A new report by Bloomberg finds that renewable energy investment may increase by 23% worldwide this year and could hit $200 billion.
Renewable energy investment was $162 billion last year, but Bloomberg predicts that it will be somewhere between $175 and $200 billion this year.
But the real questions are, what will happen in the years to come and who will be the world leaders in this field?
If you are reading this article, I think you are probably more concerned about the environment than most others. I assume that you keep up with environmental news a bit, reading more than the miniscule amount covered in the mainstream media.
However, I cannot make any guess as to how much you actually do to live a more environmentally friendly life.
Why?
The bottom line is, people inform themselves of the environmental problems in the world much more than they act. And even for those deeply concerned about the environment, it is very likely there is more they could be doing in their own lives to live a cleaner or greener life.
That is why I want to give one general tip for how to live a greener life. Maybe it is simple. But I think it is one of the best things you can do to transform your actions.
First, though, if you want some statistics on the difference between what people think need to be done and what they are actually doing, take a look at the results of this Americans’ Actions to Conserve Energy, Reduce Waste, and Limit Global Warming. January 2010 study from George Mason University and Yale University Project on Climate Change researchers.
The science of climate change is not really the question at hand anymore. Of course, there is always more to learn, but that highly accelerated climate change is real and that humans are the main cause of that are no longer questionable facts to the large majority of the scientific community. What is questionable is whether or not we will address the issue, or to what degree we will address it, and how much our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, etc. will have to pay the price for our late and limited action.
Of course, outside of the scientific community, many climate change deniers and so-called “skeptics” continue to trick the media and act as if those fundamental issues of climate science are not resolved. As a concise response (with relevant links) to some of the most popular claims put forth by the anti-science climate change deniers, here is a list of 7 myths regarding climate change science.
For more in-depth coverage of a few of these topics, read Dr. Joseph Romm’s “The year climate science caught up with what climate scientists have been saying for years” or follow the links included for each myth.
“An academic inquiry into the so-called ‘climategate’ email scandal has concluded that a well-known U.S. scientist [Mann] did not directly or indirectly falsify data in his research,” according to Mike De Souza of the National Post.
The investigation made it very clear (as other peer-reviewed analyses have done) that Mann’s “trick,” so horribly taken out of context and demonized by anti-science media and followers, was nothing unscientific, misleading or to be concerned about.
“They were not falsifying data,” said the report. “They were trying to construct an understandable graph for those who were not experts in the field. The so-called ‘trick’ was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”
Furthermore, the report went on to praise Mann for how he dealt with this greatly unfounded skepticism and criticism of his scientific work. “The report praised Dr. Mann for his ‘composure’ and ‘forthright response’ to all questions, finding no evidence that he had attempted to hide or destroy information, emails or data from his research. It also cleared him of allegations of misusing any privileged or confidential information he had access to as an academic scholar.”
This is what Kerry told advocates of climate legislation recently:
“I want you to go out there and start knocking on doors and talking to people and telling people this has to happen. You know, if the Tea Party folks can go out there and get angry because they think their taxes are too high, for God’s sake, a lot of citizens ought to get angry about the fact that they’re being killed and our planet is being injured by what’s happening on a daily basis by the way we provide our power and our fuel and the old practices that we have. That’s something worth getting angry about.” (emphasis mine)
As part of my Bachelor’s thesis in sociology and environmental studies, about 6 years ago, I studied the history of the environmental movement in great depth. Since then, I have been keeping my eye on things, on the bigger picture, as I work in different fields — natural and organic foods, city planning and sustainable development, alternative transportation, and, now, online journalism with a green tint.
The underlying question, consistently, is: “How do we avoid, or — worst case scenario — deal with, huge environmental collapse?”
The issues have only gotten bigger (see: Global Warming in the Arctic — Much Worse than We Thought!, Greenland Ice Sheet Melting Faster than Ever and Oceans Absorbing CO2, Preventing Climate Change — Good, Right? No). But we seem to be going down the same road consistently, despite all the amazing efforts of people trying to turn this car around (and transform it into something green-friendly). The environmental movement, perhaps bigger than ever, still seems on the brink of failure.