INTRODUCTION | CHAPTER 1 | CHAPTER 2

ON STOPPING CLIMATE CHANGE

The Path to a Circular Economy & How to Get on It. ^©

David Hailey

INTRODUCTION

This will take a revolution, but as it happens, that revolution has already begun. It is nearly unnoticeable, but it is here. You can see it in the fact that in 2024, while nobody was looking, renewable energy (27%) passed natural gas (24%) as the number one energy provider around the world, and in the United States, on average, more than 50% of our energy is clean (renewable or nuclear). The revolution can be seen in the fact that in the United States, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have dropped by around 30% since 2005, and in the same period, emissions from coal dropped by around 50%.

But the evidence doesn’t just show up in the statistics. The revolution can be seen in the fact that it is getting hard to drive through a neighborhood in the United States without seeing solar arrays on rooftops, and that doesn’t count the arrays you can’t see on the flat-topped roofs of businesses, condominiums, and the like. Solar panels on the flat rooftops of industries and condos number in the hundreds of millions.

 You can see the revolution in the fact that so many people are buying EVs (30% of all new cars sold worldwide) and are willing to wait in line for two or more years for their first EV – foregoing the test drive. In some more progressive cities, Teslas are popping up everywhere you look, and even more EVs pass by unrecognized because they look identical to their fossil-fuel-burning brethren. Moreover, if you look into a hotel or shopping center parking lot, you will likely see EV charging stations.

 According to the United States International Energy Agency (US IEA), “The share of electric cars in total sales has more than quadrupled in three years, from around 4% in 2020 to 14% in 2022 to 21% in 2023.” ^{(Electric vehicles - IEA)}

Green energy in the United States
is growing exponentially.

Wind energy production worldwide: Wind turbines tower above the landscape along the highways you travel. Wind energy worldwide increased by 77 billion Watts in 2022 and 220 billion Watts in 2023 (just short of 300%) in one year. Through the past few years, installations have surpassed a total of one trillion Watts of installed wind-generated electricity. 

Solar worldwide: 283 million solar panels were installed worldwide in 2022, for a total of 239 billion Watts of electric capacity. Full capacity worldwide is expected to be more than 4.5 trillion Watts by the end of 2024. 

Grid-based solar in the United States: In the United States, solar rose by 22 billion Watts in 2022 and by 33 billion watts in 2023 (up by more than 50%). According to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, “Solar is our cheapest and fastest-growing source of clean energy, and it could produce enough electricity to power all of the homes in the United States by 2035, as the solar increases employment by as many as 1.5 million people in the process.” ^{(ICYMI: Secretary Granholm Visited Maine and New Hampshire to Tour Renewable Energy Infrastructure | Department of Energy)}

Household solar in the United States: When 66 Watt solar panels were $450 each, solar was an expensive hobby for the rich, with virtually no return on investment (ROI). Today, most families with a roof can afford 450 Watt solar panels at around $200 each. If you search on Google, you will find that the ROI of solar is around 10%. That is old news. With the reductions in solar costs and the 30% Federal tax rebate, the current ROI ranges from 15% to nearly 50% per year. The ROI of solar depends on the cost of installation plus the number of bright hours per year in your region, compared to the price of your electricity ($0.12/kWh in Austin as opposed to a maximum of $0.45/kWh in San Diego). Because installation costs are currently reduced by the United States Federal tax credit, a $20,000 investment is really ~$12,500 after you receive your tax rebate. 

If you invest ~$12,500 in solar panels, your return on investment will be ~$2,500 —$3,000/yr. in Texas (ROI of 10% to 12%) and $3,000- $5,000/yr. in San Diego (ROI of 30% or more). In San Diego, solar pays for itself in under five years.  

Wind and solar worldwide: Wind and solar worldwide produced an average of more than 5.5 trillion Watts per hour in 2024, and the overall number of new installations has increased by more than 200% per year. At an average of 8,000 Watts of demand per home per hour, that is enough to power all the homes in the United States. 

