Welcome! This blog is about spreading the resources and knowledge that I get in my studies as an environmental engineer. It´s for example about renewable energy, reliable sources for information, and the environmental challenges we´re facing, but also about the progress we´re making and all the wonderful nature we´re still surrounded by. I want to spread information and reasons for hope, not despair.
What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?
What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?
What if the rainforest ADVANCES?
What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?
What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?
What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?
What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?
What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?
What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?
What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?
The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.
Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.
It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.
We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.
People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.
Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.
Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.
We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.
In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.
When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.
When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.
When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!
We fixed it.
We CAN fix it and we ARE fixing it and we DID fix it.
When I was a child, there was acid rain, almost no bald eagles, big ozone hole, it was legal to rape your wife, queer people were not in the mainstream let alone able to get married, and interracial couples being shown on ads or tv shows was still rare and scandalous. AIDS was a guaranteed death sentence as opposed to being treatable. Laparoscopic surgery wasn’t a thing yet, and I have scars to prove it. The ADA didnt exist until I was almost in middle school.
We are backsliding right now, it’s true. But we have gotten so much in my lifetime and Im in mid 40’s!
We will get some things back plus a little more, but it will be a long, painful process. Don’t give up. Take my hand.
I think about this plaque constantly. Its such a weird piece of both art and memorialization. Its a scream for action in the current, a mourning of what hasn't been done and a pray for things to be done. All in 2019...
If you read ecology books printed in the 70s and 80s, they were absolutely convinced that whales and tigers would not survive the century. There's a whole plot in Star Trek about how whales are extinct actually. Here in Argentina, we were sure that yaguaretés would have gone extinct. It was thought that rainforests would be forever lost, because there was no way that such complex ecosystems would be restored.
Now, you can go to Península Valdés and find that the whale population there is growing year after year, people can see them from their windows. In Iberá, where yaguaretés were extinct for over 70 years, there's now a population of 35 and growing, after being reintroduced just five years ago. As for rainforests?
We've becoming very, very good on restoring them. Natural environments, when given space and time to heal, can return to that they were. And after all, all natural enviroments are managed by human societies. It is up to us to implement a good management, un buen gobierno.
I firmly believe our children and grandchildren will see a restoration of Earth like never before.
Millions of people are working on this. You can learn about it, perhaps even become one of them. Or be a pointless doomer in my ask box. Your choice.
if there are people who care, it's never a lost cause. at one point, kākāpō, a nocturnal flightless parrot species from aotearoa, were thought to be entirely extinct for decades. until 1977, where booming calls from males were heard on the small island of whenua hou. now, thanks to people who care so much they dedicated their lives to caring, kākāpō numbers are close to 300. despite the setbacks. despite the small gene pool causing infertility and health problems. people cared so fucking much that they survived. this is one of COUNTLESS, countless similar stories. I'm studying ecology so that I can go into conservation and all around me, every day, I see people who care enough to put years of their lives into learning about and solving environmental problems. I don't know man. hope isn't just some nebulous thing. it's tangible if you do something with it.
I doubt this will get much traction but a Canadian company is trying to build a mine on lake superior in Michigan that could completely destroy and contaminate 21% of the worlds freshwater supply if their proposed dam breaks. Please sign this petition if you're in the US to stop the whole project.
Protect the Porkies, Protect Lake Superior— Stop the Copperwood Mine!
This isn't a case of pay more to waste less; the mass-timber, blades cost around 20% less than carbon fiber and can build taller towers.
A company making wooden wind turbine blades has successfully tested a 50-meter-long prototype that’s set to debut soon in the Indian and European markets.
Last year, the German firm Voodin successfully demonstrated that their laminated-veneer timber blades could be fabricated, adapted, and installed at a lower cost than existing blades, while maintaining performance.
Now, Voodin has announced a partnership with the Indian wind company Senvion to supply its 4.2-megawatt turbines with these wooden blades for another trial run.
Wind power has accumulated more than a few demerit points for several shortfalls in the overall industry of this fossil-fuel alternative.
Some of these, such as the impact on bird life, are justified, but none more so than the fact that the turbine blades are impossible or nearly impossible to recycle, and that they need to be changed every 25 years.
Wind turbine blades are made from a mixture of glass and carbon fiber heated together with sticky epoxy resin, and these materials can’t be separated once combined, which means they go into landfills or are incinerated when they become too battered to safely operate.
GNN has reported that folks will occasionally find second-life value in these giant panels, for example in Denmark where they are turned into bike shelters. In another instance, they’re being used as pedestrian bridges.
But there are way more wind turbine blades being made every year than pedestrian bridges and bike shelters, making the overall environmental impact of wind power not all green.
“At the end of their lifecycle, most blades are buried in the ground or incinerated. This means that—at this pace—we will end up with 50 million tonnes of blade material waste by 2050,” Voodin Blade Technology’s CEO. Mr. Siekmann said recently. “With our solution, we want to help green energy truly become as green as possible.”
