New report on climate change released today

[lpetrich]

AOC's Green New Deal for Public Housing - not sure how much of it got into the recent infrastructure and budget bills, the $1T and $3.5T ones.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "The Green New Deal for Public Housing would: ..." / Twitter

The Green New Deal for Public Housing would:

Improve living conditions for nearly 2 million
Lower utility costs, reducing energy bills up to 70%
Dramatically reduce lead poisoning, unsafe drinking water & air pollution
Create 240k good-paying, union jobs

Today, we're reintroducing the Green New Deal for Public Housing because --- with millions on the brink of eviction, millions under/unemployed, and with a coming climate crisis -- investing in our housing infrastructure has never been more important.

The Green New Deal for Public Housing was one of the first bills to take the three core elements of the GND resolution - jobs *, justiceand decarbonization - and put it into bill text.

This week we'll be adding two new bills to the GND family, so stay tuned!

I like AOC's use of emojis in her tweets.

 

[lpetrich]

Jamaal Bowman on Twitter: "I spent 20 years as an educator, seeing firsthand how transforming a child’s learning environment can unlock their full potential.

The Green New Deal for Public Schools is about transforming our schools into cleaner spaces for our children and our planet. (vid link)" / Twitter
(with video of JB describing it)

Jamaal Bowman Proposes A Green New Deal for Public Schools

Until this summer, Hamilton School, a public elementary school in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Cobbs Creek, was surrounded by asphalt. Now some of the blacktop has been ripped up to make room for three raised plant beds that will grow vegetables and medicinal herbs like chamomile and mint. Gardeners are also planting fruit trees around the school’s perimeter. The hope is that, in a couple years, the neighborhood will be able to pick fresh pears and apples from the trees whenever they want. This may sound like a small change, but Cobbs Creek’s health outcomes rank near the worst in the city, and residents have a median income of $30,500. “This costs, at most, $120,000, but it’s providing so much,” says Akira Drake Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania whose graduate students are working on the project, which will also be an outdoor classroom. “It started as a green stormwater project, but the school kept layering stuff on.”

New York lawmaker rolls out Green New Deal for public schools - The Washington Post

His Green New Deal for Public Schools calls for a $446 billion investment in the green retrofitting of public schools, along with major investments in the expansion of social services and a curriculum upgrade in school districts serving low-income communities. The money would be laid out over 10 years.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman Unveils Green New Deal for Public Schools | Press Releases | Congressman Jamaal Bowman

The ambitious new legislation — which aims to invest $1.43 trillion over 10 years in public schools and infrastructure to combat climate change — would make a transformative and unprecedented investment in public school infrastructure by upgrading every public school building in the country, addressing historical harms and inequities by focusing support on high-need schools, and hiring and training hundreds of thousands of additional educators and support staff. If enacted, the legislation would fund 1.3 million jobs per year and eliminate 78 million metric tons of CO2 annually, the equivalent of taking 17 million cars off the road.

“It’s time for a revolution in public education,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman. “As we deal with a devastating climate crisis caused by decades of unchecked corporate greed, we need to center our children and their future. The Green New Deal for Public Schools represents the level of school infrastructure investment that is urgent and necessary to heal the harm from decades of disinvestment, redlining and cycles of poverty and trauma, particularly for Black and brown children. What this comes down to is whether we’re willing to provide our kids with the resources they need to realize their brilliance and have a livable planet. Do we want to continue building a world based on militarization, incarceration, poverty, and destruction of resources? Or will we take advantage of this moment, put our kids and educators first, and treat the climate crisis as the emergency it is? This legislation is what we need to put us on the right side of history.”

H.R.4442 - 117th Congress (2021-2022): Green New Deal for Public Schools Act of 2021 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
The bill defines "climate justice" and "environmental justice":

(4) CLIMATE JUSTICE.—The term “climate justice” means the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, culture, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of policies and projects to ensure that each person enjoys the same degree of protection from the adverse effects of climate change.