In some parts of the United states,
wind is already the number one energy source.

Effective in 2024, wind power was the largest renewable energy source in the United States, with more than 100,000 turbines in a total of ~20,000 wind farms in 44 states. They produce ~200 billion Watts per hour (~200 gigawatt hours or ~200gWh). 

This points to an interesting phenomenon. In conservative states, many politicians oppose renewable energy growth because it reduces profits for the fossil fuel industry. As of this writing, Senators Ted Cruze and John Cornyn, along with Governor Greg Abbot of Texas, still deny that the climate is changing and insist there is no reason to abandon fossil fuels. And yet, according to Time Magazine, 

From sea level rise and hurricanes to extreme heat, Texas is one of the most threatened states in the United States when it comes to the impacts of climate change. It ranked first in the number of billion-dollar disasters per year since 2001, and a 2020 analysis by ProPublica and The New York Times of America’s 3,000 counties revealed that, of the 135 counties deemed most at risk from a changing climate, 24 are in Texas. As Texas Boils, Climate Denying Politicians Seek Federal Aid | TIME MAGAZINE

Ironically, despite all the political foot-dragging, Texas leads the nation in wind energy production, having more wind energy than the next three states. Thirty-eight percent of Texas energy is renewable – not because it is politically expedient, but because it is the most cost-effective energy source – it’s good for business, and good businessmen understand “good for business.”  

Should you be anxious about the future?

You should be anxious about the future, but things are not as bad as many suspect. That will be one of the goals of this book -- to point out where we really are in our quest for a sustainable future and how we will get to where we need to be. We need to emit fewer GHGs, but we do not have to stop emitting them altogether. According to scientists at MIT,  

The planet absorbs around a billion metric tons of CO₂per year, but natural sources of CO₂ such as undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents release carbon. We only emit around 100 million metric tons annually [around 10% of total CO₂ emissions, annually]. Human activities tip the scales by adding carbon to the air faster than the planet’s sinks can absorb it. How much carbon dioxide does the Earth naturally absorb? | MIT Climate Portal

If we removed ourselves from the equation right now, global warming would plateau, with levels rising slightly because of CO₂ leaching from the oceans. Still, over time, CO₂ levels would begin dropping, and the Earth would start to cool. The critical thing to remember is that global warming is a trend and not a switch. In the future, the closer we get to a zero-carbon footprint, the slower the upward warming trend will be. Once we reach a negative carbon footprint, we will begin a cooling trend. A below-zero carbon footprint would mean taking more carbon out of our biosphere than we put into it.

Taking more GHGs from our biosphere than we put into it may seem impossible, but it is not. Throughout this book, I will introduce any number of options that involve taking more GHGs from the atmosphere than we put into it. For example, wind and solar put no CO₂ into the atmosphere but take none out. Making biofuels, however, leaves a great deal of carbon waste that can be sequestered. The cycle might look like:

1. Use plants to extract CO₂ from the atmosphere (100% extracted carbon to begin with).
2. Harvest the plants and use part of them for food (15% of the carbon is consumed).
3. Use the sugars in the rest of the plants to make fuel (30% returns to the atmosphere).
4. Convert the waste byproduct into char and plow it into the soil (55% sequestered)

Electric trucks will be used for delivery. Long-haul trucks will run on biofuels with a less than zero carbon footprint. You see them every day. You just don’t know they are running on biodiesel. 

Why do things seem so bleak?

We currently live in an economy that is causing our climate to become increasingly dangerous for our civilization and maybe for the future of humankind, and we don’t know what to do about it. We rightly worry that things are going in the wrong direction, but we are ordinary people without the means to make significant changes (that is if we knew what to change). We do not know what we can do to stop the damaging processes . . . in fact, apart from the most obvious of them, we likely don’t even know what the most damaging processes are (HINT: it’s not cars).

