For sustainable business, ‘planetary boundaries’ define the new rules
What could a good green recovery plan actually look like?
What do governments across the world need to do to shift economies away from fossil fuels?
Glasgow Agreement, A Plan of Our Own (video, 4 minutes)
Rather than plans dictated from the top—which have proven not only to be unfair and destructive, but not even reach the necessary emissions cuts—we will build a plan of our own, from below.
Climate on a new scale
DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model will harness the next level of supercomputer to explore big climate questions.
https://ascr-discovery.org/2020/11/climate-on-a-new-scale/
‘Transparent Solar Cells’ Can Take Us Towards a New Era of Personalized Energy
Green Hydrogen: Could It Be Key to a Carbon-Free Economy?
Green hydrogen, which uses renewable energy to produce hydrogen from water, is taking off around the globe. Its boosters say the fuel could play an important role in decarbonizing hard-to-electrify sectors of the economy, such as long-haul trucking, aviation, and heavy manufacturing.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/green-hydrogen-could-it-be-key-to-a-carbon-free-economy
Why Nuclear Fusion Remains Our Best Bet For 100% Clean Energy
Researchers decipher structure of promising battery materials
https://news.mit.edu/2020/metal-organic-framworks-batteries-1123
Creating Higher Energy Density Lithium-Ion Batteries for Renewable Energy Applications
The Denialist Playbook
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-denialist-playbook/
UK’s spherical nuclear fusion reactor tests new heat-reducing exhaust
More Transparency Recommended for Gene-Edited Crops
https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/11/gene-editing-transparency/
New Research Confirms What We Eat Is Central to the Climate Crisis
A decade after writing a book about agriculture’s connection to climate change, Anna Lappé interviews the author of a new study that confirms we can’t bring down emissions without addressing the food system.
https://civileats.com/2020/11/18/new-research-confirms-what-we-eat-is-central-to-the-climate-crisis/
To predict how crops cope with changing climate, 30 years of experiments simulate future
Ants are skilled farmers: They have solved a problem that we humans have yet to.
Ants have been farmers for tens of millions of years and successfully solved a riddle that we humans have yet to. A new study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen reports that ants are pros at cultivating climate-resilient crops.
Transparent soil-like substances provide window on soil ecology
Future lake food webs in subarctic have more biomass and contain more omega-3 fatty acids
Bigger Is Not Always Better: Farming and Sustainability with Niman Ranch
Why agricultural carbon offsets can’t play a role in international climate action
As We’re Giving Thanks, Let’s Resolve To Change Our Food System For The Better
http://foodandwaterwatch.org/news/were-giving-thanks-lets-resolve-change-our-food-system-better
A New Native Seed Cooperative Aims to Rebuild Indigenous Foodways
The Indigenous Seed Growers Network sprouted from the pandemic, and is quickly evolving to help communities secure their own food systems for generations to come.
https://civileats.com/2020/11/10/a-new-native-seed-cooperative-aims-to-rebuild-indigenous-foodways/
The “uneven ground” in the title of this synthesis report is where the majority of rural people are increasingly finding themselves. This research report sheds new light on the scale and speed of growing land inequality.
It provides the most comprehensive picture available today, informed by 17 specially-commissioned research papers as well as analysis of existing data and literature. It lays out in detail the causes and consequences of land inequality, the contributing factors and interconnected global crises, and analyses potential solutions and offers a potential pathway to change.
https://www.landcoalition.org/en/uneven-ground/
Climate change and “atmospheric thirst” to increase fire danger and drought in Nevada and California
https://www.dri.edu/climate-change-and-atmospheric-thirst/
Can California’s Cap and Trade Actually Address Environmental Justice?
Economists, environmentalists, and policymakers—many of them White —tout cap and trade as a cost-effective way to cut emissions while generating money for other climate initiatives. But environmental justice activists say the program has not served California’s disadvantaged communities, and particularly communities of color, where many facilities operate. In their eyes, it doesn’t do enough to address climate change and allows emitters to continue polluting the air in the meantime.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/11/20/california-pollution-cap-trade/
Propaganda?: How Pesticide Companies Are Marketing Themselves as a Solution to Climate Change
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/11/18/pesticides-industry-climate-change-marketing-pr
Bug bites: Edible insect production ramps up quickly in Madagascar
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/bug-bites-edible-insect-production-ramps-up-quickly-in-madagascar/
Past is key to predicting future climate
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4705/past_is_key_to_predicting_future_climate
On the horizon: the end of oil and the beginnings of a low-carbon planet
With demand and share prices dropping, Europe’s fossil fuel producers recognise that peak oil is probably now behind them
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/01/end-of-oil-and-beginnings-of-a-low-carbon-planet
Sustainable Food Trends Will Become Center Of The Plate With Modern Consumers
She’s written 14 veg-focused cookbooks, yet Deborah Madison is not a vegetarian. What can she teach us about how to cook and eat?
https://thecounter.org/deborah-madison-interview-an-onion-in-my-pocket/
Ban short-haul flights, eat less meat: Europeans back climate over convenience in Oxford survey
Project Drawdown and an Opportunity for a Better Planet
https://signalscv.com/2020/11/cher-gilmore-project-drawdown-and-an-opportunity-for-a-better-planet/
14 Stories of Resiliency and Food Justice in Indigenous Communities
We share our recent reporting on the myriad Native solutions to food insecurity, seed preservation, sustained food sovereignty, and more.
