January 2nd, 2018 · 1 Comment
Tobias Buckell is a prolific and thought-provoking science fiction writer with a number of CliFi (climate fiction) books and short stories. For example, the Arctic Rising series‘ first book is described thusly:
Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it’s about to get even hotter. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean.
Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself—but in doing so, they have created a superweapon the likes of which the world has never seen.
Buckell has just posted a relatively short piece (<10,000 words) that easily rates as one of the top CliFi pieces that I’ve ever read. Easy for a reader to get caught up in the action, with serious science implied, serious ethics suggested, and a stunningly powerful inherent case for us (the US and all of us) to choose to #ActOnClimate seriously.
In a “world to die for,” Buckell presents us with a future where (a very few) people are leveraging technology to move between parallel universes, parallel Earths. The core difference between these alternatives: humanity’s ability to coalesce for climate action. The starting world is an electrified version of Mad Max: very violent and with degrading systems as ‘nothing is being built’ and climate catastrophe looms eminent. A second world is functioning, with police and helicopters and sweet air to breath in. The third is truly horrific, climate catastrophe has occurred and breathing air without protection is close to a death sentence. And, the last one readers encounter is “a world to die for … a world to fight for”.
These worlds are described on an “RCP scale”. RCP stands for Representative Concentrative Pathways, four trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations used by the 2014 IPCC report to frame analysis
The pathways are used for climate modeling and research. They describe four possible climate futures, all of which are considered possible depending on how much greenhouse gases are emitted in the years to come.
Buckell’s four worlds are the notional result across the four RCPs.
That ‘world to die for’ represents, in essence, the most optimistic scenario: the one where (despite the Donald Trump’s, Scott Pruitt’s, Koch Brothers, and other climate-science denying power brokers in the world) humanity gets its act together for a World War II-like mobilization to shift the economy toward lower carbon, to carbon neutral, and then to negative carbon as quickly as possible.
Looking across Buckell’s alternative futures — captured in an well-framed, even powerful, story — there really isn’t a choice as to which humanity (with perhaps rare exception) would like to end up even as there are powerful forces seeking to derail progress that might get us there.
As to that ‘world to die for,’ many of us are fighting for that world.
Tags: climate change · climate disruption · Global Warming
December 31st, 2017 · 1 Comment
Like all too many Americans, part of New Year’s Eve rushing around always seems to be getting in just a few more donations. Thanks to the GOP Tax Scam, along with millions, that end-of-year rush is, well, even rushier. (We always try to clean out and donate useful stuff and that, generally, is a ‘whenever’ activity. The #TaxScam pressured us to do a clean sweep last week — and, well, we weren’t the only ones as there was a long line to donate to Goodwill …)
Many of my donations, as per the focus of this blog, go into clean energy, climate, environmental, and related spaces.
A just made donation covers many arenas. Just completed a donation for helping put up a solar microgrid at a Puerto Rican Hospital. While such measures should have been core to a major and ongoing US government response to Hurricane Maria and the tribulations of 3.5 million American citizens on the island, such a Disaster 4R response simply wasn’t in the cards with the Trump regime and its seeming disdain for the plight of so many Americans.
It is not every donation that seems to hit so many arenas of concern:
- Clean Energy future: Helping put up clean energy systems, that will displace diesel fuel, my family’s donation will help Puerto Rico’s transition to a clean energy future and reduce climate impacts from the hospital’s operations.
- Puerto Rico has an expensive, highly polluting, and — even before Maria — unreliable electricity system.
- Disaster resiliency: The solar microgrid system will help provide resiliency in the face of a future disaster — and even help keep the power on during the all-too-often intermittent outages.
- Helping Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans post Maria: Our fellow citizens have nearly disappeared from the concerns of too many — including from those running the Federal Government. They need our assistance — and this is a useful path.
- Medical care: Okay, clean energy solutions helping save people’s lives directly … that is a pretty good combo.