We may try to recycle, but we keep hearing things like, “recycling is a scam!” Moreover, when we look closely at recycling, we find that little of our waste is suitable for that blue barrel. Water bottles, clean paper, cardboard, and a few plastic trays, and not much else can be thrown into the recycle barrel. Oily boxes, hard plastic objects, single-use plastic bags, Styrofoam, food waste, and construction waste all just go into a landfill.  

Worse -- for the most part, our politicians don’t seem to care or may even be hostile to climate mitigation.

For many of our politicians, climate change is important, but they have many more pressing problems. On the other hand, many of our politicians are completely hostile to the idea of mitigating global warming. Many of them have huge portfolios of fossil fuel stocks, and some politicians are in the pockets of fossil fuel companies.  

So, what can we do?

We begin by becoming informed. We don’t do things because we think they are right – we do things because we know they are right. The point of this book is to give you enough information to permit you to make informed decisions. 

Here is an excellent example of people making an uninformed decision: In most supermarkets, we currently have the choice of paper, single-use plastic, canvas, or multi-use plastic bags. Which to choose? The answer is, “it depends.” Current wisdom on the street is to get reusable canvas bags and carry them to and from the store. But cotton for these canvas bags is commonly grown in India. The fabric is woven in Thailand or Vietnam. The bags are manufactured in China, possibly using child labor (and sometimes, slave labor in work camps). United States Department of Labor (dol.gov)

After production, the bags are shipped across the Pacific on container ships, basically burning bunker oil (literally an asphalt-like substance that can’t even be used for paving roads). According to the New York Times, the bags arrive with a massive carbon footprint that can only be removed after 2,000 trips to the store and back. Moreover, because of the dyes being used for color and logos, they can never be recycled. The Cotton Tote Crisis - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

In contrast, some stores bail plastic bags returned by the customers and ship them to companies like Trex Decking to be upcycled into synthetic decking. Those single-use plastic bags can become a high-end deck in someone’s backyard. Next time you have a BBQ on someone’s synthetic decking, consider how many plastic bags it took to make it. If we know which stores actually recycle their plastic bags, we can consider shopping at those stores and returning their bags for recycling. Frequently Asked Questions about Plastic Recycling and Composting | US EPA  

Still, even then, we have to be careful. Some stores have bins so shoppers can return their plastic bags, but they simply turn the bags over to vendors who take them to the nearest landfill. Walmart and Target stores have both been caught doing that. They want to look green, but just throw away the bags their customers return. Across the country, their “recycled” plastic bags ended up in incinerators and landfills – some even went to Southeast Asia. The stores were subsequently dropped from the National Recycling Directory. (2350) Walmart, Target dropped from recycling directory | ABCNL - YouTube

With knowledge comes the freedom to make good choices. Before doing something, we could Google the topics to make certain ours are the best choices. The story about canvas bags is all over the internet, and so is the one about Target and Walmart. We should do our research so that we know (rather than think) we are doing the right thing. 

Looking into the abyss.

There is no abyss. There is only a long and slow march into a future with many options. Some of them are great, and some of them are not so great. We are all going to make that march into that future. If we are going to do that, we should try to be in control of where we are going. It may be scary to look into those possible futures, but doing that makes it possible for us to steer into the best one. But possibly most importantly, you will see that there is a lot going on, and most of it is encouraging.  

My mission in this book.

My mission in this book is to bring you as much information as I can so that you will have a foundation upon which to base decisions concerning your actions going forward. You can begin taking actions you know to be correct.

Moreover, if we are informed, we can tell others. We can point them to information available online without being obnoxious. There is no point in arguing with climate change deniers because they drank the Conspiracy Kool-Aid long ago, and they are unlikely ever to change their minds. And ironically, if we manage to turn things around and the Earth begins cooling, they will be the ones to say, “See, I told you it was all a hoax.” On the other hand, you will discover that the biggest reason we are getting such a late start is that big corporations are throwing a lot of money at keeping us misinformed. Many people (including scientists and politicians) deny climate change because they are paid to do it – they are the ones passing out the Kool-Aid. Why Climate Change Denial Still Exists In The United States (youtube.com)

Still, conversation with people who are open to discussion moves the ball. Almost anytime I tell someone that I write about sustainability, they begin asking questions about climate change. I am always happy being able to tell them things are not as bad as they seem  

We are not hardwired for this.

