climate change activist and science communicator; photographer; mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction
All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”
Avner Cohen provides a great summary of writing history (here under the particular limitations of studying Israel’s nuclear arsenal):
The narrative I offer, then, is by nature incomplete and interpretative. Like all narratives, it is not written from God’s-eye view; rather, it is a story told through incomplete human and archival sources.
Cohen, Avner. “Before the Beginning: The Early History of Israel’s Nuclear Project (1948–1954).” Israel Studies 3.1 (1998): 112-139.
The scope of the Israeli request for French technological assistance, the details of which Shimon Peres spelled out in Paris in 1956/1957, was tantamount to a national proliferation commitment. Enough is now known about the extent of the Dimona deal to appreciate how determined Ben-Gurion was to pursue it. The Dimona nuclear complex was designed to include all the technological components required for a plutonium-based nuclear-weapons infrastructure. The project’s scope and purpose were evident in the facility’s sanctum sanctorum, the deeply dug underground reprocessing facility designed to extract plutonium from spent uranium rods. Nothing is more indicative of Israel’s initial commitment to build a nuclear-weapons capability than this supersecret and costly facility. From the beginning, Israel hoped that [sic] within a decade or so to have enough fissile material to build its own nuclear device.
Cohen, Avner. The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb. Columbia University Press, 2010. p. 57–8
Related:
The Trudeau government has released the Speech From the Throne to open the 44th Parliament.
There’s a section on climate action, but it goes on an on about “growing the economy” and doesn’t even mention fossil fuels, much less the need to abolish them.
It’s not super encouraging that the speech is called “Building a Resilient Economy: A Cleaner & Healthier Future for our Kids,” while an infamous 2002 memo on how to cultivate climate change denial was called “The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America.”
This kind of constant prioritization of economic growth over planetary security demonstrates the government’s unwillingness to talk about the implications of what climate change mitigation requires. Arguably, it also feeds a sense in the public that the problem ought to be solvable without major societal or lifestyle changes. It doesn’t apply anything like the standard which I suggested to recent environment minister Wilkinson: “Is every project the government is supporting something which we will be glad to have in a post-fossil fuel world?”
Not mutually exclusive:
As in the campaign as a whole, the university’s penchant for secrecy makes it challenging to explain or understand their actions. In particular, that includes the parlour trick of setting up your own investment management corporation as a means of evading oversight, by pretending that somehow the advice from this organization should only be available to the administration in secret.
The latest episode of The Divest Podcast features Julia DaSilva from the Leap Manifesto chapter at U of T, the second of three groups to organize divestment campaigns, after the Toronto350.org / UofT350.org campaign and before / concurrently with the faculty/union Divestment & Beyond campaign.
Vanier Park, Vancouver
1997 LIFEboat Flotilla
From today’s Globe and Mail:
I know Canada’s major media sources tend to be reflexively pro-fossil, but it’s still remarkable to see people insisting that the industries causing climate change should not be targeted as we try to keep it from destroying us.
Today I received and began reading George Hoberg’s new book: The Resistance Dilemma: Place-Based Movements and the Climate Crisis.
The usefulness is threefold. It speaks directly to my concern about how the environmentalist focus on resistance isn’t a great match with building a global energy system that will control climate change. It references much of the same literature as my dissertation, so it provides a useful opportunity to check that I haven’t missed anything major. Finally, it’s an example of a complete, recent, and successful piece of Canadian academic writing on the environment and thus a model for the thesis. It’s even about 300 pages, though a lot more fits on a published book page than a 1.5-spaced Microsoft Word page in the U of T dissertation template.
In This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein highlights the utility of a “Blockadia” strategy to keep fossil fuels in the ground through local land-based resistance campaigns. As George Hoberg raises in his latest book, and many others have discussed, the inclination of the environmental movement runs more toward stopping and preventing things than toward building solutions. For one thing, they get caught up in what I see as false narratives that corporations are exclusively to blame for climate change, or that somehow the world would be able to use drastically less energy. Environmentalists also tend to see any environmental impact as grounds for opposing a project. Impact on birds is a reason to resist wind; impact on the landscape is a reason to oppose solar; offshore wind may ‘mesmerize crabs.’ They point out that even if we bring climate change under control we will have problems with lost biodiversity, toxic pollution, and many other issues — and thus spread their skepticism about electric vehicles or battery power because of the mineral resource requirements.
All this leaves us in a position where environmentalists are accurately raising the alarm about climate change, while rarely suggesting a path forward for replacing that energy and for providing new energy to the parts of the world that are developing economically. As David MacKay put it at the end of his book:
Because Britain currently gets 90% of its energy from fossil fuels, it’s no surprise that getting off fossil fuels requires big, big changes — a total change in the transport fleet; a complete change of most building heating systems; and a 10- or 20-fold increase in green power.
Given the general tendency of the public to say “no” to wind farms, “no” to nuclear power, “no” to tidal barrages — “no” to anything other than fossil fuel power systems — I am worried that we won’t actually get off fossil fuels when we need to. Instead, we’ll settle for half-measures: slightly-more-efficient fossil-fuel power stations, cars, and home heating systems; a fig-leaf of a carbon trading system; a sprinkling of wind turbines; an inadequate number of nuclear power stations.
We need to choose a plan that adds up. It is possible to make a plan that adds up, but it’s not going to be easy.
We need to stop saying no and start saying yes. We need to stop the Punch and Judy show and get building.
If you would like an honest, realistic energy policy that adds up, please tell all your political representatives and prospective political candidates.
Global energy use is about 576 EJ (5.8 x 1020 J), and world electricity consumption to be about 63 EJ (6.3 x 1019 J). Giving all 7.7 billion people on Earth the 125 kWh/day energy use of the average European would require energy production of 962.5 billion kWh per day (3.5 x 1018 J), or 351.3 trillion kWh per year (1.3 x 1021 J). That’s equivalent to about 45,000 1,000 MW power stations. If we want to avoid climate change in a way that is at all politically plausible, we need to get building.
Related:
In another recent unexpected announcement, Simon Fraser University has committed to fossil fuel divestment.
Back in November 2019, the university had promised to reduce investments in carbon-emitting companies by 45%.
This comes five days after the University of Toronto finally committed to divest.