A new study by Joshua Pearce of London’s Western University and Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz in Austria has found that, if global heating reaches or surpasses two degrees Celsius by the year 2100, there is a high probability that over the next century humans, mostly the wealthiest, will be responsible for the deaths of approximately one billion mostly poorer humans.

Link to the study: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/16/6074

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“Such mass death is clearly unacceptable. It’s pretty scary really, especially for our children,” said Pearce, who is Western’s John M. Thompson chair in information technology and innovation and the lead author of the study, as Western News reported. “When climate scientists run their models and then report on them, everybody leans toward being conservative, because no one wants to sound like Doctor Doom. We’ve done that here too and it still doesn’t look good.”

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“Energy numbers like megawatts mean something to energy engineers like me, but not to most people. Similarly, when climate scientists talk about parts per million of carbon dioxide, that doesn’t mean anything to most people. A few degrees of average temperature rise are not intuitive either. Body count, however, is something we all understand,” said Pearce said, as reported by Western News. “If you take the scientific consensus of the 1000-ton rule seriously, and run the numbers, anthropogenic global warming equates to a billion premature dead bodies over the next century. Obviously, we have to act. And we have to act fast.”

Pearce hopes that more industry leaders and policymakers will begin to face the consequences of humans’ reliance on fossil fuels when confronted with updated metrics and language surrounding global warming.

“As predictions of climate models become clearer, the harm we are doing to children and future generations can increasingly be attributed to our actions,” Pearce said.

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A new study by Joshua Pearce of London’s Western University and Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz in Austria has found that, if global heating reaches or surpasses two degrees Celsius by the year 2100, there is a high probability that over the next century humans, mostly the wealthiest, will be responsible for the deaths of approximately one billion mostly poorer humans.

Link to the study: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/16/6074

-snip-

“Such mass death is clearly unacceptable. It’s pretty scary really, especially for our children,” said Pearce, who is Western’s John M. Thompson chair in information technology and innovation and the lead author of the study, as Western News reported. “When climate scientists run their models and then report on them, everybody leans toward being conservative, because no one wants to sound like Doctor Doom. We’ve done that here too and it still doesn’t look good.”

-snip-

“Energy numbers like megawatts mean something to energy engineers like me, but not to most people. Similarly, when climate scientists talk about parts per million of carbon dioxide, that doesn’t mean anything to most people. A few degrees of average temperature rise are not intuitive either. Body count, however, is something we all understand,” said Pearce said, as reported by Western News. “If you take the scientific consensus of the 1000-ton rule seriously, and run the numbers, anthropogenic global warming equates to a billion premature dead bodies over the next century. Obviously, we have to act. And we have to act fast.”

Pearce hopes that more industry leaders and policymakers will begin to face the consequences of humans’ reliance on fossil fuels when confronted with updated metrics and language surrounding global warming.

“As predictions of climate models become clearer, the harm we are doing to children and future generations can increasingly be attributed to our actions,” Pearce said.

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Since late April, wildfires have been burning across Canada, blanketing the country and parts of the U.S. in unhealthy and sometimes dangerous smoke, in what Canadian wildfire officials have called the worst wildfire season ever recorded.

In a new study, scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) Initiative examined the conditions that lead to the record series of wildfires and concluded that they were at least twice as probable due to human-caused climate change.

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“This year, high temperatures led to the rapid thawing and disappearance of snow during May, particularly in eastern Québec, resulting in unusually early wildfires,” said Philippe Gachon, a researcher at the Université du Québec à Montréal, as reported by The Guardian.

Friederike Otto, senior lecturer at the UK’s Grantham Institute and co-founder of WWA, said the influence of climate change on this year’s Canadian wildfire season may be even greater than the figures in the report demonstrate because the estimates used by the researchers were conservative, CNN reported.

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Magna International is a global automotive contract manufacturer that currently reigns as the largest in North America and the fourth largest on the planet. It currently operates 351 production and assembly facilities across North America, Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa – and is only getting bigger.

