Buddy liked to help with my software challenges. Don’t worry. Technological breakthroughs, many of them just around the corner, are going to make our angst about climate change seem silly. There’s really no need to cut back on emitting CO2! The best thing we could do for climate now is to invest in developing, testing, and scaling affordable CO2 removal technologies. [David Keith, U. of Chicago Professor and carbon capture advocate] A few of the promising technologies Capturing CO2 from smokestacks and pumping it underground! Better yet, capturing it from the air all around us! Refle ..read more

Like a lot of municipal staff, Buddy was often overwhelmed researching the Inflation Reduction Act. Cities and towns are eying lots of local projects to protect neighborhoods and residents from climate costs and dangers. Protections like . . . Removable flood barriers, permeable pavements, and other ways to reduce flooding. Shade tree plantings to reduce heat. Tree cutting to reduce wildfire risk. Bike lanes to lower gasoline use. Vouchers to swap air-polluting gas blowers and mowers for battery-powered ones. There are more. And many of them can be paid for by federal grants! Fre ..read more

Always sensitive to the heat - Buddy was our climate icon. In November Hilary and I will be knocking on hundreds of doors in Arizona. We’d rather campaign near home, but even if we persuaded thousands of Washington state residents to vote Democratic in November, it’s a waste of time. Biden has a big polling lead here, more than enough to secure the state’s 12 winner-take-all Electoral College votes. The knife edge called the Electoral College It seems crazy we have to drive hundreds of miles before there’s anyone worth talking to in this year’s Presidential election. Each state’s Electoral C ..read more

Doing his part to save the planet. I watched the clouds out the window of the Boeing 737 taking us across the country last week. So many shapes! So many shades! So much CO₂! The jet engines a few feet from me were emitting about half a pound of carbon dioxide per passenger per mile. Short flights can throw off almost twice that. Would I feel better driving across? We did it two years ago this week. Driving usually puts out more emissions than flying, but less per passenger if there are two or more of us, of course. With Buddy, we were three. Taking the bus, I was surprised to learn, is actua ..read more

Always the happy campaigner. Last year only 37% of Republican-leaning adults said extreme weather is becoming more severe, down from 42% four years earlier. That contrasts with 87% of Democratic-leaning adults who say extreme weather is becoming more severe, up from 82%. Republicans’ denial is hard to justify. Globally, June 2023 to May 2024 were the hottest 12 months on record. [Fox Weather] The East Antarctic plateau just saw the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological center on Earth, experiencing a rise of 100F above its seasonal average, a world record. [Societ ..read more

At taking a break, Buddy was an expert ..read more

Buddy’s friends visiting his favorite beach. Hilary and I left our home in Washington State last weekend to revisit our (and Buddy’s) former stomping grounds in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. In addition to catching up with friends and learning if Newport has progressed with its efforts to protect re against the effects of climate change, we’re spending time distributing Buddy’s ashes among the places he favored: trails, swimming holes, city parks, beaches, and front door steps of shops with treats. We’ll be away for two issues. See you in June ..read more

Except on his birthday, Buddy did not smoke up the place. One reason most people are doing little to fight climate change is that its effects are so surreptitious. We can’t see the sea level rising. We don’t feel the heat in our air-conditioned world. For most of us, drought and storms and flooding are somewhere else. If we’re noticing more effects, it’s mostly through our wallets, directing our attention to other symptoms like homeowners’ insurance, food prices, water costs. But there is one immediate effect of climate change that’s in the face of millions of Americans, and that’s smoke! Co ..read more

In complex projects Buddy always wanted to ‘facilitate collaboration.’ Maybe soon we’ll be seeing gangs of 18-25-year-olds in our neighborhood wearing reflective vests and carrying shovels or chainsaws. Our hometowns are taking lots of measures to protect residents against climate damages and costs. ClimateDog has covered a dozen or more of them, from movable flood barriers to the most recent, preventing sewer overflows. We’ve been looking at the WHAT of these adaptation actions, but I wonder also about the WHO. Who will actually build these labor-intensive protections across the country? Th ..read more

Buddy knew a lot about high-tension wires. Promising developments can help people with climate anxieties reframe their thinking, as Stella did in last week’s Climate Dog. Some of these inventions reduce carbon emissions; some reduce climate costs and damages. New inventions are particularly needed in power distribution. Producing power is one thing, but transporting it from source to use is another. Much of our power today comes from huge amounts of liquid, gas, and coal which are carried by pipeline, train, and truck. But as we gradually switch from those fossil fuels to wind, solar, hydro ..read more