We humans have some serious flaws in our wiring. Recognizing this and dealing with it will help us in this effort to reverse the changing climate. One of our problems is an “out of sight out of mind” mentality. 

This is the nature of our economy: extract a nonrenewable resource, use it, throw it away, and not think much about the consequences of those acts. It is a linear economy. We dig up coal and burn it. We dig up oil and burn it. We buy a tee shirt, and it’s like the canvas tote I mentioned above – containing cotton grown in India, woven in Vietnam, sewn in China, and shipped to the U.S. by the worst polluters of all – ships. When we tire of the tee, we throw it away. My mission in this book is to introduce you to a different economy – a circular economy where almost nothing is wasted. 

An introduction to the circular economy.

The Tragedy of the Commons describes something people do badly. Suppose herdsmen share a common plot for grazing their cattle. In time, they will overgraze the land because it is the nature of people to pay little attention to things they do not own (out of sight, out of mind). The results of this behavior are visible from the air over sub-Sahara Africa. The Sahal was once a grassland. Now it is a desert. The same is true of northern India. Many grasslands there have been reduced to non-fertile deserts. The same behavior is visible at the Ogallala Aquifer. Ranchers are emptying the aquifer. They know they are emptying it, and by the time their grandchildren inherit the farm, there will be no water – but they don’t care. They just want to get what they can out of it while they can.

Of course, we can look at the Africans and Indians and farmers and suggest that they are getting what they deserve, that they brought it on themselves, but as a species, we are doing exactly that to the Earth – digging resources from the ground, using the products that come from those resources, and then throwing them away.  

There is another way.

Nothing ever gets thrown away. Everything, no matter how old, can have a new life.Nothing ever gets thrown away. Everything, no matter how old, can have a new life. 

A short, related story: A tree farmer in Oklahoma cuts down all of the pines on his plantation. The trees are destined to become cardboard, paper, and the like. Just before you leave a restroom in a restaurant, you dry your hands with a paper towel. The towel goes into a bin with all the other towels. Somebody picks up the bin of towels and dumps it into a dumpster. The city picks up the dumpster and carries it to an incinerator, where it will be burned to produce electricity. The CO₂from the towel passes through a scrubber that cuts the emissions. Meanwhile, newly planted trees on that Oklahoma tree farm are pulling a comparable amount of CO₂ out of the atmosphere. So, your act produced a tiny bit of electricity and had a zero-carbon footprint. 

IT’S ALL CIRCULAR! Everything is a resource. Nothing ever gets thrown away. Everything is a feedstock for another process. We don’t pull oil from the Earth, process it, then burn it. We synthesize all of our fuels from organic materials (mostly waste materials). Our technologies are such that we can make gasoline out of air and water. This gasoline has a zero-carbon footprint because the CO₂ it emits is less than the CO₂ that was taken out of the air to make it. I will spend a lot of time in subsequent pages discussing this new, circular. economy  

So where are we?

Things might be tense, but they are not grim. Ultimately, my point is this: there is a revolution underway. It has been happening in the background for decades. Few have noticed because most of the work was being done in university labs and research parks, but it is here, and it is not just a bunch of rag-tag Hippies yelling about the need for change. These actors include universities, corporations, venture capitalists, politicians, scientists, and engineers in the United States and worldwide, and they are all moving us to the circular economy. 

Universities: Universities are establishing sustainability programs designed to educate undergraduate and graduate students about the various subjects concerning sustainability. There are new bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and even Ph.Ds. focused on sustainability. Universities are even bringing engineers and business professionals back to school to teach sustainability topics and provide certification as sustainability professionals so they can go back to their companies and guide them toward a zero-carbon footprint. 

