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Super trees, smh

Not to pick on MIT Tech Review – though kicking Silicon Valley is another story and actually fine – but this story reads quite a bit like VCs trying to re-invent the bus:

At Living Carbon, Mellor is trying to design trees that grow faster and grab more carbon than their natural peers, as well as trees that resist rot, keeping that carbon out of the atmosphere. In February, less than four years after he co-founded it, the company made headlines by planting its first “photosynthesis-enhanced” poplar trees in a strip of bottomland forests in Georgia.

This is a breakthrough, clearly: it’s the first forest in the United States that contains genetically engineered trees. But there’s still much we don’t know. How will these trees affect the rest of the forest? How far will their genes spread? And how good are they, really, at pulling more carbon from the atmosphere?

Living Carbon has already sold carbon credits for its new forest to individual consumers interested in paying to offset some of their own greenhouse gas emissions. They’re working with larger companies, to which they plan to deliver credits in the coming years. But academics who study forest health and tree photosynthesis question whether the trees will be able to absorb as much carbon as advertised.

Even Steve Strauss, a prominent tree geneticist at Oregon State University who briefly served on Living Carbon’s scientific advisory board and is conducting field trials for the company, told me in the days before the first planting that the trees might not grow as well as natural poplars. “I’m kind of a little conflicted,” he said, “that they’re going ahead with this—all the public relations and the financing—on something that we don’t know if it works.”

Re-engineering trees, okay. Super-charged trees. His misgivings are right there, as are the preconditions of going ahead with this:  ‘headlines’, ‘public relations and financing.’ Like they just came out of nowhere.

I, too, want super trees to be a thing. But c’mon. Strauss is actually quoted in the article saying, “There could be a negative. We don’t know”

The point is that Climate Solutions Hype (patent pending) continues to outstrip existing effective solutions that we just don’t like, are bored with or wish were sexier and have become one more dynamic with which the Earth must contend. Along with irony.

Image: Regular Lombardy Poplar tree (also quite super).

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View from nowhere, of no thing

This is the best they do and it’s terrible. NPR runs an infomercial on a carbon capture company as news:

DANNY CULLENWARD: Carbon removal refers to things you can do, whether it involves nature-based systems or technologies to literally pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.

KLIVANS: Danny Cullenward researches carbon removal as a fellow at American University. Scientists agree that to avoid catastrophic warming, humans need to stop putting climate-harming pollution into the air, and we need to draw some down. The world’s forests and oceans naturally pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But – and here’s Cullenward again.

CULLENWARD: The problem is if we don’t intervene in these systems, they won’t suck up enough because we put such an unfathomably large quantity of pollution in the atmosphere in the first place.

KLIVANS: Startups like Charm Industrial need money to develop carbon removal technologies. That’s where the private sector is jumping in. A group of companies, including JPMorgan Chase, Stripe, Alphabet and Shopify, plan to pay Charm millions of dollars. In exchange, the company will bury the bio-oil equivalent of what 31,000 passenger cars emit a year. That’s just a tiny amount of what needs to come out of the atmosphere, but it’s a start. Nan Ransohoff is head of climate at Stripe.

NAN RANSOHOFF: We want to get more companies to the starting line and then help them get down the cost curve as quickly as possible so that we can build carbon removal solutions that have the potential to get to the scale that we need to solve the problem.

But it’s a start? 31,000 cars? Okay, sure. “Let’s plug this cool new startup, you guys! I have their Head of Climate on speed dial.”

Is it to soothe people in their cars so they can worry about really scary things like AI? Wait, don’t answer that – and that story came immediately after the one above. Caveat auditor.

They actually listen to sales people talking about extinction, but in the wrong story.

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A stage play about climate change

Is it possible? Thanks to Flagpole for the coverage of the readings for my new project:

Suppose you, unlike most people, start taking climate change seriously. Suppose, too, that your skills lie in areas having to do with communication—you’re a writer, a publicist, a blogger; you interview people on television. So when you start taking something seriously, something as all-encompassing as climate change, you naturally begin thinking about how to share your climate concerns, which, you realize, should concern us all, but which you know are far from most people’s consciousness.

