Tag: renewable energy

Holiday Thoughts on the Paris Climate Change Agreement: A Christmas Gift of Hope and Reality

By Jim Olson, President

FLOW (For Love of Water)

 

We can be thankful that nations of the world have opened the door to the foyer to address climate change. Most encouraging is the senses of cooperation to protect this home we call earth.

The other end of the promise and hope of the Paris accord is the reality that the thick tail of climate change has been rampaging and will continue to do so, erasing soil, melting glaciers, flooding and erasing people, landscapes and communities from the face of the earth.

Keith Schneider, NY Times journalist and senior editor at Circle of Blue, once again, in his true to form visionary hard-core journalism, lays bare this reality in his article in the New York Times. The whipsawing swing of climate has, is, and will strike hard. In the midst of humanity’s hope, so the message is clear: We must face reality, start the change, start finding and living the new renewable life, move toward inevitable near fossil-fuel free economies and lives, and we must do so as fast as possible to shift to the inevitable renewable energy economy.

Many places and people need this, we owe it to them as co-citizens.  We owe it to ourselves and our children, and the unborn children to come.  Earth is our common home — as Pope Francis puts it in his encyclical on climate and sustainable environment and communities. And, in the middle of this change, there is another shift, one that is based in ancient and modern principles — the commons of this world — air, water, soil, species, life itself, and the liberty of humans, depend on understanding and respecting this commons.  To do this, we must view and manage these as held in trust, a public trust, one that brings us to an ethical and legally implemented framework that manages and passes on these commons by maintaining or restoring a sustainable integrity of air, water, soil, species, including we sapiens, for centuries to come.

If we can shift to seeing our individual goals, dreams, needs as dependent on and fostered by the commons, we can solve these threats with incredible resilience, creativity, cooperation and entrepreneurship. But we must start this shift in paradigm to a comprehensive, unifying principle of commons and public trust now – in 2016– to guide our decisions, force the right decisions that if not made trespass on and impair the commons in violation of this trust, so that we truly solve these threats at the level of the problem. If we do this, the gift this Christmas may be the protection of liberty and dignity and survival that depend on this, a gift of reality that encourages us to change along the lines of both the hope and reality of climate change and our future.

FLOW Staff to Issue Public Statement at Governor’s Energy Forum in Traverse City

Click here to read and download the full press release PDF

FLOW Staff to Issue Public Statement at Governor’s Energy Forum in Traverse City

Michigan’s Energy Plan Needs to Bring Water to the Center of the Conversation

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release

TRAVERSE CITY, MI – Governor Rick Snyder’s “Readying Michigan to Make Good Energy Decisions” Public Forum tour makes its seventh and final stop in Traverse City on Monday April 22, 2013. FLOW, a Traverse City-based nonprofit water policy and education center, has prepared written comments and will made public statements during next week’s forum that highlight the water-energy nexus as an integral part of charting Michigan’s energy future plans. Once water is elevated and integrated into the energy debate, the case for prioritizing renewable energies becomes clear. FLOW is a proponent for establishing and applying principles that unify and protect the integrity of the water cycle that flows through the “nexus” between energy production, water management, and climate change.

“Michigan faces a watershed moment and opportunity to chart a new cleaner energy course that is good for jobs, good for the environment, good for energy affordability, and good for the water,” says FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood. Energy production, particularly of non-renewable sources, depends heavily on water for resource extraction, refining and processing, transportation, and electric power generation. The International Energy Agency projects that the amount of water consumed for energy production will double by 2035. FLOW urges Michigan energy policy-makers to wean Michigan off water-intensive energy sources, such as coal-fired power plants and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. “The big issue with fracking is the water, both in sheer quantity (e.g., 300 million gallons to frack 13 wells in Kalkaska County) and in safe disposal of chemical-laden and often toxic wastewater that will never return to our hydrologic cycle,” remarks Kirkwood.

In addition to water consumption for energy generation, climate change is a major issue to address in the water-energy nexus, according to Attorney and FLOW Chair Jim Olson. “What we want the Governor’s office and our state’s decision-makers to realize is that Michigan’s current energy plan is much more expensive when the costs of climate change impacts on water resources are accounted for. Our dependence on fossil fuels is the leading cause of climate change—the largest diversion of water from the Great Lakes—and the principle reason for current low water levels,” says Olson. Historic low water levels are costing taxpayers up to $21 million for emergency dredging this year. Super-storms, drought, increased evaporation, heavy precipitation, and precipitously falling water levels are all strong indicators that our fossil fuel and carbon-rich lifestyle and diet is no longer sustainable to assure the integrity and health of the waters of the Great Lakes.

The bottom line is that expanding Michigan’s renewable energy portfolio makes good sense because it good for jobs, good for the environment, good for energy affordability, and good for the water.

For more information: Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director, FLOW