In Between Times 3-16-2023
Red tape killing green energy?, Americans see serious media bias, Regenerative farming taking root, The Astros first MLB team to buy carbon credits
TAKE ACTION!
In the heart of oil country, the Houston Astros have just penned a deal to buy carbon offsets.
"The deal allows the Astros to essentially compensate for their carbon emissions by paying for CO2 to be sequestered underground after being filtered from the air by 1PointFive's Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant, which is currently being built in Ector County, Texas."
The Astros are the first MLB team to do this, but let's make sure they aren't the last by showing our support for the move by signing this petition.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN!
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Red tape is holding up a greener future
Solar power and wind energy are great, but if there are no transmission lines from renewable power plants any energy harnessed is wasted. Such is the challenge we face all across the United States today.
On the heals of the landmark climate legislation of last year many are optimistic about a greener fuel future. But our antiquated and byzantine regulatory structure threatens many renewable wins. NIMBY lawsuits and endless regulatory hoops make upgrading our energy infrastructure difficult in the extreme.
Sadly many of the people who continue to advocate for our current troublesome regs are actually the same people who championed the climate law last year.
Permitting and regulatory reforms are an area that is ripe for bipartisan progress. If wind energy is generated in South Dakota it has to get to Minneapolis, Chicago, and Saint Louis somehow. That means construction and transmission lines. This is reality. It’s time we dealt with this reality and got to work making our energy grid compatible with the technology that is coming. Otherwise, what’s the point?
(From Bloomberg)
For the IRA to achieve its full emissions-reduction potential, new transmission capacity will need to expand at roughly double its present rate. About 80% of the bill’s potential benefits will be squandered as things stand. Yet more than 900 gigawatts of potential clean-energy projects are awaiting transmission approvals, along with some 400 gigawatts of energy storage — or about the total renewable power needed to hit the nation’s goals by 2030.
Those delays are just the start. Many of the clean-energy projects currently in the queue will not be built at all because of other burdensome rules, particularly those imposed by the National Environmental Policy Act and its state and local variants. This tangle of regulations has been a boon for the consultants who perform environmental impact assessments, which routinely take years and cost millions to complete, and for the lawyers whose litigation makes Jarndyce v. Jarndyce look time-sensitive. But it is outright impeding the fight against climate change.
Click here for the article.
Schumer slams House GOP’s energy permitting bid
Biden climate law will stumble without permitting reform, industry warns
How about floating solar panel islands to energize our cities?
Seriously, how about them? Some think they could soon be a reality. According to a recent study solar panel islands could power millions of homes while reducing evaporation from reservoirs. Renewable energy plus water conservation. Win-win opportunities, we like those.
(From The Verge)
Researchers found that 6,256 cities across 124 countries could, in theory, meet all their electricity demand from solar panels deployed on nearby water reservoirs. They would just need to cover about 30 percent of the water’s surface with floatovoltaics. The researchers analyzed 114,555 reservoirs around the world using multiple databases and then modeled potential power generation using realistic climate data.
And since all those floating arrays would block enough sunlight to reduce evaporation, the researchers also projected major water savings. Cumulatively, the panels would conserve about as much water as 300 million people might use annually (or roughly 106 cubic kilometers per year). That would be incredibly helpful as droughts made worse by climate change suck reservoirs dry.
Click here for the article.
Midwestern farmers increasingly open to regenerative farming
Regenerative farming practices help sequester carbon and are far better than old-school farming practices for soil health. Soil is a living ecosystem. Good soil means good, healthier food. Thankfully more and more farmers are considering and deploying regenerative farming practices. It is increasingly cost effective, but it takes real effort (and money) to change over to new farming practices.
(From AG Week)
The thing that maybe people don't understand is soil organic matter is 50% soil organic carbon. So as you build soil organic matter in the soils, restoring it back to the to the prairie state as best as possible, you're actually building carbon in the soil, too."
Making the decision about changing how a person farms is the hardest part, Overby said.
"I think once you decide you're going to do this, then everything else will flow," he said. "But it really is the the concept of I'm going to change from doing things this way to doing things this way. And that's that's a challenge."
Click here for the article.
What is regenerative agriculture?
UK poll: Around half of farmers want to adopt regenerative practices
Media bias concerns near all-time high, new report finds
The very wide spread between Republicans and Democrats isn’t because of anything terribly recent. The media, the old media anyway, has traditionally reflected a northeastern and West Coast left-of-center mostly establishmentarian disposition. As one who interned on Capitol Hill at a TV news network for 2 years and then as one who has worked with and in media over the last 20 years, your editor can fully attest to this. Certain things, certain political views, in most newsrooms, are givens. With the exception of Fox and maybe the new Fox-like upstarts, there is a cultural understanding. Certain issues deserve attention and others, things that might be of import to people in say Ohio or Texas, get less attention. Certain views are celebrated and other views are minimized if not demonized. This has long been the case but “old media” bias feels like it has gotten worse as news choices have generally expanded. There is more contrast now than there used to be. Also, as ratings have dropped for outlets like CNN and other old paragons of media power there has been a tendency to play to the the core base, to not lose those foundational viewers and readers. Call it a political bias death spiral.
Not that Fox and its ilk aren’t guilty of shamelessly pandering to their viewer base also. They certainly do that. But it must be said that what constitutes “conservative” media is still relatively small in a world where The New York Times, The Guardian, NBC, The Washington Post, The LA Times, etc. still matter for many people, particularly in centers of power.
Regardless, left or right, liberal or conservative, it does feel like things have gone off the rails.
Below is an intersting (and short) discussion between Greg Gutfeld (of Fox News) and Bill Mahr on how hard it is to pull out of the media bias spiral as a pundit.
“You might lose an audience.”
People fear going against the tribe. No one wants to be out of a job. Still, it MUST be done. Otherwise we’re all just hacks.
Event
The EarthX Expo is the world’s largest green gathering held annually around Earth Day in Dallas, Texas. Our Congress of Conferences highlights a wide range of environmental & sustainability-related topics.
It has grown to become the largest event of its kind in the world, bringing together environmental organizations, businesses, academic institutions, government agencies, speakers, interactive programming, and subject matter experts.
EarthX Expo also features live music, art and food to help create a fun and engaging atmosphere for thought and experiential learning.