(5) ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE.—The term “environmental justice” means the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, culture, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies to ensure that each person enjoys—

(A) the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards; and

(B) equal access to any Federal agency action on justice issues related to the environment in order to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, work, and recreate.

 

[lpetrich]

A Hotter Future Is Certain, According to U.N. Climate Report - The New York Times - "Some devastating impacts of global warming are now unavoidable, a major new scientific report finds. But there is still a short window to stop things from getting even worse."

Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future, a major new United Nations scientific report has concluded.

Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the consequences can be felt across the globe: This summer alone, blistering heat waves have killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece.

But that’s only the beginning, according to the report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations. Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that is now essentially locked in.

At 1.5 degrees of warming, scientists have found, the dangers grow considerably. Nearly 1 billion people worldwide could swelter in more frequent life-threatening heat waves. Hundreds of millions more would struggle for water because of severe droughts. Some animal and plant species alive today will be gone. Coral reefs, which sustain fisheries for large swaths of the globe, will suffer more frequent mass die-offs.

“We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather over the next 20 or 30 years,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds and one of hundreds of international experts who helped write the report. “Things are unfortunately likely to get worse than they are today.”

Noting
Sixth Assessment Report from the IPCC

All pretty much as predicted - it shows how good the climate modeling is.

Climate Change Is Destroying My Country. The Nations Causing It Must Help. - The New York Times - "Islands like the Bahamas are paying the price for wealthier nations’ emissions — an injustice crying out for a global remedy."

 

[lpetrich]

What if American Democracy Fails the Climate Crisis? - The New York Times - "Ezra Klein and four environmental thinkers discuss the limits of politics in facing down the threat to the planet."

Not just in the US, but in many other nations.

Kim Stanley Robinson: Well, we are stuck in an international system of nation-states, and we don’t have time to invent and institute any kind of alternative world governance, so we have to use what we’ve got. But we also have the Paris agreement, and climate equity was written into it so that developed rich nations were tasked with paying more and doing more and helping the historically disadvantaged and even colonized nations. Executing all that is, of course, a different story.

Jasanoff: We recently had a president of the United States who simply decided overnight to bow out of the Paris agreement.

Robinson: It is a fragile system. It could become like the League of Nations. In the future, to the extent that there will be historians, they may look back and say it was a good idea that failed. People may look back to our time and say, Here was a crux, and then they blew it. This is the power of the basic science-fictional exercise of looking at our own time as if from the future, thus judging ourselves as actors in creating history. From that imaginary perspective, it can sometimes become blazingly obvious what we should do now. Parochial concerns over quarterly returns or the selfish privileges of currently existing wealthy people fade to insignificance when you take the long view and see us teetering on the edge of causing a mass-extinction event that would hammer all future living creatures.

and

Jasanoff: The research team I’ve been leading has looked into this, and it turns out that military victor countries tend to use war metaphors for confronting climate change and not military nonparticipants. So the war metaphor was reportedly not used in Sweden at all. That’s quite interesting. It was occasionally used by Angela Merkel, but only to get citizens to remember what a period of shared suffering had been like. So we’ve been talking about imagination. And there’s a serious question: Who is doing this imagining of our collective future?

In the United States, for instance, we favor individual and technological solutions for social problems. In Cambridge, Mass., where I live, we have reconfigured practically every major road in town to make it very difficult for cars and very easy for bikes. But why cars and bikes if the problem is mobility for all? I’m a senior. I’m not going to go riding around Cambridge, doing my shopping at Whole Foods, then bringing it back on a bicycle. So I’m supposed to use Uber — I mean, is that the solution?

Griffith: I am all in favor of public transit, but it is not the only answer. The per-passenger-mile energy consumption of these two-wheeled scooters and mo-peds and electric bicycles, this is far lower than the per-passenger-mile energy cost of public-transit systems. We’re seeing experiments run all over the world in what new mobility options can look like.