In the last year alone, Magna has committed close to $1 billion toward the expansion of its North American operations, including $470 million in Canada, where it’s globally headquartered, in addition to another $500 million in Michigan, where its US headquarters sits.

The company also committed nearly $800 million to the state of Tennessee to build a new manufacturing plant in Ford’s BlueOval City. Such massive footprints of manufacturing around the world come with their fair share of carbon emissions, something Magna International has previously recognized and worked to offset.

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In addition to setting net-zero goals, Magna has committed to having all its European operations running on 100% renewable electricity by 2025 and worldwide by 2030. Magna says it will require a lot of education and effort across its entire staff, Rolodex of partners, and customers to truly tackle climate change, but the company has contributed to discussions to help keep the conversation going, like the Suppliers Partnership for the Environment (SP), for example. SP is an open forum created to promote collaboration across the global automotive supply chain, including automakers, suppliers, the US EPA, and other governments.

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Ramaswamy’s push to end climate-conscious investing

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But recently, he’s become best known as “the right’s most prominent crusader against climate-conscious investing.” His latest mission: ensure Republican-led states pull their money from big investment firms like BlackRock that are trying (or at least claiming) to make more climate-friendly decisions, and reallocate that money to his firm, Strive Asset Management, which explicitly promises not to invest with the climate in mind.

The fossil fuel industry has wanted someone to do this for many years. As we’ve previously reported, the anti-ESG movement—which pushes corporations to reject environmentally and socially conscious investing principles—was originally created by fossil fuel industry operatives to try to delay the renewable energy transition.

The movement fizzled in the early 2000s. But it was revived in 2022, when Ramaswamy launched Strive with the help of billionaire investors Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman, as well as the same fossil fuel industry-connected group that spearheaded the original movement.


Strive’s DRLL fund is composed mostly of oil, gas, and pipelines. Source: Strive Asset Management

Ramaswamy has reported more than $50 million in holdings in Strive, which to date, is mostly a fund to promote fossil fuel development. As Semafor reports, the largest fund at Strive—called DRLL—“ invests in U.S. energy companies and urges them to keep drilling for oil so long as it’s profitable.”

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Ramaswamy’s push to end climate-conscious investing

-snip-

But recently, he’s become best known as “the right’s most prominent crusader against climate-conscious investing.” His latest mission: ensure Republican-led states pull their money from big investment firms like BlackRock that are trying (or at least claiming) to make more climate-friendly decisions, and reallocate that money to his firm, Strive Asset Management, which explicitly promises not to invest with the climate in mind.

The fossil fuel industry has wanted someone to do this for many years. As we’ve previously reported, the anti-ESG movement—which pushes corporations to reject environmentally and socially conscious investing principles—was originally created by fossil fuel industry operatives to try to delay the renewable energy transition.

The movement fizzled in the early 2000s. But it was revived in 2022, when Ramaswamy launched Strive with the help of billionaire investors Peter Thiel and Bill Ackman, as well as the same fossil fuel industry-connected group that spearheaded the original movement.


Strive’s DRLL fund is composed mostly of oil, gas, and pipelines. Source: Strive Asset Management

Ramaswamy has reported more than $50 million in holdings in Strive, which to date, is mostly a fund to promote fossil fuel development. As Semafor reports, the largest fund at Strive—called DRLL—“ invests in U.S. energy companies and urges them to keep drilling for oil so long as it’s profitable.”

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GENESEE COUNTY, MI -- A package of state incentives appears to have tipped the scales for locating the largest hydrogen storage manufacturing plant in the U.S. in Grand Blanc Township.

The Michigan Strategic Fund Board on Tuesday, Aug. 22, approved a $5-million grant for the Plastic Omnium New Energies USA project and another incentive worth up to $2.3 million if the company moves forward with the development, which local officials said would be located on 50 acres in the Grand Blanc Enterprise Park off Baldwin Road.