The last 15 years have seen rapid growth in another industry called mass timber. This state-of-the-art manufacturing technique sees panels of lumber heat-pressed, cross-laminated, and glued into a finished product that’s being used to make skyscrapers, airports, and more.
At the end of the day though, mass timber products are still wood, and can be recycled in a variety of ways.
“The blades are not only an innovative technological advancement but a significant leap toward sustainable wind production,” said Siekmann, adding that this isn’t a case of pay more to waste less; the blades cost around 20% less than carbon fiber.
Additionally, the added flexibility of wooden blades should allow for taller towers and longer blades, potentially boosting the output of turbine by accessing higher wind speeds.
Now partnered with Voodin, Senvion will begin feasibility analysis in the next few months, before official testing begins around 2027.
A final for one of my classes, my profesor said i should post this somewhere :)
words belong to Alanis Obomsawin,
an American-Canadian of Abenaki descent, a documentary filmmaker, though this is not where I first heard them.
When the Last Tree Is Cut Down,
The Last Fish Ate
The Last Stream Poisoned.
You Will Realize That You Cannot Eat Money.
Native American saying, first written in 1972. Still relevant when more than half a century old, and we can see how it manifests itself in real time. I personally came across a version of it in Aurora's song "The Seed," originally titled "Eat Money." Quoting her "It's about human history, about how we've co-existed in the world and how we've forgotten how to live with nature and the power we have."
We have already averted truly apocalyptic levels of global warming.
Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.
To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:
"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years...
The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse."
(New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)
So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.
The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.
Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:
-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.
How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?
I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.
(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)
Some real talk for the new year, about where we now stand, and what the next years are going to look like. (Still ends on a "be hopeful or else" kind of note, but definitely gets into some heavy truths about the meaning of recent events.)
Look, I'm not saying that the effects of warming aren't already bad, or won't get worse. I'm from California, I currently live in LA. My state's been on fire for half my life. Natural disasters starting amping up early here (and we're certainly in the middle of another historic number now).
But like I said, my state's been breaking horrible disaster records constantly for the past ten years. And you know what? Natural disasters have been getting more and more survivable for years, largely thanks to faster warnings and better mass communication (x).
Does it suck how many natural disasters there are now? Yeah. Are we going to need to organize and mobilize (both politically and especially community-wise) like never before to see as many people through these times as best as possible? Also yeah.
An unknown number of the most optimistic futures were foreclosed when Trump won the US election. That's painful but a reality.
But for twenty-ish of the past twenty-five years, the science said we weren't going to survive climate change at all.
For most of my life, we were worried that we had set Earth on a course to become like fucking Venus (which is, on average, well over 800 degrees Farenheit). Even if it didn't get that bad, we were so worried that global warming might wipe out all life on earth - except maybe the cockroaches. Literally, when I was a younger the kids at my church put on a play about that. It was like an adaptation of A Christmas Carol where the future only had talking cockroaches. I grew up so worried about this. (Yes it was very granola why do you ask.)
But starting a few years ago, studies have shown that there wasn't going to be a runaway greenhouse effect that could turn us into Venus; that earth is warming, yes, but we don't seem to be in danger of that.
Between that and the fact that the adoption of renewables globally is too fast to be stopped, and we do have the technology and environmental science knowledge to eventually re-lower global temperatures by getting to net negative carbon emissions (x), and most countries and at least 73% of people in all countries for which there is data (x) actually care very much about the climate, yeah, we have closed the door on the lava planet future.
And yeah, I do think that's worth celebrating.
That's a massive fucking victory.
Semi-relatedly, I also think that, given the loss of the US election, there's a really, really strong chance the developing world will be what saves us, and we'll just be lucky to be along for the ride.
Most people have no idea of the kinds of stories and statistics coming out of the developing world and Indigenous communities. The world is changing for the better on the environment, even as disasters (and the US) are getting worse. Solar power is going to revolutionize the fucking world, because it's going to grant humanity universal access to electricity, and that's going to revolutionize the world, especially the developing world (aka the global majority). And most people have no idea at all, much less how much it's going to change.
So, yeah, natural disasters are going to keep getting worse.
But there's a long, long long fucking way between "natural disasters are going to keep getting worse" and "the extinction of all of humanity and/or the vast majority of life on earth"
And yeah, I am going to celebrate that fucking difference.
Because for over twenty years, I was afraid I'd never get to.
even with new administration, there were a lot of things already approved and in the pipeline for this year.
End of 2025, we should have 10x the offshore wind as we did at end of 2024, due to one project that broke the bottleneck for building.
The bottleneck was lack of a specific type of ship operating within US. It's currently working off Virginia. The prep work for similar project off Connecticut is currently underway, and as soon as Virginia is done, that ship switches up here. And is likely fully booked through 2030 with similar items.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Intiative has been operating for 15 years, reducing co2 power plant emissions in new England and midatlantic. They did such a good job they hit their 2020 goals in 2018... and set new more aggressive ones for 2030, at least some members shooting for zero power plant emissions by 2030.
Thats 10 members, plus Virginia just joined so just starting that process Pennsylvania and North Carolina may join with next year or two, once legal challenges solved.
