Gifts for Gaia. Wilding & cement batteries. Spider silk from plastic & Mycelium terraforming. Reboots & more.
Here is a list I’ve compiled of positive innovative developments on the climate front.
Bad news always seems to take precedence over good news, because we receive both emotionally, and they impact us in distinctly different ways.
We tend to think of good and bad as opposites that can counterbalance each other.
To some extent that is true — or then again, not so much.
For we react to news on many levels and those reactions and the effects they leave in their wake, differ in how they are received and processed by the brain, with bad, qualitatively and quantitatively usually out-weighing good, particularly when it comes to emotional response shaping and retention. Good is beneficial, enhancing, pleasurable and fleeting. Bad is unsettling, painful, destructive and long lasting to the point of leaving permanent scars. It sends out shock waves which take much longer to dissipate and penetrate deeper.
To prepare for good, we try to leave our door open.
To defend ourselves from bad we board it up, build defenses, dig trenches…and arm ourselves to the teeth.
In this way, good suffers from a serious handy cap, struggling as it does to do its part in adjusting and maintaining our equilibrium as we suffer from the ‘red tides’ of life. Receiving bad news tends to have a greater subconscious impact, as it triggers our defensive responses and our survival imperative. Symbiotically, it aligns with the primacy of our negative auto responses, which it also feeds. It wounds with the knife of trauma. By comparison good news is like a lovely flower floating down a stream and soon out of sight. If good news is a zephyr, bad is a cat-o-nine.
As a result, we tend to forget the good others do us long before we forget the bad.
Ironically, after years of shunning the emotionally destabilizing content of most climate posts on DK, as awareness builds and readers find their courage, many seem to gravitate toward information that bolsters their feelings of despair and doom. This is to be expected, because they are still in the thickets of denial.
Positive environmental news about the many things being done, innovations both gestating and blossoming, the application of knowledge reshaped or newly revealed, as well as many other aspects of positive pro-action, still fare poorly when compared to the ‘negative’ choices on DK’s ‘lazy Susan’ of topical offerings.
Nevertheless, the positive is critically essential, as without it negativity becomes ascendent, enabling denial to continue its reign of terror. Partial environmental knowledge, especially when gathered together with an ear biased for the dirge of doom, does not adequately represent our present environmental situation — and it stops proaction dead.
For as dire as things are, this crisis is decidedly not without hope and having hope does not constitute blinded optimism — provided hope is nurtured and informed by the many positive actions people are taking to try and save our sorry asses.
The threat of doom motivates, but not if hope is absent.
The struggle here is to maintain a true objectivity based in all the facts pro and con, not subconsciously cherry picked by fear based pessimism or denial based optimism.
Recently, Meteor Blades produced a stellar ‘Earth Matters’ with a lead reference and accompanying link to a marvelous book who’s subject is the underexposed fact that we have everything we need already to fight climate change with no further innovations necessary.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/3/2226055/-Earth-Matters-No-technological-miracles-needed-to-address-climate-Green-New-Deal-push-relaunches#comment_88163739
This does not mean that more wouldn’t be welcome — we need all the help we can get — but rather that further innovations aren’t a make or break necessity — provided we ‘de-zombify’, ASAP.
When entering the DK-verse for its daily smorgasbord, many of us are pressed for time with barely enough to peruse the days offerings and cherry pick either the most important news, and/or the most titillating bites. Clicking on links to snorkel the depths of information made available by conscientious diarists, is seldom a pursuable option and much valuable ‘nourishment’ is tossed aside for fresh ‘meat’.
As a result, compendiums of the ‘not to be missed’, get at best set aside for a ‘later’ that rarely materializes. Nevertheless, when there is information of the magnitude contained in the links I’ve provided, it warrants the effort and I urge you to find the time to read them. Think of this as a medicine cabinet for the climate ravaged mind.
Since mid last year, I have been saving links to what I feel are the most important discoveries, innovations and ideas that I have come across. Many of these have appeared on DK occasionally as a link in a broader based environmental diary, and then, for the most part, got swept up and away by the current.
Others I have found in the MSM or stumbled upon elsewhere and not come across since.
1. This is one of my personal favorites. It reports on the invention of a supercapacitor battery made from cement, carbon black and water. Among many applications, we can now have solar panels on the roof and store surplus electricity in the walls.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230731151603.htm. Cement Batteries
2. These next two links discuss the extraordinary ability of Mycelium to reclaim ‘spent’ land as well as terraform new soil from exposed rock. The first link is to a Ted Talk by the brilliant Paul Stamets and the second is a diary I wrote presenting this information to DK readers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/27/2201987/--6-ways-Mushrooms-can-help-save-the-planet-Mycelium-is-the-mother-of-land-based-life?_=2023-10-27T08:58:00.000-07:00
Mushrooms
3. A mutual friend sent me this link which provides a section from a documentary by a brilliant Canadian film maker, pertaining to land reclamation by the simple process of letting it go wild. I’ve had the pleasure of having been filmed by Albert for one of his documentaries (but unfortunately didn’t survive editing) and I’ve spent time enjoying his company and exchanging thoughts and ideas. He is deeply committed to facilitating beneficial social change and uses his unique sense of humor in a pointed but surprisingly embracing and captivating way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vpCDd_binWs&t=2s Wilding
4. This is an old link, but well worth reprising…if it is out of date now, that hopefully means there have been further developments and discoveries. (one of which I list below).