MLive-The Flint Journal could not immediately reach a representative of the company, a subsidiary of Compagnie Plastic Omnium, for comment on the production facility, which is projected to create 175 new jobs and result in an investment of $171 million.

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“The operations will support roughly 40,000 vehicles annually starting in 2027, ramping up to full production by the end of 2028 ...,” the memo says. “This facility will be state-of-the-art with large amounts of automation due to the sheer size of the vessels. As a result, the project will bring dozens of high-tech jobs to the area to support this machinery.

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GENESEE COUNTY, MI -- A package of state incentives appears to have tipped the scales for locating the largest hydrogen storage manufacturing plant in the U.S. in Grand Blanc Township.

The Michigan Strategic Fund Board on Tuesday, Aug. 22, approved a $5-million grant for the Plastic Omnium New Energies USA project and another incentive worth up to $2.3 million if the company moves forward with the development, which local officials said would be located on 50 acres in the Grand Blanc Enterprise Park off Baldwin Road.

MLive-The Flint Journal could not immediately reach a representative of the company, a subsidiary of Compagnie Plastic Omnium, for comment on the production facility, which is projected to create 175 new jobs and result in an investment of $171 million.

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“The operations will support roughly 40,000 vehicles annually starting in 2027, ramping up to full production by the end of 2028 ...,” the memo says. “This facility will be state-of-the-art with large amounts of automation due to the sheer size of the vessels. As a result, the project will bring dozens of high-tech jobs to the area to support this machinery.

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California is on the verge of drastically undermining the value of shared solar systems for renters — and solar groups and environmental justice advocates are crying foul.

The policy changes set forth in this month’s proposed decision from the California Public Utilities Commission would essentially eliminate financial incentives for property owners to install rooftop solar in shared settings, such as schools, farms or multifamily dwellings.

The new rules would put solar power out of reach for California’s nearly 17 million renters, who have been largely locked out of the state’s residential rooftop solar boom, these groups say. It would also break a pledge from the CPUC to protect low-income communities from the major changes to the state’s solar net-metering rules the agency imposed last year, they warn.

Pushback to the proposal, which could come up for a vote by CPUC commissioners next month, has been fierce. More than 100 community and environmental justice groups sent a letter to the CPUC and Governor Gavin Newsom demanding changes to a proposal they warned would ruin the economics of in-progress multifamily solar projects that could serve an estimated 100,000 renters in the state. Over 150 local elected officials signed a similar letter decrying the proposal as ​“fundamentally unfair,” as it would ​“force tenants, schools and farms to buy all of their power from the utility even when it is generated on their own rooftop or field.”

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Full Article: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/new-california-rules-would-crush-rooftop-solar-for-renters

California is on the verge of drastically undermining the value of shared solar systems for renters — and solar groups and environmental justice advocates are crying foul.

The policy changes set forth in this month’s proposed decision from the California Public Utilities Commission would essentially eliminate financial incentives for property owners to install rooftop solar in shared settings, such as schools, farms or multifamily dwellings.

The new rules would put solar power out of reach for California’s nearly 17 million renters, who have been largely locked out of the state’s residential rooftop solar boom, these groups say. It would also break a pledge from the CPUC to protect low-income communities from the major changes to the state’s solar net-metering rules the agency imposed last year, they warn.

Pushback to the proposal, which could come up for a vote by CPUC commissioners next month, has been fierce. More than 100 community and environmental justice groups sent a letter to the CPUC and Governor Gavin Newsom demanding changes to a proposal they warned would ruin the economics of in-progress multifamily solar projects that could serve an estimated 100,000 renters in the state. Over 150 local elected officials signed a similar letter decrying the proposal as ​“fundamentally unfair,” as it would ​“force tenants, schools and farms to buy all of their power from the utility even when it is generated on their own rooftop or field.”

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Full Article: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/new-california-rules-would-crush-rooftop-solar-for-renters