Archive for July, 2019

When Jason Smerdon opened up a retirement account as a graduate student two decades ago, he gravitated toward socially responsible stock funds, despite the possibility of weaker returns. He figured his ideals were more important than investment performance. Fast forward two decades, and his investment philosophy is no longer as black and white. Since the economic downturn a decade ago, he has moved a majority of his retirement portfolio into aggressive growth funds and only factors environmental concerns into the equation when investing in individual stocks. All of that consciousness came in ‘08 and ‘09 when I realized I don’t want to be caught in a conservative trap where I’m not beating inflation.”Smerdon isn’t an ordinary investor worried about the future of the planet. He’s a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and co-director of the Earth Institute’s undergraduate program in sustainable development.

Epstein: "Fossil fuel energy has not taken a naturally safe climate and made it unnaturally dangerous; it’s taken our naturally dangerous climate and made it unnaturally safe."

"The International Disaster Database, a nonpartisan organization that tracks deaths from climate-related causes—such as extreme heat, floods, storms, and drought—shows that such deaths have been plummeting as CO2 emissions have been rising. How is this possible? Because of the fossil fuel energy that emitted the CO2, which has empowered us to climate-proof our environment with heating, air-conditioning, sturdy buildings, mass irrigation, and weather warning systems. Fossil fuel energy has not taken a naturally safe climate and made it unnaturally dangerous; it’s taken our naturally dangerous climate and made it unnaturally safe. Fossil fuels are not an existential threat. They are an existential resource because they increase something much more important than the level of CO2 in the atmosphere: the level of human empowerment. Increased life expectancy, income, health, leisure time, and education are all tightly linked to increased access to fossil fuels.

Malizia II, like the rest of the yachts in the Imoca 60 class, is constructed from high-tech carbon fiber composites to make it ultra-light and fast. It is the ultimate play thing of the wealthy elite.  These boats are made of hydrocarbons, not to mention all the energy it took to make them. Carbon fiber composites are primarily made from propane and petroleum.  This boat was pumped out of the ground...The Monaco Yacht Club is among the sponsors paying for the trip.  They removed all the corporate sponsor logos from the yacht so as not to be associated with the capitalist prosperity that built it. Ending air travel is nihilism.  Going back to sailing to cross oceans is a 19th-century solution that cannot meet 21st-century travel needs.  This makes no economic, logistical, or ecological sense.