Craig

Water Professional. Persian and exotic cats, Married ,#ClimateAction, #sciencematters. #Climatechange, #cleanwater, #sustainableliving.#fedup

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

The EU saved $60 billion in fossil fuel costs in 2025, according to the IEA. Solar led the charge, generating over 340 TWh and reaching 12.5% of the bloc’s electricity mix. Clean energy investments helped Europe avoid €51.4 billion in fossil fuel imports, while global savings across five major importing regions reached $260 billion.

European industry trade on input costs. For thirty years, European manufacturers competed with one hand tied behind their back because gas and electricity prices here ran consistently higher than in the United States, Russia, or the Gulf. That cost gap drove investment decisions, plant closures, and relocations. It shaped entire supply chains.

Solar is beginning to close that gap structurally. The distinction is critical. A temporary dip in gas prices does not change investment calculus. A decade of declining renewable generation costs, combined with massive domestic capacity, does. When a factory in the Ruhr or northern Italy can increasingly price its electricity from domestic solar rather than from Qatari LNG or Norwegian gas, its cost base becomes more predictable and, over time, more competitive.

The 2025 savings also served as a direct buffer against the energy price spikes driven by the ongoing Middle East conflict. That is the geopolitical hedge in action.

Certain American politicians who appear to believe Europe is permanently overcast, argue that solar cannot be a reliable baseload source because clouds exist. This reflects a misunderstanding of how modern grids work. No serious grid planner expects a single source to carry the entire load. Solar operates as part of a diversified generation mix alongside wind, hydro, gas peakers, nuclear, and increasingly grid-scale storage. Germany manages this. Spain manages this. Denmark manages this. The grid does not stop when a cloud passes over Bavaria any more than it stops when a gas turbine goes offline for maintenance.

By the late 2020s, if capacity expansion continues at current pace, European heavy industry could hold a genuine structural cost advantage over competitors still dependent on volatile fossil fuel imports. That would represent a quiet but decisive reversal of a narrative that defined European industrial decline for a generation.

The $60 billion figure is the receipt. The competitive advantage is still being built.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[SriSathya @sathyashrii]

Bravo ✨👏👏

[Mao Ning 毛宁 @SpoxCHN_MaoNing]

“American people and Chinese people live on one Earth. We need to focus on our similarities.” — Ronald Sakolsky, an American who donated to help turn China’s Mu Us Desert green. Kindness knows no borders.

[GBX @GBX_Press]

🚨 JUST IN:
Brazilian President Lula da Silva: "I want to say this loudly and clearly: The Israeli president is committing genocide against women and children. This is a historical fact."

[Middle Eastern Affairs @OpsHQs]

"Tel Aviv is witnessing rare civil disobedience. A group of Israeli refuseniks are burning their draft papers on the main street. The reason for refusal: 'We will not kill children in Palestine and Lebanon.' The penalty: military prison. But they insist on going to prison rather than enlisting."

[Global Times @globaltimesnews]

"Absolutely amazing!" said Ronald Sakolsky, an American who donated $5,000 to Chinese desert-control specialist Yin Yuzhen 27 years ago to support her work on combating desertification in the Mu Us Desert. Sakolsky expressed his surprise at how dramatically the landscape had changed.

[Night Sky Today @NightSkyToday]

🚨: Colombia bans all new oil and mining in its Amazon rain-forest. The protected area is the size of Sweden and covers 42% of the country.

[Laiken Jordahl @LaikenJordahl]

BREAKING: 7 former heads of Big Bend are urging @SecMullinDHS not to waive environmental & resource protection laws in the national park.
If DHS rams this waiver through, it would be the first time in American history that all environmental laws were gutted in a national park.

[Nicolas Fulghum @nicolasfulghum]

NEW | Wind and solar just produced more electricity than gas globally for the first month on record

In April, they produced 531 TWh (22%), compared with 477 TWh (20%) for gas.

Wind and solar generation has more than doubled in the last five years.

[The Hon. Matt Kean @honmattkean]

Those who claimed renewables can’t power Australia’s heavy industry must now confront reality. An Australian steel mill is sourcing majority renewable power — for the first time ever. The energy transition isn’t coming. It’s here.

https://t.co/CqtRDSpltx

[Laiken Jordahl @LaikenJordahl]

ALERT: DHS just quietly issued the largest border wall contract in American history, slicing right through the heart of Big Bend National Park.

