Ann Arbor, Mich., has an aggressive goal of net-zero emissions by 2030, and it is taking its desire for clean power into its own hands.

The City Council this week approved plans to create a sustainable energy utility, or S.E.U., which is an organization that helps local residents use less energy.

Ann Arbor’s hope is to build a kind of local, renewable grid close to homes and businesses, with solar power and connected buildings that draw power from geothermal power sources. It is intended to be cheaper than a traditional energy grid and more affordable than adding solar panels or battery storage to individual homes.

https://archive.ph/aPaMU

In Orange County, California, wastewater from people’s homes is not considered waste. Instead of treating it and sending it to the ocean, Orange County purifies its wastewater with an additional three-step process. Each day, the county treats about 130 million gallons until it’s safe enough to drink.

Mehul Patel is with the Orange County Water District. He says the aquifer is a key source of water for people who live in the area. Replenishing it this way helps buffer water supplies as climate change makes droughts more frequent and severe.

Orange County has now been recycling its wastewater for more than a decade. And Patel says the approach could help other drought-prone regions, too.

As storms and floods become more frequent, intense, and expensive in terms of finances and lost lives, city life is becoming more precarious.

Amit Prothi, the director general of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, has spent decades working on making communities more resilient across more than 15 countries in North America, Asia, and Europe. He said that American infrastructure – like power lines, water drainage systems, and housing development – and building policies that govern such projects may not account for the changing risks brought about by climate change.

But there are several strategies U.S. cities can put in place to become more resilient. As a bonus, implementing these strategies can also make cities more beautiful and community-oriented – and in most cases, are also financial no-brainers.

In the U.S., coastal floods now happen three times more often than they did 30 years ago, and the frequency and intensity of coastal flooding are projected to increase into the future. By 2050, floods are expected to happen 10 times more often than they do today.

Climate Central’s Coastal Risk Finder provides maps and analysis of the people, homes, and land projected to be at risk from worsening coastal flooding. Around 2.5 million Americans in 1.4 million homes live in areas at risk from a severe coastal flood in 2050, with Florida, New York, and New Jersey facing the highest risks.

You can explore the data here: https://app.climatecentral.org/coastal-risk-finder

The U.S. Supreme Court this week declined to take up a closely watched lawsuit brought by 21 young people challenging the federal government’s fossil fuel energy system.

The high court’s decision Monday in Juliana v. United States ends a 10-year legal effort to hold the government accountable for knowingly endorsing an energy system that would destabilize the climate. The complaint claimed the situation infringed on the young plaintiffs’ rights to life, liberty and property and called on the government to phase out carbon emissions and implement national plans to address the energy and environmental problems they created.

The Supreme Court offered no reason for declining Juliana. Rodgers said the organization was considering options. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The human world of the early 21st century is dominated by science, cities, and high technology. However, both our modern way of life and our way of thinking about the world sprang up only within the past several centuries. Compared to our hunter-gatherer forebears, we might as well be from another planet.

Most people who live in industrialized nations now believe that humans are superior to the rest of nature. It is assumed that by using science and reason, along with giant helpings of technology, we can banish scarcity and ignorance. Modernity is thought to be the implicit goal of billions of years of biological evolution.

However, in the last few years a critical discourse about modernity has emerged in books, blogs, and academic literature. For these authors, modernity is the cause of the current polycrisis and the impending Great Unraveling. Modernity is likely to comprise a brief and intensely destructive moment in Earth history, because the way we live is unsustainable not just in its details, but in its inherent design.