Climate Change
“If we don’t have a healthy planet, we can’t have a healthy humanity.”
Kevin Johnson, CEO, Starbucks
Carbon dioxide hits record high despite pandemic
Even though the Covid pandemic throttled the global economy, dramatically reduced transportation, and limited any number of activities that require energy, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a new record high. According to a June 7, 2021, article in the Washington Post and numerous other publications, “turning the tide of climate change will take even more massive efforts over a much longer period of time.” “Fossil fuel burning is really at the heart of this. If we don’t tackle fossil fuel burning, the problem is not going to go away,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, adding that the world ultimately will have to make emissions cuts that are “much larger and sustained than anything that happened during the pandemic.”
Environmental issues slow industrial solar development
According to a June 4, 2021, story in the Wall Street Journal, efforts to develop industrial scale solar in desert areas have run into opposition from environmentalists who are also ardent supporters of solar. A current battleground is the 14-square-mile Battle Born Solar Project in California's Mojave Desert which would be the largest industrial solar project in the nation, the size of 7,000 football fields. Environmentalists say the project will destroy the land forever. “Their objections range from a desire to keep the land unspoiled to protection for endangered species to concerns that their views would no longer be as beautiful.”
Gates and Buffet to build nuclear reactor in Wyoming
Even while tensions rise between those who want to build industrial solar and rooftop solar advocates, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are planning to build a nuclear reactor in Wyoming. According to a June 2, 2021, story in The Guardian, TerraPower, founded by Gates, and PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, have joined to build the first Natrium nuclear reactor on the site of a retiring coal plant. The story says that “small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels to traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.” Experts have said the new technology is riskier than traditional reactors and more of a target for militants looking to create a crude nuclear weapon.
Will zinc batteries replace lithium-ion batteries?
According to a May 27, 2021, article in Science, promising work is underway to replace lithium-ion batteries with ones made of zinc. If historical issues with using zinc batteries can be overcome, the batteries will replace ones that require lithium, a rare metal, is expensive and must use a flammable electrolyte. Zinc is nontoxic, cheap and abundant. More than 1,000 papers on the issue have been published in the last year, an indication of the intensity of research on the technology.
Oil company becomes the largest offshore wind firm
As the world transitions from using fossil fuels for energy to renewables, it is inevitable that oil, natural gas and coal producers will either go out of business or transition to renewable firms. One company, the Danish Oil and Gas Company, has already made the switch. Once specializing in offshore oil production in the North Sea, it has now been renamed Orsted AS and become the world's largest developer of offshore wind energy,” according to a June 8, 2021, story in the Wall Street Journal. The story says it is one of “a handful of once-small energy companies that have grown after pivoting from fossil fuels to renewables, including Spain’s Iberdrola SA, Italy’s Enel SA and America’s NextEra Energy Inc.” Helping oil companies transition their capital assets from fossil fuels to renewables is a challenge that could reap huge climate rewards.
The U.S. west is exporting scarce water overseas via alfalfa
Even while the U.S. west plunges deeper into its 20-year period of drought, U.S. farmers are exporting scarce water supplies to China, Japan and Saudi Arabia through shipments of alfalfa. Alfalfa is the largest agricultural user of water in California. According to a June 6, 2021, story in Grist, as much as 17% of the U.S. alfalfa crop is shipped around the world. In addition, a Saudi Arabian firm called Almarai has purchased 1,700 acres of land in the Palo Verde Valley to secure a supply of alfalfa for its dairy cows. “Soon after,” Grift reports, “Saudi Arabia began phasing out domestic alfalfa production to preserve its water supplies, which were dwindling after years of overuse for agriculture … But the company is far from alone. Foreign corporations are increasingly purchasing land in the U.S.; in the Southwest, thanks to longstanding laws on water rights, these purchases often come with unlimited access to the valuable water underneath the soil.”
Himalayas predicted to lose two-thirds of ice by 2100
While the American west continues to struggle with a multi-decade period of drought that began in 1999, Asia’s Himalayan mountains are predicted to “lose up to two-thirds of its ice by 2100, causing water and food shortages for over two billion people in the downstream river basins of South and East Asia, according to a new report by the United Nations Development Program.