Woodstock Earth Blog

10 FALSE SOLUTIONS

TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Wind and Solar are the best solutions to electrical power generation, and Organic Agriculture the best for the problem of feeding growing populations in times of Climate Change. We are less enthused with the other renewable power solutions, Geothermal, Wave, and Tidal, which may add positively to the array, but with complications. (Geothermal involves the drilling deep into the Earth, which is expensive and not without risk, and Wave and Tidal power at a time of extreme weather events and sea level rise might be too dangerous and expensive to maintain.) And there is no reason to pursue “all of the above” renewable strategies. There is certainly more than enough wind and sunshine to power the entire world with fully renewable energy and with zero emissions, should we be able to find the resolve to urgently ramp up efforts to harness, transmit, and store that energy.

Small local organic farms are the answer to feeding the world with healthy food in times of Climate Change, with less greenhouse gas emissions. And one of the many bonuses of Regenerative Organic Agriculture, aka Agroecology, is that it can actually sequester carbon and, if it would be made a priority, and if it gets the support of governments and is ramped up significantly, it could absorb so much CO2 from the atmosphere that it could slow the warming of the planet. This is Mother Earth’s Carbon Capture Technology, and we know it works, but it has to work in conjunction with urgent action consistent with reducing emissions, including the necessity to leave fossil fuel deposits in the ground and a departure from the status quo.

But there are so many false solutions, (all with advocates and lobbyists who stand to profit), that are being ‘green-washed’, and masqueraded as ‘real solutions’. As we approach the Paris Climate Summit and move beyond to accomplish the real solutions we must pursue, we felt it necessary, and very important, to highlight the many false solutions. Though we don’t have the time to make a full argument on each of our decisions to list these solutions as false, nor do you have the time at this moment to read that book, we felt it important to at least highlight each of them for your own research and decision. Some of them may surprise you.

10 FALSE SOLUTIONS

1  Hydroelectric Power

Everybody thinks that Hydroelectric Power is “renewable” and is “carbon neutral”, but this can’t be further from the truth. In many places, Drought threatens renewability, and Hydroelectric Dams emit as much carbon dioxide and methane gas, (over 100 times worse for greenhouse gas warming potential than CO2), throughout the generation process, as coal-fired power plants. These greenhouse gases come from the decomposition of biomass that had been submerged by the dams and from sediments that accumulate. Dams kill trees and animals, and destroy ecosystems, villages, and indigenous homelands. The Kyoto Protocol encourages the building of dams to produce hydroelectric “clean energy”, and many new projects are in the making all over the world, and most of these projects are massive and will be very destructive to our Environment and Climate, not to mention to the people and animals displaced. It is urgent that the UNFCCC reassess this source of power, and that we put an end to new projects as soon as possible.

2  Natural Gas and LNG

Contrary to the TV ads, Natural Gas is not “Clean Energy”, and it is not a “Bridge Fuel” to Renewable Energy. It may burn cleaner, but during the production and distribution of Natural Gas, so much of it leaks out, that Natural Gas turns out to be as bad as Coal. Its principal ingredient is Methane, over 100 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. Other ingredients in this leaking gas, Benzene and Toluene, etc., are EDCs and Carcinogenic. The Aliso Canyon Storage Facility, the largest in California, is leaking 55 tons of Natural Gas per hour, and they haven’t been able to stop the leak. And the aging Pipeline system is leaking all over the world. Methane is measurable and growing everywhere, and there are locations all over the US that have been found to have high concentrations. In order to export Natural Gas it must be condensed into a liquid (LNG), which requires tremendous energy, and there is great potential for leaks both at the point of export and import. And with all this pressurized gas, whether or not in liquid form, there’s always the risk of massive explosion.

3  Nuclear Power

Now that the focus is on greenhouse gas, the nuclear industry is touting their method of generating power as “Carbon-Free”, and thus, “Clean Energy”. Chernobyl and Fukushima remind us of the deception in that claim. No matter how strong the claims of safety, there is always the potential for carcinogenic Radioactivity to escape into air and water, and there is the perpetual problem of how to handle and store the Nuclear Waste. Mining of the nuclear raw material, Uranium, has polluted groundwater on Native American reservations with Radioactivity. If Nuclear Power were to be ramped up to replace fossil fuels, that would only increase the possibility of nuclear accidents.

4  Carbon Capture Technology

Since the ‘80s, when Richard Branson ‘dangled the carrot’ of a $25 million prize for a technology to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere in order to reverse global warming, so far no one has been able to collect the prize. Technologies have been developed to capture some of the CO2 emitted from smokestacks of coal-fired power plants, but there is no such thing, like they would have you to believe, as “Clean Coal”.

5  Geoengineering

There is growing evidence of experimentation with manipulating the weather through the injection of chemicals into the atmosphere to seed clouds or ‘Chemtrails’ to reflect sun energy back into space. Whether or not this is indeed already happening, there is so much chatter we felt we must respond to the fallacy of this option. The risk of exposing humans, animals, plants, air, water, and soil to these chemicals is potentially great, and the unknown results to our planet of such an experiment could be devastating.

