Stephan: Norway has competent governance, not perfect but competent and committed to fostering wellbeing. By almost any social outcome data you choose to name, Norway exceeds the United States. This is what their road transportation already looks like.
Norway isn’t just Tesla’s biggest market on a per capita basis. It’s also the company’s fourth biggest market by sales—though it’s home to only 5.5 million people. Credit: FREDRIK BJERKNES
If you’re used to road tripping in America, where two-thirds of all new vehicles sold are hulking, gasoline-powered SUVs or pickups, the streets of Norway are like a vehicular Bizarro World. Not because they’re dominated by Nordic brands, the Volvos and Saabs of past and present. Or because they’re lined with tiny Smarts and VW Up!s, squeezed into parking spaces smaller than some American humans. They’re strange because Norway has the world’s highest purchase rates of electric vehicles.
In the land of the Norwegians, battery-powered rides are so ubiquitous, it is as if you’ve traveled 10 or 20 years into our transportation future. Jaguar I-Paces, Audi E-tron SUVs, VW E-Golfs, Hyundai Konas, and other vehicles rarely spotted in the States stream down highways and side streets en masse, like Ford F-150s and Toyota RAV4s do here.
The Land of the Midnight Sun, though, isn’t content to just have its […]
The department will suspend data collection for its Honey Bee Colonies report, and officials did not say when — or if — it would be restarted. It will release data already collected from January 2018 through April of this year.
The Agricultural Department has been a key source of data on the insects, which is critically important to scientists and farmers.
The number of honey bee hives, vital to pollinating crops for the agricultural industry and other plants for wildlife, plummeted from
Stephan: Get used to this kind of news, you are going to be seeing a lot of it. This is where we are at today.
Aftermath of the damage left by Cyclone Kenneth in a village north of Pemba, Mozambique in May. Credit: Mike Hutchings/Reuters
Climate crisis disasters are happening at the rate of one a week, though most draw little international attention and work is urgently needed to prepare developing countries for the profound impacts, the UN has warned.
Catastrophes such as cyclones Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique and the drought afflicting India make headlines around the world. But large numbers of “lower impact events” that are causing death, displacement and suffering are occurring much faster than predicted, said Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on disaster risk reduction. “This is not about the future, this is about today.”
This means that adapting to the climate crisis could no longer be seen as a long-term problem, but one that needed investment now, she said. “People need to talk more about adaptation and resilience.”
Estimates put the cost of climate-related disasters at $520bn a year, while the additional cost of […]
Stephan: Here in the U.S. our government is committed to keeping carbon energy alive as long as possible. Meanwhile, in countries run by people more competent in governance, this is what is going on. Good news for the Earth, but yet another marker describing the downward spiral of America's status and leadership in the world.
A large German wind farm. Credit: Bernd Wüstneck/picture alliance/Getty
The myth that a very high level of renewables can’t be integrated into the electric grid is being demolished by the clean tech and battery storage revolution.
“By 2040, renewables make up 90% of the electricity mix in Europe, with wind and solar accounting for 80%,” predict the experts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) in their annual energy outlook released this week.
“Cheap renewable energy and batteries fundamentally reshape the electricity system,” explains BNEF. Since 2010, wind power globally has dropped 49% in cost. Both solar and battery prices have plummeted 85%.
PRICE DROPS IN SOLAR, WIND, BATTERIES SINCE 2010. CREDIT: BNEF.
In fact, many countries are already at very high levels of renewable power: Iceland (100%), Paraguay (100%), Costa Rica (98%), Norway (97%), Uruguay (96.5%), Kenya (91%), New Zealand (84%), Austria (80%), Brazil (80%), Austria (74%), Canada (65%) and Denmark (61%). The main renewables in these […]
Fran Quigley, Director of the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law - truthout
Stephan: Another confirmation that the U.S. illness profit system, particularly the pharmaceutical industry, is interested in only one thing -- profit. Achieved by milking the American public of as much money as they can get away with, as witnessed by the grotesque prices for drugs in this country.
The leaders of the pharmaceutical industry are laser-focused on profits, stock prices, salaries and bonuses. Credit: Heungsoon / Pixabay
Frances Leath no longer works in management for pharmaceutical industry giant Eli Lilly and Company, but she keeps tabs on the company where she spent the first 15 years of her career. She still lives in Indianapolis, home of the company headquarters. She has watched as Lilly’s dramatic increases in the price of insulin have triggered regular protests by angry patients, class-action lawsuits, and Congressional criticism.
