “determination to seek solutions to the climate crisis
Building on that success, activists are NOW turning their focus to the millions of dollars that universities accept from the oil and gas industry for research, sponsorships and collaborations. Those donations allow companies to greenwash their images, activists say, by appropriating prestige and environmental credentials even as they continue to invest billions in new fossil fuel projects that scientists say are heating the planet to dangerous levels. [from:https://www.baystpost.com/world-news/climate/kicking-oil-companies-out-of-school/]
Fossil Fuel Phaseout–From Below Grass Roots Efforts
Strike!: Jeremy Brecher’s Corner
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder, The Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS)
March 2022 …People and governments all over the country are taking steps on their own to cut down the extraction of coal, oil, and gas. …
While the US government and corporations are failing to effectively reduce the mining and drilling of fossil fuels, hundreds of efforts at a sub-national level are already cutting their extraction. Of the 19,500 total cities, towns, villages and boroughs across the USA, 50 US cities are already powered entirely by clean and renewable sources of energy. 180 US cities are committed to 100% clean energy. According to a report by the Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change International, Indigenous resistance has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one-quarter of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions. Such reductions are an essential part of a widespread but little-recognized movement we have dubbed the “Green New Deal from Below.” …
…While national and global action will be necessary to phase out fossil fuels completely, in their absence action from below is forming the tip of the climate protection spear.
In California, 2.2 million people live within half a mile of an oil or gas well; another 5 million live within one mile. More than 60% of the 25,000 drilling permits issued by the state between 2015 and 2020 were in majority-Latino communities.
And a Child Shall Lead Them
One of these inspiring stories is that of Nalleli Cobo, a teenage activist who developed asthma and heart palpitations due to oil facilities in her neighborhood and decided to take a stand.
At the age of nine Nalleli Cobo began getting unexplained nosebleeds, stomach cramps, nausea, headaches, and body spasms. Community-based non-professional researchers, backed by a team of toxicologists from Physicians for Social Responsibility, identified the source of the problems as an oil well 30 feet from the family home.
Toxic Neighbors: Taking Action to Solve the [fossil fuel] Climate Crisis
250 medical and health professions in Los Angeles are publicly demanding that the city end its neighbourhood oil drilling. They are calling on the city to impose a 2,500 foot human health and safety offer between oil wells and homes, that would benefit [safeguard the health of] over 325,000 angelenos. Despite the tireless efforts of the community, Allenco is working to resume drilling.
… In 2015, Nalleli Cobo, now a teenager, helped form the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition in Los Angeles. With other organizations it sued the city of Los Angeles for rubber-stamping oil projects in communities of color. As a result, the city adopted new environmental requirements. The oil industry countersued but lost.
The campaign against oil and gas wells near residential areas has continued to burgeon. In September 2021, the Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously to phase out oil and gas drilling and ban new extraction sites in unincorporated areas of the county. In late January, 2022 the LA City Council voted to phase out oil and gas extraction in the city.
The LA ordinance bans new drilling entirely. It orders an evaluation of how to shut down operating wells across the city. It orders city departments to draft a new policy to ensure the proper plugging and site remediation of closed wells. And it initiates an analysis of economic and job impacts of the shutdown and how to transition oil industry workers to clean energy jobs. City Council President Nury Martinez also introduced a motion to create a new city office to support workers as they transition out of jobs affected by new technology, including those in the oil and gas industry. She said the city can’t “correct the sins of environmental racism” by “taking away jobs from working-class communities.”
Shut it down!
Since 2010, our movement has led to more than half of the coal plants in the United States to retire or commit to retire.
In 2010 the US had 530 active coal-fired power plants. Hundreds of local campaigns, backed by the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, have led to the completed and planned closing of 353 of them. For example, on December 14, 2021 Ameren Missouri announced its intent to retire its Rush Island coal plant no later than March 2024. Ameren Missouri previously planned to retire Rush Island in 2039, but accelerated the shutdown following Clean Air Act violations and a court order to add modern pollution controls. And the owners of a coal plant in Rockport, Indiana just announced that it will be fully retired by 2028. 177 US coal-fired power plants remain in operation.
The Europe Beyond Coal campaign was established in July 2017, with the goal of ensuring coal is phased out throughout Europe by 2030 at the latest.
Keep it in the Ground
In 2021 the International Energy Agency, the leading advisor to governments on energy policy, reversed its long-established approach and stated that, in order to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C limit for global warming, nations would need to immediately stop approving new oil projects. In short, fossil fuels in the ground need to stay there.
Stop the Money Pipeline
In 2010, a group of college students asked their colleges to divest from coal. Soon universities, foundations, and faith-based organizations were divesting not only from coal but from all fossil fuels. From colleges the movement spread to new sectors, including large insurers, pension funds, philanthropic organizations, and banking institutions. By the end of 2016, institutions and individuals with assets over $5 trillion were divesting from fossil fuels. By 2017, 43 U.S cities and states had committed to some form of divestment from fossil fuels, largely through public employee pension funds. …
By October 2021, a total of 1,485 institutions representing $39.2 trillion in assets worldwide had begun or committed to a divestment from fossil fuels.
