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The incoming Trump administration will have a say in whether federally backed direct air capture projects in Louisiana move forward

Move to exclude fossil fuel firms from investment portfolios follows years of campaigning by staff and students

The student campaign group People & Planet announced on Friday that 115 out of 149 UK universities had publicly committed to divest from fossil fuels – meaning £17.7bn-worth of endowments are now out of reach of the fossil fuel industry.

Later this month, the group will group will unveil its latest university league table that ranks institutions by their ethical and environmental performance. Campaigners say they will then increase pressure on the remaining 34 UK universities yet to go fossil-free.

An international court will decide what nations owe to future generations.

Vanadium flow-batteries were developed in the US, then the license was sold to China (older 2022 NPR story) https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1114964240/new-battery-technology-china-vanadium

Report calls for course correction to avoid land abuse ‘compromising Earth’s capacity to support human and environmental wellbeing’

The main culprit, according to the report, is unsustainable agricultural practices, which are responsible for 80% of forest loss. These techniques, which include heavy use of chemical inputs, pesticides and water diversion, also erode soil, diminish water supplies and contaminate ecosystems.

The link is to a year-old article that helped me decide not to pay Alaska Airlines’ voluntary SAF carbon mitigation fees. I’m still not certain about the right choice, and would like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

The big picture includes acknowledgement that there’s no such thing as ethical consumption within capitalism, so in some ways this choice is entirely irrelevant. Also that flying is by far the most polluting form of transportation per passenger mile so we should each minimize doing it. Finally that flying has the most challenging logistics of shifting energy sources, fundamentally because batteries are heavy.

Alaska offers me a choice during the checkout procedure to contribute to SAF accounting for between 5% and 20% of the fuel that my flight will use, but it has nothing to do with the fuel actually consumed by my flight. They are already buying some amount of SAF and using it in their SFO hub only, so the program is hand waving about the fungibility of fuel consumption. Really they’re just offering me the opportunity to donate money towards their SAF usage, indirectly supporting the growth of the SAF industry.

It seems to me that the whole SAF industry is currently greenwashing bullshit, piggybacking on the big lie from the past few decades that adding ethanol to automotive gasoline is “sustainable” in some meaningful way. But that ignores the water usage depleting aquifers at an accelerating rate, necessary fertilizer use and soil depletion, using food-producing acreage for fuel instead, energy usage in planting/harvesting/refining/distilling, and so on.

Please validate my choice not to donate to the current state of SAF, or provide links to interesting reading that supports your claim otherwise.

Main link is a syndicated copy of this Wall Street Journal article