10 May 2017, Climate Central (report), Coastal communities are enduring growing flood risks from rising seas, with places like Atlantic City, sandwiched between a bay and the ocean, facing some of the greatest threats. Guided by new research by Climate Central’s Scott Kulp and Benjamin Strauss, reporter John Upton and photographer Ted Blanco chronicled the plight of this city’s residents as they struggle to deal with the impacts. Upton spent months investigating how the city is adapting, revealing vast inequity between the rich and the poor…. DeDomenicis has lived in this house since 1982, a few hundred feet from a bay. She used to work as a restaurant server; now she’s a school crossing guard. Her husband walked a mile to his job at Bally’s Casino until he retired in January. They’ve seen floods worsen as the seas have risen, as the land beneath them has sunk, and as local infrastructure has rotted away. “It comes in the front door, the back door, and then from the bottom of the house, in through the sides,” DeDomenicis said. “You watch it come in and it meets in the middle of the house — and there’s nothing you can do.” Two miles east of Arizona Avenue, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is spending tens of millions of dollars building a seawall to reduce storm surge and flooding risks for Atlantic City’s downtown and its towering casinos, five of which have closed in the past four years. A few miles in the other direction, it’s preparing to spend tens of millions more on sand dunes to protect million-dollar oceanfront homes. Read More here
Tag Archives: Community
2 May 2017, Renew Economy, The angry denunciation of Westpac’s new climate policy – which rules out funding for new mines in the Galilee Basin – serves only to underscore how crucial support from at least one major Australian bank was to Adani’s push to win finance for its beleaguered Carmichael coal project. Now shunned by all of Australia’s big banks – the Commonwealth Bank, NAB, ANZ and now Westpac – as well as a further 15 banks around the world, Adani is desperate and financially dateless. In its media release following the release of Westpac’s revised climate policy Adani Australia complained Australian banks have “chosen to bow to environmental activists” and decided to “ignore the opportunity to invest” in the Carmichael project. The banks, Adani complained as it played the nationalist card, would continue to invest in overseas coal projects “at the expense of Australians, many of whom are their investors and depositors.” (Curiously, Adani’s media release is not posted on the company’s website.) In its policy Westpac committed to “limit lending to any new thermal coal mines or projects (including those of existing customers) to only existing coal producing basins and where the calorific value for that mine ranks in at least the top 15% globally.” With no existing mines in the Galilee Basin, the bank was explicitly ruling out the Carmichael project – along with other potential but even less viable nearby projects – irrespective of what quality coal they may produce. By any measure, Westpac’s policy is a cautiously-couched incremental improvement on its previous policy but far from being “anti-coal” as the headline on one Fairfax Media article tagged it. (The divestment campaign group Market Forces has a measured analysis of what the policy does and doesn’t mean.) Indeed, aside from the huge climate considerations, there are good financial reasons why a bank like Westpac wouldn’t risk backing any Galilee Basin project: the mines would produce low-quality coal and require huge investments in new railway and port capacity at a time the future price of thermal coal appears to be bleak. Read More here
24 March 2017, Renew Economy, Fear and loathing about renewable grid in Coober Pedy. There is uproar in Coober Pedy, the iconic mining town deep in the South Australian desert that is known as the Opal Capital of the world. What should have been a positive story about a project to shift the town from diesel to a renewable-focused mini-grid based around wind and solar and storage is causing outrage among consumers and councillors, and embarrassment to the developer and the federal agency that backed it. Last year, as we reported at the time, the final plan for the Coober Pedy Renewable Diesel Hybrid project was unveiled, featuring 4MW of wind, 1MW of solar and a 1MW/250kWh battery to provide up to 70 per cent of the power needs of Coober Pedy. The idea was that it would dramatically reduce the amount of diesel consumed from the existing 3.9MW diesel power station, reduce costs, and provide a possible blueprint for the rest of Australia to follow. But what should have been a flagship project for the country – as ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht touted it at the time – looks like turning into a disaster for the town and an embarrassment for the renewable energy industry; and a legal dispute between the council and the developers. It has now emerged that the cost that will be charged to the council, which owns the local grid, and which will subsidised by the government, will be more than double other alternatives. Graham Davies, from Adelaide-based Resonant Solutions, who completed an assessment on behalf of council last year, says that the average cost of generating electricity, not including distribution but including rebates, will be 48c/kWh. The deal signed by council will translate to total cost of $192 million over 20 years, a saving of a dismal $5 million over the diesel only grid staying as is for 20 years – which would simply not happen. The company’s own presentation on the project, made last May, appears to confirm that there is little difference between the ongoing cost of diesel and the solar, wind and storage grid. (see graph below). Renewable energy experts say that is absurd. Read More here
23 March 2017, Independent, If you really care about climate change, you should boycott the ridiculous Earth Hour stunt. The people who are wrecking the planet are the fossil fuel companies, not Georgina from Enfield who occasionally leaves the kitchen light on all night. I am an environmentalist. For my whole adult life I have protested, campaigned, helped to elect climate-savvy politicians and worked hard on what I see as the cause of my life: putting a stop to the dangerous change to our climate that is killing millions. And yet I hate one of the world’s most prominent environmental events with the intense heat of a burning climate – the annual WWF event “Earth Hour”, which this year will take place on 25 March. The charity expects millions of people around the world to symbolically switch off their lights for an hour. Earth Hour is terrible, and not just because the symbolism of darkness is very poorly thought out. The worst thing about Earth Hour is that it tricks people into thinking they’ve done something useful by turning off the lights for 60 minutes, and lets the real villains in the climate change story off the hook. By focusing on individual behaviour, Earth Hour sends out the message that ordinary citizens are the ones to blame for climate change. It passes on the unhelpful message that all we need to do is change our lightbulbs and do more recycling and everything will be fine. Every time someone says that environmentalists are nagging busybodies obsessed with making you turn your TV off standby before you go to bed, Earth Hour has contributed to that. Read More here