https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-economy-basically-big-gas-station-harvard-economist-2022-2

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Russia’s economy is “incredibly unimportant in the global economy except for oil and gas,” Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former advisor to President Barack Obama, told The New York Times.

“It’s basically a big gas station,” he said.

His comments come as the West prepares heavy sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine. While they have the potential to throw the Russian economy into chaos, these measures could also reverberate to further damage the US, Europe, and the rest of the world as they battle inflation and rising energy prices — a ripple effect that the West hopes to mitigate.

On Monday, Moscow declared the independence of two breakaway regions of Ukraine and sent troops there — escalating the prospect of a major war. President Joe Biden has already ordered sanctions on the separatist regions — Donetsk and Luhansk — prohibiting US citizens from engaging in any exports, imports, or new investments in these areas.

Despite Russia’s size and wealth in raw materials, its economy is more on par with Brazil than with nations like Germany, France, and the UK, according to the latest nominal GDP data from the World Bank. According to the World Bank, Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s and South Korea’s, two nations with less than half of Russia’s population.

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Go there and read. More next week when gas prices will be above $4.

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The post Russia Farts in Ukraine’s Face – This is what happens when a “gas station” goes to war appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-moms-who-are-battling-climate-change?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Three years ago, I had a baby. I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say that she is extremely cute, and I enjoy being her mother. A few months after her birth, I was scrolling on my phone, and I came across news of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It described a future world that will have experienced 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming. In this world, the oceans are acidifying, and most coral reefs have been bleached to death; hundreds of millions of people face severe drought, and even more face deadly heat waves. The kicker? This planet—the 1.5-degree-warmer one—was the best-case scenario. Scientists were using the report to argue that we should try to shoot for that. The Paris climate accord aims to limit the global-temperature increase to “below 2 degrees Celsius.” At present, both goals seem like a stretch. According to the U.N., all of the world’s current pledges would only cut carbon emissions by one per cent—a far cry from the nearly fifty per cent needed this decade in order to meet our goals. So, 1.5 degrees is coming. According to some researchers, we could get there around 2030, when my daughter will be entering middle school.

I did some further Googling: What will the world look like when she’s middle-aged? When her children are middle-aged? I found a Web site that lets you plot major events in your child’s life against the projected global-temperature increase. Even the “optimistic” scenarios show the world warming two degrees during her lifetime. The more realistic scenarios—the ones based on what countries are actually doing to reduce emissions, not what they’ve pledged—show it heating up to three degrees. There is a universe of difference between those numbers, but they are both awful, bringing rising seas, heat waves, food and water shortages, wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes, not to mention the loss of biodiversity. Naturally, this line of research prompted a nervous breakdown. I had always understood, intellectually, that climate change was an existential threat, but it was only after my daughter’s birth that it became real to me.

I’m not alone. According to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications, twenty-six per cent of Americans report feeling “alarmed” about climate change, up from less than half that number six years ago. About the same number of people describe themselves as “concerned”—which seems like the way you should feel about your child’s “Animal Crossing” addiction, not the fact that the Thwaites Glacier could slide into the ocean during his lifetime, flooding coastal cities.

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Go there and read. Join up. More next week.

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The post Mothers Against Climate Change – April Fools joke – or Serious Movement appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

As automakers promise to get rid of internal combustion engines, Heidelberg is trying to get rid of autos.

By Jack Ewing

• Published Feb. 28, 2021Updated March 3, 2021

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Go the read – once you catch your breath. More next week.

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The post Ban Cars! Ban Cars! Ban Cars! – We will try anyway appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

The post MERRY CHRISTMAS – And a happy New Year appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/how-biden-can-ensure-every-federal-agency-is-fighting-c-1845701534?utm_source=digg

How Biden Can Ensure Every Federal Agency Is Fighting Climate Change

President-elect Joe Biden has an unprecedented opportunity to walk the U.S.—and perhaps the world—back from the brink on climate change. After four years of harmful deregulation, his work is cut out for him.

But to truly address climate change will require more than simply repealing President Donald Trump’s rollbacks and maybe strengthening a few rules on power plant emissions before calling it a day. Because climate change is an everything problem, the entire and considerable weight of the federal government will need to be thrown into addressing it. Like rowing competition, the race to address climate change can only be won if everyone is pulling in the same direction.

This “all of government” response to the crisis at hand is the only way to ensure a shot at keeping the globe from heating up more than the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) goal outlined in the Paris Agreement, to say nothing of the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) target outlined in a landmark United Nations report. Over the next four years, Biden will have to center climate change at every agency, from the obvious ones like the Environmental Protection Agency to others like the Department of Education and Treasury.

Earther has pulled together ideas and actions federal agencies can take to address climate change, based on conversations with dozens of experts who know the federal government’s levers of power and how to pull them so that they’re all geared to lower emissions. The ideas below are not exhaustive nor do they include solutions that can be applied at all agencies such as installing climate advocates at all levels, using procurement to electrify the government vehicle fleet, and diversifying the workforce so that new problem solvers are welcomed into the fold. But they do represent some of the best ones out there for how to get the ship turned quickly.

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Go there and rejoice. More next week.

