Citizens Climate lobby Roscommon/Crawford Chapter

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter What’s Happening  Regular readers of this blog will remember that Citizens Climate Lobby has developed and supported a proposal to mitigate climate change by enacting a national tax on fossil fuels. Some people refer to the idea of taxing fossil fuels as a carbon tax, although the formal name for Ccl’s proposal is Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. The idea was first introduced in the US House of Representatives and is now known as House Bill 763 as it awaits action from the full House and Senate. Although the bill is widely lauded, action by both the House and Senate has been slow in coming since many believe the administration would surely veto the proposal if it were passed by Congress. What’s happening now is that our politicians are finally beginning to come to their senses in considering solutions for climate change. It seems that nearly everyone in both the House and Senate, regardless of political party, concurs that a...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter Bhutan In a recent blog, we discussed the book, The Future We Choose , which spoke of opportunities for mitigating climate change . This blog suggests a model that we might emulate as we find our way forward from our nation’s current problems. The model is a most unlikely one, it comes from a small nation in the far east with a king. You may be shocked at their wisdom.  Bhutan, officially known as the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked country in South Asia. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it is situated on the ancient Silk Road between Tibet, India and China. A small nation, Bhutan reports a total population of just under a million people with a land mass of 14, 824 square miles (less than ½ the size of lower Michigan). In 2008, Bhutan transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy and promptly created their National Assembly, a bicameral parliament of the Bhutanese democracy. For the last few years, Bhutan has...

      Roscommon/Crawford Chapter Another Way to Fix the Climate Problem We all know about the carbon cycle and how plants take in carbon dioxide and give off life-giving oxygen used by people and animals. Plants are essential for our world to exist as climate scientists have proven over the last 50 years. Seen in this light, the problem of climate change is that we have too many people on earth demanding energy (from burning fossil fuels) and too few plants taking in enough carbon dioxide. As result, our atmosphere has been gradually filling up with greenhouse gases. In trying to find solutions to the climate problem, folks have been talking about sequestration of carbon (a fancy term meaning taking in carbon dioxide) by whatever means possible, up to and including large machines powered by electricity to suck in air and capture the carbon/greenhouse gases. Such a large and complicated answer for a simple problem – why not let plants do the job? C...

The Future We Choose Christiana Figueres This title is taken from a new book written by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. Figueres is a luminary in the world of climate change having been the principal leader of the United Nations Conference that has become known everywhere as 2015 Paris Accords. (Tom Rivett-Carnac assisted at Paris and collaborated in writing their new book.) That the 2015 conference was even held is something of a miracle since the previous United Nations effort in 2009 was a total wash-out with the conferees unable to achieve any sort of consensus about remedies for climate change. Even Figueres herself was not optimistic at the end of the 2009 effort. When reporters asked if she believed there was a chance for a world-wide agreement she answered, “Not in my lifetime.” Despite the 2009 failure, the United Nations leadership wouldn’t give up. In desperation, they asked the Costa Rican activist Figueres to try again, giving her cart...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter                              Some Good News About Climate for a Change In this blog we can report good news on the climate front: Our air quality is getting better, bit by bit, and the United States is helping by reducing C02 emissions, although not nearly enough to avoid the problems of climate change. The shelter-at-home requirement and the fear surrounding the corona virus has provoked a major positive effect in cleaning our atmosphere. Data is not yet available on the amount of C02 and other greenhouse gases that are being released in the midst of the crisis, but anecdotal evidence is pointing toward major improvements as air quality has improved markedly. The evidence is visual; residents in many places can see the results as hazy, smoky skies have become nearly clear in places where low visibility had become common. In Punjab, India residents have been euph...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter Twenty Things for Climate Change (or How you can Reduce Your Carbon Footprint) It is easy to blame our government for not acting as it should to fix climate change. Most of us average Joe’s and Josephine’s can't demand energy companies stop drilling oil and polluting our air, but there are things each of us can do to reduce the carbon pollution that we generate in our daily life. Before beginning, it is helpful to know your carbon footprint; the average amount of carbon that your household emits on a yearly basis by the decisions YOU make about your lifestyle and energy consumption. Here is a web page that can help you calculate your carbon footprint:            https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx Your goal should be getting to 1.8 tons of carbon emissions per year before 2050, the number that everyone in the world must reach to meet world standards agreed upon in 2015. You should also know that the average ...

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter Farming and Climate Change Today's news is all about the corona virus, so it is easy to let climate change concerns slip to the back burner of our collective consciousness. One of the immediate effects of the virus is how quickly it provoked food shortages and yielded bare shelves at grocery stores. Everyone hopes these shortages are temporary; that once the virus disappears the world food supply will return to normal. Given the lack of progress in combating climate change, that is unlikely. The fact is "climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity, and agriculture feels its effects in profound ways," according to a leading supplier to the international agricultural industry. As you know from reading our Climate Change Blogs, effects of climate change include drought, severe heat, flooding, storm and fire danger depending upon where you live. All these things hurt agriculture. Still think climate change w...