Derek Caelin @derek@sunbeam.city

"#Bike Powered Water Pumps"

"The Spanish NGO Azada Verde works with rural communities in #Mozambique to develop sustainable and local food systems. Their bike powered #water pumps save the local population much time fetching water. The pumps each supply 10 litres of water per minute. So far, 67 bike powered water pumps have been installed."

https://www.notechmagazine.com/2022/05/bike-powered-water-pumps.html

Innovative Project Is Growing Crops Beneath #SolarPanels in #Kenya

"...By combining the land dedicated to solar panels with the land dedicated to agriculture, it is possible to avoid some of these pitfalls. Growing plants beneath elevated solar panels protects them from the sun in hot, dry places and helps the soil retain moisture, the University of Sheffield explained. The strategy has worked successfully in Global North countries like France, Germany and the U.S., but has not been tested in the Global South, according to SEI and The Guardian.So far, the results have been promising, The Guardian reported.

In Kajiado, #cabbages cultivated under 180, 345-watt solar panels were a third larger and healthier than the control group. #Eggplants, #lettuce and #corn also fared better in the panels’ shade."

#Agrivoltaics

https://solarpunks.net/post/684429883441594368

"We should be encouraging people to slow down. We should be encouraging people to think more about disability justice. We should be working together and building foundations for advocacy based on love and not hate. There’s too much pressure in the way of perfection on individuals when we know this crisis was built by systems."

"Maintaining my mental health is part of my activism because mental health is planetary health. It’s an intersection that is often overlooked. For example: there’s a drug that I’ve been on for nine years—I’ve tried coming off it so many times but I can’t. Last summer I increased my dose of this medication and for the first time ever I couldn’t tolerate the heat. It was really hot in the U.K. and I was at home, absolutely uncomfortable. I got a heat stroke; I couldn’t think straight; I was chronically dehydrated. I couldn’t sleep more or less for the whole summer. It’s just one way of illustrating that disability justice is climate justice. "

"The #aviation industry accounts for 5% of #carbon emissions, which might not sound like much to a lot of people. But when you think about the fact that 1% of people in the world account for 50% of carbon emissions from flying you begin to realize that the aviation industry is: firstly, projected to grow; and secondly, associated with a lot of privilege in the Global North."

https://atmos.earth/tori-tsui-climate-justice-conserving-biodiversity-preserving-mental-health/

"“Narratives play an important role in communicating climate risks and motivating solutions.” Narratives facilitate collective action through the development of shared visions. They hold the potential to shape norms and standards and, by extension, laws and policies. We have witnessed firsthand the power of narrative when diplomats from SIDS derive their rhetorical authority, in part, from citing IPCC reports in negotiations at the ocean-climate nexus. "

"Rather than a broad recommendation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, AR6 recognized that unlimited economic expansion cannot continue if the goal is to prevent catastrophic climate change. It looked to #degrowth studies to emphasize that runaway consumption, free natural capital, cheap exports, and dispossession on the hunt for profit are unsustainable for the planet and inequitable for the people. "

https://news.mongabay.com/2022/05/from-victims-to-claimants-mobilizing-the-ipcc-assessment-for-climate-justice-commentary/

"The amount of space available on the rooftops of Walmarts, Targets, Home Depots, Costcos, and other large stores and shopping malls in the continental U.S. is staggering. Environment America estimates that it amounts to 7.2 billion square feet, or about the size of El Paso, Texas. Even tiny little Rhode Island has 279 stores that span at least 25,000 square feet each.

"...David Hughes, an environmental anthropologist at Rutgers University, has a more radical idea. When Grist spoke with him last fall, he suggested that when the owners of these large flat rooftops fail to take advantage of their solar potential, they should forfeit their rights to do so to the community or municipality."

"Why doesn’t every big box store have rooftop #solar?"

#solarpunk

https://solarpunks.net/post/684513684588003328

"...The technology itself still has room for improvement, but what’s needed is not so much a better #wind #turbine or #solar panel as much as broader #policy changes that encourage more widespread adoption.

For residential solar power, upward of 70 percent of the price tag is due to “soft costs” — things like permitting, inspections, installation, and financing rather than the cost of the hardware itself. Solar could still get much cheaper, with costs falling another 50 percent by 2050 according to some estimates, but it will require cutting through this red tape."

https://www.vox.com/23042818/climate-change-ipcc-wind-solar-battery-technology-breakthrough

Is #Bookwyrm down?

Anyone have recommendations for #chess sets I should highlight with @Chess? Ideally I'm looking for sets with stories.