6  Biotech and Climate Smart Agriculture

Biotech and GMO’s are being promoted by the Chemical, Big Ag, and Big Food Corporations, that profit from them, as the only way for the world to go forward and feed the growing masses. This is nothing but deception, since there is no evidence of increased yields from GMO’s, and there is much evidence of increasing unhealthful pesticide and herbicide use (and insect and weed tolerance), and evidence that these chemicals are getting into the crops and into human and animal food, and how, as EDCs, they adversely affect our health.

There is no gene that provides a plant “drought resistance” and the Biotech industry is lying when they claim to be able to provide this feature. Conventional breeding of crops and seeds of crops that have exhibited more “drought resistance” can yield more “drought resistant crops”, but not through Biopiracy. The methods and chemicals used by Agribusiness and Biotech promote Erosion and the loss of Soil Carbon. Increasing Soil Carbon, and thus water retention, and the conventional breeding of more “drought resistant” crops are some of the best ways to actually promote “drought resistance”. Adopting some of the techniques from Permaculture and Organic Farming, like “No Till” and “Cover Crops”, while still applying the poisons of weed and bug killers and synthetic fertilizers, though it may be of some use for better water retention and may reduce some oxidization of the soil, (through not applying conventional tillage), this is far from “Climate Smart Agriculture”.

7  Biofuel and Ethanol

Despite what the promoters of Biofuel are implying, the combustion of Biofuel emits gallon for gallon close to the amount of carbon emitted by fossil fuels. The reason for the mandate in the US to include 10% Ethanol in gasoline was to promote energy independence from the import of oil from Saudi Arabia and OPEC. Now that the US produces so much oil, and that the Saudi’s are depressing the price, there is really no need for Ethanol, especially from Corn, which is the least efficient source. But the biggest reason to stop the use of Ethanol is that the methods used to grow the GMO Corn and refine the Ethanol is a very energy intensive process, and is destroying our air, water, and soil which should be conserved for growing food. It is also creating huge toxic algae blooms and dead zones in our oceans.

8  Biomass – Not Carbon Neutral

Biomass was supposed to be about burning waste and debris to generate power. It was never supposed to be about cutting down live trees and burning them for fuel, or about cutting down huge tracts of forest in the South East US for profit, to provide wood chips for Europeans and Asians to burn for fuel. The Republicans in the US Senate and Congress recently inserted a Rider into a must-pass Appropriations bill, in order to reclassify the burning of Biomass as “carbon-free”. This is based on convoluted, nonsensical thinking that since the carbon that is being put back into the atmosphere was once in the atmosphere, it is not really adding new carbon. Burning Biomass in power stations is no more “carbon free” than the burning of our forests by the rampant wildfires of Climate Change. We’re talking millions of tons of CO2. Is that not enough CO2 to choke our atmosphere? Must we continue to cut down and burn life-giving living trees?

9  Globalization and Trade Agreements

Globalization of Food and Trade is being celebrated by many of the world’s leaders who are promoting the ratification of the TPP, TTIP, and TISA Trade Agreements as the answers to the world’s problems. And they profess that there would be mass starvation without globalization of food. But, there is no reason our food should travel thousands of miles with the resulting carbon footprint before we eat it. Globalization and these Trade Agreements clearly put corporate interests before the interests of the Environment, or the peoples interests, including the poor people. Despite all the lobbying and green-washing of Globalization, it is every bit a false solution.

10  Carbon Trading, Carbon Offsets, or Carbon Tax

Likely the majority of my colleagues in the environmental movement are firmly of the opinion that a financial mechanism for limiting carbon would be positive. Perhaps there would be some benefit, and perhaps we are wrong to list it as a false solution. But, no matter how carefully the plan is constructed, there will be those business executives that find the loopholes and devise schemes to get rich on trading carbon. And the idea of carbon offsets, for an example, a polluter in Chicago planting trees in South America to offset the pollution in Chicago will no less harm the health of the neighbors in Chicago. The world is in such a precarious state at this moment, we need both the additional trees in South America and less pollution from that factory in Chicago. We need both. We have no more time for the status quo.

Message to our Readers

Unlike our previous posts, with photos, illustrations, charts, graphs, videos and a Final Thoughts section, this post is not a full Story, but just a Bulletin, so in the interest of brevity, we left all of that out on this one.

We welcome the delegates of COP21 to Paris, and we welcome all the people of the world to read this Bulletin, and to come up with your own conclusions. It is so important that we all rise up and respond to the urgency of this moment, that we get involved, through marches, nonviolent protest, social networking (Please Facebook and Tweet, etc.), teach-ins, anyway we can, but especially that we VOTE. Vote for the Planet, not for the Corporations.

We thank our readers in France, Germany, Canada, the UK, and Russia, (our biggest audience outside the US), and we thank all of our US and international readers (from over 100 nations). We really do appreciate you taking the time to read our articles. And we extra-appreciate when you refer them to friends. That’s where our readers can really make a difference. Whether we really are able to do something significant to protect the planet, and all of its inhabitants, including our children and future generations, from the ravages of Climate Change, depends largely on whether we and others can get this story out, and make citizens of the world aware, and get them out to VOTE. We love getting feedback. Our email address is: woodstockearthblog@gmail.com, or if you prefer Twitter, you can use: @Mikethemikeman1. For the sake of our people, our families, and Mother Earth, we encourage all of you, as charter members of Woodstock Earth, to spread the word and help get these stories out.