- Etc …
The project I donated to, a crowdsourcing being run by acquaintances of acquaintances seeks “to install a 6 kilowatt solar emergency microgrid on the Migrant Health Center in the western region of Maricao, Puerto Rico”, is just a small drop into the ocean of Puerto Rico’s needs. If you wish to look elsewhere and have something ‘more’ than a crowdsourcing re solar & Puerto Rico, the Solar Foundation is helping move money to projects–go to see their very appropriately named site: Solar Saves Lives. The project I donated to, in fact, is being done in coordination with the Solar Foundation. From the organizer:
“Right after Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico, I read that FEMA was asked if they were going to put in solar panels and they said no. They were just tasked with rebuilding Puerto Rico‘s electricity grid the way it was before. Their budget to rebuild was $5 billion and they were going to rebuild the antiquated, dysfunctional dirty grid transmission and distribution infrastructure. PR electricity comes from 98% fossil fuels and 2% renewables. This is tragic! It’s up to us to help move the needle to a clean energy system.
I am working with The Solar Foundation in DC which is serving as the project manager. Solar Foundation is coordinating equipment donations, equipment purchases and contractors to install solar photovoltaics and batteries. There are many companies that are willing to reduce their equipment prices, donate equipment or donate their time to help Puerto Rico. Feels like a barn raising.
Solar Foundation had a list of 62 medical clinics, mobile clinics and hospitals and identification of how much solar PV and energy storage they need to continue operations when there is a blackout. I asked them for a small, rural clinic that otherwise would not be helped for years. Policlinica Jayuya is the site we chose. Solar Foundation is working with New Energy to engineer and install the installation pro bono.”
2017 has been a very difficult year — on so many levels, in so many ways, for so many people.
Ending the year taking a step to help put solar systems into Puerto Rico is, well, a good way to end that difficult year.
Tags: renewable energy · solar
December 28th, 2017 · 2 Comments
The classic climate science denial line: it’s cold outside, we really could use some of that global warming … It is such a standard tactic that the Washington Post’s Capital Weather gang, in association with warnings of serious (record-breaking (in many cases)) cold descending on the East Coast, warned against this.
If anyone on the US East Coast asks “where’s that global warming”, the rest of the world is answering: HERE!
Much of the US is incredibly cold — while the rest of the world isn’t … but let’s say Global Warming doesn’t exist …
To be clear, one moment’s weather situation doesn’t prove climate change … just like a cold weather snap in part of the world doesn’t prove it doesn’t exist. Winter still happens, cold weather records still occur … but winters, globally, are shorter and not as cold. And, when it comes to weather records, they should be roughly balanced between hot and cold weather records — with human-driven climate change, high temperature records (including high lowest temperature) are blowing past cold records to the order of 10-1 globally decade to decade.
This isn’t ‘normal’ but the result of humanity putting its thumb (or 7 billion thumbs) on the climate scale.
Rational thinking, listening to experts, understanding science are far from the hallmarks of @RealDonaldTrump.
With perhaps dismay at having to wear a sweater while playing golf for something over the 100th time since he occupied the Oval Office, Trump tweeted out …
In addition to ignoring science and celebrating his science denial, its clear that Trump doesn’t follow the Capital Weather Gang and didn’t realize that he was providing the straight man idiot to prove their point yesterday.
From my perspective, a response to Trump:
Along with literally billions of other thinking humans around the world, as of 6 November 2016, I thought such idiocy was being relegated where it should be — to the dustbins of history. Instead, thank you to abysmal media practices, Republican abusive practices (voter suppression), Russian interference, and …, these anti-intellectual, anti-expert, anti-science fossil fools are occupying the US Federal government and damaging humanity’s ability to set a path to tackle climate change and foster a way forward to a prosperous, climate-friendly future.
The shallow ignorance arrogantly demonstrated by Trump might have been been amusing if coming from a powerless old man sitting yelling at his TV … sadly that is not the case and I am not amused …
PS:
- Did not have time/energy to take on Trump’s deceit re Paris Accords (“going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS”) — in short, false on so many levels. (1) other countries investing too; (2) “pay” assumes no return, when the ROI would (will) be multiple times larger than the investment cost due to multitudes of factors other than simply reduced climate risks; and (c), (d), (e), …
- See after fold for a number of related tweets/items. Among other things, others similarly warned that deniers would make hay of cold weather … such as climate scientist MIchael Mann.
- Of particular value, see WashPost’s Dino Grandoni’s After chilly forecast, Trump tweets U.S. ‘could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming’ for some history re Trump’s climate science denial tweets and discussions of the idiocy of Trump’s tweet today.
