By: Chandu Visweswariah “A Tale of Two Cities” is an 1859 historical novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. This blog is about the City of Ithaca, NY and the Town of Bedford, NY before and during the climate revolution. It has been a good week from a climate perspective as United…
Don’t Waste Our Money
By: Chandu Visweswariah Now is the time to advocate for electrification of school transportation fleets because school districts are planning their 2021-’22 transportation budgets now, and NYSERDA has recently announced an update to their voucher program that encourages schools to buy electric buses. The School Bus Voucher Program falls within NYSERDA’s Truck Incentive Program. Accordingly, we post this call to all school…
The Incumbent Mirage
By: Chandu Visweswariah This past week I received numerous holiday greetings expressing a sentiment that the sender was glad to put 2020 in the rearview mirror. The assumption is that the vaccine is here, the election is over, and better days are ahead. Thanks to rigorous scientific advances and the magic of messenger Ribonucleic Acid (mRNA), we believe we will…
“Super Power” Can Get Us to 50% GHG by 2030
By: Chandu Visweswariah Clean Energy U Curve courtesy RethinkX Adam Dorr and Tony Seba of RethinkX, a think tank that studies technology disruptions, just published a report entitled “Rethinking Energy 2020 – 2030.” The report gives us a blueprint of how we can achieve 50% Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction by 2030 as required by an overwhelming consensus of scientific thought…
The Beginning of the End of Fossil Fuels
By: Chandu Visweswariah The writing is on the wall: we are witnessing the beginning of the end of fossil fuels (as well as the beginning of the end of the internal combustion engine)! Fossil fuels are used in the electricity sector, transportation sector, for building heat and in industrial processes (like making cement and steel). By 2040, we need to…
Give Carbon a Seat at the Table
By: Chandu Visweswariah [Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of articles about Electric Vehicles marking Croton100’s observation of National Drive Electric Week, September 26 to October 4, 2020.] We live in a topsy-turvy world. Increasingly, from world affairs to local matters, we put the cart before the horse, opinion is more important than fact, echo chambers serve…
Our Car Lexicon is Changing
By: Chandu Visweswariah [Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles about Electric Vehicles marking Croton100’s observation of National Drive Electric Week, September 26 to October 4, 2020.] Something profound is happening right in front of our eyes. Our very language around the topic of cars is changing. Gone are the days when you can tell a…
The Moral Imperative to Live a Negative Carbon Lifestyle
By: Chandu Visweswariah Would you knowingly harm your child? Of course not! What about your grandchild? Same answer. What about your grandchild’s children and grandchildren? This concept is echoed in every major religious traditionand beautifully captured in an ancient and profound Haudenosaunee principle: “The Peacemaker taught us about the Seven Generations. He said, when you sit in council for the…
Understanding Our Carbon Budget for 1.5 Degrees C of Warming
By: Chandu Visweswariah Graphic by Prof. Rob Jackson of Stanford A very interesting paper entitled “An assessment of Earth’s climate sensitivity using multiple lines of evidence” was published in Reviews of Geophysics on July 22, 2020 and discussed in the New York Times. The paper’s lead author is Prof. S. Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Australia,…
From a Vicious Cycle to a Virtuous Cycle
By: Chandu Visweswariah The 21st century will witness a series of profound macro-economic decoupling forces. Traditional wisdom has it that the more advanced and prosperous an economy, the more energy that economy uses. There is strong historical data for over a century to support this tight coupling. Unfortunately, this sets up a vicious cycle. We optimize our economic policies to…
