Author: Organikos

Hydropower In The Age Of Climate Change

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A dry section of the Guavio Reservoir that feeds the Guavio Hydroelectric Power Plant in Gachala, Colombia, in April. Jhojan Hilarion/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

We knew that dams’ days are numbered, but the evidence keeps mounting:

When Hydropower Runs Dry

The struggle of the world’s largest source of renewable last year could have important implications for the fight against climate change.

Global pollution from electricity generation was set to fall last year, thanks to the growth of renewable energy. Then came the droughts.

Hydropower, the biggest source of renewable energy in the world, was crippled by lack of rain in several countries last year, driving up emissions as countries turned to fossil fuels to fill the gap. Continue reading →

Doom-Scrolling With Rigor

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Students in a course at the University of Chicago sorted through the future that they will inherit. Illustration by Ben Denzer

Gags and wonders abound. But now, enough diversionary fun, back to the tough stuff. Thanks to Rivka Galchen, writing in the current issue of The New Yorker, follow along and ponder all the major threats, with rigorous reasoning, in the classroom:

Are We Doomed? Here’s How to Think About It

Climate change, artificial intelligence, nuclear annihilation, biological warfare—the field of existential risk is a way to reason through the dizzying, terrifying headlines.

In January, the computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton gave a lecture to Are We Doomed?, a course at the University of Chicago. He spoke via Zoom about whether artificial intelligence poses an existential threat. He was cheerful and expansive and apparently certain that everything was going to go terribly wrong, and soon. “I timed my life perfectly,” Hinton, who is seventy-six, told the class. “I was born just after the end of the Second World War. I was a teen-ager before there was aids. And now I’m going to die before the end.” Continue reading →

Garden Conservancy’s Open Days

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One of “the marquee gardens” welcoming the public during the Garden Conservancy Open Days belongs to the interior designer Bunny Williams, in Falls Village, Conn. Courtesy of Bunny Williams

Eleanor Briggs’s garden in New Hampshire, designed some 30 years ago by the landscape architect Diane McGuire, includes long borders that offer places for new must-have plants. Eleanor Briggs

Margaret Roach, a wealth of information on gardens, offers another option to salve the doom-scrolling. She provides this link to get more information on the Garden Conservancy’s open days:

Your Chance to Snoop: It’s ‘Open Days’ Season in the Garden

This year, more than 360 private gardens across the country are opening to visitors. Don’t miss your chance to learn from some of the best.

Ms. Briggs has opened her garden at Skatutakee Farm, her updated 18th-century home, numerous times since 2005. The next tour date is Aug. 24. Eleanor Briggs

I was at my station, a folding table dressed up with a burlap cloth, checking in visitors at a Garden Conservancy Open Days event maybe 10 years ago and answering questions from those who had already explored my garden, when I saw someone across the yard taking a photograph.

But of what, I wondered — what’s over there? There was nothing in that spot, I felt certain. Continue reading →

Worthy Weekly Workout

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This platform is for sharing stories that can inspire readers to take care of things worth caring about. Unfortunately, doom  comes with the territory because we are not as good at taking care of as we are at caring. Lawrence Wood offers a respite from the doom in the book to the left, excerpted below in the Atlantic. It is a reminder of one of the many options to work out that doom on a regular basis. In his case (followed by some in our own family), it is this caption contest.

Try this weekly workout yourself, or just read about how best to approach it:

How I Became the Ken Jennings of the New Yorker Caption Contest

I hold the competition’s all-time record. And I might have some insight into how you can beat me at my own game.

When my twin daughters were 10, they created an animated slideshow depicting scenes from our life. One slide showed a cartoon version of me happily daydreaming on the toilet with my pants around my ankles. Above my head they put a thought bubble that read, “New Yorker, New Yorker, New Yorker.” Continue reading →

More Youth Demanding Liveable Futures

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portion of the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska in 2023. The project would involve construction of a liquefaction plant to prepare the gas for export to Asia. Photograph: Richard Ellis/Alamy

Our appreciation to Dharna Noor for writing a clear story about this new legal initiative, and to the Guardian for publishing it. What started in Montana, a naturally well-endowed state with a mixed environmental record, now continues in Alaska, the biggest frontier of the American West. Our thanks to the younger generation for taking up the fight creatively:

Young Alaskans sue state over fossil fuel project they claim violates their rights

Plaintiffs claim $38.7bn gas export project, which would triple state’s greenhouse gas emissions, infringes constitutional rights

Eight young people are suing the government of Alaska – the nation’s fastest-warming state – claiming a major new fossil fuel project violates their state constitutional rights. Continue reading →

Upgrading Electrical Power Lines

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High voltage power transmission lines near Underwood, N.D. Installing new wires on the high-voltage lines that already carry power hundreds of miles across America could double the amount of power those lines carry. (Dan Koeck for The Washington Post)

Shannon Osaka, writing in The Washington Post, offers an unglamorous but effective-sounding story about the role that electrical transmission lines may play in upgrading our energy infrastructure:

How a simple fix could double the size of the U.S. electricity grid

Rewiring miles of power lines could make space for data centers, AI and a boom in renewables.

