Is climate change causing the heatwave?

A resident uses a bucket of water to put out embers on olive trees in Ourem, Portugal last week.   -   Copyright  PEDRO ROCHA / AFP

From Euronews.Green

For hundreds of millions of people in Europe, unbearably hot weather has been driving the reality of climate change home over the last month.

Temperatures in the UK hit 40C for the first time in recorded history, while France, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Croatia have been battling wildfires for days or even weeks.

We know that global warming is the cause and experts have said that the UK's recent record temperatures were made 10 times more likely by climate change. It’s a straightforward connection to make during a heatwave.

Despite this, dangerous climate sceptics are still being published in national newspapers, bending over backwards to claim it’s because the Earth is moving closer to the sun.

So if you’re feeling a little hazy on the science, or need some points to persuade the climate inactive in your life, we’ve got you covered.

The planet’s average temperature has risen by 1.1C since pre-industrial levels, largely because of the huge increase in greenhouse gases human activity have unleashed. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the biggest contributor to global warming; its concentration in the atmosphere has soared by 48 per cent between 1750 to 2020.

Like glass in a greenhouse, CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases trap the sun’s heat, causing less warmth to return to space.

As average temperatures rise - ever closer to the 1.5C mark which will be disastrous for many countries - the amount of weather at the ‘extremely hot’ end of the spectrum increases, making extreme heat events more frequent, longer, and more intense.

According to a recent expert study, a heatwave that would have had a one in 10 chance of occurring in any given year in the pre-industrial climate will now occur almost three times more frequently on average and be 1.2C hotter. A heatwave that would have struck one in 50 times will strike five times more often.

“I think we can very confidently say that every heatwave occurring today has been made more intense and more likely because of climate change,” said co-author Dr Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the UK’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.

In other words, we no longer need to wait for ‘attribution studies’ to prove that climate change is making heat events worse. Such research is still really valuable, however.

A study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that the heatwave which destroyed a Canadian village last summer - after a record-breaking 49.6C was followed by wildfire - was made 150 times more likely by climate change. It would have been “virtually impossible” without it, the climatologists concluded. Those who returned to rebuild Lytton were again evacuated last week.

The UK's recent record breaking heatwave in July was also made at least 10 times more likely by climate change, according to experts. The team at WWA adds that this is a conservative estimate as temperatures have risen higher than climate models simulate.

Dr Mariam Zachariah, who also works at the Grantham Institute and WWA, says “there have been so many extreme events happening this year, it has become difficult to look at every one.”

Focussing on events that have been most impactful to people and agriculture is a key part of climate communication, however.

WWA chose the UK for its most recent study because it is "particularly unaccustomed to very high temperatures as the ones that we have seen last week," according to Friederike Otto, a senior climate science lecturer at Imperial College London.

Temperatures recorded at two of the sites the group analysed would have been "statically impossible" if the world hadn't seen 1.2C of warming since the late 1800s, the study says.

Despite the alarming data sets she handles, Dr Zachariah tells Euronews Green, “the message is that we have to start acting, and I do have a lot of hope for us; if we act in time we can do enough to adapt and mitigate climate change for the future.”

Focus far more on methane

 From Inside Climate News

The Environmental Protection Agency is drastically undervaluing the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas when the agency compares methane’s climate impact to that of carbon dioxide, a new study concludes. 

The EPA’s climate accounting for methane is “arbitrary and unjustified” and three times too low to meet the goals set in the Paris climate agreement, the research report, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found.

The report proposes a new method of accounting that places greater emphasis on the potential for cuts in methane and other short-lived greenhouse gasses to help limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“If you want to keep the world from passing the 1.5 degrees C threshold, you’ll want to pay more attention to methane than we have so far,” said Rob Jackson, an earth system science professor at Stanford University and a co-author of the study. 

Methane is the second-leading contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide but is a far more potent greenhouse gas.Unlike carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, methane is a “short-lived climate pollutant” that stays in the atmosphere for approximately 12 years. 

The vastly different atmospheric lifetimes of methane and carbon dioxide make comparing the climate impact of the two gasses difficult.

The EPA, following guidance by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), quantifies how equal amounts of different climate pollutants like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide contribute to warming the planet over a 100-year period.