Climate change is so far from our everyday lives (and so near) that it is almost impossible for the finest scientific and academic minds to wake us up. But if you’re Alan Flurry, who has all the communication skills mentioned above, plus more (he’s a drummer), you’re still going to have a go at finding a vehicle that tries to bridge the wide gap between everyday and everywhere.

Alan’s solution is to write a play. You say that’s more likely to put them to sleep than wake them up. Nevertheless, a communicator communicates, and Alan has written a play about climate change, which will have a staged reading a couple of times next week, directed by Alexis Nichols.

Flurry uses the device of a play within a play, or actually several plays within a play. The main through-line belongs to the character known as “Director.” Director, you see, is staging a play and is at the point of read-throughs when he begins musing with Adam, one of the actors. In fact, Director, thanks to split staging and multiple time frames, is staging several plays, but the one foremost in his mind is about climate change. So, we’ve got all the plays in the process of production, but Director continues to bring us back to the main event—his preoccupation with climate change.

Continue reading…

Hopefully coming to stage near you in the near future.

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And they just said No

Maybe because it leans the wrong way, against the grain/norm/whatever, but this is the kind of dissonant outcome that can be difficult to fit into the pro-business framing of most news reporting:

The US Supreme Court turned away oil-company appeals that sought a key procedural edge in about two dozen lawsuits blaming the industry for contributing to climate change.

The justices Monday refused to consider shifting the lawsuits into federal court, where corporate defendants often fare better. The companies say the suits are governed entirely by federal law, giving them the right to move them out of state court.

In the lead appeal, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. sought to transfer a suit by two Colorado counties and the city of Boulder. The lawsuit contends the oil companies should compensate taxpayers for the increased cost of maintaining roads and fighting forest fires.

At issue was a legal doctrine known as removal, which lets defendants in many cases shift the forum for lawsuits filed in state court. In the Colorado case, a Denver-based federal appeals court said Exxon and Suncor lacked grounds to remove the suit because Colorado state law governs the claims.

Legacy Guilded Age damage usually allows companies preference to advance appeals claims on practically any point where they are held to account, but this time the court just said no. Of course, Alito recused as a stockholder in at least one of the parties(!) and Kavanaugh would have granted the case. But still, appeal denied.

So maybe the lesson is to keep yelling.

Image: Supreme Court portico, via wikimedia commons

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When business meets a better business idea: Think about it

I’m familiar with Slutty Vegan and while not quite a fan – all the yelling, not sure I get that – the concept is solid and the burgers are good. And whatever one may think about the sustainability of meat and particularly the way we ‘farm’ chickens at this point, ‘They pull their little beaks off’ is actually a thing, no matter how you may or may not feel about it. And of course, the practice has far worse ethical issues.

SV founder and CEO Aisha “Pinky” Cole elaborates on her plan to exploit this fact to continue building her business (paywalled):

When you get an order of chicken wings, how many chickens is that? Two and a half? Two? What? And how old are they? Are these babies? Are they middle-aged? Are they wealthy? Are they poor? I wanna know: Where are these chickens coming from? And how are y’all able to produce so much, so fast?

I stopped eating meat altogether in 2007. I got food poisoning after I went to a restaurant. I had a chicken sandwich, and I got super sick. I was like, “That’s it. I’m not eating no more meat.” A little shy of 10 years ago, I went cold turkey and never turned back. When I went vegan, I had a restaurant that sold meat. I was selling oxtails and jerk chicken. But I wasn’t in alignment because I didn’t eat it. So why was I selling it?

Veganism is closely associated to climate change and how it’s important to save the animals and make sure that you’re doing the right things so that animals can sustain. I started really researching those things and I’m like, “Oh, I have to use my voice a little bit differently.”

Fake burgers as lifestyle brand, y’all.

Do try to keep up.

More on SV here.

Image: Not a burger (Beef Wellington, actually), but I bet she’s working on it. via wiki commons

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Almost as If

Dr. K brings the medium, sensible heat today regarding Russian failures in Ukraine. It’s a good explainer without the jingoism, importantly including the economic offensives alongside the military ones that have been less than dispositive, or perhaps more so depending on your rooting interest.

But the kudos to Europe for not only resisting energy blackmail but in so doing, also for revealing that the planning and execution of the energy transition are well under way:

So what can we learn from the failure of Russia’s energy offensive?