This is the solution! These actions will not only help people stay in their homes and not become Climate Refugees in the USA, but because the US is one of the biggest emitters, it will also start to help everyone else stay in their homes.
Let’s see more Americans and Canadians getting on the Fossil Fuel Phaseout.
Such as through the Banks:
How shareholders are pushing big banks for climate action
May 2022…Those far-off dates sometimes don’t feel urgent. But at the Citigroup meeting this year the debate got personal when John Harrington, the investor whose firm presented the proposal to cut financing of fossil fuel immediately, got his chance to speak.
He told his fellow shareholders how a wildfire had burned down his home of 30 years in Napa Valley. It came with no warning, he said, and he and his wife barely escaped alive, “driving through fire and smoke” until reaching safety. “This story has been repeated in many parts of the world,” Harrington said. “It is our future thanks to climate change and our banks’ continuing to finance fossil fuels.”
A few questions about the proposal followed before Jane Fraser, the Citigroup chief executive, responded. She said that the company agreed that emissions must be reduced and added that the war in Ukraine had highlighted the need for a faster transition to renewable energy. [But???]
Why I’m Capping a Leaking Gas Well for My Birthday!
I recently turned 70 years old! As my big day approached, I started thinking about what a milestone it was. As a longtime climate activist, I realized I wanted to do something symbolic of my life’s work, and something concrete enough to have actual results. …
… I suddenly had one of those Eureka! moments.
I called Well Done’s founder Curtis Shuck and asked him what it would take to cap a well for my birthday. He loved the idea and said “All” it would take is…$30,000 (boo). That’s what it costs to pay for the equipment needed to survey a gas well site, fill it with cement, put an actual cap on it, and start to restore the land around it. “Can you raise the money?” he asked. And I said “ABSOLUTELY…as long as my friends and family skip the presents and birthday cake and contribute to The Well Done Foundation instead.” “You’d ask them to do that?” Curtis wondered. “I would,” I replied. And I did, with gratifying results. In just a few weeks, more than 45 people contributed over $16,000 to cap a leaking methane well that Curtis identified in Northern Pennsylvania.
- One friend said, “This is a great actionable solution…So glad to learn about it and to help spread the word.”
- Others noted that they thought it was the perfect way to compensate for their own carbon footprint, since on average each of us adds 20 tons of carbon to the atmosphere every single year.
- “I love this concept!” emailed a friend from an airport runway in New York. “I’ll make an offset donation to offset my flying guilt….(sitting on a plane now).”
- And noted a dear family member, “Here’s to your next decade – and may it be the one when we begin to reverse climate change!” Mom’s Clean Air Force – Fracking/Methane News https://biggreenpurse.com/
How to save money, reduce reliance on Russian energy, support Ukraine and help the planet…………….
Playing my part
By following all these recommendations, a typical household in the European Union could reduce, on average, its energy bill by more than EUR 450 a year. If all EU citizens were to follow the recommendations below at home and in their workplace, it would save 220 million barrels of oil a year, which is enough to fill 120 supertankers, and around 17 billion cubic metres of gas, which is enough to heat almost 20 million homes. Citizens have the power to immediately cut their energy use and reduce their fuel bills
This report is the result of a collaboration between the European Commission and the International Energy Agency to raise European citizens’ awareness of the benefits of energy savings and the importance of putting energy efficiency at the heart of planning and investments.
These Groups Want Disruptive Climate Protests.
Oil Heirs Are Funding Them.
August 2022 – They’ve taken hammers to gas pumps and glued themselves to museum masterpieces and busy roadways. They’ve chained themselves to banks, rushed onto a GrandPrix racetrack and tethered themselves to goal posts as tens of thousands of British soccer fans jeered.
The activists who undertook these worldwide acts of disruption during the last year said that they were desperate to convey the urgency of the climate crisis and that the most effective way to do so was in public, blockading oil terminals and upsetting normal activities.
They also share a surprising financial lifeline: heirs to two American families that became fabulously rich from oil.
Two relatively new nonprofit organizations, which the oil scions helped found, are funding dozens of protest groups dedicated to interrupting business as usual through civil disobedience, mostly in the United States, Canada and Europe. … …For some activists, civil disobedience has proved to be unexpectedly gratifying.
Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist who works for NASA, said he had spent 16 years trying to compel corporate executives, government leaders and the public to act on the climate emergency. [to no avail.]
In April, Mr. Kalmus was one of roughly 1,000 scientists in 25 countries who blocked traffic and chained themselves to, among other targets, the gates of the White House and doors of bank branches as part of the Scientist Rebellion. The participants weren’t paid, but the group received $100,000 from the Climate Emergency Fund for organizer and consultant wages, space rental and travel costs.
