Soybean farm in Brazil.

GR: Each year, the Global Footprint Network calculates the date at which we humans have used as much biomass as the Earth/Sun system produces in a year. In other words, it’s the date after which we live by overdrawing our resource bank account. This year its August 2.

There is much that we need to do. Here’s a sample.

“Four days after President Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, the Global Footprint Network (GFN) reported that Earth Overshoot Day 2017 will fall on Aug. 2. Most Americans likely have no idea what that means.

“The basic point is quite simple: From Jan. 1 to Aug. 2, the world’s 7.5 billion people will have used as much of Earth’s biological resources—or biocapacity—as the planet can regenerate in a year. During the remaining five months of 2017, our human consumption will be drawing down…

Predicted Growth of Drought in the U. S. Southwest

GR: Here’s a helpful article that explains the drought disaster that is spreading across the southwestern U. S. There’s nothing new here, but the discussion clarifies some issues and will help you prepare for the inevitable changes. The article has an optimistic message, but the science is clear, life will become steadily more difficult in the Southwest, people will move away, and most will be gone from Arizona and large areas of surrounding states by 2100. It is inescapably obvious that we need to redirect the energy devoted to development in the Southwest and the corresponding effort to conserve water to forcing an immediate end to fossil fuel use.

Projected Drought Intensity in the U. S.

Though I believe the future for the Southwest is bleak, there is one small hope that the article contains. The Southwest could become a solar power…

Opinion:

¶ “Solar power gaining ground” • Solar power, once so costly it made economic sense only in spaceships, is becoming cheap enough that it will push coal and even natural-gas plants out of business faster than previously forecast. The scenario suggests green energy is taking root more quickly than most experts anticipate. [GoErie.com]

Solar array (Thinkstock image)

¶ “Record levels of green energy in UK create strange new world for generators” • On one Friday in May, solar power briefly eclipsed the UK’s eight nuclear power stations. The grid recently went without coal for an entire day for the first time, and the dirty fuel is now regularly absent from power supply for hours at a time. [The Guardian]

World:

¶ Worldwide, $10.2 trillion will be invested in power generation from 2017 to 2040, with renewable power sources such as wind and solar getting almost three…

Science and Technology:

¶ For two weeks in January of 2016, unusually warm weather caused a 300,000 square mile patch of the Ross Ice Shelf to partially melt. The roughly Texas-sized area, blanketed in a slushy mixture of ice and water, represents one of the first times scientists have been able to catch such widespread Antarctic melting in action. [Popular Science]

Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf (lin padgham via Wiki Commons)

¶ A perceived degrading of vehicle batteries has been holding back bi-directional vehicle-to-grid technology, a group working on the problem says. Those researchers now say, however, that the lithium-ion batteries will not deteriorate with a new algorithm-driven system because they are using special power calculations. [Network World]

World:

¶ A notification posted online this week by the Legislative Affairs Office, which reports to the Chinese cabinet, indicates that all manufacturers will be required to generate EV credits…

Back during late 2015 and early 2016, wealthy investors aligned with Nevada utilities in an attempt to kill off a wave of rooftop solar adoption rippling through the state.

Campaign money was promised, shady back-room deals were made, and in 2016, the state set forward a policy that would basically make it uneconomical for homeowners to purchase or maintain solar rooftops. Credits to homeowners with solar roofs who sold electricity back to utilities dropped from 12.5 cents per kilowatt hour to 2.5 cents.

This crushing blow to clean, distributed energy resulted in mass protest both from the Nevada public and from the industry itself. Demonstrations erupted in the Nevada capital as Solar City (now under Tesla), Sunrun, and Vivint all decided to pull the plug on state operations in an all-out boycott to protest Nevada’s anti-renewables policy. In total, 2,600 clean energy jobs were lost in Nevada as…