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#climate solutions
ecoamerica · 5 months
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Last call: It's the final week to apply for the American Climate Leadership Awards! Apply by Friday, December 15, at midnight PT!
Calling all climate leaders! 2024 marks 5 years of @ecoamerica’s American Climate Leadership Awards, and applications are open now! Your efforts toward climate solutions can earn a share of $175,000! You may be awarded $1,000 just for qualifying as a semifinalist. Apply here for your chance: https://ecoamerica.org/american-climate-leadership-awards-2024/
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climatecalling · 11 months
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The sleeping giant of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stirred.
In the past month, an avalanche of anti-pollution rules, targeting everything from toxic drinking water to planet-heating gases in the atmosphere, have been issued by the agency. Belatedly, the sizable weight of the US federal government is being thrown at longstanding environmental crises, including the climate emergency.
On Thursday, the EPA’s month of frenzied activity was crowned by the toughest ever limits upon carbon pollution from America’s power sector, with large, existing coal and gas plants told they must slash their emissions by 90% or face being shut down.
The measure will, the EPA says, wipe out more than 600m tons of carbon emissions over the next two decades, about double what the entire UK emits each year. But even this wasn’t the biggest pollution reduction announced in recent weeks.
In April, new emissions standards for cars and trucks will eliminate an expected 9bn tons of CO2 by the mid-point of the century, while separate rules issued late last year aim to slash hydrofluorocarbons, planet-heating gases used widely in refrigeration and air conditioning, by 4.6bn tons in the same timeframe. Methane, another highly potent greenhouse gas, will be curtailed by 810m tons over the next decade in another EPA edict.
In just a few short months the EPA, diminished and demoralized under Donald Trump, has flexed its regulatory muscles to the extent that 15bn tons of greenhouse gases – equivalent to about three times the US’s carbon pollution, or nearly half of the entire world’s annual fossil fuel emissions – are set to be prevented, transforming the power basis of Americans’ cars and homes in the process.
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smarmy-yet-satisfying · 4 months
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So having a fossil fuel executive as the president of the UN Climate Summit is going about as well as expected
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Fossil fuel companies and the politicians they employ are murderers. And they should be treated as such.
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Abolish billionaires. Ban private jets & mega yachts. Invest in renewable energy and stop listening to politicians and corporations over scientists.
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wachinyeya · 2 months
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joy-haver · 10 days
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I found this link on Facebook, it is resources for disabled farmers and gardeners.
Feel free to add more links and tips in the reblogs.
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reasonsforhope · 2 months
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"As countries around the world begin to either propose or enforce zero-deforestation regulations, companies are coming under growing pressure to prove that their products are free of deforestation. But this is often a far from straightforward process.
Take palm oil, for instance. Its journey from plantations, most likely in Indonesia or Malaysia, to store shelves in the form of shampoo, cookies or a plethora of other goods, is a long and convoluted one. In fact, the cooking oil or cosmetics we use might contain palm oil processed in several different mills, which in turn may have bought the raw palm fruit from several of the many thousands of plantations. For companies that use palm oil in their products, tracing and tracking its origins through these obscure supply chains is a tough task. Often it requires going all the way back to the plot level and checking for deforestation. However, these plots are scattered over vast areas across potentially millions of locations, with data being in various states of digitization and completeness...
Palmoil.io, a web-based monitoring platform that Bottrill launched, is attempting to help palm oil companies get around this hurdle. Its PlotCheck tool allows companies to upload plot boundaries and check for deforestation without any of the data being stored in their system. In the absence of an extensive global map of oil palm plots, the tool was developed to enable companies to prove compliance with regulations without having to publicly disclose detailed data on their plots. PlotCheck now spans 13 countries including Indonesia and Malaysia, and aims to include more in the coming months.
Palm oil production is a major driver of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, although deforestation rates linked to it have declined in recent years. While efforts to trace illegally sourced palm oil have ramped up in recent years, tracing it back to the source continues to be a challenge owing to the complex supply chains involved.
