The Witness Chronicles, June 22, 2024

The heat, big oil, and the climate and a little bit of good news

Photo by Craig Manners on Unsplash

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We’re Having a Heatwave, a Tropical Heatwave

There is no normal weather anymore, but deniers keeping denying

I’m fond of telling my faraway friends that where I live in Western NY is a climate island, a place rarely subject to wrathful weather like floods, hurricanes, tornados, and forest fires. But the crazy heat and humidity we had this past week showed just how pervasive the climate crazy is getting.

There’s no escaping it. Yes, a few uncomfortable days is not comparable to half of Florida being underwater or southern Gulf Coast Texas being battered by the first named tropical storm of the season, Alberto. But it was still miserable if you didn’t have AC. I do, sort of, but I’m a walker and I was basically housebound for a few days because when I did go out it was oppressive.

But if you look at the heat on a macro basis, which is the only way to really see weather, this heat dome was massive and deadly and is traveling across the globe. Worldwide over 1400 heat records were broken and thousands died. This is during a La Niña year when a cooler summer was expected. Instead, long range forecasting has the seasonal heat higher and longer lasting.

But the fact that climate change is not a dominant topic in the dialog is a testament to the power of fossil fuel money.

It’s the only reason people are not up in arms about what is going on. The oil business has been methodically conducting a criminal coverup for decades, on a scale that is barely imaginable, lining the pockets of politicians, researchers, and anyone who might require them to change anything.

The dollars involved are staggering, but oil, once you have tapped into it, is an immensely profitable business, basically sucking money out of the ground so we can burn it. But the business of fossil fuels is beginning to fade, so of course the companies are doubling down.

The good news is there if you have the patience to find it. Regenerative farming, an obscure topic if you are not in agriculture, can bring carbon down rapidly by using techniques that rebuild depleted soil so plants can absorb much more carbon. It has the added benefit of cutting pesticide use drastically and pesticides and fertilizer are both derived from fossil fuels.

Sustainable energy production is growing rapidly as costs go down (successful capitalism at work), and is creating a glut of oil worldwide which is a problem the oil business is hyper aware of. But generating a lot more clean energy creates its own problems, particularly the ability to transmit it and store it.

Transmission is big problem and we can directly blame the oil people for that as they lobby against rebuilding energy infrastructure (there’s money to be made by keeping resources scarce). The infrastructure is so decrepit that we regularly see wealthy states like Texas having deadly blackouts. But there is a technological breakthrough coming that can change that, if politicians will support it.

Wires are a big problem, particularly those massive cables on the big towers stretching across the country. There is an upper limit on their capacity to transmit because of the metals they are made of. But it turns out that we have developed new materials like graphene that have much higher capacity, and the tech to manufacture them at scale.

Theoretically we could pull new high capacity wires through the same towers and acquire the ability to transmit far more energy, with far less loss, which would mean a plentiful amount of juice, even over long distances. This is not science fiction, it is being tested now.

More juice at lower costs means adopting new electric powered household tech, like heat pumps and induction ranges, becoming within reach of many more households, and in turn, far less carbon entering the atmosphere, not to mention methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas.

So there is good news, if anyone pays attention, and more people are. But it still seen as a grassroots thing, not a global emergency requiring a massive coordinated effort to fix. Again the political infrastructure is just as ancient as the power grid and we have blatant evidence of that in people like Ron DeSantis of Florida who denies everything as his state collapses into climate chaos.

And then there is the Trump offer to give the oil industry everything they want in exchange for a billion dollars, chump change to those guys.

If you’re inclined to support Trump, and you have grandchildren, take a long look in the mirror. He just offered to sell their future for a pittance, a bargain the executives who were offered it are scrambling to take. Their immediate return on that billion in exchange for gutting environmental regulations is estimated at 100x, a cool $100 billion.

Trump just offered the oil business everything they ever wanted. If there is any evidence he cares nothing for anyone other than himself, that is it. The next time you are pissing and moaning about filling your tank or buying groceries, take a good look at the climate change deniers, because they are raking it in.

Turns out denial is good business and good politics. You just have a be monumentally selfish and cruel, even to your own descendants. That’s exactly what Trump and his cronies are.

We can develop tech that can change the world but the major barrier is human nature and greed and it’s on full display in the Republican Party.

~ I write The Grasshopper, an occasional letter on the creative life and it’s sister, mostly daily publication The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate. They share a free and paid subscription. I also write The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. I don’t paywall any content in these, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen.

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