I think the great Zoom experiment is going to be more significant than public transport. A huge number of people have realized that an enormous amount of the traveling we do is tedious, expensive and time-consuming and can be eliminated. So there’s a piece of our imagination that was released by the experience of the pandemic. Honestly, I think Stan is on the vanguard. In your novel “The Ministry for the Future,” I particularly loved how you imagined people in the future using dirigibles and slow air transport as the solution to noisy, fast jets.

 

[lpetrich]

A growing number of Republicans are working to address climate change. - The New York Times

When Representative John Curtis quietly approached fellow Republicans to invite them to discuss climate change at a clandestine meeting in his home state of Utah, he hoped a half dozen might attend.

The guest list blew past expectations as lawmakers heard about the gathering and asked to be included. For two days in February, 24 Republicans gathered in a ballroom of the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City where they brainstormed ways to get their party to engage on a planetary problem it has ignored for decades.

“Some came with the promise of being anonymous,” Mr. Curtis said in an interview. “It’s terrible that Republicans can’t even go talk about it without being embarrassed.”

They've got a long road ahead of them. They'll have a lot of work to do to undo the effect of fossil-fuel donors like the Koch brothers.

 

[lpetrich]

The Left Is the Only Reason We’re Talking About Climate Change at All | The New Republic by Kate Aronoff, datelined Jul 22

It’s become fashionable to suggest climate activists are too hard on Joe Biden. Being hard on Joe Biden is what got climate spending into the infrastructure package

Smoke from raging, climate-fueled wildfires out West blanketed East Coast skies this week. Siberia is burning, too. And flooding in China has displaced some 1.2 million people. In Jacobabad, Pakistan, conditions are too hot and humid for the human body to withstand, leading to a rash of heat-related illnesses and death. One might think this drumbeat of extreme weather would have some bearing on the week’s political events in D.C. It hasn’t. Republicans are still dragging the process along on the White House–supported infrastructure bill so as to obstruct it for as long as possible, and Joes Manchin and Biden are still holding out hope for bipartisan agreement from a party that can’t agree that Donald Trump lost the presidential election.

A few days before the smoky haze made it risky for New Yorkers to take their morning jog, the members of the New York Times editorial board chided Biden’s “chattering critics on the left wing of his party” for not giving him enough credit for a series of environmental pledges, a handful of executive actions, and a bipartisan infrastructure bill whose text has not been released. “This was less than Mr. Biden wanted,” the editorial board wrote of the yet-to-be-passed package, “but his critics reacted as if there were nothing there at all, sending protesters to the White House and Capitol Hill.” The climate left, the Times editorial board and others have recently suggested, is too tough on the president, with counterproductive results.

They’re wrong. The reason there are currently any climate provisions in this infrastructure package is because of the chattering leftists the editorial board and its fellow travelers are telling to pipe down and call it a day.

Then discussing the Obama Admin's proposing cap-and-trade and quickly backing off after a lobbying effort backed by the likes of the Koch brothers.

KA noted the Sunrise Movement's sit-in in Nancy Pelosi's office in late 2018, but it was the result of years of activism by climate activists: fossil-fuel divestment, oil-pipeline protests, etc.

The innovation climate activists offered was, instead of seeing climate policy as a matter of sacrifice—figuring out the right way to make things more expensive—reframing climate policy as a series of investments that create jobs and improve livelihoods. Lacking any other ideas for how to talk about climate change, the Biden administration and top Democrats have mostly run with that, ending a decades-long love affair with carbon pricing as the be-all and end-all of emissions reduction policy.

Could part of that be due to the failure of cap-and-trade efforts? Also, it must be noted, what climate activists are now proposing is much more positive and forward-looking.

Also, I recall that it was originally proposed by Republicans, but when Democrats embraced it, the Republicans turned against it. Much like Obamacare.

