By now I’m sure you’ve seen the incredible photos coming out of Texas due to icestorms, freezing temperatures, loss of heat and undrinkable water. People were being told to boil their water before drinking but couldn’t do that because they had no electricity or gas to turn on the stove. I don’t need to tell you that this wild and destructive weather is another result of global warming; that’s pretty obvious. There’s also a false narrative being promoted that all of the power outages and problems are a result of a solar and wind power. In a nutshell, that’s not true and the Biden administration knows that we need to update our power grids in order to prepare for future catastrophic events. If you can donate and support Texans during this awful time, they need our help. The sad part is that these situations are only beginning, unless we do something. What else happened in the news this week? Let’s take a look.
Texas isn’t the only state that’s experiencing unusually cold and debilitating weather. These US cities had the coldest morning in decades — with some reaching all-time record lows. Remember that while climate change involves global warming, it also includes unpredictable and extreme weather events that we aren’t prepared to handle.
This story feels like it’s out of science fiction – Mysteries of massive holes forming in Siberian permafrost unlocked by scientists. “The researchers…found that the craters are just one unsettling sign that the northernmost reaches of our planet are undergoing radical changes….The craters and other abrupt changes occurring across the Arctic landscape are indicative of a rapidly warming and thawing Arctic, which can have severe consequences for Arctic residents and globally.”
Meanwhile Bill Gates has a new book out. ““The world is going to keep building buildings just for the basic sheltering needs in the developing countries,” said Gates, who’s also co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and founder of Breakthrough Energy, a coalition of groups that work toward speeding up the arrival of a sustainable energy system. “And so we can’t ask them to stop doing that, but we need to give them an innovation so that that cement isn’t superexpensive….
Cement is over 6% of worldwide emissions. And yet, we don’t have a way of doing it that’s clean, that doesn’t cost dramatically more, more than twice the price. So if people think it’s just passenger cars and electricity, they’re going to miss what we need to do to get to zero.
“If you don’t mind all the corals dying and Miami Beach [in Florida] disappearing and island countries being underwater and farmers near the equator starving and trying to migrate up to northern latitudes. You know, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. So if you have positive emissions, you’re driving the temperature up on an ongoing basis. And that’s more crop failures, more days humans can’t go outside. It gets pretty extreme, and those natural ecosystems won’t come back.”
Lawsuit Aims To Block New N.H. Landfill Permits Under Outdated Trash Plan. “New Hampshire is facing a lawsuit for permitting landfill expansions without having an updated plan for reducing solid waste. The suit, filed Thursday in Merrimack Superior Court, comes from the Conservation Law Foundation….DES has been operating with a state solid waste plan that was published in 2003 and expired in 2009,” Irwin said. “Our lawsuit is designed to require DES (Department of Environmental Services) to come into compliance with the law, start planning in ways that will allow New Hampshire to begin reducing the amount of waste it throws away, and move New Hampshire away from its current overreliance on landfills.”
And now some good news – Plymouth State takes new approach to climate change. “If youngsters are going to fix the world they need to understand what has to be fixed – and nothing needs more fixing than the way we are altering the climate. That’s roughly the thinking behind Plymouth State University’s newest bachelor degree, an unusual program that focuses not only on the scientific realities of climate change but also on possible responses to the ongoing disaster.”
And now here’s a recap of other topics Hannah and I discussed this week on GreenLifeNH!
Like what you see? Make sure to subscribe (look on the bottom of the home page) and tell us what you thought about the articles. Which did you find most interesting or important? We are all on this journey together.
– Rachel
PS Cover photo borrowed from CBS
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