My recent attempts to filter the internet deluge for you
Reviews of Planet of the Humans, sustainable Covid-19 recovery plans, and an index of SLE!
Dear folks,
It’s a been a while since my last letter to you, but I’ve not been sitting idle (just sitting behind the computer a lot). I put out a few web-only posts that I’d like to tell you about. I don’t know whether it’s because of the media hyper-activity recently, but I’ve found myself making lists, perhaps trying to bring some order to the chaos.
1.
You might remember the first of these lists, the overview of policy proposals from the energy democracy movement and how easy each one was to implement, relatively, by which level of government. (That one was supposed be web-only too, but found its way to your inbox by accident.) It seemed important to have that overview somewhere, because these are precisely the kinds of policies that could get us to zero-carbon in a way that is acceptable – and even good – for most.
At the same time, I also realized (again) that the strength of this particular newsletter does not lie in replicating and disseminating the policy literature, because those of you working on policy are likely already aware of the ideas (please let me know if this assumption is mistaken).
I can contribute most by going into the case studies that show what happens when these policies meet the ground. There is theory and there is practice, and we can learn most from each other’s practice (and that’s where social scientists come in – with a little bit of theory!). By making sense of the complexities of execution, we can enhance our understanding of what moves people and what keeps things in place. And by seeing how things work IRL, we can also get inspired!
What local governments can do and how comparatively difficult it is to do it.
2.
That being said, I do believe in the power of the list. There is a lot out there and you can’t keep up with it all and sometimes it’s just hard to get to the heart of the matter, in the flurry of voices and arguments. A meaningfully ordered list can make all the difference. At least that’s why I hope (please let me know if I should be disabused of an illusion).
Without further ado then, the first list I hadn’t told you about yet is a round-up of critiques of the Michael Moore produced documentary Planet of the Humans. That film gets almost all that it claims about renewable energy wrong, and since y’all work on renewable energy (and people might be asking you about it), I thought you might be interested in what exactly it gets wrong: about clean energy, about the enemies of clean energy, about its friends, and about its ‘solutions’ to climate change. (1400 words, about 5 minutes to read)
EV life-cycle emissions are just one thing The Planet of the Humans never bothered to look up.
3.
The second new list on SLE is an overview of the energy policies that people have said should be part of the Covid-19 recovery packages. The kind of policies that will help the economy recover, create new jobs, while actually facing the climate emergency, instead of some of the actual policies that are being passed that will heighten the emergency while putting money into the black hole of fossil powered industries. The overview is a survey of the field – I’m sure I missed this or that great piece but just because of how many pieces I reviewed I suspect it is representative of the gamut of policy proposals – the state of the art, if you will. If you read it and you do miss something, let me know though. (3000 words, 10+ minutes)
Cool initiative to make Milan more bike and pedestrian friendly, to come out of lockdown safely and to have a healthier city, period.
4.
Finally, the third list is an overview of this very newsletter! Somewhere in April we passed the first year anniversary of this publication (I don’t know why I missed it, something important must have been going on), and even if I didn’t quite manage to put out a letter every week, I got closeish, which means the archive started to get long, and it’s easy for posts to get lost (even I was surprised to find some of the early things I wrote!).
As all of the lists I just mentioned, it is thematically organized (otherwise, no point to the list), so if you feel like deep diving on a particular topic, consolidate your understanding, take this overview as your starting point 🙂.
I love the science jive and it loves me
That brings me to my parting words for this week: if, seeing the overview, you miss something that you would like me to cover, do let me know! I want this to be useful. In fact, my last letter was to ask you this very question, and some of you wrote to me (for which I thank you) while precisely none of you voted or commented on the online post 😁 (for which I forgive you). I’m going to keep up that post for just a little while longer, if you want to take a look and maybe add something to the list, but my door is also always open, if you want to just drop in.
That’s it for today, hope you’re staying healthy and sane!
Best,
Marten (jiving)