The result has not been a wholehearted embrace of the Green New Deal but a basic friendliness toward its strategic vision: namely, that policymakers have to make climate policy look like something ordinary people can understand and might want to see.

 

[ZiprHead]

This guy took video as a tornado hit his house in New Jersey.

https://www.facebook.com/markkoby4/videos/1696299003895842/

 

[ZiprHead]

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/WIDQbDai2jQ[/YOUTUBE]

 

[lpetrich]

Europe Rolls Out Ambitious Climate Change Plan, but Obstacles Loom - The New York Times - "The proposal would impose tariffs on some imports from countries with looser environmental rules. It would also mean the end of sales in the European Union of new gas- and diesel-powered cars in just 14 years."
noting
Europe Plans Aggressive New Laws to Phase Out Fossil Fuels - The New York Times
and
Delivering the European Green Deal | European Commission

The EC has very ambitious goals.

• 55% reduction of emissions from cars by 2030
• 50% reduction of emissions from vans by 2030
• 0 emissions from new cars by 2035

The Commission also promotes the growth of the market for zero- and low- emissions vehicles. In particular, it seeks to ensure that citizens have the infrastructure they need to charge these vehicles, for short and long journeys.

In addition, from 2026, road transport will be covered by emissions trading, putting a price on pollution, stimulating cleaner fuel use, and re-investing in clean technologies.

Electric cars? Renewable-energy synfuels for fuel cars?

The Commission is also proposing carbon pricing for the aviation sector, which benefited from an exception until now. It is also proposing to promote sustainable aviation fuels – with an obligation for planes to take on sustainable blended fuels for all departures from EU airports.

What does this mean? Synfuels?

To ensure a fair contribution from the maritime sector to the effort to decarbonise our economy, the Commission proposes to extend carbon pricing to this sector. The Commission will also set targets for major ports to serve vessels with onshore power, reducing the use of polluting fuels that also harm local air quality.

What is that supposed to mean? Synfuels? Sending out "power ships" to plug into ships to power them in port?

 

[lpetrich]

Improving buildings is another part of this European Green Deal.

• 35 million buildings could be renovated by 2030
• 160,000 additional green jobs could be created in the construction sector by 2030

Renewable energy in general:

• 40% new renewable energy target for 2030
• 36-39% new 2030 energy efficiency targets for final and primary energy consumption

Europe Plans Aggressive New Laws to Phase Out Fossil Fuels - The New York Times

The European Commission’s package of around a dozen legislative proposals, expected on Wednesday, is designed to swiftly reduce the emissions of planet-warming gases and meet an ambitious climate goal, already enshrined in law: The 27-nation bloc has said it will cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 55 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.

The legislation is expected to be in sharp contrast to vague aspirations by various other countries to neutralize their emissions by midcentury. “It’s not just a big promise,” said Jennifer Tollmann, a Berlin-based analyst for E3G, a research and advocacy group that works on climate policy.

The proposals, known as “Fit for 55,” are just that — proposals. They will take many months to negotiate among the 27 member countries and the European Parliament before becoming law. And they will most certainly invite scrutiny of Europe’s own reliance on extracting and burning fossil fuels in its own territories, from oil and gas drilling in the North Sea to coal mining in countries like Germany and Poland.

The most contentious element is something called a border carbon adjustment tax. It would impose tariffs on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with products imported from outside the European Union and, in effect, would protect European companies from goods made in countries with less-stringent climate policies. Among the products that it could target, according to a draft leaked in June, are steel, cement, iron and fertilizers.

China and India don't like that idea.

Other aspects of the legislative package are likely to be contentious within the European 27-country bloc itself. Efforts to phase out the sales of new internal combustion engine cars for instance are likely to face objections from some European carmakers. (Bloomberg reported this week that France opposed a proposed 2035 ban on new gas-burning car sales.) Efforts to phase out coal from electricity generation are likely to face opposition from countries with large coal operations, like Poland and Hungary.