Schools offering these certificates are among the most prestigious in the world, including MIT, Yale, Harvard, and even the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England. They all have certification programs designed to guide people with long-held degrees into new careers that demand an understanding of sustainability issues. The instructions guide professionals into fields such as Sustainability Advisor, Circular Economy Consultant, Sustainability Officer, or even Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) in the corporate “C” suite. From the bottom to the top of corporate structures, there will be countless new sustainability-related careers. 

Moreover, you will be hard-pressed to find a university that is not doing significant research into various aspects of sustainability, and these research scientists are developing extraordinary new technologies, including devices that suck CO₂ out of the atmosphere, batteries as large as apartment buildings, solar panels twice as efficient as last year’s panels, roads that charge your EVs as you drive on them, and much more. Again and again, in this book, you will read about significant discoveries in universities that solve problems with recycling, GHG emissions, water capture, etc.

University engagement doesn’t begin and end in education and research, however. Universities are actively moving toward a zero-carbon footprint for themselves and their students. For example, students with Electric Vehicles have access to some of the best parking spots on campus. On many campuses, students with EVs drive into the faculty lots and hook up to the nearest charger (possibly next to the Dean’s EV). Many of these charging stations have tables with photovoltaic awnings and phone chargers, where they can do their homework with their study buddies.  

Corporations: Major industries are working hard at becoming carbon neutral. For example, Google is already carbon neutral. Even the most egregious industries, such as steel production, are looking to reduce their carbon emissions by more than 80% in the next decade. That would be a reduction of carbon emissions by 8% worldwide. That might seem small, but it equals the emissions of all of the automobiles currently on the road. 

One major supermarket chain has millions of solar panels spread out over all of its superstore roofs, including more than 2,000,000 panels on the roofs of its stores in the 40-mile stretch between Austin and San Antonio, TX (you can count them on Google Maps).  

People in that vicinity have no idea this is happening . . . they have no way of seeing the panels on flat top roofs and behind walls, but when the big freeze hit Texas in 2021, most retail stores had to shut their doors during the many rolling blackouts. But H-E-B Supercenters stayed open and became warm shelters for the many people caught in near-zero temperatures. As I have already pointed out, corporate microgrids and rooftop solar have had huge impacts by adding resiliency to the electric utilities. 

Shopping centers and hotels without EV charging stations are becoming endangered species. In some cases, the best parking spots are reserved for EV charging. Even restaurants and service stations are installing charging stations. One day soon, travelers will pull into restaurant parking lots and have lunch, or they might tour a museum or visit a zoo while refueling their cars – often for free (I sometimes charge for free while shopping at a local mall). 

Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists: Whole, new sustainable industries are springing up. Gasification, for example, is expected to be a trillion-dollar industry by 2035, offering thousands of jobs (more on gasification later in the book). 

Very wealthy people are putting $-billions into thousands of similar ventures around the world. Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy venture capital company is among them, having invested $-billions per year for years into sustainability ventures around the world, funding developers of batteries, carbon capture hardware, conversion of waste into energy, etc. They do it because, like Tesla, some of these ventures will change the future, and when they do, they will create industries worth many trillions of dollars with billions of jobs. Who would turn down such amazing returns on investment? 

Desert dwellers: People who desertified their land by overgrazing are re-greening their deserts with water capture and judicious planting of trees and grasses. They have been so effective that NASA has photographed their progress from space.  

Much of the darkest green in China was the Gobi Desert just 10 years ago. India accomplished much of its regreening effort in just 48 days, where villagers responding to a contest spent 48 days building water retention structures designed to force rainwater underground. Their efforts were so successful that all their dry wells filled with water and arroyos became continuously flowing rivers (e.g., The Avari River). 5 Most Epic Earth Healing Projects! (youtube.com)

Private researchers: Researchers can convert algae, municipal waste, sewage, un-recyclable plastics, and any other organic material into synthesis-kerosene, syn-diesel, syn-gasoline, and syngas (natural gas substitute). Porsche is making amazing EVs, but they do not want to give up internal combustion autos, so they have a research lab in Chile that is making gasoline from AIR and WATER! These fuels all burn much cleaner than fossil fuels, and most of them have a less than zero-carbon footprint.

