[GWSG] Renewable prices; fossils doomed: IEA; Oxford U divests; along with others; little essay; McKibben's blog

[Tilley, Al]

1. Headline: “Solar, wind and battery storage now cheapest energy options just about everywhere.” The price of onshore wind has fallen 9% in the last six months. Utility scale solar power is down 94% in the last decade. The price of battery storage has dropped 50% in the last two years. It is now about as cheap in China to build a new solar plant as it is to run a coal plant.   https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-wind-and-battery-storage-now-cheapest-energy-options-just-about-everywhere-95748/



2.   The International Energy Agency, famous for its plus-size projections of fossil fuel usage, sees renewable energy as the only survivor of the shock now being delivered to the energy industry by the coronavirus. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/30/covid-19-crisis-demand-fossil-fuels-iea-renewable-electricity



3. The University of Oxford has followed Georgetown, the University of California (the entire system), and many others in divesting from fossil fuels. https://www.ecowatch.com/oxford-university-fossil-fuels-divest-2645863951.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1



4. 1195 institutions representing $14.4 trillion in investments and over 58,000 individuals with $5.2 billion in investments have committed to divesting from fossil fuels. https://gofossilfree.org/divestment/commitments/



5. Now please go back and reread number 4, renouncing every mean thought you may have had about Bill McKibben, who, as I understand it, is as responsible as anyone for the divestment movement. Then reread numbers 1 and 2. Surely we may say that the energy transition could well be at hand.

The selfish and mean people who think James Buchanan understood the world, people with tiny souls, cannot be allowed to determine our future.  Trump admires the leaders of Russia, Brazil, the Philippines, Turkey, and other autocracies. We shall leave him, and them—Pence, McConnell, Miller, Putin, Bolsonaro, DeVos, and the rest—behind, however many bodies they produce, even if ours must be among them. The casualties of covid-19 are in part victims of a government which does not even act as if it, he, they, valued the public good. They choose the interests of the profiteers over those of the health system. Their rudimentary values are the primary difficulty in the way of effective climate action. Resistors to autocracy are the soldiers of the climate wars, and the war has its martyrs.

Finally, Trump and his associates are reactionary, and will pass. We shall survive the virus and need learn no further lessons to reverse the course of the climate crisis. Global carbon neutrality by 2030 would do. We could then get about building a sustainable culture as we partly learn, partly relearn what it means to be at home in the world. Native peoples can help us. Our technologies are full of novel possibilities. After that future we might begin to wonder what it means to be at home in the universe. Right now, we must deal with a virus and an election even as we lay plans for climate action.



5. Bill McKibben’s blog finds both darkness and hope in younger people. He also interviews a pipeline activist who assures him that “Not an inch of the risky Keystone XL pipeline will ever touch our land and water here in Nebraska, because of the lawsuits and grassroots actions we are leading.”  https://outlook.office.com/mail/inbox/id/AAQkADY3M2IwNjNlLWY1ODItNGUxMi04MGY0LTE4OWQxNGM3ZWNlNAAQAJ%2BUcPfcMxNIoKkK3lHTV0Q%3D

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