Nevertheless, this should put pressure on China and the US to try to do something about their carbon emissions.

 

[lpetrich]

Europe Rolls Out Ambitious Climate Change Plan, but Obstacles Loom - The New York Times

The European proposal, which some environmental activists say still does not go far enough, raises the bar for the United States and China. President Biden has said that he wants the United States to be a leader in efforts to address climate change.

A White House official said on Wednesday afternoon that it was reviewing the European Commission’s proposals and broadly welcomed the idea of a carbon border tax. Congressional Democrats took a preliminary step on Wednesday toward a similar tax, which they called a “polluter import fee” also intended to reduce emissions.

The United States has promised to reduce emissions 40 to 43 percent by 2030. Scientists have said the world needs to halve emissions by then, which would require history’s biggest polluters, namely the United States and Europe, to make the sharpest, swiftest cuts.

Like:
Greta Thunberg on Twitter: "So it’s official. Unless the EU tear up their new #Fitfor55 package, the world will not stand a chance of staying below 1,5°C of global heating. That’s not an opinion, once you include the full picture it’s a scientific fact.
#MindTheGap between words and action." / Twitter

The detailed proposals from the European Union mark only the start of what promises to be a difficult and bruising two-year negotiation among industry, 27 countries and the European Parliament on how to reach the 55 percent reduction.

...
There are geopolitical implications. The cross-border carbon tax proposal could have the greatest impact on goods from Russia and Turkey, mainly iron, steel and aluminum, according to data analyzed by the Centre for European Reform. The impact on U.S. exports to Europe would be far smaller, according to the analysis.

...
Although the European Union produces only about 8 percent of current global carbon emissions, its cumulative emissions since the start of the industrial age are among the world’s highest. But as a huge market, it also sees itself as an important regulatory power for the world and hopes to set an example, invent new technologies that it can sell, and provide new global standards that can lead to a carbon-neutral economy.

The same can be said of the US, with 1.6 times the emissions of the EU.

 

[lpetrich]

 List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions has numbers for 2017, and I could not find more recent numbers elsewhere.

China is at 29.34%, the US at 13.77%, and the post-Brexit EU at 8.55%. The figure given is 9.57%, and it includes the UK at 1.02%.

India is at 6.62%, Russia at 4.76%, Japan at 3.56%, South Korea at 1.82%, Iran at 1.81%, Saudi Arabia at 1.72%, Canada at 1.66%, ...

World shipping is at 1.83% and world aviation is at 1.47%.

Fridays For Future – Map of Climate Striking and Actions shows where climate activists have been active.

Plenty of activism in the US, Europe, and India, but not much in China, Russia, or Saudi Arabia. The first three are relatively open societies, while the second three are relatively authoritarian. There is, however, a curious shortage of climate activism in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, despite their relatively open societies.

 

[lpetrich]

In New York City,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Major climate announcement incoming and it’s actually good" / Twitter
noting
Mayor Bill de Blasio on Twitter: "A recovery for all of us means our city AND our planet. Join me, @NYCComptroller and @AOC at City Hall for a major climate announcement. (link)" / Twitter

Elizabeth Kim on Twitter: "Joined by @AOC, Mayor de Blasio today announces $50 billion divestment from fossil fuels + new investment in renewables. The city is committing to net-zero emissions in all pension investments. (link)" / Twitter
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Actually good, major climate news: ..." / Twitter

Actually good, major climate news: today New York City is announcing its public pensions are fully divesting out of the fossil fuel industry and into renewables & climate - a massive shift of about $50 billion.

This move is led by NYC workers. Here’s why this is a big deal.
(above tweet from Elizabeth Kim)

Pension funds are massive pools of money that fund retirement for teachers, city workers, and other public employees.

These funds invest throughout our economy, & the sheer size of pension plans in the US economy (~$5.5 trillion according to @PensionDialog) make them powerful.