Recent regulatory proposals have, however, made it imperative for companies to find a way to prove that their products are free of deforestation. Last June, the European Union passed legislation that prohibits companies from sourcing products, including palm oil, from land deforested after 2020. A similar law putting the onus on businesses to prove that their commodities weren’t produced on deforested land is also under discussion in the U.K. In the U.S., the U.S. Forest Bill aims to work toward a similar goal, while states like New York are also discussing legislation to discourage products produced on deforested land from being circulated in the markets there...
PlotCheck, which is now in its beta testing phase, allows users to input the plot data in the form of a shape file. Companies can get this data from palm oil producers. The plot data is then checked and analyzed with the aid of publicly available deforestation data, such as RADD (Radar for Detecting Deforestation) alerts that are based on data from the Sentinel-1 satellite network and from NASA’s Landsat satellites. The tool also uses data available on annual tree cover loss and greenhouse gas emission from plantations.
Following the analysis, the tool displays an interactive online map that indicates where deforestation has occurred within the plot boundaries. It also shows details on historical deforestation in the plot as well as data on nearby mills. If deforestation is detected, users have the option of requesting the team to cross-check the data and determine if it was indeed caused by oil palm cultivation, and not logging for artisanal mining or growing other crops. “You could then follow up with your supplier and say there is a potential red flag,” Bottrill said.
As he waits to receive feedback from users, Bottrill said he’s trying to determine how to better integrate PlotCheck into the workflow of companies that might use the tool. “How can we take this information, verify it quickly and turn it into a due diligence statement?” he said. “The output is going to be a statement, which companies can submit to authorities to prove that their shipment is deforestation-free.” ...
Will PlotCheck work seamlessly? That’s something Bottrill said he’s cautiously optimistic about. He said he’s aware of the potential challenges with regard to data security and privacy. However, he said, given how zero-deforestation legislation like that in the EU are unprecedented in their scope, companies will need to sit up and take action to monitor deforestation linked to their products.
“My perspective is we should use the great information produced by universities, research institutes, watchdog groups and other entities. Plus, open-source code allows us to do things quickly and pretty inexpensively,” he said. “So I am positive that it can be done.”"
-via Mongabay, January 26, 2024
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Note: I know it's not "stop having palm oil plantations." (A plan I'm in support of...monocrop plantations are always bad, and if palm oil production continues, it would be much better to produce it using sustainable agroforestry techniques.)
However, this is seriously a potentially huge step/tool. Since the EU's deforestation regulations passed, along with other whole-supply-chain regulations, people have been really worried about how the heck we're going to enforce them. This is the sort of tool we need/need the industry to have to have a chance of genuinely making those regulations actually work. Which, if it does work, it could be huge.
It's also a great model for how to build supply chain monitoring for other supply chain regulations, like the EU's recent ban on companies destroying unsold clothes.
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post-leffert · 1 year
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help save electricity, shut down your local bank neon lights
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queer-crip-grows · 7 months
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If you are involved in climate activism and if you work in town planning and purchasing, or anything similar, I am begging you to please, *please* start thinking about disabled folk, elderly folk and parents with young kids when you are talking about walking and biking to places.
Cycles are absolutely inherently more pedestrian-friendly than cars, but they are still perfectly capable of injuring or even killing pedestrians, particularly frailer people, small people, and pets.
A lot of pedestrians, especially elderly and disabled people, have developed this instinctive terror of cycles and cyclists purely because poor planning so often shoves cycles into pedestrian spaces that aren’t actually even that ideal for pedestrians, and people who already have difficulties - elderly and disabled people, dog walkers, parents of small children - in those spaces start accumulating experiences of injury or even a succession of near-misses, which are perfectly capable of producing trauma even if physical injury is avoided.
And that only plays into the hands of polluters and governments who are in their pockets as well as increasing the marginalisation of already-marginalised people.
I can’t blame cyclists who are too afraid to ride cycles on the roads along with motor traffic. It’s terrifying and incredibly unsafe. Cycle paths, Cycle lanes, and other specific spaces for cyclists are absolutely essential, with as little need to share space with motor traffic *or* pedestrians as possible. Even in wide city boulevards, laid-out cycle paths and spaces are essential. They literally only need paint! And let electric scooters back on them in the UK too.
