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Darling Wind Farm, South Africa

Energy is sustainable if it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Sustainability issues in the current energy system include high emissions of greenhouse gases, air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass, and pervasive energy poverty in developing countries. The scientific literature on limiting global warming describes pathways in which the world rapidly phases out coal-fired power plants, produces more electricity from clean sources such as wind and solar, shifts towards using electricity instead of fuels in sectors such as transport and heating buildings, and takes measures to conserve energy. These changes would involve a system-wide transformation of the way energy is produced, stored, distributed, and consumed. Decarbonization of the energy system would bring major co-benefits to human health and can be done in concert with providing universal access to electricity and to clean cooking. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Topre switch

... that Topre's conical-spring capacitive keyboard switch (example pictured) was inspired by a mosquito coil?
... that the 1936 Northeast Flood directly led to the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1936 by the United States Congress?
... that with a force of just 3,500 men, French lieutenant colonel Natalis Constant Darche was able to hold up the advance of the German 5th Army for three weeks at Longwy in August 1914?
... that Piecemeal, who appeared in The Incredible Hulk: The Pantheon Saga, was considered one of the strangest characters to appear in a Marvel video game?
... that according to science fiction essayist Jacques Van Herp, the novella The End of Illa caused the temporary decline of French science fiction?
... that Mother Teresa defended Jesuit priest and child molester Donald McGuire against sexual abuse allegations?
... that in 1987, fans of C.D. Guadalajara attempted to dress the statue of Minerva in the team's shirt?
... that Lieutenant Colonel Richard John Andrews survived the Second Boer War, the First World War, the Russian Civil War and the Irish War of Independence only to be killed by a defective tool in his garage?

In the news

Fumio Kishida

The Liberal Democratic Party, led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (pictured), wins a majority of seats in the Japanese general election.
A military coup in Sudan, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, deposes the government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev is re-elected President of Uzbekistan.
Ahead of Barbados becoming a republic, Sandra Mason is elected as the country's first president.

On this day

November 2: All Souls' Day (Western Christianity)

Police during the 2007 Georgian demonstrations

619 – Emperor Gaozu allowed the assassination of a khagan of the Western Turkic Khaganate by Eastern Turkic rivals, one of the earliest events in the Tang campaigns against the Western Turks.
1917 – The British government issued the Balfour Declaration in support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population.
1963 – President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam was assassinated, marking the culmination of a coup d'état led by Dương Văn Minh.
1984 – The serial killer Velma Barfield became the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1962.
2007 – In Tbilisi, Georgia, tens of thousands of people demonstrated (police pictured) against the allegedly corrupt government of president Mikheil Saakashvili.

Bettisia Gozzadini (d. 1261)
Anne, Princess Royal and Princess of Orange (b. 1709)
Harriet Bosse (d. 1961)

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Today's featured picture

William Adams Richardson (November 2, 1821 – October 19, 1896) was an American lawyer who served as the 29th United States secretary of the treasury from 1873 to 1874. During his tenure, the Panic of 1873 swept the nation and caused a depression that lasted five years. He controversially responded by issuing $26 million in greenbacks, which averted the crisis, although there was debate as to whether he had the authority to do so. He was later appointed a judge, and subsequently the chief justice, of the Court of Claims. This line engraving of Richardson was produced around 1902 by the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) as part of a BEP presentation album of the first 42 secretaries of the treasury.

Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva

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