I sit on the Financial Services Cmte & often see how Wall St leverages risky &/or unpopular investments onto public pensions, taking bets and setting up workers to hold the bag.

As fossil fuels sink in popularity, pension funds have been an important source for fossil fuel $.

That’s where workers come in to spark change. By demanding their retirements be divested of fossil fuels, workers and voters are precipitating large shifts of $ out of big oil, gas,etc.

That amps up pressure & leaves companies like Exxon w/ fewer places to get fossil fuel money.

And while it’s important to note that market-based approaches alone will NOT solve the climate crisis (in fact they largely created it to begin w/), divestment mvmts help create the conditions & pressure necessary for even larger leaps.

So there’s your good news of the day 🗞

Kudos to @NYCComptroller for crunching the numbers and laying out the plan and @NYCMayorsOffice for executing on it

The latest bit of divestment from fossil-fuel companies.

 

[lpetrich]

Money For Green Energy Creates More Jobs Than Fossil Fuel Investment, New Study Finds | HuffPost Latest News - "The findings are true across the world, but the U.S. could see some of the biggest benefits from spending on renewables and nature restoration."

As Congress debates whether to pare down the Biden administration’s signature climate proposals or allow the fossil fuel industry to benefit more from new government programs, new research suggests doing so would create far fewer jobs.

For every million dollars the United States government invests, solar produces over 2.7 times more jobs than fossil fuels, according to an analysis from two environmental think tanks and a labor union. Wind energy spurs over 2.8 times more jobs than investments in oil, gas and coal. And retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient creates demand for nearly three times as many jobs.

The findings appear to hold true across the world.

The paper ― which the World Resources Institute, New Climate Economy, and the International Trade Union Confederation published Monday ― reviewed a dozen studies from 2009 to 2020 and compared the projected job numbers in Brazil, China, Indonesia, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, the United States and globally.

 

[bilby]

Money For Green Energy Creates More Jobs Than Fossil Fuel Investment, New Study Finds | HuffPost Latest News - "The findings are true across the world, but the U.S. could see some of the biggest benefits from spending on renewables and nature restoration."

As Congress debates whether to pare down the Biden administration’s signature climate proposals or allow the fossil fuel industry to benefit more from new government programs, new research suggests doing so would create far fewer jobs.

For every million dollars the United States government invests, solar produces over 2.7 times more jobs than fossil fuels, according to an analysis from two environmental think tanks and a labor union. Wind energy spurs over 2.8 times more jobs than investments in oil, gas and coal. And retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient creates demand for nearly three times as many jobs.

The findings appear to hold true across the world.

The paper ― which the World Resources Institute, New Climate Economy, and the International Trade Union Confederation published Monday ― reviewed a dozen studies from 2009 to 2020 and compared the projected job numbers in Brazil, China, Indonesia, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, the United States and globally.

'creates more jobs for the same result' = 'is vastly more expensive and inefficient'.

It's not a good thing.

Creating jobs to get a larger amount of electricity, or more reliable electricity is a possible win. Doing so but getting less electricity, or less reliable electricity is not.

Inefficiency is not made laudable by reframing it as 'job creation'. Digging the tunnel for a new subway line creates more jobs if it's done by hand, with teaspoons, than it does if you use a Tunnel Boring Machine. But that doesn't mean teaspoon tunnelling is the better option.

 

[bleubird]

Oaks Instead Of Palm Trees? Florida’s Iconic Palms Don’t Cut It With Climate Change

They are iconic to Florida, but palm trees offer little shade to urban heat islands and capture very small amounts of carbon, a greenhouse gas…

wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu

No shade,poor co2 take up, and produce little of value.

 

[lpetrich]

Ithaca, New York votes to decarbonize every building in climate change fight - The Washington Post

"Following a common council vote, Ithaca, N.Y., is set to be the first city in the country to electrify its buildings with the help of BlocPower"

Late Wednesday night, the city of Ithaca, N.Y., voted to electrify and decarbonize its buildings. It’s the first such initiative of its kind in the country.

