№ 793. The Age of Depopulation: Surviving a World Gone Gray

Nicholas Eberstadt

November/December 2024 Published on October 10, 2024

 

"As a rule of thumb, a total fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman approximates the replacement threshold in affluent countries with high life expectancy—but the replacement level is somewhat higher in countries with lower life expectancy or marked imbalances in the ratio of baby boys to baby girls."

 

Population Institute of Canada

№ 728. Renewable Energy

 

Our World in Data

A cleaner, more sustainable form of energy, renewables draw power from natural sources such as the sun (solar), wind (aeolian), ocean (marine), rivers (hydroelectric), and the Earth’s internal heat (geothermal). However, this also means they can be affected by environmental, seasonal and daily cycles that can limit their use or efficiency. As such, renewable energy cannot always consistently produce energy at all hours of the day – this is called intermittency. 

Solar and wind farms energy production in Europe have been known to fluctuate between 0 to 23 and 24GW of energy respectively during peak times. While these peak production periods provide a large share of energy, the sometimes unpredictable lulls are what define the intermittency of renewables. This intermittency is contrasted by the constant power output that can be generated by fossil fuel-based power plants using coal or natural gas, this has often been referred to as base-load energy. These power plants are able to provide a constant source of energy but do so at the cost of the environment. 

 Intermittency has always been an issue limiting the growth of renewable energy, but the development of high-capacity batteries capable of storing large quantities of power has changed that. Being able to store excess energy produced by renewable energy during peak cycles, storage provides power grids with the ability to tap into those reserves when the cycles dip – negating the intermittency of renewables. Recent studies have shown that the use of large-scale batteries in the United States could both help reduce renewable energy infrastructure costs and provide over 80% of the nation’s power demands through sustainable energy.

№ 675. Zero Waste Cooking

Reddit

 

№ 655. Climate Status

The Week

 

You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives.

 

Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming — a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic strife, but, from some corners, warnings of civilizational collapse and even a sort of human endgame. (Perhaps you’ve had nightmares about each of these and seen premonitions of them in your newsfeed.)

 

Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees. (A United Nations report released this week ahead of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, confirmed that range.) A little lower is possible, with much more concerted action; a little higher, too, with slower action and bad climate luck. Those numbers may sound abstract, but what they suggest is this: Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.

 

№ 599. Creation

 We are only stewards, never masters, of creation.

Thinking

"In 'A Natural History of the Future,' the ecologist Rob Dunn sketches an arresting vision of this relentless natural world — a world that is in equal measures creative, unguided and extravagant. Fog a tree with pesticides and watch new beetle species tumble from the canopy by the hundreds, a “riot of unnamed life.” Chlorinate your water and, though you might wipe out most parasites, you’ll soon bedew your shower head with chlorine-resistant mycobacteria. Make a world fit for bedbugs, then try to kill them with chemicals, and you’ll end up — not in a world without bedbugs, but one in which they’ve “evolved resistance to half a dozen different pesticides.”

Life is not a passive force on the planet, and much as we might presume to sit in judgment of Creation — even sorting species by their economic value to us — we live on nature’s terms. The sooner we recognize this, Dunn argues, the better."

№ 519. TEOTWAWKI

 

The Pandemic has arrived. We are still managing it. Barely.

Winter is coming. 

Not the white walkers, but worse, the irreversible rise in temperature. An accelerating system that could wipe out our civilizations.

Singapore, as always, is leading into that foreseeable future.

"Giant solar-powered air-conditioners, vacuum garbage collection, subterranean roads for electric vehicles, urban farms and green architecture. Put them all together and you have Tengah, Singapore’s most ambitious project yet to build the city of the future.

TEOTWAWKI = The end of the world as we know it.