RGGI used model of taxing CO2 emmission via permit and permit auction money goes to direct utility assistance for low income folks, weatherization & energy efficiency to reduce demand, and green power projects.
Those green projects are all small, but lots of em. So no one big solar farm, it's 20 warehouses with solar panels. So invisible infill you don't SEE happening. But that's been chugging along for 15+ years and will keep going because it's a state, not federal, program.
Justice40 under the Biden administration prioritized historically undeserved and economically depressed areas for funding for climate resiliancy projects and green projects. It's been in place since 2017 so a lot of money assigned to it that's still working through system and all those will complete in next few years.
Trump could reprioritize how money for those programs is allocated, but it is a lot of very rural areas so he will get push back. Noooo, we need that money! And they do.
Since they're very poor and undeserved areas, it means you get a much bigger improvement vs better off areas. Swapping out a coal plant from 1940 vs one that upgraded in 1990 is a way bigger potential improvement!
The US military has been putting lots in alternate energy for last few years entirely due to security of being reliant on oil they have to get places, leaves supply lines vulnerable. So they will continue adding capacity for foreseeable future. And anybody complaining about it being "woke nonsense" can get told off about how many fuel convoys get struck in conflicts and how much better on-site solar and wind is than generator use.
So there's good things in process that likely can't be stopped. So even if us fed stopped new project funding entirely (unlikely), there's lots in process that will complete in next few years and continue building capacity.
Keep on your reps about it at the federal level, because msny will still go through. But don't forget to annoy state reps as well because they CAN keep on those smaller state projects and keep building capacity. And other states already did a lot of the work. These are proven technologies. Copy other states homework.
Thank you so much for the addition! It's super good to learn about some of these! And it's so true that there are SO MANY state and local projects underway, the vast majority of which the federal government cannot stop.
This devastating flash flood caused the death of 72 people so far. And the fact that we are intimidating and imprisoning climate justice activists who are pleading with world governments to DO FUCKING something about impending ecological disasters... it's beyond dystopic.
Rescue teams are working to recover those missing after floodwater knocked down bridges and dragged cars through streets.
I thought I´d share the speech that I made today at my city´s climate strike. It went quite well and I hope that in this way I can reach a few more people. :)
Hello and thank you all for coming! My name is Sam, I´m here with and on behalf of Klimatstudenterna, a student association at the university.
When I joined the association, it was out of a desire to meet people who think like me and who care as much about this planet and its incredible, unique nature as I do. I grew up in the alps and I´m spending a lot of time biking, hiking, kayaking, trekking, and diving through this diverse and awe-inspiring wonderland that we call home. But I´ve also been aware of its problems since the age of seven, and now that I´m studying environmental engineering, I´m closer to the gruesome reality that we face than ever before.
We are living in a time of change, and time to change the direction in which we are going is running short. However, today I don´t want to focus on all the negative effects that we are having on this planet, but to offer a change of perspective.
For most of humanity´s existence, we´ve been at nature´s mercy. At the mercy of the weather, of bad harvests, of the seasons and the animals that competed with us for food and shelter. All of that has changed within less than two centuries. Scientists have declared that the stable period that allowed us to become what we are today, has ended. The Holocene, the geographical age that we´ve been living in for the past 10.000 years, has ended, and we have entered the Anthropocene, the age of humans. Because we are the factor with the greatest influence on planet earth. That is a scary thought. We are no longer cradled within the embrace of the big wide world, the world is depending on our decisions to thrive. Or not to thrive, because this will not be the case for long. In a short few years, climate change will be the decisive factor that will change the face of the earth. We´ve sown wind, and we´ll harvest storm. Maybe more storm than we can take.
However, the window is still open to do something about that. We are in the age of the Anthropocene, and it is up to us to decide in which way we want to shape the planet. Do we want to exploit and deforest it? Or do we want to give that space back to the wilderness? Do we want to keep polluting the oceans with plastic, phosphorus and PFAS? Or do we want to protect and clean them, so our children will experience clear waters and abundant marine live, like our grandparents did. Do we want to be the destructors of this planet? Or its shepherds?
It is a great responsibility, and I don´t like the thought of humanity being this powerful, but it´s time to feel responsible for all the living things out there, because it really is up to us. We have to decide if we want to be the shepherds or the destructors of this planet. We have to decide that as a species, as a country, as a region, as a commune, and also as individuals. Likewise, every bit of climate action is needed, global action as much as nationwide, regional, communal, and individual action. At the same time, because there is no time to dawdle and argue about who should fix it, EVERYONE should fix it, in their own way and capacity.
Be it biking to work, be it investing in clean energy. Be it voting in favor of the environment in the upcoming EU-election, and any other election, or be it voting in favor of the environment as a part of the EU-parliamen, or any other parliament. Be it making informed purchase decisions, or maybe not purchasing anything at all. Be it growing tomatoes on your balcony or turning your mass production pig farm into a mushroom farm. From parliaments to nursing homes and from work places to living rooms, there is something that everyone of us can do right now to fix this.
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
