What To Do After the Climate Strike

Fridays for the Future (https://www.fridaysforfuture.org) - the Friday Climate Strikes continue
October 2 there will be a Global Solar Yatra (https://www.ggsy.in) with 1 million students in over 70 countries building their own solar lights for studying
October 7 Extinction Rebellion (https://xrmass.org/action/nyc-kickoff-global-rebellion/) will be doing actions around the world
Sunrise Movement (https://www.sunrisemovement.org) is planning actions in support of the Green New Deal up to and after the Inauguration of the next President in January 2020

September 20 was a great show of strength but what are we going to do tomorrow and the day after that?  Is there a daily climate practice that can do what we need to get done in the time available?  I know someone who used to write a letter to the editor to some publication around the world on climate issues every day.  Now he does stand outs most mornings during rush hour traffic with his climate signs.  Another is standing up in the train to talk about climate on the commute home.  (“How did Solidarity start?” someone once asked Lech Walesa who answered, “By speaking loud at the bus stops.”)  I have a solar swadeshi myself: http://solarray.blogspot.com/2005/05/solar-swadeshi-hand-made-electricity.html
and have been practicing Solar IS Civil Defense for 20 years:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/8/1697177/-Is-It-Time-to-Talk-About-Solar-Civil-Defense
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2007/3/30/317777/-

If the children can devote one day a week to climate issues, the adults should too.  Climate strikes can evolve into climate teach-ins, brainstorms, hackathons, and barnraisings, especially if we have a daily climate action plan on international, national, regional, state, county, municipal, neighborhood, family, and individual scales with benchmarks and targets.

Greta Thunberg at the UN mentioned that we are on track to burn through our carbon budget, the amount of greenouse gases we can put into the sky and still stay within that “magic” 1.5º F heating range, within 8 years.  That’s one benchmark.  The idea that “we have a little more than a decade” to turn around climate comes from a 2017 paper from Christiana Figueres, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Gail Whiteman, Johan Rockström, Anthony Hobley & Stefan Rahmstorf.  What gets mentioned less is their six-point plan with specific targets for turning the tide of the world’s carbon dioxide by 2020:  https://www.nature.com/news/three-years-to-safeguard-our-climate-1.22201

However, China may reach its greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2022, far ahead of its 2030 schedule announced at the 2015 Paris climate meeting:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-carbon/china-co2-emissions-to-peak-in-2022-ahead-of-schedule-government-researcher-idUSKCN1VQ1K0
and Norway, Iceland, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Paraguay are all countries which get almost all their electricity from renewable energy now:  https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/11-countries-leading-the-charge-on-renewable-energy/
Costa Rica plans to be a carbon neutral nation by 2021:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/climate/costa-rica-zero-carbon-neutral.html

Job One for Humanity (https://www.joboneforhumanity.org/plan) has a four point plan for climate action starting from emergency preparation and working on up to mass political and social change.  Many of their ideas are not only adaptation to the weather emergencies they believe are now inevitable but also best practices which will also mitigate any more climate damage and improve individual, family, and local resilience.

Lots to do and lots we can do.  

If anyone is interested, My Approach to Climate Change is available at http://solarray.blogspot.com/2018/12/my-approach-to-climate-change.html

Agrophotovoltaics, Agriphotovoltaics, Solar Sharing

Fraunhofer Institute in Germany has been doing “agrophotovoltaics” studies for the last few years, the concept of producing both crops and solar power on the same land.  Their 2018 study results are available here: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2019/agrophotovoltaics-hight-harvesting-yield-in-hot-summer-of-2018.html

”The results from 2017 showed a land use efficiency of 160 percent, as confirmed by the project consortium under the direction of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. The performance of the agrophotovoltaic system in the very hot summer of 2018 greatly exceeded this value.”

Fraunhofer is also doing tests of solar panels over shrimp ponds in Vietnam:
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/news/2019/aqua-pv-project-shrimps-combines-aquaculture-and-photovoltaics.html
They show similar results there, too, possibly even better as the solar shading is more conducive to shrimp growth.  If there are any applicable aquaculture facilities in your state, there might be some solar opportunities available there too.

What Fraunhofer calls agrophotovoltaics the Japanese call  “solar sharing” and have been doing since at least 2004:
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/2013/10/10/japan-next-generation-farmers-cultivate-agriculture-and-solar-energy/

”The concept was originally developed by Akira Nagashima in 2004, who was a retired agricultural machinery engineer who later studied biology and learned the “light saturation point.” The rate of photosynthesis increases as the irradiance level is increased; however at one point, any further increase in the amount of light that strikes the plant does not cause any increase to the rate of photosynthesis….

”Based on the tests conducted at his solar testing sites in Chiba Prefecture, he recommends about 32% shading rate for a farmland space to reach adequate growth of crops. In other words, there is twice as much empty space for each PV module installed.”

UMass Amherst is working on this concept as well with outreach to farmers through a state program:
https://ag.umass.edu/clean-energy/fact-sheets/dual-use-agriculture-solar-photovoltaics

Mother Jones article on this idea:
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/09/the-best-place-for-harvesting-solar-energy-is-not-where-i-expected-it-to-be/
Paper from Nature Sustainability the article references
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0364-5.epdf

There should be no competition between active farmland and solar development.  When done correctly, solar can become a lucrative second “crop” for farmers while maintaining and, in some cases, increasing agricultural productivity.