“We are being very aggressive,” said Luis Aguirre-Torres, Ithaca’s director of sustainability. “I’m very excited but, at the same time, it’s a lot of work ahead.”

The city of about 30,000 people consists of some 6,000 homes and buildings.

...
“It’s a project for the whole city, not just municipal buildings,” said Aguirre-Torres.

Buildings account for nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Ithaca’s initiative is projected to cut about that much from the city’s overall carbon footprint — saving approximately 160,000 tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the equivalent of the emissions from about 35,000 cars driven for a year.

That means going all-electric, replacing natural gas and propane and fuel oil with electricity, promoting electric cars, and putting solar panels on rooftops.

For cooking, that means three kinds of heating: straight resistance heating, induction heating, and microwaves.

I have a personal connection. I'd lived in Ithaca NY when I went to Cornell University.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ithaca, New York votes to decarbonize every building in climate change fight - The Washington Post

"Following a common council vote, Ithaca, N.Y., is set to be the first city in the country to electrify its buildings with the help of BlocPower"

Late Wednesday night, the city of Ithaca, N.Y., voted to electrify and decarbonize its buildings. It’s the first such initiative of its kind in the country.

“We are being very aggressive,” said Luis Aguirre-Torres, Ithaca’s director of sustainability. “I’m very excited but, at the same time, it’s a lot of work ahead.”

The city of about 30,000 people consists of some 6,000 homes and buildings.

...
“It’s a project for the whole city, not just municipal buildings,” said Aguirre-Torres.

Buildings account for nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Ithaca’s initiative is projected to cut about that much from the city’s overall carbon footprint — saving approximately 160,000 tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the equivalent of the emissions from about 35,000 cars driven for a year.

That means going all-electric, replacing natural gas and propane and fuel oil with electricity, promoting electric cars, and putting solar panels on rooftops.

For cooking, that means three kinds of heating: straight resistance heating, induction heating, and microwaves.

I have a personal connection. I'd lived in Ithaca NY when I went to Cornell University.

So long as you are generating your electricity with fossil fuels cooking on resistance or induction heating increases CO2 emissions.

 

[ZiprHead]

Ithaca, New York votes to decarbonize every building in climate change fight - The Washington Post

"Following a common council vote, Ithaca, N.Y., is set to be the first city in the country to electrify its buildings with the help of BlocPower"

Late Wednesday night, the city of Ithaca, N.Y., voted to electrify and decarbonize its buildings. It’s the first such initiative of its kind in the country.

“We are being very aggressive,” said Luis Aguirre-Torres, Ithaca’s director of sustainability. “I’m very excited but, at the same time, it’s a lot of work ahead.”

The city of about 30,000 people consists of some 6,000 homes and buildings.

...
“It’s a project for the whole city, not just municipal buildings,” said Aguirre-Torres.

Buildings account for nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Ithaca’s initiative is projected to cut about that much from the city’s overall carbon footprint — saving approximately 160,000 tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the equivalent of the emissions from about 35,000 cars driven for a year.

That means going all-electric, replacing natural gas and propane and fuel oil with electricity, promoting electric cars, and putting solar panels on rooftops.

For cooking, that means three kinds of heating: straight resistance heating, induction heating, and microwaves.

I have a personal connection. I'd lived in Ithaca NY when I went to Cornell University.

So long as you are generating your electricity with fossil fuels cooking on resistance or induction heating increases CO2 emissions.

Ithaca has a hydroelectric plant.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So long as you are generating your electricity with fossil fuels cooking on resistance or induction heating increases CO2 emissions.

Ithaca has a hydroelectric plant.

Power is fungible. If they're cooking on that hydropower it's not available for somebody else who is going to have to burn fossil fuels. Whether your power produces carbon or not is irrelevant so long as it's part of a grid that includes carbon-producing power. Only the big picture matters--how much carbon the grid produces.