The four ways humanity can avoid climate disaster..

The FOUR Golden Means..

There are four ways humanity can avoid climate disaster: reducing our need for energy, producing energy through more sustainable, low-carbon means, changing the DNA of capitalism to put a price on carbon emissions, and better environmental conservation.

Let’s start with the first point: reducing our energy consumption. There are three major sectors that make up the bulk of energy consumption in our society: food, transportation, and housing—how we eat, how we get around, how we live—the basics of our daily lives.

Reducing Energy Needs for Food

It is forecast that farmers will start investing in renewable algae or hydrogen-based fuels for machinery, and the installation of solar and wind generators on their land. Meanwhile, farming soil and its heavy dependence on nitrogen-based fertilizers (created from fossil fuels) is a major source of global nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas). Using those fertilizers more efficiently (like via soil testing) is crucial. 

Overusing chemical fertilizers can increase the salinity of soil, making it difficult for plant roots to absorb water. Incorrectly applied chemical fertilizers can damage  plants or increase the acidity of the upper layers of soil, making it harder for some plants to absorb nutrients. Chemical nitrogen fertilizers work best when they are tilled into the soil and lightly irrigated shortly before planting time.

In addition to supplying nitrogen and other nutrients plants need, compost improves the structure of the soil, allowing water to permeate through it more easily and increasing its ability to retain water. Unlike chemical fertilizers, organic soil amendments release nutrients over a period of several years. Legumes form a symbiotic relationship with bacteria in the soil that allows them to draw nitrogen from the atmosphere. Legumes are commonly planted on nitrogen-deficient soils and then plowed into the ground where the nitrogen absorbed from the air is released into the soil as the plants decay.

Eventually, switching to algae based fertilizers will become a major focus in the coming years. To get serious about agriculture carbon reduction, we’ve also got to reduce the numbers of cattle. 

Reducing our need for electricity for homes, offices and factories
Electricity and heat generation produces about 26 % of global greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings, including our workplaces and our homes, make up three-fourths of the electricity used. Today, much of that energy is wasted. We need to watch out for :

·       Do we leave TVs and Computer sockets on at night – this too uses electricity.

·       Do we take the trouble to keep our houses as cool as possible through natural means – via chiks / roller blinds outside and inside our windows, by keeping all doors and windows open when the outside air is cool, such as in most summer nights.

·       Do we optimize the most efficient ways of cooling ourselves – apart from ceiling fans, wall fans placed in kitchens, bathrooms, balconies and stores can help; small mini coolers with honeycomb pads can be wheeled everywhere and use only as much power as a fan. These coolers can easily run on inverters / colony generator back up up also.

·       When using Airconditioners (ACs), do we keep them at a more optimal temperature of say 25 C with perhaps a light fan, rather than keep them at 20-22 and then use blankets for covers in summer nights.

·       The same goes for heaters – blowers and oil heaters are energy guzzlers as they have settings only for 1000 / 2000 watts.

·       Halogen heaters instead have 3-4 rods, each rod varying in wattage use from 125 – 300 Watts. So one can only switch on only as many rods as one needs. They give out light too apart from heat, eliminating the need for putting on a separate light in the evening.

·       People often don’t realize that they lose enormous amounts of heat / cool via their window / door glasses, as glass is a good conductor of heat and cooling. So keeping your glass windows as insulated as possible with chiks / roller blinds / thick curtains when using either cooling or heating devices is a good idea.

·       It is not too expensive to replace your normal single fixed glass panes with double glass panes. The trapped air between two glass window panes acts as a very good insulator. A good carpenter or iron-works person can change your single fixed glass pane to double glass ones. In our homes, the single 3 mm fixed panes were removed from all windows and 6 mm panes installed on the inside, and 8 mm panes installed on the outside, in the same frame where earlier single glass panes were fitted. There is a more than 2 inch gap between the two fixed glass panes now.

·       In my memory in 2016 we paid around 400 INR a sq foot for removal of previous panes, cleaning and painting of the frame, buying of 6 mm and 8 mm glass panes, and installation with silicone injections which seal air in.

·       Window ACs in our house were enclosed in simple, open-able wooden boxes which reduce air-flow between outside and inside when the ac is not in use. To my memory we paid about Rs. 4000 per such box in 2014.

·       Both these measures have reduced noise from outside (like sometimes from a neighbouring club) in our estimation by about 60 % but have also insulated the room/s to the some degree from loss of heat / cold.

·       Putting blankets on your beds and sofas in winter increases their insulation enormously, making you warmer when you use them.

·       Another possibility is to turn buildings into mini power plants by converting their windows into see-through solar panels (yup, that’s a thing now) or installing geothermal energy generators. Such buildings could be taken entirely off the grid, removing their carbon footprint.

·       In India, ofcourse, rooftop solar electricity generation is slowly making its presence felt.

It is estimated that in the US in the coming decades the buildings will triple or quadruple their energy efficiency, saving 1.4 trillion dollars.

Acknowledgement : Some of the above material is adapted from Quantumrun Forecasting. The ideas for energy saving at homes are my own.