Afterward, Dr. Kalmus — who noted he was not speaking for NASA — said feedback had poured in from around the world saying that he had made a difference and had left people inspired. “I get messages every day from people who said it had given them hope,” Dr. Kalmus said. “It seemed to communicate that urgency far more than anything else.”
The FT Climate Game …….. for investors
byJEREMY WILLIAMS April 22, 2022
Allow me to ruin your Friday productivity by pointing you towards a climate quiz game created by the Financial Times [for investors]. Your task is to get to net zero by 2050, and the game presents you with a series of choices. Select the policies that will cut emissions, set targets, invest in technologies, and see what the global temperature is by 2050. …
…“The FT wanted to bring to life a process that can often seem abstract and dizzyingly complex” say the designers. “It requires changes in every sector of the economy, as well as in the way we live.” Putting it into a game structure presents quite a lot of information, and a sense of the trade-offs involved, in an engaging way.
We have all read the lists of what we can do.
Here is the list with some links to actually do it. Just Do It!
- switch to renewable energy: https://www.inspirecleanenergy.com/ Learn how it works and/or Inspire Clean Energy will check your availability and build a custom offer for you. There are many websites that do this….
- stop buying and using plastic bottles. take a reusable cup to coffee shops.
- same goes for plastic bags or do something we them – Look what Gomi does
- go vegan. (if that’s too hard, go vegan for a few days each week. sounds dumb but makes a massive difference.)
- save electricity. (turn lights off when you leave the room. don’t leave your phone on charge overnight. turn plugs off at the switches AND take the plugs out.) https://www.constellation.com/energy-101.html <<< another company with plans to take you to renewables.
- save water. take shorter showers. wash dishes manually instead of using a dishwasher. (unless of course, your dishwasher is new and more efficient than washing hands manually)
- take public transport / walk more / bike / do car shares. does your transportation app cover all of this?
- don’t waste food. start a compost bin if you can – it reduces waste at landfills and gives you good soil
- maybe try growing your own fruit/vegetables. or – get your produce from a farmer’s market. #5 Dry Toilet Sanitation Systems For Our Growing Population for compost!
- boycott unethical companies. your buy is your vote
- plant a tree 🙂 switch to Ecosia – Plant trees while you search the web.
- maybe the most important: USE YOUR VOICE!!! try and influence the people you know, sign petitions, write to your local mp, whatever you can do to make a difference. people really underestimate what their voice can do. even if you manage to persuade your friend to stop buying plastic water bottles or stop driving their car to a shop 5 minutes away, it makes a MASSIVE difference. YOUR UNDERSTANDING, YOUR VOICE, YOUR ACTION, YOUR BUY IS YOUR VOTE!
Tens of millions of people could be displaced by climate change by the end of this century. Climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer explains why that matters, why he supports the right to migrate, and what governments need to do to prepare.
“We should still always remember; people don’t want to move if they can help it. They’re mostly being forced to move under these circumstances by a bad climate situation, and what we should do is make it easier for them to stay, that means reducing the climate change and also making the situation where they are more bearable.”
phase out fossil fuel
help people stay home
Waste to Energy posts
Other posts on the subject of WASTE to Energy
Anaerobic Digestion In Full Swing – #1 Waste To Energy?
CNG, LNG, RNG Fuelling Stations – #2 Waste To Energy
#3 Municipal Solid Waste – MSW To BioFuel? Yes!
Finally In The Mood To Phase Out Fossil Fuel? Environment
Finally In The Mood To Phase Out Fossil Fuel? People-Civic
Finally In The Mood To Phase Out Fossil Fuel? – Governance
The “Relief” Of Phasing Out Fossil Fuel! …Now!
ALL Islands: Just Go Zero – NOW! – Like Tilos
We CAN Deal With The #1 Mistake: Fossil Fuel – Today
Look To Garbage Dump Sites For The Energy We Need! Sure Fire!
Other approaches to waste to energy in these posts
Useful Green WASTE Business Ideas That Scale To Any Size
Harvesting Waste Ideas. Waste Rushes? NOW!
Climate Retrofits On Land Or At Sea
Shipping’s Carbon Footprint And Your Small Business >> Your Vote
Industrial Zone – Closed-Loop Networking
Cellulosic Ethanol – One Of Many DSM Sustainability Projects
what needs to be cleaned
Too Much Methane !
The Greenhouse Gases List …..A Re-Review
cleaning up the mess
Can We, Are We Pulling In The Excess CO₂ ?
Fuel From Air? – Capture CO₂
Carbon Dioxide – Who Else Has Ideas To Pull It DOWN And OUT?
Urban Mining for clean energy
Urban Mining ! – More Important Than Ever
Critical Minerals & Rare Elements! ….. COLOSSAL WASTE RUSH