$1.7 billion to destroy our natural heritage, to wall off a congressionally protected national park and wild & scenic river, to obliterate the most cherished public land in all of Texas—all in a place where virtually nobody is crossing the border.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Colombia has declared its entire Amazon biome a reserve zone for renewable natural resources, effectively banning any new oil exploration, hydrocarbon production, or large-scale mining projects in the region.
Colombia has declared its entire Amazon biome a reserve zone for renewable natural resources, effectively banning any new oil exploration, hydrocarbon production, or large-scale mining projects in the region.
The protected area spans approximately 483,000 square kilometers about the size of Sweden and represents 42% of Colombia’s continental territory, covering roughly 7% of the entire Amazon rainforest basin.
Announced during COP30 in Brazil, the decision makes Colombia the first Amazonian country to protect its entire share of the rainforest from new extractive industrial activities. The policy halts dozens of pending concessions, including 43 oil blocks and hundreds of mining requests that had not yet begun operations.
By prioritizing ecosystem preservation over fossil fuel and mineral extraction, the measure aims to reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and maintain the Amazon’s crucial role in global climate regulation through carbon storage and water cycle stability.
The initiative, introduced under the Petro administration, reflects a shift toward sustainable development and could set a precedent for other Amazon nations facing similar pressures from resource extraction.
Environmental advocates consider it one of the most significant conservation victories in recent history, safeguarding vital ecosystems and Indigenous territories while contributing to global climate protection.

[Samuel 🇲🇽 @resisres]

🇲🇽🌊 Mexico reverses Salinas-era water privatization — redistributes concessions to indigenous farmers.

"Those who had hoarded all the water — today, we're taking it from them and we can redistribute it," Sheinbaum said.

Under the new Water Law, unused concessions return to the state. Private water sales banned. Decades of hoarding by a few ended and redistribution to campesinos are underway.

[Rahul Gandhi @RahulGandhi]

I travelled through Great Nicobar today.

These are the most extraordinary forests I have ever seen in my life. Trees older than memory. Forests that took generations to grow.

The people on this island are equally beautiful - both the adivasi communities and the settlers - but they are being robbed of what is rightfully theirs.

The government calls what it is doing here a “Project.” What I have seen is not a project. It is millions of trees marked for the axe. It is 160 square kilometres of rainforest condemned to die. It is communities that have been ignored while their homes have been snatched away.

This is not development. This is destruction dressed in development’s language.

So I will say it plainly, and I will keep saying it: what is being done in Great Nicobar is one of the biggest scams and gravest crimes against this country’s natural and tribal heritage in our lifetime.

It must be stopped. And it can be stopped - if Indians choose to see what I have seen.

[Laiken Jordahl @LaikenJordahl]

We're suing the Department of Homeland Security for waiving all environmental and public transparency laws to rush border wall construction through Big Bend—a place where virtually nobody crosses the border.

Here's our co-plaintiff Billy Miller, discussing what's at stake:

[TheNewPhysics @CharlesMullins2]

🚨 China just built a coal system that makes electricity without burning coal.

Read that again.

Instead of combustion, it converts carbon’s chemical energy directly into electricity using an electrochemical fuel cell.

No steam turbines.
No conventional heat-engine limits.
Potentially much higher efficiency.

Even wilder

CO₂ is captured at the source and turned into useful chemicals.

If scalable, this doesn’t just improve coal

it may redefine what fuel is.

Maybe the future of energy isn’t burning matter…

but extracting energy through structure.

Could fossil fuels become electrochemical resources instead of fuels?

Follow me I track where physics becomes technology.

[Chris Gloninger, CCM, CBM @ChrisGloninger]

61% of the Lower 48 in drought. 97% of the Southeast. VPD, how aggressively the atmosphere pulls moisture from the ground, is 77% above normal and 25% beyond any previous record for this time of year. UCLA: this "wouldn't have appeared possible before now." Then the EPA repealed its authority to regulate the emissions making it worse. #drought #climate #EPA

[The Ocean Cleanup @TheOceanCleanup]

This year, your monthly donation has ~2.5× the impact.

With more Interceptors in the water and more efficient operations, we’re collecting more trash for every dollar.

Take action today: https://t.co/TWBLTSPKZi