- For a relevant earlier discussion, see “Where’s the Global Warming?” thought Buffalonian; then they looked at a map.
“Yes, Buffalo is having a massive, massive snowstorm. (And, I do not envy — sympathize greatly with — those who are trying to deal with its impacts — from shoveling massive amounts of snow, to worrying about whether your home will cave in, to …) For too many, that (beautiful) white stuff somehow is a disproving item when it comes to climate change science. To try to explain that, in fact, the snow is related to climate change opens the door for ill-educated mockery. Yet, it is …”
- UPDATEs: The outrage/engagement re Trump’s tweet is impressive … 1000s engaging. Two excellent ones.
[Read more →]
Tags: climate zombies · science denial · Trump · Trump Administration
December 28th, 2017 · Comments Off on Climate change threatening what might be world’s most ubiquitous addictive drug
This guest post is from Pakalolo.
While not thrilled with ‘your luxury is at risk’ climate change discussions ( from skiing to wine to …_, the reality of threats to such luxuries can … or might be able to break through to get (some) people’s attention and, perhaps, (support for) action to reduce climate impacts.) In this case, the title caught my attention — coffee is my one ‘addiction’, with withdrawal symptoms emergent when I don’t have that morning coffee (or that second cup …).
This year will rank as one of the planet’s top five warmest years on record according to new data from NOAA and NASA.
NASA concludes that 2017 will be the 2nd warmest year on record behind 2016 which in turn removed 2015 from the top spot. Meanwhile, NOAA predicts 2017 will be the 3rd warmest year on record.
[Read more →]
Tags: agriculture · catastrophic climate change · guest post
December 22nd, 2017 · Comments Off on Playthings lead to substance? Incremental to real change? What does a “solar train” really mean?
Electrification of rail, a global phenomena (with, sigh, a major exception in the US/Canadian market), has significant positive impacts:
- Improved rail capacity
- with no other change, roughly 15% improvement in capacity due increased efficiency in braking/acceleration
- Interesting options for improving grid reliability, connections, etc …
- rail right of way as viable for power lines
- Reduced costs
- Increased safety
- including due to reduced oil movements
- Reduced pollution
- both local and globally
- moving from diesel to electric locomotives (or overhead power lines)
-
Solar panels provide electricity to run coach systems
With the plunging cost of solar power, an increasing ‘buzz’ over the past few years has been various ‘solar train’-related stories. India has been a space of dramatic change over just a few years — with decisions to move from diesel to electric trains soon followed by decisions to invest in solar (including at train stations) to moves to incorporate solar power into the trains themselves. Serious progress that has accelerated with improving technologies, dramatic price cuts, and clear-thinking analysis supporting decision-making processes. Along the way, however, some breathlessly headlined stories suggesting total change when, in fact, it was more ‘simply’ an incredible step along the way.
For example, from India came stories headlined like Endgaget’s India’s first solar-powered train makes its debut. As something in the range of >95% of people never read more
Solar on coaches will displace diesel fuel
than the headline (or the tweet or …), easy to understand why people would think “wow, India Rail is moving people with solar”. Before ‘debunking’, to make clear, the real story from India is a pretty good one that shouldn’t be dismissed but it isn’t accurately reflected by the headline. A more accurate headline from Quartz India is rolling out trains with solar-powered coaches that’ll save thousands of litres of diesel. “Solar-assisted coaches” — each coach has 16 300 watt panels (total peak capacity of 4.8kilowatts) to take up the hotel load: “for powering internal lights, fans and other electrical systems of the coach”
This is the first instance involving the installation of a solar rooftop system in a diesel-run passenger train with a battery backup. The system is capable of developing up to 20 kilowatt-hour (kWh) per day throughout the year
Those solar panels are displacing electricity that, otherwise, “from a diesel-driven generator“. Thus, the solar panels are absolutely reducing diesel-fuel use to move passengers — but certainly not eliminating it and, well, really acting at the margins.
