[GWSG] Renewable peace plan; the fossil bill; who owes what; adaptation bills; cooling cities; cargo by sail

[Tilley, Al]

1. At a meeting in Sydney, US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said that the switch to renewable energy “could be the greatest peace plan of all.” “No country has ever been held hostage to access to the sun. No country has ever been held hostage to access to the wind. They have not ever been weaponised, nor will they be.” https://reneweconomy.com.au/us-energy-secretary-says-switch-to-wind-and-solar-could-be-greatest-peace-plan-of-all/

2. Nuclear and fossil fuel industries depend for their solvency on externalizing costs. If the nuclear industry had to pay for the effects of their operations, including their wastes, the cost of nuclear energy would be far beyond our ability to pay.. The health costs alone of burning fossil fuels would render them impossible to market. A Dartmouth College study revealed that the global wage losses from rising heat due to the burning of fossil fuels in the five highest emitting countries have been about $6 trillion in the past 25 years. The US alone is responsible for almost $2 trillion in lost income. Other countries, many of them poor, have been paying our bills. They have noticed and are working on removing the legal barriers to gaining restitution.  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/12/us-carbon-emissions-greenhouse-gases-climate-crisis?CMP=share_btn_tw&utm_campaign=Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20220713&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter

3. The Dartmouth study used attribution models to detail the damage in lost wages caused in, say, Angola by, say, the US, lifting a “veil of deniability” which has protected the emitters from liability. https://apnews.com/article/climate-russia-ukraine-science-united-states-226702e6d195c94433cdc48e5fed6e63?utm_campaign=Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20220713&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter

4. On a separate but related issue, poor countries in Africa will have to pay the greatest part of their resources adapting to climate disruptions they did the least to cause. At COP 26 a two-year effort to help the poorest countries with adaptation began to address the problem; the support so far has been inadequate. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/13/climate-adaptation-bill-african-countries-dwarf-health-spending?utm_campaign=Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20220713&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter

5. Air conditioning generally balances the cool air it provides with the hot exhaust coming out the back. White roofs and trees are a better answer to urban heat. So are raising buried rivers and such basic architectural considerations as “orientation, shading, and air flow.” https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jul/14/climate-crisis-metropolis-meltdown-urgent-steps-cool-sweltering-cities

6. Sustainable commercial shipping could use wind power—if we could figure out how to build a proper cargo sailing ship. French twin brothers Olivier and Jacques Barreau are among those trying to solve the problems. They are at work on their second ship.  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/14/replacing-container-ships-with-sailing-boats-cargo-shipping-wind-power

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