The comparison allows government agencies and the private sector to weigh the relative impacts of different greenhouse gasses and then determine how much emphasis to place on reducing their emissions. However, the use of the 100-year yardstick results in a greater emphasis on pollutants like carbon dioxide that remain in the atmosphere for a relatively long time and downplays the contribution of short-lived pollutants like methane, even though they do far more, on a metric ton-for-metric ton basis, to warm the atmosphere in the short-term.

Sam Abernethy, a Stanford doctoral student and the lead author of the study, said he became interested in the “global warming potential” of methane after looking into why the United States and other countries use the 100-year time frame.

Abernethy found that the period of 100 years was an “arbitrary and unjustified” choice adopted by the Kyoto Protocol, the first binding international climate agreement, in the 1990s, and used in international reporting and agreements ever since.

The 100-year measure was selected for the Kyoto agreement because it was the middle ground between two other possible time frames—20 years and 500 years—provided in early reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  

“I was confused at how something so arbitrary could be underpinning so much of climate policy and how we think about different greenhouse gasses,” Abernethy said.

Over a 100-year period, methane is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. However, over a 20-year period, a yardstick that climate scientists have previously suggested would be a more appropriate timeframe, methane is 81 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

“It’s a huge swing in how much we value methane, and therefore how many of our resources go towards mitigating it,” Abernethy said.

However, the use of either time frame remains largely arbitrary.

To determine a “justified” time frame, the Stanford researchers took the Paris climate goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as a starting point, and then calculated the most appropriate time frame to meet that goal. 

Based on climate models using scenarios where global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees, they determined the planet would reach 1.5 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels in approximately 24 years.  

“If that’s the case, and you’re using a 100-year frame for methane, then you’re not going to put enough value on reducing methane emissions compared to other greenhouse gasses,” Jackson said..

Over a 24 year time period methane is 75 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. This is three times higher than 25, the current value that the EPA uses for methane.

“It’s not inherently wrong,” Abernethy said of the 100-year time frame. “It’s just not aligned with our current [climate] goal.”

Jackson said that carbon dioxide remains the most important greenhouse gas. But he  added that additional attention must be paid to methane if the world is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Source: Wikipedia

Six key lifestyle changes to cut emissions

 From The Guardian 

People in well-off countries can help avert climate breakdown by making six relatively straightforward lifestyle changes, according to research from three leading institutions.

The study found that sticking to six specific commitments – from flying no more than once every three years to only buying three new items of clothing a year – could rein in the runaway consumption that is partially driving the climate crisis.

The research carried out by academics at Leeds University and analysed by experts at the global engineering firm Arup and the C40 group of world cities, found that making the six commitments could account for a quarter of the emissions reductions required to keep the global heating down to 1.5C.

The study was published on Monday alongside the launch of a new climate movement to persuade and support relatively well off people to make “The Jump” and sign up to the six pledges.

Tom Bailey, co-founder of the campaign said: “This ends once and for all the debate about whether citizens can have a role in protecting our earth. We don’t have time to wait for one group to act, we need ‘all action from all actors now’.”

Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its “bleakest warning yet”, saying the climate crisis was accelerating rapidly with only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages.

Bailey said as the world reaches the edge of ecological collapse, it needed a workable alternative to this ‘universal consumer society’ in the next decade.

“The research is clear that governments and the private sector have the largest role to play but it is also equally clear from our analysis that individuals and communities can make a huge difference.”

The Jump campaign asks people to sign up to take the following six “shifts” for one, three or six months:

•  Eat a largely plant-based diet, with healthy portions and no waste
•  Buy no more than three new items of clothing per year
•  Keep electrical products for at least seven years
•  Take no more than one short haul flight every three years and one long haul flight every eight years
•  Get rid of personal motor vehicles if you can – and if not keep hold of your existing vehicle for longer
•  Make at least one life shift to nudge the system, like moving to a green energy, insulating your home or changing pension supplier

The campaign was officially kicked off on Saturday and Bailey said there was already a growing movement emerging in response to the evidence with Jump groups up and running around the country.

The research is based on a study by academics at Leeds University, Arup and the C40 group of leading cities which assesses the impact of consumption by people in the world’s leading cities.