Talking Tofurky: How its mission and fun approach made a quirky company a plant-based leader
While the 25-year-old family-owned company may be named after its Thanksgiving roast, a diverse array of products and leadership have helped establish the now-trendy segment.
USDA Looks to Conservation Finance to Deliver More Working Lands Conservation
The root of the soil organic matter: Part 1
https://hayandforage.com/article-3255-The-root-of-the-soil-organic-matter-Part-1.html
Biden Stocks Transition Teams with Climate Experts
The President-elect has included those with climate experience across a wide swath of federal agencies
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biden-stocks-transition-teams-with-climate-experts/
‘Today Feels Like a Betrayal’: Sunrise Movement Blasts Biden Pick of Big Oil-Backed Cedric Richmond for Key Post
“President-elect Biden assured our movement he understands the urgency of this crisis; now, it’s time for him to act like it.”
A youth group helped Biden win. Now they want him to fix climate crisis
The Sunrise Movement helped reach 3.5m voters in swing states and are determined to hold the president-elect to his promises
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/16/joe-biden-climate-crisis-ennvironment-energy
Biden’s Agriculture Secretary: Heitkamp is the Wrong Choice
https://foodtank.com/news/2020/11/bidens-agriculture-secretary-heitkamp-is-the-wrong-choice/
Ma Jun: China has started to ‘walk the walk’ on climate crisis
US dropped the environmental ball under Trump, but Biden victory means the two countries can work together for a green recovery, says campaigner
New Hope for the Climate in a Biden-Harris Win
https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/joe-biden-climate-change/708346
How AI Helps Amazon Improve Sustainable Packaging
https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2020/ai-amazon-sustainable-packaging/707721
From Fear and Anger to Collective Purpose
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/11/11/election-moving-forward-collective-purpose/
Factory Farms Are Poisoning Rural Communities. Will Biden Take on This Crisis?
https://truthout.org/articles/factory-farms-are-poisoning-rural-communities-will-biden-take-on-this-crisis/
After Trump’s payouts are gone, what happens to farmers?
https://www.iatp.org/blog/202011/after-trumps-payouts-are-gone-what-happens-farmers
Plastic pollution is everywhere. Study reveals how it travels
Agricultural revolution: “The Gates Foundation is leading Africa to failure”
https://www.iatp.org/blog/202010/agricultural-revolution-gates-foundation-leading-africa-failure
How the Green New Deal Can Save Joe Biden and America.
There is no other policy construct on the horizon that has any chance of delivering so many salutary outcomes.
Trumpism is not an accidental phenomenon. It has been in gestation for over four decades. It began in the 1980s, with Reagan, when the U.S. made the explicit policy decision to transfer massive shares of national income and wealth from the working and middle classes to those who were already the most-wealthy. This was the notorious “Supply Side Economics.”
Supply Side Economics lowered tax rates on the highest income earners from 71% to 35%. It did this without any requirement that the Titans of Capitalism invest their new-found gains in the U.S. economy. So, they didn’t. They invested them in the Asian Tigers: Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, and China. Over the next four decades, U.S. financiers and industrialists moved trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of factories, and tens of millions of high-paying working-class jobs out of the country, mainly to Asia.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/11/15/how-green-new-deal-can-save-joe-biden-and-america
Tackling the growing challenge of urban air pollution – 2020
https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/about/news/201118-urban-air-pollution-management.html
On environmental protection, Biden’s election will mean a 180-degree turn from Trump policies
https://theconversation.com/on-environmental-protection-bidens-election-will-mean-a-180-degree-turn-from-trump-policies-149223
The rise of the carbon-negative building.
Wooden structures that store more carbon than is emitted in their construction point to a flaw in green building schemes.
Buildings are currently the source of about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Until recently, most of those emissions have come from the energy needed for heating, lighting, and so on. But that pattern is starting to change. As buildings become more energy efficient and the energy system decarbonizes, a greater proportion of a building’s lifetime emissions come from the materials used in constructing it.
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2020/11/the-rise-of-the-carbon-negative-building/
Scientists Create the First Global Map of Bee Distribution
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/scientists-create-the-first-global-map-of-bee-distribution