First, Russia looks more than ever like a Potemkin superpower, with little behind its impressive facade. Its much vaunted military is far less effective than advertised; now its role as an energy supplier is proving much harder to weaponize than many imagined.

Second, democracies are showing, as they have many times in the past, that they are much tougher, much harder to intimidate, than they look.

Finally, modern economies are far more flexible, far more able to cope with change, than some vested interests would have us believe.

For as long as I can remember, fossil-fuel lobbyists and their political supporters have insisted that any attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be disastrous for jobs and economic growth. But what we’re seeing now is Europe making an energy transition under the worst possible circumstances — sudden, unexpected and drastic — and handling it pretty well. This suggests that a gradual, planned green energy transition would be far easier than pessimists imagine.

Read or listen to (not recommended!) the business news any day of the week and everything any normal person would consider good news – strong jobs report, tight labor market, increased consumer protections, penalizing reckless banking and investment behavior – is all cast in terms of doom and gloom. The sky is always falling and we can’t do this or have that and so stop wanting it and vote for more oppression of the powerless. Kick down, pull up the ladders, that’s all we can do.

What if – and yes, caution, slight optimism ahead – all of that is itself just a form of corruption? The fossil fuel industry, just as an obvious example, has been assuring us since the 1970s that it just can’t be done, there is no way to replace coal as our primary energy source, so stop trying. Wind stops blowing. Solar? Have you heard of nighttime? It’s too expensive, too impractical, is itself bad for the environment. Birds! Plus, people hate to see windmills. They don’t want electric cars. Meanwhile what has happened? What is happening?

What if we decided to get even more bold, rather than cowering in fear about what we’re afraid to do, that we are reminded we can’t do? What other issues out there might not be so inviolate?

Guns?

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How fast is a fast train?

Faster than you think. Literally faster than you remember if you’ve ever taken one. But before we get to that, some figurative and also quite speedy trains.

Like the parade to ban books, or move on from horrifically disgusting violence in schools. These, too, move much faster than we imagine, even as we wait for something or someone else to slow them down or stop them. But it’s a tightly constructed set of deliberate steps that brings the fast trains, whether as transport or societal degradation. In the case of the latter, the stage has been set by the Republican party through decades of vicious stinginess for infrastructure and social programs, proffering the glories of low taxes and toothless regulation of everything from the stock market to the water table. The forms of efficient and affordable transportation enjoyed by people in our so-called peer nations around the world are as unknown in the U.S. as a public toilet and it’s much better if we stop being coy about all of this.

The need to acknowledge where society is falling short, who it is catering to and why is a matter of great urgency.

Image: B line trams in Grenoble, France, last week. Author photo.

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Business-speak brouhaha

Oh, for the love of language. As Duncan reminds, the aughts were an incredibly fraught time for cloaking war and destruction in democracy as a way of de-stabilizing and neutralizing domestic opposition – both political and in the media (still a smoking ruin but… bygones). But about the same time – curiously, right around the time of the establishment of this very fine blog – the business community encountered the nascent green movement and saw… well, you know what they saw. Let’s see how the language is holding up:

For the first time in at least a decade, US drillers last year spent more on share buybacks and dividends than on capital projects, according to Bloomberg calculations. The $128 billion in combined payouts across 26 companies also is the most since at least 2012, and they happened in a year when US President Joe Biden unsuccessfully appealed to the industry to lift production and relieve surging fuel prices. For Big Oil, rejecting the direct requests of the US government may never have been more profitable.

At the heart of the divergence is growing concern among investors that demand for fossil fuels will peak as soon as 2030, obviating the need for mutlibillion-dollar megaprojects that take decades to yield full returns. In other words, oil refineries and natural-gas fired power plants — along with the wells that feed them — risk becoming so-called stranded assets if and when they are displaced by electric cars and battery farms.

In other words, companies will pay dividends and buyback stock to keep the share price high for as long as they can, even in the face of all the signs that are telling them to shift, while they shift and not supporting the shift, thereby slowing the shift, when the shift needs to happen much faster. Squeeze all the profits out of short-term projects, eschew longer term investments in fossil fuels, which are obviously foolish because of what we are doing/not doing. If and when, indeed:

US oil production is expected to grow just 5% this year to 12.5 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Information Administration. Next year, the expansion is expected to slow to just 1.3%, the agency says. While the US is adding more supply than most of the rest of the world, it’s a marked contrast to the heady days of shale in the previous decade when the US was adding more than 1 million barrels of daily output each year, competing with OPEC and influencing global prices.