Analysis of that data has found that the six steps set out above could cut global emissions by between 25% and 27%.

My own six recommendations are:

1. Become vegetarian or vegan.  ±15% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from animal husbandry
2. Buy your electricity from a green electricity provider.  Don't choose a provider that uses "offsets" to pretend it's green.  Offsets don't actually cut emissions, and are often scams.  ±30% of global emissions come from electricity generation.
3. If you can afford it, and own your own home, put solar panels on your roof.  Payback periods vary from country to country, but the worst I've seen is 10 years.  
4. Get an EV.  For most of us that's still too expensive, but an ordinary hybrid, like the Toyota Corolla hybrid, will still cut your transport emissions by 40-50% and only costs 7% more than the petrol version, while it will save you its extra up-front cost in lower fuel bills within a couple of years.  ±20% of global emissions come from transport.
5. Fly as infrequently as possible.  Including the warming effect of NOX (nitrous oxide -- N2O) emissions from jet engines, flying is responsible for ± 5% of greenhouse gas emissions.
6. Vote for the political party which has a genuine plan to cut emissions in your country and region.  Once again, watch out for vague promises and distant targets.  To avoid temperatures rising by more than 1.5 degrees C we need to cut emissions by 5% compound every year for the next 50 years.  Realistic climate policies won't just be grand statements of resolve, but concrete actions year-by-year.  Examples: "we will phase out coal generation by 2030", or "we will set rising target percentage sales for EVs/PHEVs/hybrids for the next 10 years", or "we will introduce a price on carbon". 

The IPCC report: 7 key takeaways

 From The Age

Every seven years or so, like a recurring global spasm, scientists from around the world update their understanding of how the planet is heating up, what the impacts will be and what we might do about it.

Known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the resulting reports serve as what one contributing author calls a “golden book” of climate science in three volumes plus a synthesis report.

The first volume of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) was released on Monday and lays out in exacting detail in about 4000 pages how jamming our atmosphere with greenhouse gases is altering the climate.

What’s changed from previous Assessment Reports?

Temperatures, for one thing. The mean temperature at the surface – where we live – has warmed 0.24 degrees since the 2013-14 Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) evaluated data to 2011. Let’s call it a quarter. We’re now about 1.1 degrees warmer than the 1850-1900 baseline and, given the slow process of how our extra emissions trap more heat from the sun, we will heat further even if carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gas pollution ceased today. (Spoiler: They won’t.)

Apart from more refined estimates, AR6 has stepped up regional forecasts including carving Australia into four zones. The blame humans carry for altering the climate – known as attribution research – also gets more prominence. (Spoiler: we are responsible for virtually all of it.)

Do these reports do much?

These IPCC reports aren’t meant merely to gather dust (though they do), but inform governments (Intergovernmental is a clue) and the public (that might nudge those policymakers to act).

Since the first assessment report (presciently dubbed FAR) in 1990 said, “the climate is warming, folks”, we’ve belched 1 trillion tonnes (1,000,000,000,000) of CO2 by burning fossil fuels and clearing land. It’s also 41 per cent of all the estimated emissions since 1750, so if it’s a pedal we’re hitting, it’s not the brake. Temperatures, particularly since the 1970s have been going one way, and the best climate models are doing an increasingly good job at matching observations.

1.5 degrees and all that

Remember Paris and that 2015 climate summit where almost 200 nations agreed to keep warming to between 1.5 degrees and “well below 2 degrees”? Well, this instalment of AR6 is meant to guide leaders when they gather (or Zoom into) a summit in the less glamorous Glasgow in November. (The other two reports, on impacts and what emissions action we could take, won’t land until next year.)

Remember, though, that 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees are both arbitrary. Look at Greece this week, Canada or California last month, or our home-fired Black Summer last year to get a glimpse of how juicing the climate is already raising the odds of extreme nasties. Heatwaves are one of them.

Oh, and as the 1.5-degree target represents a 20-year average, don’t be surprised if we cross that marker in an El Nino year (when the Pacific Ocean unhelpfully doesn’t absorb as much heat and gives some back) this decade. We hit that mark in a month during the 2015-16 El Nino, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s Blair Trewin.

