Friday has become a ritual of posting Quick Hits – brief summaries of the stories of the week that I found interesting, important, or just entertaining.
But before going into today’s list, I want to do something I rarely (and by rarely I mean never) do -share personal story.
On Wednesday I had planned to travel to Washington DC to attend a Heatmap News sponsored discussion with Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado, former FERC Chair Neil Chatterjee, and Robinson Meyer and Joel Holzman from Heatmap News. I was looking forward to meeting them all in person, and to the discussion on the future of climate policy.
The plan was to take Amtrak from Connecticut to DC. However, as my departure time drew closer, I was informed that my train had been canceled. It turns out that a brushfire evidently instigated by a transformer forced track closures and disrupted train service in the Northeast.
The fire wasn’t the kind of fire that we’ve witnessed in places like California. But like California, there has been a lack of rain in the Northeast that has created “red alert” conditions for wildfires. Thus, the irony was that climate change was somewhat responsible for missing a gathering to discuss climate change.
Although disappointed, the impact was far from catastrophic. Still, it does illustrate that altered weather patterns exacerbated by climate change can impact everyone at any time. This may have been a minor incident, but what does the future hold if such conditions become more commonplace and more severe.
That is the challenge faced by the climate change movement: to effectively communicate how potentially disruptive and costly global warming can, and will be, to the population in general.
End of personal story.
𝗢𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆’𝘀 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗛𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘀:
▶ A tree grew in the Antarctic
▶ And the winner is? (Not really, but if you think coal is very bad you should read this.)
▶ Forget cowboys, hope your kids grow up to be solar installers
And we end on a feel-good story:
▶ It’s big… and it’s alive!
#coal #coalpower #solarinstallation #solarenergy #antarctica #amber #coralreef