High voltage power lines run through a substation along the electrical power grid in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The grid is strained by increasing demand from electricity-hungry data centers and electric vehicles, as well as extreme weather events. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

There is one big thing holding the United States back from a pollution-free electricity grid running on wind, solar and battery power: not enough power lines.

As developers rush to install wind farms and solar plants to power data centers, artificial intelligence systems and electric vehicles, the nation’s sagging, out-of-date power lines are being overwhelmed — slowing the transition to clean energy and the fight against climate change. Continue reading →

Tiny Creatures Also Need Climate Stability

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Scientists have identified about 9,000 species of springtails, but that number might represent just a fraction of their global species richness. Frank Ashwood

We have shared articles about the type of small creatures that we rarely think about, but which may be important to the wellbeing of the planet. Sofia Quaglia, an award-winning freelance science journalist (new to us), has written this story for the New York Times with exceptional photos by Frank Asherood:

Life in the Dirt Is Hard. And Climate Change Isn’t Helping.

Heat and drought are taking a toll on the tiny soil creatures that help to lock away planet-warming carbon, according to a new analysis.

They’re dirt-dwelling invertebrates, but, in a sense, they’re the real backbone of Earth’s carbon cycle.

Thousands of species of mites and springtails, living in soil all around the world, provide a crucial service by munching organic matter like fallen leaves and wood, transferring its planet-warming carbon into the ground and releasing nutrients that help new plants grow. Continue reading →

Implementing The Inflation Reduction Act

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A windmill getting tangled by an electrical cord

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic

We celebrate when a law is passed that moves the USA in the right direction, but the biggest  such law ever still is in the process of implementation. So, creativity and vigilance are still key ingredients to making the best of the law:

The Next Front in the War Against Climate Change

Clean-energy investment in America is off the charts—but it still isn’t translating into enough electricity that people can actually use.

On august 2022, the U.S. passed the most ambitious climate legislation of any country, ever. As the director of President Joe Biden’s National Economic Council at the time, I helped design the law. Continue reading →

Making Good Trouble In India

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Another of this year’s trouble-making prize-winners:

Meet Alok Shukla

Alok Shukla led a successful community campaign that saved 445,000 acres of biodiversity-rich forests from 21 planned coal mines in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. In July 2022, the government canceled the 21 proposed coal mines in Hasdeo Aranya, whose pristine forests—popularly known as the lungs of Chhattisgarh—are one of the largest intact forest areas in India. Continue reading →

Shrimp Transparency

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Shrimp and transparent shrimp shells sitting on a white surface.We link to the work of Erik Vance for its clarity and utility:

Americans love their prawns. So how healthy are they — for us and for the planet?

Americans aren’t particularly enthusiastic about seafood. We eat less than half of what a Japanese or Indonesian person does. Less than a third of the average Icelander. But there is one big exception: shrimp. Continue reading →

Vermont Vote Victory

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Flooding in downtown Montpelier, Vermont, in July, 2023.Photograph by John Tully / Washington Post / Getty

When you read to the end of this short commentary, you will wonder whether this is a victory at all, but when Elizabeth Kolbert says it is, it probably is. It just requires more pondering to understand how it is:

Vermont Moves to Hold Fossil-Fuel Companies Liable for Climate-Change Damage

A new constituency is willing to stand up to Big Oil (and Gas and Coal): state government.

On July 10, 2023, Vermont’s state capital, Montpelier, was hit with more than five inches of rain. Continue reading →

Nature’s Ghosts, Author’s Viewpoint

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Thanks to Sophie Yeo, editor of Inkcap Journal and the author of this book to the right, for sharing that book’s key insights in essay form in the Guardian:

Nature’s ghosts: how reviving medieval farming offers wildlife an unexpected haven

Agriculture is often seen as the enemy of biodiversity, but in an excerpt from her new book Sophie Yeo explains how techniques from the middle ages allow plants and animals to flourish

The Vile, a medieval strip field system below Rhossili village, Gower, Wales. Photograph: Wales/Alamy

The Vile clings on to the edge of the Gower peninsula. Its fields are lined up like strips of carpet, together leading to the edge of the cliff that drops into the sea. Each one is tiny, around 1-2 acres. From the sky, they look like airport runways, although this comparison would have seemed nonsensical to those who tended them for most of their existence.

A field of lavender on the Vile above Fall bay, Rhossili, planted in summer 2019 to encourage pollinating insects. Photograph: Holden Wildlife/Alamy

That is because the Vile is special: a working example of how much of Britain would have been farmed during the middle ages. Farmers have most likely been trying to tame this promontory since before the Norman conquest.