Barbecued and soaked Australia

The improved resolution of climate models has allowed this IPCC report to provide a closer look at how regions of the world might fare as the planet heats up.

Land warms faster than the ocean, and that happens to be where most of us live. In Australia, we’ve warmed about 1.4 degrees so far, since 1910. Projected warming doesn’t make for a happy scene, particularly for maximums, and that’s not considering heatwave spikes.

Rainfall is likely to be heavier when it comes, as the atmosphere holds about 7 per cent more moisture per degree. Unfortunately, southern Australia will remain on its drying trend, particularly in winter, as west-to-east storm tracks shifting closer to Antarctica. Other unpleasant outcomes await those living near the coast as sea levels rise, while the “intensity, frequency and duration of fire-weather events are projected to increase throughout Australia” the report states with “high confidence”.

Mid-century carbon neutrality?

The third AR6 report will explore in more detail what fossil pathways we might saunter down, but this one gives us a taste of what we can expect. It presents five specific options, ranging from low to high emissions, and includes methane, nitrous oxide (think fertiliser) and other heat-trapping gases.

Taking the lowest scenario (awkwardly named “shared socio-economic pathway”) won’t get us to net-zero emissions or so-called climate neutrality this side of 2050.

Remember, that target is what many rich nations have signed up for, while the Morrison government says it’s a “preferred” goal. Better not get stuck on a higher or moderately high emissions path or we’ll never get there.

So, how much can we burn?

Let’s say every time you flip on an electric toaster or drive your car (assuming you’re not offsetting both by buying renewable energy or planting a tree, or so on), you’re helping warm up our planet. (Big picture: every trillion tonnes of CO2 likely causes a best-estimate of 0.45 degrees warming.)

Now, we burn or emit about 42 billion tonnes of CO2 a year. The AR6 report puts a range of probability risks around what we might aim for. If it’s to keep warming to 1.5 degrees or stay thereabouts, and we think we’d like a 50-50 chance, then we have 500 billion tonnes of C02 to go, or 12 years of current pollution levels.

Or as Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes puts it: “I don’t want my future based on the toss of a coin.” Who flies in a plane with a 50 per cent risk of crashing?

Tipping points and other unfathomables (for now)

Professor Pitman is not alone in thinking we’re all but set for 1.5 degrees of warming. Pep Canadell, one of the AR6 report authors and senior CSIRO researcher says “there’s a lot of warming all the way to 2050. And it’s coming fast”.

The report, if anything, errs on the side of caution, noting the limited data on so-called “low probability, high impact” events such as the disintegration of Antarctic ice sheets (think more than 15 metres of sea-level rise) or the halt of the Gulf Stream. For the latter, (fancy name: Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), the report says “there is medium confidence that there will not be an abrupt collapse before 2100″. Not so reassuring if you live in northern Europe.

 

What keeps people like Professor Pitman awake at nights, though, is the prospect that the biosphere won’t behave as it has for the past couple of centuries of our carbon-plus experiment. The AR6 report notes that as emissions rise, the land and ocean won’t be so cooperative and take up as much of the extra emissions we’re sending up.

“That’s a big, big deal,” he said. “The specific human cuts of emissions necessary to achieve any particular CO2 level becomes harder.“

If the atmosphere keeps it, we’d better come up with some good ways to take it back out, and fast.

[Read more here]

Truth will out

Source: NOAA

From Open Mind, Tamino's climate blog:

The deniers lost.

Their credibility is so low that further efforts to deny the truth only make it more obvious. The only people who will buy their utter crap, are those who cannot be reasoned with.

For twelve years I’ve been blogging, mainly to prove how utterly wrong, how empty-headed, how gullible are the “arguments” from climate deniers. I followed others, yet more joined later, and together we did it. They got pwned.

Problem is: in the decades it took to accomplish this, our society, our governments, our world, has not faced the real problem. The problem they were trying so hard to deny all along. Yes, truth will out, but it can take its time getting its shoes on.

Deniers of the crisis of man-made climate change: you have done wrong. You have done evil. Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

Most people aren't convinced, emotionally, by numbers and statistics.  The steady rise in average global temperatures is visible on charts, in the data tables.  But it was only when it started to impact our everyday lives that ordinary people started to believe.  When 100-year floods start happening every couple of years, they notice.  When 100-year droughts happen often, everywhere, they notice.  When heatwaves start killing people in their thousands, they notice.

