Since I wrote the first wrote about Tom Bleakney, he has been peppering me with stories of environmental hope and despair. You'll recall Bleakney is a Tesla evangelist and environmental action prophet.
His despair comes in the continuing warning from scientists that time is short if we are to avoid an environmental catastrophe as opposed to simply dire effects of global warming. In its latest report the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote that the world would likely be unable to limit global warming sufficiently to prevent climate disasters.
To which Bleakney wrote: "I am very disappointed that Biden approved the huge Conoco Phillips drilling project in Alaska, which is completely incompatible with what this report says."
Tom Bleakney in his beloved Tesla.
Just days later, he wrote me with the good news that distillers in Scotland have pledged to whisky with energy from wind, wood chips and tides. They take the long view, a news story said, "They are part of a tradition that goes back centuries, and they think in decades, producing spirits that often spend 12 years or more maturing in casks. They can see clearly that there is only one direction to go."
Meanwhile, he sees a good wind blowing. New York City is investing heavily in wind power, some of it offshore. And in the West, billionaire Philip Anschutz, who owns the Coachella music festival, the L.A. Kings, and the Crypto Arena, is preparing to build a huge wind farm in Wyoming and a 732-mile electric power line to California. But even as construction starts, so does controversy, as Sam Conn writes in the Los Angeles Times.
Here’s the problem: Almost anywhere you try to build renewable energy in the West, you’ll face opposition. Whether it’s based on protecting wildlife, preserving scenic views or promoting fossil fuels, someone will come forward and fight to maintain the status quo. Threading the needle means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
Then, Beakney sent this story about capturing carbon from the air and burying it so that the carbon would stay in the ground for a more than a millennia. A potential game changing solution. Unlike other forms of agricultural carbon sequestration, the solution reported by University of California researchers would bury biomass in a sealed, dry grave so it would not decompose. The researchers make grand claims: according to Eli Yablonovitch, a Professor in the Graduate School in UC Berkeley's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences:
"We're claiming that proper engineering can solve 100% of the climate crisis, at manageable cost.... If implemented on a global scale, this carbon-negative sequestration method has the potential to remove current annual carbon dioxide emissions as well as prior years' emissions from the atmosphere."
Finally, on the good news side of the equation: the California Senate has passed SB252 with a lopsided 22-10 vote. The bill would require that the state’s $750-billion public pension funds systematically divest from fossil fuels companies, including oil, gas, and coal. The times they are a-changing. Similar legislation failed earlier. The bill now goes to the Assembly. Third Act, the activist organization of elders I belong to, is supporting the coalition behind SB252. You can get involved, too. Email your representative.
Photos: Alaska ice floe by Melissa Bradley via Unsplash. Bleakney photo by CTK.