Sustainability

 Considering some of the climate change  efforts...

Some videos to share about the Green Wall being built tree-by-tree across Africa.

..and I enjoyed seeing the following video which shows the 4 year training efforts of planting just a small area of trees at a time, then other plants for food and other sources.

These videos were shared with me by Cathy Holt, a former Asheville NC resident, who now lives in South America and publishes an occasional blog post through "Medium." Here's the link to her latest post: https://cathyholt.medium.com/earth-us-africas-great-green-wall-food-forest-barichara-s-water-ea501489c38d

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And my new newsletter "The Contrarian" selected Al Gore for their weekly standout figure for democracy last week.

"Climate change deniers have derided Vice President Al Gore for decades. And yet with each new climate change-enhanced disaster, his warnings about global warming seem more prescient...

Slamming President Trump’s climate denial and “phony” energy emergence, he declared, “These performative acts show the pervasive influence that the fossil fuel industry will have in the United States over the next four years. But make no mistake, the global Sustainability Revolution is unstoppable.” He slammed withdrawal from the Paris Accords as “shortsighted abdication of leadership that will only serve to put our nation at a disadvantage.

“Trump officially barred new offshore wind leases and will review federal permitting of wind projects, making good on a promise to ‘end leasing to massive wind farms that degrade our natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers,’” Vox reported. Even his own party members may dissent. (“The top four states for wind generation — Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — are solidly red, and unlikely to acquiesce. Even Trump’s pick for Interior secretary, Doug Burgum, refused to disavow wind power during a hearing last week, saying he would pursue an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy.”)

Meanwhile, in targeting credits for EV’s Trump is handing China a gift. Rattner notes that while the U.S. lags in EV production, only 10 percent of our car production is electric. In China, that number is 50 percent. China dominates the world market with 76 percent of the global market.

The rest of this article "Undaunted: A champion for truth, science, and responsible stewardship" was published Jan. 24, 2025, by Jennifer Rubin.

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Today's quote:

What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers. 

-Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)

Today's art:

Unknown photographer

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You may notice I'm posting more that will share the efforts all over the world to better our possible chance of survival from the climate crisis, and oh yes, the political one as well.

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Today is day 3 after dental work, and the area where novocaine was pumped is still sore and swollen, and my lower left lip is somewhat "frozen" and it's hard to talk. So I'm trying to get in to see my doctor sometime today...and taking ibuprofen. It's been hard to talk with only 3/4 of my lips working, not to mention my looking quite gorilla -ish!

Climate Trace to track every big source of greenhouse emissions

 Well Al Gore has come through again. He went to COP-27 and talked, in an interview with All Things Considered, about a new way that everyone can tell what level of CO2 different industries are producing.

It's a map from satellite images. Of the world. Including China etc.

Al Gore helped launch a global emissions tracker that keeps big polluters honest

November 14, 20225:18 AM ET 

Heard on All Things Considered 

(Treehugger edition) 

Twitter

In the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one of the longstanding challenges has been figuring out who is exactly producing them and how much.

Now, a new global tracker is helping to make clear exactly where major greenhouse gas emissions are originating. Created by the nonprofit Climate Trace, the interactive map uses a combination of satellites, sensors and machine learning to measure the top polluters worldwide.

It observes how much greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — are being emitted at specific locations, such as power plants and oil refineries. Former Vice President Al Gore, who is a founding member of the initiative, said it is meant to serve as a more reliable and accurate alternative to companies self-reporting their emissions estimates.

"Cheating is impossible with this artificial intelligence method, because they would have to somehow falsify multiple sets of data," he told NPR's Michel Martin on All Things Considered.

Gore recently returned from Egypt where world leaders have been convening to discuss the climate crisis at the annual U.N. climate conference, also known as COP27.

He believes the tracker will help countries stick to their pledges to reach net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050.

Climate Trace wants to track nearly every big source of greenhouse emissions

The emissions tool employs over 300 satellites; sensors on land, planes and ships; as well as artificial intelligence to build models of emission estimates.

Right now, it tracks about 72,000 of the highest emitting greenhouse gas sources. That includes every power plant, large ship and large plane in the entire world, Gore said.

And that's just the beginning. By next year, Gore hopes to be tracking millions of major emitting sites.

"We will have essentially all of them," he said.

Gore said 75% of the world's greenhouse emissions come from countries that have made pledges to become carbon-neutral by 2050. "Now that they know exactly where it's coming from, they have tools that will enable them to reduce their emissions," he told NPR.

He added that the database, which is free and accessible online, can help inform countries about how much pollution is being emitted by the companies they are working with or considering working with.

It is not enough for companies to self-report, he said. For instance, Climate Trace found that the oil and gas industry has been significantly underreporting its emissions.

"We found their emissions are three times higher than they have been telling the United Nations," Gore said.

In the U.S. specifically, oil and gas producers have underreported how much methane they've been releasing, recent research suggests.

That doesn't mean companies were intentionally cheating, Gore added. However, he said underreporting prevents governments and the public from staying on track with their net-zero pledge.

Six regional governments in Mexico, Europe and Africa have already entered into working agreements for using the tool, Gore said.

Gore remains optimistic about the climate future

The world is generally off track from its goal of cutting emissions that drive climate change, but Gore said he's been impressed by recent efforts around the globe to address the issue.

In the U.S., Gore pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes over $360 billion to tackle climate change and incentivizes consumers to make greener choices. Gore described the law as "the biggest climate legislation in the history of the world."

He also praised Australia for voting in a new government that pledged to shift away from coal and Brazil for electing a new president who vowed to stop destroying the Amazon.

"So there's great danger, but there is hope," Gore said. "If we can summon the will to act."