The Climate Minute

Medical care in the US generates a lot of carbon pollution. Part of this pollution comes from the manufacture of very sophisticated and expensive ‘one-use-only’ medical devices. A good way to reduce CO2 emissions from medical care is to carefully re-process those currently discarded medical devices for repeat usage. This saves on both medical costs and the planet.

The MA DPU is slow to approve electric power ‘community aggregation’ plans. How come? Plus we talk about microgrids, community design and an undersea cable ‘backbone’ to connect the multiple proposed wind turbine farms off the East Coast.

The climate future is coming into focus. It is better than the 5C hell-scape we have feared, but much worse than our hoped for 1.5C. How we build that tumultuous new world is up for grabs and is the heart of a recent article (Beyond Catastrophe: A new climate reality is coming into view, by David Wallace Wells) that gives lots of food for thought.  Listen in are we process some of the ideas in order to give you a head start when you read it yourself.

Climate activists threw tomato soup at Van Gogh’s sunflowers.  What did you think? Was the protest effective? There are many perspectives and few correct answers. We discuss.

COP27 (the Conference of the Parties) will be held in Egypt in November of 2022. One of the topics of discussion will likely be ‘loss and damage’ suffered by countries and people who cannot afford to adapt to climate damage they did not cause. We take a moment to explain some background for this subject.

The IRA provides money for building clean energy generation, but the permitting process could slow progress. We look at several interesting proposals that show a path to an energy transition that is both rapid and just.

We talk with our special guest, MA State Representative Jeff Roy. The last time Jeff was with us we were all waiting for the governor to take action on the recent climate legislation. Now that it is on the books, what is next for our journey along the roadmap?

Electricity providers are raising rates. How should you think about this? From a climate perspective, we should recognize the long term problem and build more renewables.

In a big win for climate activists, Joe Manchin withdrew his flawed permitting bill. Climate folks should be impressed with their growing political clout, but what comes next? How does our country, in an equitable way, build the urgently needed transmission infrastructure that we need?

The Inflation Reduction Act is good climate bill, but in the sausage making  process, a companion bill that pretends to improve the ‘permitting process’ was needed. Now the ‘Manchin side deal’ is moving to a vote. For greens, permitting reform relates to what is happening in Maine, but for Manchin (read Big Oil) it about rolling over local voices for faster pipeline construction.