It's only going to get worse.  The level of CO₂ in the atmosphere keeps on rising, at an accelerating rate.  Global temperatures keep on rising.  Climate extremes are just going to get worse.  The politics of global warming are only going to get more fractious.  The Green New Deal, the 'Stop Adani' caravans—these are just the beginning.  The pressure to do something to reduce carbon, methane and nitrous oxide emissions isn't going to get less.  It's going to intensify.  No country not pulling its weight in this struggle will be allowed to get away with it.  The denialists have lost.

A low cost, low carbon grid.

It makes it much easier to argue for a carbon-neutral electricity grid if the costs are lower than the costs of coal.  In the graph below, I've used Lazard's estimates for different USA generating technologies, supplemented by company announcements and my own estimates.

I've used Lazard's LCOE (levelised cost of electricity) estimates for wind, utility-scale solar, gas and coal unchanged.  Note that these estimates exclude both subsidies and the implicit costs imposed on society by pollution, including emissions of carbon dioxide.  Lazard assume for all their calculations an 8% cost of debt and a 12% cost of equity.  If we were to assume half these rates, the cost of renewables would fall proportionately more than the costs of gas, coal and nuclear because in the case of renewables almost all the cost is upfront, whereas other technologies have maintenance and fuel costs, which being further into the future have less impact on the LCOE the higher the discount rate.  The corollary is that in countries with higher interest rates, perhaps because they have greater political risk, higher inflation, or less access to capital, nuclear and coal would appear relatively more attractive.

For CSP (concentrated solar power), I've used public announcements about Solar Reserve's PPAs for new CSP plants around the world.  Lazard gives higher figures, but they don't seem credible in the context of actual signed PPAs over the last year to 18 months.  Note that the most recent signings (Chile & Australia) have been at the lower end of that range, and that the PPA (subsidised) of their first CSP plant in Nevada  was US$135/MWh, which compares with average recent PPAs of US$67/MWh. Big decline over 5 years.

For wind plus power-to-gas (storage) I've assumed that the power-to-gas part costs 3 times the cost of wind alone, but is only needed for 20% of the time (10 weeks a year), based on previous work I did.  That is, the costs assume there is no wind at all for 20% of the days each year, or half average wind for 40% of the year.  They also assume there is already a natural gas grid and peaking power gas plants, which is true in most developed countries as well as many developing countries.

Lazard does not include the cost of de-commissioning in its estimates for the LCOE of nuclear, so I've added an arbitrary 10% to their estimates.  I think Lazard's costings are based on the new generation IV Westinghouse AP1000 reactors that were being built at Vogtle in Georgia, USA.  Westinghouse has gone bankrupt because of the huge cost overruns at Vogtle, so I suspect Lazard's estimates for nuclear are too low.  By comparison, the new reactors at Hinkley Point in the UK (10 years behind schedule!) have a PPA of about $140/MWh (£92.50 in 2012 prices), but that's not fixed.  It rises in line with yearly CPI inflation.  (All the costs of renewables in the chart above are fixed in nominal terms.)  Adding inflation indexing to the PPA significantly increases the effective LCOE.  Also, the PPA for Hinkley Point does not include the cost of de-commissioning, nor the benefit of government loan guarantees.  

Natural gas prices in the US are lower than in other countries, so outside the USA, gas would be more expensive than shown.  Even though natural gas produces half the CO2 emissions of coal when burnt, unburnt methane is 28-36 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 is*.  Leakages from gas extraction and distribution can in principle be reduced to close to zero, but that will clearly up the cost of gas.  Also, the momentum against fracking is building.  It's very clear that it's environmentally very costly.  Expect the price of gas to keep on rising.

I have included the cost of batteries to "firm" the power from wind or solar (solar only shown in chart).  Extrapolating from the costs of the Tesla battery bank in South Australia, the cost of batteries is at best US$72/MWh, assuming a 15 year life. So for 8 hours, that would add at least $24/MWh to wind or gas.  However, the net cost would be less, because batteries, like CSP, could store power when it is abundant and cheap and release it when it's expensive as well as providing frequency/oscillation control and current flow.  I've assumed a net $20/MWh.