From Australia, however, comes news of an actual fully solar-powered train which made its maiden voyage earlier this month. This is a tourist (and local transit) project, ‘combining the new technology of solar power and a heritage train’. Using bus technology, the solar panels on the train — on a sunny day — provide enough power for five or round-trips on this three-mile track. In this case, Inhabitat accurately headlined: The world’s first 100% solar-powered train launches in Australia. The system has 6.5kw of panels, a 77 kwh battery, and regenerative braking. Reportedly, it requires just 4 kwh for each leg. Clearly, not everywhere is Australia with Australian sun.
Electrification of rail is real — with real benefits. And, increasingly, this is being married with the solar revolution. In India, we have a clear example of incremental moves toward this marriage with serious green-eye shade calculations showing the the cost-benefit relationship. In Australia, we have a demonstration project (a tourist ‘plaything’ it might be termed) that shows, at least in some circumstances, transit can be handled primarily with its own panels. In coming years, we should see an acceleration marrying these paths supporting an every cleaner transportation system globally.
Tags: rail · solar · trains · transportation
December 21st, 2017 · Comments Off on Fossil Fools don’t pay taxes
The Republican Party just passed and is celebrating the GOP Tax Scam, with the obsequious genuflecting to Trump added even more insult to the injury that they have done to the nation. Amid the Tax Scam, the Republican Senators and Representatives tried to stuff in measures every which way to Sunday to gouge wage-earning Americans to put money into special interests and billionaire contributors. Within this were numerous deals providing special deals to fossil fuel interests.
When it comes to benefiting from tax cuts, those dirty industries needed special deals because they pretty much don’t pay any taxes relative to their incomes as is seen strikingly in this table from 538.
- Coal firms essentially don’t pay Federal taxes.
- Oil firms are under ten percent effective tax rate.
Pretty hard to take seriously fossil fools whining about oppressive taxation when, essentially, they aren’t paying taxes.
This is made explicit after the fold. Even looking solely at money-making companies, fossil fools don’t look so foolish when it comes to avoiding taxes. With years of sneaking in this benefit and that exclusion, coal and oil firms pay a fraction of the taxes of other industries.
- Aerospace/defense: 23%
- Auto parts: 27%
- Construction supplies: 30%
- Food wholesalers: 34%
- Machinery: 27%
- etc …
The average, across all industries, is an effective tax rate of 26.22% for money-making companies.
What about fossil fuels?
- Coal: 0.69%
- Oil/Gas:
- integrated: 8.01%
- production/exploration: 7.08%
- Distribution: 7.78%
No wonder they aren’t focused on tax cuts and are pleading for even more subsidies, special deals, and enabling more polluting. After all, how can you cut taxes when they barely pay them?
To show the absurdity, let’s stay sort of in the same extraction world,
How about other traditional energy:
How about dirty energy’s clean competition?
- Green & renewable energy: 26.42%
While clean energy firms, pretty much, are paying ‘what business pays’ in taxes, the dirty energy firms polluting the air our children breathe, the water they drink, and the future they will live in are barely paying any taxes at all. When you hear of fossil foolish subsidies, this fossil-foolishly low effective tax rate is a cogent example of their reality.
Now, even with their absurdly low tax rates, the OIl Giants win giantly (YUGELY) from the GOP tax scheme, perhaps even boosting earnings per share by five percent. There are gains from expensing (allowing, for five years, 100 percent deducted in year one rather than deduction schedules), reduced US implications of overseas earnings, etc, etc, etc … For decades, the legions of lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists have worked hard to assure that the oil, natural gas, and coal industries pay as low an effective tax rate as possible. With their claws in the Republican Party, they successfully snuck plenty of fossil-foolish provisions that will even further lower their contribution to the general treasury.
[Read more →]
Tags: Energy
December 20th, 2017 · Comments Off on Ryan’s lie …
Last evening, Paul Ryan told the world that
opening a small … area of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge …
is the most ambitious step we have taken in years to secure our energy future.
By any reasonable criteria, Paul Ryan lied.
First, let’s consider just what the ANWR opening might mean. A key Bush Administration energy official put it this way (in a discussion promoting opening of ANWR):
“You’re looking at production scenarios of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day,”
In other words, in a number of years, opening up a wildlife refuge might (MIGHT — dependent on oil prices, actual discovered reserves, etc …) lead to producing a few percent of U.S. daily oil demand. A different examination suggests that it would take about 10 years to hit meaningful production and nearly 20 to reach in the ballpark of 800,000 barrels per day — roughly 4-5% of current US oil demand. Let’s be clear, that 800,000 isn’t nothing — but does that truly represent, 20 years from now, a serious (‘ambitious’) step “to secure our energy future”?