Tell us again – Billions in Handouts as doubts grow – actual subtitle of article (thanks editors!): Shareholders envisioning the imminent peak of petroleum demand want executives to focus on short-term returns rather than long-term projects that risk becoming stranded assets.

In the immortal words of William Burroughs, “And because he was himself a priest, there was no need to call one.”

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Designing Horizons

Funny thing about Green buildings – we need them! That’s decidedly unfunny BUT… timing is very important as far as the technology available and what seems most durable when architectural engineers choose how to power the building. Especially if it’s innovative and edgy:

Some of the building’s most important green features were the right answer to the climate problem in 2016, when design work was completed. “And then the answer changed,” Mr. Wilcox said.

Unlike many skyscrapers, One Vanderbilt generates much of its own electricity. This was a leap forward a decade or so ago — a way of producing power that saved money for landlords and was cleaner than the local grid.

However, One Vanderbilt’s turbines burn natural gas. And while natural gas is cleaner than oil or coal, it is falling from favor, particularly in New York City, which in recent years has adopted some of the most ambitious climate laws in the world, including a ban on fossil fuels in new buildings.

As that transition happened, SL Green was caught in the middle. Although One Vanderbilt went up relatively quickly, topping out after three years, its owner had to watch as the city’s environmental strategy raced forward.

The building is one of those skinny, ribbon skyscrapers in Manhattan. And they had the right idea. Kind of. It was right at the time, which seems like, well, ouch.

It is akin to many familiar things, like choosing a vocation that will interest you for decades and hopefully longer. It can be tricky, based on what you think is out there. If you choose a life of exploration – artistic, scientific, whatever – you throw the rock (the thing you’re chasing) as far as you can. Hopefully the journey to finding/achieving takes a long time, years, enough time for you to develop as a finder of such things.

Building is slightly different, as it is so permanent. So… go with ancient designs or new bells and whistles? It’s a gamble, much like choosing a vocation, if you are so fortunate. Choose wisely.

Image: an ancient design, Le Pont du Gard

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Really Gross Domestic Product

Leading the index alongside racism, guns, and the forced birth, it’s pandering. And it’s not even close.

Dr. K takes on rural rage in a column this week:

In terms of resources, major federal programs disproportionately benefit rural areas, in part because such areas have a disproportionate number of seniors receiving Social Security and Medicare. But even means-tested programs — programs that Republicans often disparage as “welfare” — tilt rural. Notably, at this point rural Americans are more likely than urban Americans to be on Medicaid and receive food stamps.

And because rural America is poorer than urban America, it pays much less per person in federal taxes, so in practice major metropolitan areas hugely subsidize the countryside. These subsidies don’t just support incomes, they support economies: Government and the so-called health care and social assistance sector each employ more people in rural America than agriculture, and what do you think pays for those jobs?

What about rural perceptions of being disrespected? Well, many people have negative views about people with different lifestyles; that’s human nature. There is, however, an unwritten rule in American politics that it’s OK for politicians to seek rural votes by insulting big cities and their residents, but it would be unforgivable for urban politicians to return the favor. “I have to go to New York City soon,” tweeted J.D. Vance during his senatorial campaign. “I have heard it’s disgusting and violent there.” Can you imagine, say, Chuck Schumer saying something similar about rural Ohio, even as a joke?

Not without conniptions from across the spectrum, including the so-called liberal media – which would probably be leading the charge for apologies. That’s a sort of reflexive pandering that doesn’t even work, performance that no one believes nor allows credit but still happens. And it provides confirmation for the entire industrial pandering complex to double their efforts.

All the hokum about IRS funding we’re about to hear, in the same breath as concerns over budget deficits no less, is merely beating a drum that has been fine-tuned. A lot of this malfeasance lies at the feet of journalism schools and the savvy of corporate media. Politicians who are supposedly afraid of men in dresses and American history now traffic exclusively in hate, and whether it’s performative or not matters not a whit. The results are the same.

Rural voters and the politicians who fan their rage may also be entitled to find out that patience for their antics has limits. Like children, they are absolutely in search of them.

Image: Calculus 1, intro to limits, via the internet