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/10/could-a-new-plastic-eating-bacteria-help-combat-this-pollution-scourge. bacteria Guardian
5. In January of 2022, I posted the first in what would become a series of diaries and multiple comments that put forth a methodology for my post Pandemic Shutdown epiphany — explaining the only safe way to lower emissions to safe levels fast enough without damaging the environment in the process. While I initially ‘ambushed’ reader’s with my proposal, over time, climatologists have come around on their own to the same conclusions and are beginning to become increasingly blunt and aggressive about advocating for what is shaping up to be the same path forward.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/3/2185012/-When-you-re-ready-to-listen-there-s-a-path-out-of-this-mess-if-we-re-mature-enough-to-choose-it Emissions reboots
6. With advancements across the board in physics and science, wonders such as this remarkably innovated method for tapping into wind power are starting to appear — and like turbines, it does not kill birds or spread cancer. (Its effects on ‘space lasers’ is still undetermined.)
https://newatlas.com/energy/airloom-energy-wind-track/ Gates new wind device
7. While not as phenomenalistic as cement batteries, this is still well worth our attention.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/battery-crushes-teslas-tech-unveils-160816090.html battery
8. These next two articles are yet more breakthroughs in battery technology, so critical to widening our gateway to sustainability.
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/ev-battery-recycling-urine-lithium-cobalt/. Cobalt reclamation from batteries using vinegar & urine
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/harvard-researchers-game-changing-breakthrough-003000316.html lithium battery improvement 10 minute charge etc
9. Not just because it will make cement batteries essentially climate friendly, but even more importantly, it will drastically reduce or even eliminate the horrendous release of C02 from our current world wide building boom.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/01/03/1084734/sublime-systems-cement-climate-change-carbon-footprint/? Electricity to make cement
10. The increasingly shit-worthy and avaricious NYTimes does not make this article open domain, but I list it anyway for its content, in the hopes that some readers can access it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/climate/artificial-intelligence-climate-change.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20231204&instance_id=109260&nl=the-morning®i_id=215213938&segment_id=151661&te=1&user_id=b1dd677400e4bbce2a6f950656063605AI and climate collapse
11. I first found this in a diary posted by ‘nailkeg’ with a link and was stunned with both its potential, as well as, its implications — and KO’d by the fact that it had been blocked so successfully from our collective knowledge. That sea water can be used as a preferable alternative to commercial fertilizers, is both entirely logical and a tragic example of the power of corporate genocidal greed based propaganda.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/13/2156937/-Chapter-Two-A-Teaspoon-of-Seawater?utm_campaign=recent Sea water as fertilizer
12. Without a doubt, one of the most amazing ‘twofers’ I have ever come across, allowing us to break down plastic and convert it into spider silk, which is a ‘wonder material’ scientists have been trying to replicate on a commercial scale for years.
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-bacteria-plastic-multipurpose-spider-silk.html bacteria / breakdown plastic & spider silk
13. ‘Ferrock’ is another extraordinary discovery; cheaper, stronger and for now, safer for the environment until cement production technology catches up.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/researcher-accidentally-discovers-material-stronger-120000930.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABelL2eooi1At6Z28eSvd7VZr87wN-R-wlX_qHSSJDmhAKAjjbzWEXcfPmldHfDfR152xDv5Jz7VEEhYUEWdtdqBzhNtGOCZ0Z0RrjrmsyHGvIhArxxO4CuQttwQuDQLVPBD9AQgSWSJNIRAKsl0-qWISSLXSzmICov-xY48k__h
Ferrock
14. Although frequently downplayed in an effort to get people to stop thinking of it as more effective than it is, this article helps greatly to ‘re-establish’ and keep reforestation on the radar as a valuable and powerful tool for stabilizing climate collapse.
https://www.iflscience.com/enormous-reforestation-has-buffered-the-eastern-us-against-climate-change-72949. East Coast reforestation buffer against climate change
15. xaxnar posted this diary with information well-worth reiteration. With hydrogen potential poised to play a principal sustainability role, finding large sources of it is great news.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/2/26/2225801/-Hydrogen-Update-There-may-be-reserves-just-waiting-to-be-tapped-drill-baby-drill-for-green-H2?utm_campaign=recent#comments xaxnar - drilling for ‘green’ hydrogen
16. I find the data on emissions to be endlessly confusing, especially as it pertains to the ebb and flow of overall levels. While surety continues to elude me, articles such as this provide ‘balm’ for my anxiety.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2024/02/26/current-climate-co2-emissions-fall-but-theres-a-long-way-to-go/?sh=70938247ad1f emissions fall in 2023
17. …and as icing on this cake — which we could eat, throw the cake away and
‘live to see another day’. :-)
https://www.powells.com/book/no-miracles-needed-9781009249546
The book M.B. speaks of, which explains that we already have everything we need for climate stabilization.
Please feel free to add to this list in comments :-)