Of course, putting aside that pesky little issue of opening up for environmental destruction a pretty wide swath of long protected land, there is the reality that increasingly energy analysts are discussing cannibalization of fossil fuel demand (coal being hit hardest now with ever-lowering cost solar/wind and storage, but oil soon to feel severe impacts from electrification of transportation) and projections that ‘high-cost’ oil production will be ‘stranded’ in a world with ever-diminishing oil demand. Considering opening ANWR and an over 10-year timeline to meaningful production (now, ANWR oil won’t be cheap, perhaps requiring sustained prices above $35 for profitability) with this sort of thoughtful forecasting, incorporating reasonable projections of innovations in the energy(-related) world, suggests a very high risk of stranded assets: high-cost Alaskan oil simply unable to compete with cheap oil from Saudi Arabia.
From cyber-security to grid infrastructure to smart-grid to deployment of clean energy (solar and wind, primarily) to Defense Department focus on its energy security to other initiatives and investments, the United States has seen (in both the Bush and Obama Administrations) a wide range of more “ambitious step(s) … to secure our energy future.”
Let’s take just one example, one that Ryan voted for: the creation and operation of the Advance Research Projects Agency-Energy. As the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation coined it, ARPA-E is a Versatile Catalyst for Energy Innovation. Across a wide range of energy domains (from better drilling equipment to hydrogen tanks to solar power to …), ARPAE has fostered an environment for innovation and through its strong work with its awardees moved forward numerous firms and technologies toward introduction into the commercial marketplace. While still early in the game, at less than a decade old, ARPAE is having an impact to “secure our energy future” that will only accelerate with each passing year.
No, Speaker Ryan, opening up ANWR is neither an “ambitious step” nor does it help America and Americans “secure our energy future”. To assert that it does is, simply put, a lie.
[Read more →]
Tags: Energy
December 14th, 2017 · Comments Off on Democratic Party candidates speaking climate
For too long, such a high share of political candidates were (near) silent when it came to climate change that it was simpler to mention the few who ‘talked climate’ as, sadly, Climate Hawks were few and far between.
Seriously, this is changing.
-
- In Virginia, quite a few of the new House of Delegates candidates — while focusing on local issues — were articulate and forceful when it came to environmental, clean energy, and climate change issues. In fact, 13 of the 15 winners taking seats from Republicans signed the pledge to take no contributions from fossil foolish interests. (Which, by the way, in Virginia primarily means saying no to the behemoth Dominion Energy, which is trying to buy its way to more fossil fuel infrastructure with two polluting and unnecessary fossil gas pipelines.)
- In Alabama, unremarked by most, Doug Jones speaks thoughtfully re climate and clean energy issues which were one of the items on his campaign issues. This is, of course, in deep-Red Alabama where Jones sought to thread the needle to victory. He didn’t shy from talking about climate change and, as the sub-heading to that article puts it, “The lesson to Democrats: Don’t shy away from climate change.”
- Tuesday night, as catching people celebrating sanity’s victory in Alabama, a Democrat targeted on retiring the fossil foolish Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, came up multiple times in my Twitter feed a la the below highlighting @IronStache. Spent a few months to learn a bit about “Iron Stache”, actually Randy Bryce.
From Randy’s issue page,
Instead of committing our country to reversing Climate Change, investing in renewable energy, and protecting the environment, Speaker Ryan is standing in the way of progress, applauding as the US retreats from an international commitment to preserve our planet.
- In my own #VA10, there is a gaggle of Democrats seeking the opportunity to put extremist Barbara Comstock out to pasture and almost all of them have something to say about climate. Dan Helmer, for example, is clearly a climate hawk — this is a central issue that drove him to quit his job to run full time. His latest fundraising appeal: “A deadly peril” (see after fold for all of it) began “Climate change is a deadly threat to civilizations across our globe.” (See after the fold …) The odds look good that, come January 2019, Virginia’s 10th will have a real Representative in the House and one who puts climate issues as a critical, core issue for legislative action.
