[GWSG] Cheaper, bigger batteries; S-curve novelties; unlabeled lies; ANWR protected, Willow not; Biden's dilemma, our anguish

[Tilley, Al]

1. A 20-minute video from CNBC describes the role ever larger and ever cheaper batteries are playing in our electrical supply. A 2 minute video remarks on the effect of that on the methane industry. https://climatecrocks.com/2021/05/28/the-weekend-wonk-tesla-leads-energy-storage-down-the-cost-curve/

2. New technologies are adopted by percentages of the population which graph as an S curve over time—home electrical supply, the telephone, the auto, color TV, the home computer, cell phones, and others. Renewable energy and electric vehicles are on that curve now, moving toward dominance faster than most of us realize. A five-minute video explains. https://climatecrocks.com/2021/05/28/the-s-curve-why-im-optimistic-about-the-clean-transition/
The BBC adds info on electric cars and the S curve. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57253947

3. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube carry hundreds of thousands of false posts on climate each year. A Grand Solar Minimum is leading to a new ice age; space lasers set forest fires; snow storms indicate a reversal in the climate crisis. Social media label false information on COVID but ignore false claims on climate while fossil fuel corporations are weaponizing them. Facebook has organized a Climate Science Information Center to counter some of the manufactured ignorance.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-future-of-this-planet-is-at-stake-report-pressures-facebook-youtube-and-twitter-to-battle-climate-lies/ar-AAKrFvr

4.   The Biden administration has suspended offering licenses to drill within Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. None of the big oil companies were interested in bidding on leases there anyway. The Administration may hope that the defense of ANWR will distract attention from their granting permission to ConocoPhillips to take a reported 100,000 barrels a day for 30 years from the Willow project on Alaska’s north slope, the so-called National Petroleum Reserve. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/01/biden-suspends-oil-drilling-leases-alaska-arctic-refuge-trump-era
I have little hope that the Biden administration is prepared to act in a meaningful or timely way on the climate crisis. The momentum seems to lie with the EU and China, though while the US is pumping oil and gas at such a rate it will be an uphill battle. May the electrification of transportation lead to speedy bankruptcies in the oil industry to match those already facing commercial methane and the dwindling coal industry.

5. The Biden administration is having trouble reconciling its willingness to accommodate the fossil fuel industry with its mandate to deal with the climate crisis. To act decisively might lead to ceding ground to a Republican party which appears to be bent on replacing our democracy with an autocracy. Not to act decisively might lead to the termination of our environmental license to practice civilization, or worse. Perhaps a way out of the impasse would lie through determined and focused public action.  https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01062021/with-trump-gone-old-fault-lines-in-the-climate-movement-reopen-complicating-bidens-path-forward/?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20210602&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Daily

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