Business and individual home owners: Many businesses are putting microgrids on their roofs. Microgrids connect to the utility grid and make it more resilient by helping control the flow of local current as demand for power peaks and threatens the grid (much more about microgrids later). Many household grids produce so much electricity that they provide leftover power to their neighbors.  

Who are you?

I recently went to a symposium that was addressing climate change. Every single person at my table was looking for answers to what they could do as individuals, and they were looking for the possibility of connecting with some organization where they could get good information or become volunteers. I think you are like them. Most people who pick this book up will be looking for information they can use and actions they can take. You might be a homemaker or grandparent, a financier or entrepreneur, a student or teacher. I believe that you all want to end this slide toward climate change. While you want to do what you can to avert climate change, you don’t know what to do beyond what you are already doing. After all, you are just one person in a world of ~8 billion people, most of whom seem to be doing nothing useful. The truth is the list of things we can do would fill a book. 

So, who am I?

To say I am an old guy would be a gross understatement. I am well past my “sell by” date. I was already 50 when I received my doctorate in technical and professional communication. After that, I researched and taught Technical and Professional writing for the next 25 years.

I should point out that technical writers look at the work of scientists and engineers and make that work accessible to the public, and that is what I have done for my entire adult life. I am not the scientist inventing all of those new innovations that can save humanity. I am the guy watching that person work and reporting those results to you.

In addition to my degrees, I studied topics directed toward a Professional Certificate Program in Sustainability at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a year. At the end of that year, I became a Certified Sustainability Professional Writer. My individual certifications include,  

• Sustainability: Strategies and Opportunities for Industry,
• Sustainable Infrastructure Systems: Planning and Operation,
• Life Cycle Assessment: Quantifying Environmental Impacts,
• Circular Economy: Transition for Future Sustainability,
• Persuasive Communication: Critical Thinking to Enhance Your Message.

In this book, I will address university programs that address sustainability and a circular economy at length. While the rest of the world has been arguing whether global warming is a thing, the universities have known the dangers of significant climate change and have been preparing for it. Topics in sustainability pervade all of the university disciplines from science and engineering to psychology to political science and even English at baccalaureate, master’s degrees, Ph.D., and beyond. 

Writing about sustainability since the 1980s: 

Long before I got my degree in technical writing, I was already a technical writer. In the 1980s, I was writing for Caterpillar, the tractor company, about the processes of recycling asphalt and concrete into new roads. Even in the 1980s, aggregates and good asphalt were getting hard to find. Recycling was a cost-effective solution. So, as engineers designed new processes and as contractors put those processes into the building of new roads and bridges, I wrote about those processes.

Later, I became Innovations Editor for Highway and Heavy Construction Magazine and continued writing about new technologies in construction for another ten years.  

Sustainability wannabe. From then until the present day, I have seen our march towards a fearful climate future with growing alarm. I thought I was doing what I could: I recycled, composted, drove vehicles that sipped gas, hyper-miled, over inflated my tires, watered frugally, kept household temperatures moderate, voted for ecologists, installed solar, and did all of the other things we, the concerned, do. But I always felt like I should somehow do more.

In the 1990s, I was working with some of the research engineers at Utah State University when I began researching the tools we would need to combat climate change and where we stood in that effort.

Unfortunately, we were not very far along back then. At the time, the big hope was that we would be able to replace diesel and gasoline with biofuels extracted from algae. There was a great deal of excitement, research, and money going into that hope. These algae produce a lot of oil, and once extracted, it is easily converted into biodiesel. It looked like an excellent solution for finding a replacement for fossil fuels. Unfortunately, after all these years, the algae thing just hasn’t worked out.  

Should I convince you to do something about climate change?

I don’t need to convince you. That you are reading this book implies that you are ready to pitch in as soon as you know what to pitch. I hope to give you good ideas ranging from the best recycling models to finding your role in creating a worldwide, sustainable economy.