If you are providing any form of public rentable cycles, please, *please* accommodate elderly, frailer and disabled people too. We tend to be the ones who are in the most need of alternatives to get places, but traditional bikes are inaccessible to frailer people and most people with balance and fatigue issues. Please buy a selection of bikes, including adult-size tricycles, scooters with seats, and bikes with seats and tow options for small children. Parents exist, and are mostly desperately in need of transport as they have small humans with short legs and limited energy, and most prams and buggies are incompatible with traditional cycles.
We know so damn well how right-wing governments and corporations benefit from setting us against each other, and how adept they are at using marginalised people to distract the majority of exploited workers from the larger issues said governments are doing poorly or not tackling at all.
Disabled and elderly people, and parents of small children, are very vulnerable to climate change and the issues it causes. We are not the enemies of the climate movement; but we equally need to be *included* in it and *accommodated* by it.
If you are only looking for solutions that work for abled, healthy young adults, you are, frankly, not doing your job effectively. Listen to disabled people, older people, and parents. If you are doing large-scale planning work, invite us into the planning process *early*, not at the end when any changes will seem too burdensome and expensive to make, and, honestly, pay us for our time and expertise.
Oh, and if you make or sell bikes or electric bikes, sell more accessible options like adult trikes and ones with child seats and towing options too, please. And don’t charge enormously more for them than standard bikes. Financing options would be good too. Most disabled people can’t afford to run a car, and your bikes are often more expensive than that, if you offer them at all.
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tendie-defender · 1 year
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Does the HumVEE qualify for the tax credit?
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Nope it absolutely does not.
“Great American road trip is going to be electric”
It’s gunna be a long trip, and it costs about 70-90 bucks worth of electricity to fully charge its battery.
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Can an average income individual afford the cost of an electric vehicle?
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God. No.
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ecoamerica · 9 months
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Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2023 now: https://youtu.be/fenns4Pfq_A
@ecoAmerica was excited to announce the ACLA23 runner-up, Mothers Out Front! Mothers Out Front builds the power of mothers as an organized constituency to push for transformational change on climate and energy policy in the US. Watch the top ten finalists, Jane Fonda, Vanessa Hauc, Bill McKibben, and more in the ACLA23 Broadcast Recording!
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climatecalling · 10 months
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“I don’t know of another time in history where so many courts in so many different levels all over the globe [have been] tasked with dealing with a similar overarching issue,” said Karen Sokol, law professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. Research also continues to unearth more about the fossil fuel industry’s knowledge of climate change. A January study revealed that Exxon had made “breathtakingly” accurate climate predictions in the 1970s. The vast majority of climate-focused cases in the US have previously focused on the regulation of specific infrastructure projects, such as individual pipelines or highways, said Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. But the new forms of climate litigation are different, as they grapple not with particular projects’ emissions, but on responsibility for the climate crisis itself. Sokol, who dubbed these new suits “climate accountability litigation”, says though they will not alone lower emissions, they could help reshape climate plans.
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alexxahope · 5 months
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Instead of watching American Climate Leadership, watch me for free. And give yourself a good pleasure 🥵🥵
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punksatawney-phil · 1 year
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Fully convinced that the lack of promotion around Strange World was not just because it had amazing representation (though that is, as usual, part of it)
It was because it’s cli-fi that had the potential to reach mainstream audiences on a massive scale.
Changing societal priorities to adapt to catastrophic environmental change?? Shifting from industrial to biodiverse agriculture??Ecosystems as living things?? Degrowth as a necessary and messy step before sustainable regrowth?? They didn’t want anyone getting any ~ideas~ about environmental justice
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If we lived in a decent society we’d behead people like this
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Absolute ghouls. People who see the looming water shortage as a profitable opportunity aren’t worth the air they breathe.
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themightyfoo · 7 months
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Today's harvest from our square foot garden
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