E.g., while not quite everywhere I look, increasingly (above are examples, not an exhaustive list …) Democratic Party politicians are making climate change central to their statement of what matters and what they will work on if (when) elected.
The Climate Hawks Vote PAC (which, by the way, just announced endorsement of Sean Casten (campaign website), who has long been someone I paid attention as a leading thinker/actor in combined heat and power, with how to take waste heat and create value from it) has a real problem: unlike in past election cycles, there are a plethora of good climate champions running for office. Scientists, engineers, veterans, concerned citizens who pay attention to what experts have concluded about climate science are all greatly concerned about climate change risks … and, whatever the ‘political chattering consultancy class’ might say, they are making clear that this is an issue that matters and an issue that they will focus on if (when) elected. While many hoped/fought to make this the case a long time ago, that climate is becoming part of core messaging with so many candidates is a good harbinger of where policy making might go in a post-Trumpista/post climate-science GOP world.
[Read more →]
Tags: climate change · climate hawk · Climate Hawks · political symbols · politics · VA10
December 4th, 2017 · Comments Off on #Climate activists occupy @HouseGOP offices re #TaxBill
The GOP Tax Plan (or “Deficit Augmentation to Enrich Super Rich (DATES Rich) Act) is horrid on so many grounds — from devastating graduate education, to massively increasing economic inequality, to setting the path for destruction of Social Security and Medicare, to … well, the list of horrors would take many pages of scribbling on the margins (as the bill was written). Amid the horror — worsening even further climate devastation and climate risks through additional subsidies to fossil fuels, opening up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling, to …
With this in mind — recognizing both the reality of the challenge and the additional devastation that the #GOPTaxScam would cause the climate — the activist Sunrise Movement (which has done some great actions, such as during the climate talks in Germany) put together a team and are occupying House offices this morning.
The following is from the office of Congressman Curbelo.
Who is Sunrise targeting this morning? GOP members who
- are members of the Climate Solutions Caucus
- voted for the Tax Bill on the first round and, especially,
- sign a letter to the Senate calling on protection of ANWR from drilling.
BREAKING: Young people demand House Republicans vote against #GOPTaxScam for the 1% and fossil fuel billionaires.
Call your representative: 877-796-1948
Sign the petition to Republicans who say they care about climate change but might vote for this #BigOilBailOut: bit.ly/BigOilBailOut
Tags: Energy
November 28th, 2017 · Comments Off on Light at Night: a sign of …
Across energy presentations, versions the following might just be the most common image.
The globe at night: what does bright really mean?
Variations of this image and discussion have been around for decades. This post, while reflecting long-time thinking, was sparked from presentations (such as slide 2) at the excellent Green Growth Knowledge Platform annual conference with much top-notch economic analysis of climate, sustainability, and clean energy/water challenges and opportunities (along with more valuable networking opportunities/interactions).
Bright areas, in short, show higher density + higher economic strength (developed) communities. Brightest areas include Western Europe, Japan, and the East Coast of the United States.
Dark areas are low density and/or low-income economies. Sub-Saharan Africa (notably not South Africa) and
“The World At Night” provides a surrogate to discuss economic development (and, conversely, lack of development). The take-away one is expected to take: dark is bad and we need as much of the world as bright as possible.
There is substantive truth here: the bright areas have electricity, have clean waters supplies, economic and job opportunities, health care infrastructures, higher educational achievement, greater stability, higher life expectancy, and a plethora of other ‘life is better’ measures. (Even if the climate change (and other pollution) impacts are lower in the dark space … which is is used by those fighting climate action as a (false flag) argument against climate mitigation efforts.)
The basic message which we are expected to understand on seeing the image:
- Bright is good.
- Dark requires development to become bright.
There is another way of looking at this image. Very simple, human generated lumens reaching space is waste — no one flips the light switch with the desire to have Martians see them light up their bedroom. While, again, there is truth that ‘light’ represents developed areas, there is also a reality that the light represents a significant opportunity: how can humanity become more efficient in lighting to cut wasted energy lighting the heavens.
![Earth at Night, North America [hd video]](https://i0.wp.com/farm9.staticflickr.com/8216/8269691015_884a14a44b_n.jpg?resize=320%2C180&ssl=1)
Tags: Energy