The fields have retained their old names, speaking to a long history of struggle against the soil. Stoneyland. Sandyland. Bramble Bush. Mounds of soil known as “baulks” separate one strip from the next. Continue reading →

Idrees Kahloon On Daniel Susskind On Growth

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Idrees Kahloon is an excellent discussant on the Economist podcast, and reviews Daniel Susskind’s new book in the current issue of the New Yorker:

Capitalism, as it has been practiced throughout the past century, has brought with it plenty of problems; as with any engine, harnessing it properly requires controlling it properly.Illustration by Carl Godfrey; Source photographs from Alamy; Getty

The World Keeps Getting Richer. Some People Are Worried

To preserve humanity—and the planet—should we give up growth?

In April, 1968, a consequential meeting took place in the Villa Farnesina, a stately Roman home built for Pope Julius II’s treasurer and adorned with frescoes by Raphael. The conveners were Alexander King, a Scottish chemist who directed scientific affairs for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Aurelio Peccei, an Italian industrialist who simultaneously held executive positions at the automaker Fiat, the typewriter manufacturer Olivetti, and a large consulting firm. Continue reading →

Genetically Modified Rice

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A scientists compares vitamin-A enriched Golden Rice and ordinary rice in Manila, the Philippines. Photograph: Erik de Castro/Reuters

Our thanks to Robin McKie, the Guardian’s science editor, for this news:

‘A catastrophe’: Greenpeace blocks planting of ‘lifesaving’ Golden Rice

Thousands of children could die after court backs campaign group over GM crop in Philippines, scientists warn

Scientists have warned that a court decision to block the growing of the genetically modified (GM) crop Golden Rice in the Philippines could have catastrophic consequences. Tens of thousands of children could die in the wake of the ruling, they argue. Continue reading →

Mountaineering Books Worthy Of Your Time

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photograph: tashi tsering/xinhua/eyevine

It goes without saying, for most non-mountaineers anyway, that Jon Krakauer is the master of this genre, but hear what the Economist has to say:

Five of the best books on climbing mountains

The books and a documentary that capture the pull of the peaks

Mountaineering has gone mainstream. What was once a pursuit for only the hardiest adventurers is now the extreme sport du jour. Take Mount Everest. In the four decades after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached the summit in 1953 an average of 12 people a year followed in their footsteps. Continue reading →

One Film, Two Decades Of Influence

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It has not been top of mind for any of us contributing to this platform, but Michael Svoboda, the Yale Climate Connections books editor, puts the influence of this film in perspective:

The enduring influence of “The Day After Tomorrow,” 20 years later 

The groundbreaking film popularized an extreme climate scenario. To what effect?

It has been 20 years since we first saw the paleo-climatologist Jack Hall, played by Dennis Quaid, standing at a railing overlooking a command center at NOAA and asking his colleagues the question that baffled them: “What about the North Atlantic Current?” Continue reading →

Cheaper, Faster, Better

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The author of this book was a presidential candidate in the USA briefly in what seems the distant past of just a few years ago. His publisher says this:

Renowned investor and climate champion Tom Steyer gives us a unique and unvarnished perspective on how we can all fight climate change—joyfully, knowledgeably, and even profitably—at a time of unparalleled consequence and opportunity.

Blurbs for the book include: Continue reading →

Sailing Circa 2024

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photograph: getty images

Continuing the theme of new sailing technology, our thanks to the Economist:

A new age of sail begins

By harnessing wind power, high-tech sails can help cut marine pollution

In 1926 an unusual vessel arrived in New York after crossing the Atlantic. Continue reading →

Brutalist Plants, Reviewed

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Les Étoiles d’Ivry, Paris, France. Architect: Jean Renaudie (Image credit: pp1 / Shuterstock)

Olivia Broome’s new book is reviewed in Wallpaper:

‘Brutalist Plants’ is a new monograph capturing the best of eco-brutalism

‘Brutalist Plants,’ the new book by Olivia Broome, captures concrete architecture engulfed with nature

‘Brutalist Plants’ is a new book featuring an impressive selection of imagery that captures the very best of the trend of ‘eco-brutalism’. This texture-rich movement has been gathering attention recently, focusing on brutalist architecture that has been – to varying degrees – embraced by flora, as planting engulfs entire structures, creating a calming concrete jungle for urban living. Continue reading →

Really, 3M?

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Image may contain Cosmetics Medication and Pill

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized two historic regulations of forever chemicals, which are found in countless everyday products. Photo illustration by Philotheus Nisch for The New Yorker

There is nothing to enjoy in this article, but we appreciate the work of the journalist Sharon Lerner and her colleagues at the New Yorker and Pro Publica involved in bringing it to us:

How 3M Discovered, Then Concealed, the Dangers of Forever Chemicals

The company found its own toxic compounds in human blood—and kept selling them.

Kris Hansen had worked as a chemist at the 3M Corporation for about a year when her boss, an affable senior scientist named Jim Johnson, gave her a strange assignment. Continue reading →