[GWSG] Homicide rap; CDR webinar; the Saudi lobby; Amprius's battery; a last cartoon; sailing ships; good tips

[Tilley, Al]

1. A forthcoming paper in the Harvard Law Review maintains that a sufficient case may be made for charging oil companies, perhaps as a group, with homicide. (A murder charge is more difficult, but possible.) One remedy would be to restructure them as public benefit corporations, as was done to Purdue Pharma in settlement of a suit concerning opioids. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/22/big-oil-companies-homicide-harvard-environmental-law-review

2. The World Resources Institute put on a most worthwhile 1 ½ hour webinar on carbon dioxide removal (CDR). (It specifically avoided carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), fossil fuel’s way to stay in business by attempting to remove C from the exhaust stream.) Noah Deich of the Department of Energy, IPCC lead author Gregory Nehman, and Charm Industry’s Nora Cohen Brown sketched the task ahead, the challenges, and the opportunities, leaving a sense of a robust effort headed in the right direction. A recording of the webinar will be posted on the WRI’s site in the next few days.  https://www.wri.org/

3. A group led by Saudi Arabia pushed to include CCS and CDR in the IPCC summary report, and to block the report from mentioning the importance wind and solar power, now cheaper than fossil fuels. The group succeeded in blocking mention of wind and solar, but were blocked from mentioning CCS. (So CDR was also blocked.) The Saudi group had been successful in getting CCS not only mentioned but emphasized in the main report last April. https://www.climatechangenews.com/2023/03/23/governments-battle-over-carbon-removal-and-renewables-in-ipcc-report/?utm_source=cbnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-03-24&utm_campaign=Daily+Briefing+24+03+2023

4. California’s Amprius Technologies announced final testing completed for a new battery with twice the energy density of current lithium batteries. For vehicles, that could mean much longer range with the same battery weight or much more power for the same battery weight. The factory is under construction in Brighton, CO. https://electrek.co/2023/03/23/amprius-light-energy-dense-battery-independently-verified/

5. The Last Dog on the Moon offers a last cartoon on climate change (of course it isn’t). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/24/this-is-the-last-ever-cartoon-about-climate-change-of-course-it-isnt

6. “Already more than 20 commercial cargo ships use wind power to cut their fuel use.” (With a solar array and some newly cheap grid-level batteries as ballast, couldn’t they cut the rest?) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/23/cargo-ships-powered-by-wind-could-help-tackle-climate-crisis

7. When a sufficient number of people adopt a new technology, the adoptions cascade. Perhaps as the scale increases, costs decline; perhaps early adopters pass the word on of how useful/cheap/neat the new technology is. A number of these new tipping points are here or approaching: electric vehicle adoption, a move to plant-based diets, replacement of gas heaters/stoves/clothes dryers by heat pumps and other electric appliances, and installation of rooftop solar are among the changes which are important, even (as is the case with diet) crucial to ending the climate crisis. The government can aid these changes by switching subsidies for fossil fuels, meats, and other problematic sectors to the new and more positive ones. Of course some of that is already in progress. (And of course some is already being coopted by the fossil fuel industry—for example, production of hydrogen as a fuel). https://cleantechnica.com/2023/03/23/were-approaching-several-positive-climate-tipping-points-is-it-enough/

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