"Many changes that have occurred in agriculture make us more, not less, impacted by climate change," Lobell explained. "A lot of productivity-enhancing changes are more effective in good weather, and so the stakes for having good weather go up."
And that good weather, the report makes clear, is not on the horizon.
Tim Garrett, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, sees climate change as a normal part of a cycle: everything that exists is born, grows, then ultimately collapses.https://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/panel-discusses-effects-of-climate-change-on-utah/article_e3e07997-a4d0-5ff8-ac35-8354664cd5b6.html
“This is just a normal part of life cycles,” Garrett said. “Our lives collectively are fantastic right now, but they are fantastic at expense of our environment, an environment we depend upon, and that will ultimately lead to our demise.”
Here, it is shown both theoretically and observationally how the evolution of the human system can be considered from a surprisingly simple thermodynamic perspective in which it is unnecessary to explicitly model two of the emissions drivers: population and standard of living. Specifically, the human system grows through a self-perpetuating feedback loop in which the consumption rate of primary energy resources stays tied to the historical accumulation of global economic production—or p×g—through a time-independent factor of 9.7±0.3 mW per inflation-adjusted 1990 US dollar. This important constraint, and the fact that f and c have historically varied rather slowly, points towards substantially narrowed visions of future emissions scenarios for implementation in GCMs.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-009-9717-9
Car exports, 2017. ($ billion)
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) November 22, 2018
Germany: 157.4
Japan: 93.4
US: 53.6
Canada: 46.4
UK: 41.9
Mexico: 41.7
South Korea: 38.8
Spain: 35.8
Belgium: 33.1
France: 22.1
Czech Republic: 21.5
Italy: 18
Slovakia: 16.4
Turkey: 11.8
Thailand: 10.9
(World's Top Exports)
When in 2012 the Free Trade Union “August 80” (WZZ “Sierpien 80”) started the campaign for free public transport in Poland, to fight against the increasingly frequent and high ticket price increases throughout the country, public transport was free in only two cities. Today there are 44 Polish cities that practice it, from the small town of Swieradow-Zdroj1 – 5,000 inhabitants, but invaded by tourists and their cars in high season, whose free public transport is common with the Czech city Nove Mesto pod Smrkem2 – to the canton of Lubin with a total population of 106,000.3https://socialistproject.ca/2018/11/steps-forward-in-free-access-to-public-transport/
One point of confusion regarding whether today’s oil prices should be of concern is the fact that the maximum affordable oil price seems to decline over time. This happens because workers around the world increasingly cannot afford to buy the goods and services that the world economy produces. Inadequate wage growth within countries, growing globalization and rising interest rates all contribute to this growing affordability problem. To make matters confusing, this growing affordability problem corresponds to “falling demand” in the way economists frame the issues we are facing.https://ourfiniteworld.com/2018/11/07/why-we-get-bad-diagnoses-for-the-worlds-energy-economy-problems/
A scheme which was once seen as utopian had, by 2017, an 88 per cent approval rating in Tallinn (according to a survey conducted by market research company, Turu-uuringute AS – editor).
...The August 2018 figures show that the number of passengers on newly free routes increased by 33 per cent across the nation. In some counties, the number of passengers almost doubled.
I’ll leave the final words to the current mayor of Tallinn, Taavi Aas. “People who travel by bus are mostly lower-paid people, the young and the elderly. Someone going to work in a county centre 30 kilometres from where they live will save €700-800 per year. Critics of free public transport claimed these people do not exist – they are wrong.”
Unless new, affordable housing is placed in walkable, transit-adjacent neighborhoodswhere people can live without cars, the growth of cities will drive emissions even higher. This is especially true for the movement of goods. Sprawl doesn’t just lengthen commutes, it increases the distance of vehicular trips needed to make deliveries.https://www.curbed.com/2018/4/6/17010042/climate-change-mayor-infrastructure-highways-parking
Unfortunately the infrastructure plan put forth by the Trump administration—if one can call it a plan—incentivizes car-centric development.