Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Resource Movement offers a handy primer on wealth taxes (and the value of applying them). – Jean-Benoit Legault reports on new research showing that pregnant Inuit women are exposed to significantly more contaminants than their counterparts elsewhere. – David Climenhaga discusses how generations
Continue readingTag: energy
Things Are Good: Cooking With Electricity is Cleaner than Gas
Gas stoves have reputation for being good to cook with, but they are really quite bad for everything else that happens in the kitchen – like inhaling air. Indoor fas stoves can actually make your kitchen air quality worse than a highway’s. Thankfully, electric stove technology has improved to the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Building New Solar Energy Plants Cheaper than Running Coal
Since the inception of Things Are Good we’ve been following the demise of dirty fossil fuel usage and the rise of clean energy. A few highlights from over the years: Solar Power Is Cheaper Than Nuclear Solar And Wind Outgrow Subsidies Wind Power: One Of The Cheapest Sources Of Energy
Continue readingThings Are Good: A Team Cools the Planet by Sending Heat to Outer Space
Aaswath Raman, a material scientist at UCLA, has looked into the past to solve today’s problems. He has led a team that’s created an impressive device that uses radiative cooling to help cool anything by sending heat into outer space. This sounds like it’s right out of science fiction, but
Continue readingThings Are Good: Graphene as a Limitless Power Generator
Graphene has long been heralded as an amazing new material that can change entire industries and revolutionize the economy. Notably this has yet to happen. Yet. At the University of Arkansas a team of physicists found a way to use graphene to generate limitless power based on the movement of
Continue reading52 Ideas: I wish Rex Murphy would understand that change is coming…
In 2018, the Toronto Paramedic Service (TPS) introduced 11 hybrid-electric ambulances into their fleet. Like many other North American cities, Toronto has been working on reducing its carbon footprint. The adoption of hybrid-electric ambulances was just one step in changing its consolidated vehicle fleet. In the City of Toronto Consolidated
Continue readingThings Are Good: I See a Wind Turbine and I Want it Paint it Black
Believe it or not there are people out there who don’t want renewable energy and actively campaign to keep our power grid based on world-destroying fossil fuels. These backward thinking individuals have had success in stopping some wind turbine installations by arguing that wind turbines kill birds. Sadly, wind turbines
Continue readingThings Are Good: A More Robust Solar Desalination Solution
You should drink more water. We all should drink more water, however in some places water wells are drying up and water is getting harder to get. Fortunately for us, we have a lot of ocean to drink from. Costal cities have increasingly looking towards desalination as a solution to
Continue readingIn-Sights: More methane? Meh!
In British Columbia and other western provinces, we will soon be working to reshape the economy. Now is a perfect time to commit to reduced production of fossil fuels and move vigorously toward a clean energy economy. Instead of public relations campaigns, we need action. Real action.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Renewable Energy Keeps Growing While Oil Companies Shrink
Without a doubt all business have been negatively impacted by the pandemic with some being hit more than others. The dirty and climate-destroying fossil fuel industry has really been hit hard (unfortunately it’s the workers who have been hurt by this and not the lying executives) and the industry isn’t
Continue readingThings Are Good: Singularity University Online Conference on COVID-19 Happening Today
It’s free and you can attend from all over the world. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to grow and we all need to do our part to help our communities. Step one might be to better understand the coronavirus and how it functions in the context of our health and our
Continue readingThings Are Good: Teck Halts Work on Tarsands Proposal
Canada is waking up to the reality of the climate crisis, those ringing the alarms includes a diverse group from the Wet’suwet’en Nation to Greenpeace. Now a large fossil fuel company, Teck Resources Ltd., has decided to not move ahead with an environment-destroying tarsands project partly due to the fact
Continue readingIn-Sights: Hopeful change?
Today, Premier Horgan gave Energy Minister Michelle Mungall a new job, replacing her with Bruce Ralston. I am encouraged, anticipating (perhaps naively) that leadership of the department responsible for BC Hydro and […]
Continue readingThings Are Good: Countries can Greatly Reduce Carbon Emissions by Improving Transmission
In order to avert climate catastrophe we’re going to have to make boring changes to our built infrastructure. Politicians find it hard to argue for these sorts of enhancements because voters don’t get to see a ribbon cutting ceremony; however changes to infrastructure can make a massive difference. In the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Closing Coal Plants Saves Lives
Everyone already knows that burning coal for energy is absolutely horrible for the planet and were still learning just how bad coal power plants really are. The positive news is that once the plants are closed positive changes are quick to be found. A recent study found that shutting down
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Heather Scoffield writes that a genuine commitment to fighting climate change could resolve multiple major issues facing Canada – while delay serves only to exacerbate them: At the core of today’s western alienation and of today’s search for prosperity is a much larger
Continue readingThings Are Good: Electric Power from Rivers Meeting Oceans
Renewable energy comes in many forms with new innovative approaches being discovered very so often. A more recent approach to carbon neutral renewable energy can be found where two bodies of water meet. In an innovative approach, scientists have found a way to create electricity from locations where fresh water
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Will Hutton discusses how the U.S.’ monopolistic economic system threatens anybody who becomes subject to its whims. And Eric Levitz points out how a wealth tax which ensures that everybody is required to contribute to the price of a functional civilization should appeal
Continue readingThings Are Good: Scotland Banned Fraking, Rest of UK to Follow
Fraking is really bad for all of us, it’s the process of using water to force dirty oil out of the ground. This practice destabilizes the ground causing earthquakes and the end result is more wasteful oil ultimately being consumed, which in turn, produces waste that gets released into the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Toronto’s Food Waste Powers its Garbage Trucks
Toronto’s garbage trucks are being fuelled by the very thing they are picking up on their routes. The trucks pick up food waste (in a separate bin from recycling and trash) and transport them to a holding facility where the food further decomposes. Since 2015, Toronto has been working to
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