I won't say my calculations are definitive, but the chart is telling, isn't it? It's abundantly clear what the shape of the electricity grid will be--all the technologies on the left of the chart, except for gas, because gas still adds to global warming, and anyway is more expensive outside the USA than is depicted in the chart.  Even in the USA, the prominence of gas in the grid is unlikely to last.

As we replace aging coal and nuclear power stations, it is obvious it will be with wind, solar, CSP, batteries and power-to-gas.  Not just because we want lower emissions and cleaner air but because they will be cheaper.  This gives the lie to the oft-repeated claim that switching to renewables would cause the economy and our living standards to collapse.



* Nitrous oxide (N2O) is 265-298 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2.  N2O is produced in agriculture (67%) and by burning fossil fuels or bushlands and forests.  Don't confuse it with NO2, or nitrogen dioxide, which is a potent pollutant produced in car engines by burning petrol or diesel.

Air pollution inside cars

Air pollution inside cars is 9 to 12 times as bad as it is outside cars.  And it's bad enough there.

Source

Children are at risk of dangerous levels of air pollution in cars because exposure to toxic air is often far higher inside than outside vehicles, a former government chief scientific adviser has warned. 

Prof Sir David King, writing for the Guardian, says walking or cycling to school would be much better for children’s health. The warning comes as the UK government faces a third legal defeat for failing to tackle the country’s illegal levels of air pollution. Air pollution is known to damage children’s developing lungs but recent research also indicates it harms children’s ability to learn at school and may damage their DNA. 

“Children sitting in the backseat of vehicles are likely to be exposed to dangerous levels [of air pollution],” said King. “You may be driving a cleaner vehicle but your children are sitting in a box collecting toxic gases from all the vehicles around you.” 

“The best thing for all our health is to leave our cars behind,” said King, who now advises the British Lung Foundation. “It’s been shown that the health benefits of walking and cycling far outweigh the costs of breathing in pollution. If more drivers knew the damage they could be doing to their children, I think they’d think twice about getting in the car.” 

A range of experiments, some as far back as 2001, have shown that drivers inside vehicles are exposed to far higher levels of air pollution than those walking or cycling along the same urban routes. 

Prof Stephen Holgate, an asthma expert at Southampton University and chair of the Royal College of Physicians working party on air pollution, said there was enough evidence to tell parents that walking and cycling exposes their children to less air pollution than driving. 

“It is nine to 12 times higher inside the car than outside,” he said. “Children are in the back of the car and often the car has the fans on, just sucking the fresh exhaust coming out of the car or lorry in front of them straight into the back of the car.”

[Read more here]

I have to say I didn't know this.  

I'm all in favour of more walking and cycling.  But even if you walk or cycle you are still exposed to nitrogen dioxide (not to be confused with nitrous oxide, N2O) and various extremely unhealthy particulates.  Plus if you cycle you have a much higher risk of accident than if you are driving a car (that's why I stopped cycling--the risks were just too high)  And sometimes you simply have to use your car, especially in cities where public transport is bad.  Whatever work-arounds we try, the truth is that petrol(gasoline)/diesel cars, lorries, and busses don't just emit carbon dioxide, they emit other toxic muck, which kills people.  

The solution is obvious: electric vehicles (EVs).  But it's a collective solution, because it's not enough for you to replace your ICE car with an EV, if everybody else continues to use their filthy petrol or diesel cars and lorries.  Yes, at the margin we can make a small difference.  But we're still breathing in everybody else's toxic waste and getting sick because of it.  We have to act as a society to get rid of ICE vehicles, by regulation and tax incentives.  The problem is that the Right equates "collective" with "socialist", and refuses to act.  

The good news (the topic for my next post) is that the cost of electric cars is falling so fast that within 5 years they will be cheaper than ICEs.  So even if the Right drags their feet, the car fleet will start to get cleaner.  But it will still take time: average car life is around 10 or 11 years, so even when 100% of new car sales is made up by EVs, it will take a decade after that point for the whole car fleet to be pollution free, unless we offer owners of worn-out old ICEs an incentive to swap their cars for EVs.  For me, and for everybody's health, a 100% EV fleet can't come soon enough.