0 Emissions Costa Rica

September 9, 2016

costa-rica-flagBackground

Since 1847, when Costa Rica declared sovereignty from the United Provinces of Central America, it has remained among the most stable, prosperous, and progressive nations in Latin America. In 1949 it became (and remains) one of sixteen sovereign nations without a standing army.

Achievements

  • It has been cited by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as having a better record on human development and inequality than the median of the region.
  • Its rapidly developing economy has diversified to include sectors such as finance, pharmaceuticals, and ecotourism.
  • It is the only country to meet all five UNDP criteria established to measure environmental sustainability.
  • It ranked third in the Americas in the 2016 Environmental Performance Index.
  • It was twice ranked the best performing country in New Economics Foundation’s (NEF) Happy Planet Index and identified as the greenest country in the world in 2009.
  • According to UNDP in 2010 the life expectancy at birth for Costa Ricans was 79.3 years, second highest in the Americas and higher than the United States.
  • Its healthcare system is ranked higher than that of the United States, despite its incomparably smaller GDP.
  • Since 1941 it has provided universal health care to its wage-earning residents. By the year 2000, social health insurance coverage was available to 82% of the population. Notably (take note, U.S. Congress and presidential candidates), the government funds over 70% of it at a cost of about 7% of GDP.

Exemplary Again

Now the country has been powered entirely by a mix of hydroelectric (80.27%), geothermal (12.6%), wind (7.1%), and solar energy (0.01 %, there’s room for growth) for 76 days straight, from June 16, 2016 through September 2, and it’s not a fluke. In 2015 Costa Rica spent 299 days using renewable energy alone, and it’s going to get better. Later this month the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE, in Spanish) will unveil the largest public infrastructure project in Central America after the Panama Canal, enough to power around 525,000 homes, Mashable reported.

The Obvious

If enlightened Costa Rica can achieve so much with so little for so many, certainly the rest of the world can too. For that however, humans will have to redefine “great” not on a country’s ability to destroy the planet but on its contributions to making life better for all, while we have one.

The Winds of Terminal War

September 8, 2016

The irresistible force and the immovable object.

The immovable object and the irresistible force.

Lately, focused on the impending presidential election, Syria, the Ukraine and the South China Sea, American mainstream media have all but ignored climate change. It’s as if there’s a consensus that war will inevitably transform Earth into another Mars long before it broils into another Venus. Why bother –that logic suggests- making, let alone implementing extraordinarily costly plans for the benefit of future generations that may never be born?

Leaders claim their highest priority and responsibility is the protection of their people. However, if that mentality is extended to a military confrontation between the world’s biggest nuclear powers, the U.S., Russia, and increasingly, China, they will be doing the very opposite. Even a small number of their highly efficient nuclear arsenals will trigger a nuclear winter. In a matter of days the upper atmosphere would be engulfed in a thick layer of radioactive dust that would block the sun’s rays from reaching the Earth’s surface. Without them, the entire planet would quickly freeze and all plants and animals, including us, would die.

This time weapons cannot and will not succeed in imposing one belligerent’s will on the other. Accordingly, our species needs to mature to a level commensurate with the rapidly increasing power of its technology. Furthermore, the ruling elites, who indirectly control all those planet-killer weapons, need to understand that climate change has doomed the plutocratic world order they are so desperately trying to perpetuate. Either we follow it into oblivion or we save ourselves by quickly adopting, as a preliminary step, true Aristotelian democracy –the rule of the majority, who happen to be the poor- worldwide. The status quo will not get us there.

 

Solar Cell Triggered by Sun and Rain

April 11,2016

A study published in Angewandte Chemie has found that when combined with an electron-enriched graphene electrode, a dye-sensitized solar cell can be excited by incident light on sunny days and raindrops on rainy days. Its optimal solar-to-electric conversion efficiency is 6.53%.

Regulations Could Preserve Assets in the $Trillions

April 5, 2016

A 2016 study from the London School of Economics and Political Science argues that regulations to limit carbon emissions could actually help to preserve $trillions in assets.

Saving New York & Low-Lying Cities From Sinking

April 4, 2016

There are two main components to the global water crisis exacerbated by climate change: drought and flooding. While temporary phenomena like El Niño mask the long-term nature of the former, doing nothing will not save cities like New York, Miami, New Orleans or Dacca from the ocean’s relentless rise.

Plan A could solve both while simultaneously ending the use of fossil fuels and nuclear fission to generate electricity. In a nutshell, it calls for flooding with seawater natural below-sea-level depressions and dry lake beds in sparsely populated areas in the western U.S., southern Argentina and western Egypt. In addition to generating clean energy, it  should reduce the expected increase in ocean rise and simultaneously create a new source of fresh water wherever desalination is impractical or impossible.

Low-lying Cities Sinking Twice As Fast

April 4, 2016

A new study from climate scientists Robert DeConto at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and David Pollard at Pennsylvania State University suggests that the most recent estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for future sea-level rise over the next 100 years could be too low by almost a factor of two. Low-lying cities could be devastated sooner than expected.

Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health

April 4, 2016

A 332-page report developed and issued today by globalchange.gov, which belonged to the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and hosted congressionally mandated National Climate Assessments and other climate data, details how climate change threatens human health and well-being in the United States. Water will become more contaminated, food more tainted, and the air dirtier. Already it affects more people in more ways than ever, including asthma attacks in children, invasions of disease-causing mosquitoes and mental health. The website went dark on July 1, 2025, therefore the report is no longer available online.

Not only is it this calamity going to get worse, there’s an abysmal gap between the government’s rhetoric and action. Congress is unable or unwilling, or both, to act in tandem with the Obama administration to do what’s necessary to halt –and eventually reverse- climate change. The technology exists. Money abounds, especially in this environment of low interest rates when big capital is searching for profitable long term, safe returns. But the will is lacking. Perhaps it will emerge when the powers that be begin to realize that inevitably they too are going to pay the same price as the rest of us, much sooner than they are willing to admit.

Extreme Poverty Worse For Men

April 3, 2016

Writing for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Eleni Karageorge reports that researchers in the National Bureau of Economic Research have found that men who experienced poverty as children suffered greater economic consequences than women who grew up in poverty. Gender differences in employment rates varied. Among people whose parents were in the bottom fifth of income distribution when they were young, the 30-year-old men were less likely to have a job than were the women. This was especially true among boys who were raised by a single parent. But for all other income groups, the opposite case was true; specifically, men were employed at higher rates.

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