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The post The United States All IN On Climate Change – I never thought I would say that appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

The idea that small is better has always seemed to be suspect to me. Anyway, here is one take on the down side of a Tiny House. And yes, I still believe Small is Beautiful.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/tiny-houses-look-marvellous-but-have-a-dark-side-three-things-they-don-t-tell-you-on-marketing-blurb?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Tiny houses are everywhere. They’ve received heavy coverage in the media and there are millions of followers on dozens of pages on social media. While there is no census for these homes, they have seen a surge in popularity in the decade since the Great Recession – witness the prolific growth of tiny house manufacturers, for instance. Originating in the US, tiny homes have also been popping up across Canada, Australia and the UK.

Tiny houses are promoted as an answer to the affordable housing crisis; a desirable alternative to traditional homes and mortgages. Yet there are many complexities and contradictions that surround these tiny spaces, as I discovered when I began investigating them.

I have toured homes, attended tiny house festivals, stayed in a tiny house community and interviewed several dozen people who live inside them. My research took me throughout the US, from a converted accessory unit squeezed between two average size homes on Staten Island to a community in Florida full of cute and brightly coloured tiny structures – appropriately located just down the road from Disney World. Here are three things I unexpectedly discovered along the way.

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I am sure there are thousands of people that are happy with their Tiny Houses. Go there and read. More next week.

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The post Tiny Houses Do Not Equal Happiness – It takes a change of MIND to be HAPPY appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/8-facts-about-the-animals-of-chernobyl?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Three decades after the Chernobyl disaster—the world’s worst nuclear accident—signs of life are returning to the exclusion zone. Wild animals in Chernobyl are flourishing within the contaminated region; puppies roaming the area are capturing the hearts of thousands. Tourists who have watched the critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl are taking selfies with the ruins. Once thought to be forever uninhabitable, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a haven for flora and fauna that prove that life, as they say in Jurassic Park, finds a way.

1. The Animals of Chernobyl Survived Against All Odds

The effects of the radioactive explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986 devastated the environment. Around the plant and in the nearby city of Pripyat in Ukraine, the Chernobyl disaster’s radiation caused the leaves of thousands of trees to turn a rust color, giving a new name to the surrounding woods—the Red Forest. Workers eventually bulldozed and buried the radioactive trees. Squads of Soviet conscripts also were ordered to shoot any stray animals within the 1000-square-mile Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Though experts today believe parts of the zone will remain unsafe for humans for another 20,000 years, numerous animal and plant species not only survived, but thrived.

2. Bears and Wolves Outnumber Humans Around the Chernobyl Disaster Site

While humans are strictly prohibited from living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, many other species have settled there. Brown bears, wolves, lynx, bison, deer, moose, beavers, foxes, badgers, wild boar, raccoon dogs, and more than 200 species of birds have formed their own ecosystem within the Chernobyl disaster area. Along with the larger animals, a variety of amphibians, fish, worms, and bacteria makes the unpopulated environment their home.

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The post I Never Believed In Godzilla – You know radioactive monsters appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

What lifestyle changes will shrink your carbon footprint the most?

In the beginning, her modest goal seemed daunting, but she quickly discovered that the two simple activities nourished her physical and mental well-being. She wanted to do them every day. “It’s no longer for the carbon — it’s for the fact that I genuinely love riding my bike and walking my kids to school,” she says. And that made her wonder: What other steps was she thinking of as sacrifices that might actually enrich her life?

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The post We Can Make A Change – If we all pull together we can make big change appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/13/21132013/climate-change-children-kids-anti-natalism

Some say you shouldn’t have children in the era of climate change. Don’t buy it.

A growing contingent of young people are refusing to have kids — or are considering having fewer kids — because of climate change. Their voices have been growing louder over the past year. UK women set up a movement called BirthStrike, announcing that they won’t procreate until the world gets its act together on climate, and high-profile US figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez amplified the question of whether childbearing is still morally acceptable.

One of the main worries cited by this contingent is that having a child will make climate change worse. Their logic is that anytime you have a kid you’re doing something bad for the planet. You’re adding yet another person who’ll cause more carbon emissions, plus their children, plus their grandchildren … and so on, in a never-ending cascade of procreative shame.

Driving this logic are studies claiming to show that having a child leads to a gargantuan amount of carbon emissions — way, way more than the emissions generated by other lifestyle choices, like driving a car or eating meat. Media reports have trumpeted the takeaway that if you want to fight climate change, having fewer children is far and away the best thing you can do.

But that’s just not true, according to a new report by Founders Pledge, an organization that guides entrepreneurs committed to donating a portion of their proceeds to effective charities.

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The post I Am Not Having Kids – Some people get way to carried away with environment issues appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

https://www.propublica.org/series/polluters-paradise

How Oil Companies Avoided Environmental Accountability After 10.8 Million Gallons Spilled

Louisiana still hasn’t finished investigating 540 oil spills after Hurricane Katrina. The state is likely leaving millions of dollars in remediation fines on the table — money that environmental groups say they need as storms get stronger.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, while stranded New Orleanians flagged down helicopters from rooftops and hospitals desperately triaged patients, crude oil silently gushed from damaged drilling rigs and storage tanks.

Given the human misery set into motion by Katrina, the harm these spills caused to the environment drew little attention. But it was substantial.

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Go there and read at least 15 articles. More next week.

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The post Louisiana Is Drowning In Toxic Pollution – Propublica chronicles it all appeared first on Community Energy Systems.