Planet Earth Needs You

  The Data Center will be the straw that breaks the back of the effort to stop climate change. They will consume massive amounts of energy, resources and degrade local environments. It will start with their construction and escalate with its operations. Data centers may well be needed in the future but building them at this critical time is not possible, when the reduction in greenhouse gases is necessary for the survival of all life as we know it today. What follows are the reasons it is not possible at this time.   Hundreds of data centers are under construction and hundreds more are being planned. Huge amounts of greenhouse gases will be produced in the making of the steel and concrete for the buildings. Significant amounts of materials and energy will be used to make the massive number of computers and thus will produce more greenhouse gases. During the construction, transportation of men and materials will burn lots of fuel and add to the carbon footprint of the project. ...

Ever since the Trump administration began its effort to stop the growth of Battery Electric Vehicles, BEV's, online articles pop-up every other day either declaring the end of BEV production in the USA or announcing the billions of dollars lost by the legacy automotive companies invested in BEV's. These articles claim the US auto industry has finally heard from the consumer and it is telling the industry they just do not want battery electric vehicles, BEV's. The articles keep reporting that the projected growth of BEV sales prior to the elimination of government tax subsidies will not be achieved. Hidden in the articles is that growth is still increasing but just not as high as before Trump's attack on the BEV business.  So why are consumers still buying BEV?  Reliability of BEV is much better than ICEV. This is made possible because the number of parts, especially moving parts, is many times less than that of an ICEV. It results in lower repair and maintenance cost. O...

Is new development really good for your community? Are there limits to what your local community can support? Have we reached the point where further development results in a decrease in the quality of life for the majority of its residents? With the planet heating up faster than predicted and the effects of the global increase in temperature occurring faster and more severely a more thorough look at further development of our local community would seem  necessary.  Severe rain events that last longer and bring many inches of rain in a very short time are occurring much more frequently and causing extensive damage to local communities. Wildfires that destroy our homes and send smoke that keeps us in our homes, with windows and doors sealed tight so we are not made sick by breathing them. Droughts that destroy crops and grazing fields result in higher priced food for us. More hurricanes with stronger winds staying long and reaching further inland are destroying our local commun...

  By Nancy Williams and Michael Coppola The tobacco industry touted the filtered cigarette as being safer than their unfiltered brands in order to keep selling cigarettes, but the filtered cigarette was not actually safer. Now we see similar misinformation from the auto industry, backed by the powerful fossil fuel industry that the Hybrid Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle [HICEV] is less polluting than the Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle [ICEV] and, therefore, it can get us to achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement of staying below a 2 degree C increase or hopefully below a 1.5 degree C increase. How much time do we have left to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement? According to all sources we cannot meet the 1.5 goal by 2030 as required and are headed to exceeding 2.0 C by the mid 2030’s if we continue on our current path. However, it is still possible to halt warming to 2.0 C if we were to immediately dramatically reduce our greenhouse emissions. The latest data shows ...

By Michael Coppola When it comes to the climate emergency there are two allegories that exemplify what has gone on in the USA for the past hundred years or so. For the citizens it is that of the frog slowly being cooked in the pot of water and for the political leaders it’s Nero fiddling while Rome burns. If one looks at the headlines in the media, we see the Epstein scandal; the war crimes in Gaza and Ukraine; the death of democracy; the tariff policy of a deranged president. Rarely does one see even a footnote mention of the climate crisis even after the reporting of wildfires; hurricanes and massive flooding destroying neighborhoods. If we do not stop the politicians from fiddling and the citizens don't begin to feel the heat, business will continue as usual and we will lose the last opportunity to save ourselves. The science tells us that we have less than 5 years to dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Currently we are increasing our emissions. The ...

  By Nancy Williams and Michael Coppola Greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase in the United States.  If we want to keep the increase in global temperature from rising to the level that will make it very difficult to survive, shouldn't we be spending taxpayer money on the most cost-effective solutions; the ones that are already available and can be implemented the fastest?  We have to question the government spending $808,000,000 in grant money on a technology that will not be commercially available for almost a decade and will contribute little to the reduction in GHG emissions. The Federal government is offering that $808 million as a grant to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for the development of a nuclear reactor known as a Small Modular Reactor (SMR). There are several types of SMR's that are being investigated today. Some are designs that were rejected in the 1970's. The type that the TVA is betting our tax money on is a modified design of the reactors b...