We need to transform global society to survive the 21st Century

William P. Hall on September 16, 2021

Absolutely everyone concerned in any way with our futures [humanity, ourselves, our families] on our fragile planet Earth must read Umair Haque’s latest essay linked below.

This man is a true spokesman for reason, science and politics. Here he explains what we need what we need to transform in order to continue living for long in this world. I also try to communicate these things, but Umair does it far better here than I havedone.

Our civilisation needs a great transformation

We need three decades of transformation, but are we capable of it?

Read this article by Umair Haque at Eudaimonia & Co. Read more from Umair @Medium

Where Australia is concerned, the only area where I disagree with Umair’s sequence of priorities is that our first order of business must be to fix the political frameworks we live in that are specifically managed by Liberal/National party puppet governments who work across many levels to stop or delay us from doing anything that might inconvenience their masters representing special interests in the fossil fuel industry and their friends. Only then will we be able to devote our full interests to completing the moral and economic transformations that will see us progress towards solving the existential climate emergency. And there is very little time left (if any) to actually do that.

We all need to work together to achieve his prescription. Think seriously about what he says, and then lets get to work.

Our Vote Climate One Traffic Light Voting System provides a simple way for you to use our preferential voting system to vote for only those candidates who will support and work for immediate action on climate change. Our stoplight system doesn’t tell you who to vote for, but does flag those parties or individuals whose record suggests they are more likely to support the special interests and others trying to delay action than prioritize actions to deal with the existential climate emergency.

If we can get to work soon on the issues that really matter, perhaps we will be able to leave our offspring with a hopeful future.

Walking towards the unknown future.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Governments must allow markets to drive down energy costs

William P. Hall on September 15, 2021

Ars Technica explains that the decreasing cost of renewables is unlikely to plateau any time soon

Past projections of energy costs have consistently underestimated just how cheap renewable energy would be in the future, as well as the benefits of rolling them out quickly, according to a new report out of the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford.
The report makes predictions about more than 50 technologies such as solar power, offshore wind, and more, and it compares them to a future that still runs on carbon. “It’s not just good news for renewables. It’s good news for the planet,” Matthew Ives, one of the report’s authors and a senior researcher at the Oxford Martin Post-Carbon Transition Programme, told Ars.

And yet, our COALition Government is still working assiduously to hinder any actions that may diminish the profits or ‘harm’ the fossil fuel industry’s continued profligate mining and burning of greenhouse gas emitting carbon-based fuels. By driving continued global warming, these emissions fueling the accelerating climate emergency of droughts, storms, wildfires and rising sea-levels. If the warming is not stopped and reversed we will soon be seeing global famines, economic and social collapses, and mass extinctions (including our own species) as positive feedbacks drive increased greenhouse emissions from soils, burning forests, dying and drying wetlands, and thawing permafrost, plus additional warming enabled by melting polar ice and global ‘dimming’ (where the world absorbs a greater percentage of the solar energy received every day).

We must replace the COALition fossil fuel puppets in our Parliaments with genuine representatives of the people who will work with the economic reality that we must replace greenhouse gas emitting industries with those don’t, and may even engineer effective solutions for recapturing and sequestering some of what was emitted in the past.

Vote Climate One won’t tell you how you should vote. However, we will show you which candidates we think will actively work to help us develop a sustainable future versus those who seem to be indifferent or are actively working to protect their puppet masters in the fossil fuel industry from any changes that might harm their short-term special interests.

By Doug Johnson, 04/10/2021 in Ars Technica

The decreasing cost of renewables unlikely to plateau anytime soon: The decreasing cost of renewables unlikely to plateau anytime soon

Past projections of energy costs have consistently underestimated just how cheap renewable energy would be in the future, as well as the benefits of rolling them out quickly, according to a new report out of the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford.

The report makes predictions about more than 50 technologies such as solar power, offshore wind, and more, and it compares them to a future that still runs on carbon. “It’s not just good news for renewables. It’s good news for the planet,” Matthew Ives, one of the report’s authors and a senior researcher at the Oxford Martin Post-Carbon Transition Programme, told Ars.

The paper used probabilistic cost forecasting methods—taking into account both past data and current and ongoing technological developments in renewables—for its findings. It also used large caches of data from sources such as the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and Bloomberg. Beyond looking at the cost (represented as dollar per unit of energy production over time), the report also represents its findings in three scenarios: a fast transition to renewables, a slow transition, and no transition at all.

Compared to sticking with fossil fuels, a quick shift to renewables could mean trillions of dollars in savings, even without accounting for things like damages caused by climate change or any co-benefits from the reduced pollution. Even beyond the savings, rolling out renewable energy sources could help the world limit global warming to 1.5º C. According to the report, if solar, wind, and the myriad other green energy tools followed the deployment trends they are projected to see in the next decade, in 25 years the world could potentially see a net-zero energy system.

“The energy transition is also going to save us money. We should be doing it anyway,” Ives said.

Read the complete article….

We need to elect a government who can actually understand and navigate these issues to fight the climate emergency. The COALition parties and their fellow travelers are puppets of the fossil fuel industry and related special interests. These puppets and charlatans need to be replaced by rational candidates who have committed to put action on the climate emergency at the top of their to-do list if elected. Vote Climate One’s Traffic Light Voting System will give you a lot of information to help you pick the candidate(s) who are most likely to respond to the emergency as you would hope.

Give our offspring some hope for a bright future — Vote Climate One.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

What our COALition Government politicians need to think about before the COP-21 meeting in Glasgow

William P. Hall on September 15, 2021

Michelle Grattan in the Guardian says, “Multiple doctors’ organisations, led by the Australian Medical Association, and a major farm lobby have called on the federal government to boost Australia’s climate change ambition, as pressure mounts on Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce to finalise a deal ahead of the Glasgow conference.”

Doctors and farmers turn up heat on Morrison ahead of Glasgow

Michelle Grattan in the Guardian (Aus.)
September 14, 2021

This pressure is still based on a dangerously ‘optimistic’ IPCC view of the ‘probable’ future. The IPCC view does not factor in the last two or three years of marked acceleration in NB4 extreme climate events or consider the likely consequences if the world is still warming past 2050 or 2100.

The recent crescendo of NB4 events, combined with a longer look into the future suggests that global warming is starting to ‘run away’ from our limited capacity to actually stop and reverse the warming. If we fail to do this, we are not just faced with some crop failures and an excessive number of heat-related deaths; but rather total collapse of our agricultural and social systems, and inevitable human extinction along with most other large and complex organisms sharing the planet with us.

We need immediate and sustained action to control and reverse global warming, and any politician not working to help achieve this should be immediately turfed out of office and replaced by someone who will work for us, rather than the fossil fuel special interests and their friends.

Our Vote Climate One guide provides a simple way for you to use our preferential voting system to vote for only those candidates who will support and work for immediate action on climate change. Our stoplight system doesn’t tell you who to vote for, but does flag those parties or individuals whose record suggests they are more likely to support the special interests and others trying to delay action than prioritize actions to deal with the existential climate emergency.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.