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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

Archived copies of the article:

• archive.today
• ghostarchive.org
• web.archive.org

As average temperatures rise and warmer air sucks more moisture out of landscapes, firefighters across the country say they are more frequently battling blazes at unexpected times of year, and in more places.

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I hope billionaires really don't keep themselves informed enough, in order to get started searching for climate refugia on OUR earth...

... Ending up possessing the maybe last spots of life on this planet.

Donald Trump has said many times in the last few months that because of global warming, sea level will rise an eighth of an inch in several hundred years...

He usually follows by adding that “we’ll have more beachfront property.”

It is just about the stupidest thing one could possibly say about sea level rise.

On 29 November, Ireland will hold its first general election since before the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the climate commitments made by the six most popular parties in a 25 November opinion poll, based on their latest manifestos.

A recent interview with on of the few Adults in the "Climate Debate", Professor Kevin Anderson.