Bill, the heron passage is the one that's staying with me. "No one held a memorial service" — that's it exactly. We've built rituals for every kind of loss except this one, the slow kind, the kind that happens one missing bird at a time until the marsh just goes quiet.
I keep coming back to that same tension in my own writing — the $480 billion in avoided costs is real and it matters, but it's never what moves anyone to actually change. It's the empty rookery. It's the one heron raising her young alone. That's the number nobody can argue with, because it doesn't require a spreadsheet to understand.
Thank you for holding both of those truths in the same piece.
Yes, it's a story that touches our heart that motivates us. I just read one. Last September, the Gen Z kids in Madagascar risked their lives protesting lack of power. The grid goes down half the time and most rural folks don't even have the grid. Their protests inspired a coup and the President fled the country. In the last 9 months since the coup, little has changed.
Madagascar needs electricity for economic growth. GDP has been stagnant since France liberated Madagascar three generations ago.
Would you lend $25 or more for this solar vendor in rural Madagascar? They have proven their credit worthiness to us. Repayments in 13 months.
"once you’ve installed renewable energy you no longer have to pay for fuel." Not quite true, Bill. I pay Vt Elec. Coop $28/month for the privilege of having my solar panels hooked up to their grid. And depending on how much credit I get when there's more sun in the summer, I still end up paying something more -- anywhere between $100-$200/ month in the winter. And that's with heat pumps, a whole lot of insulation, and southern exposure solar gain.
I think the point is the sunlight is free, not that you have enough panels to supply 100% energy in the winter. My Oregon utility charges me $25 for the solar meter as well and I'm providing them power with non-existent transmission losses. The power companies hate competition. That is something we need to change
Here in Houston, Texas, the oil people whine about being abandoned by bankers. The ARE paying a lot more for loans than renewable energy is. Their capital expenditures are almost half of what they were a decade ago says RMI.
Green stocks are now third largest industry says London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). And green stocks are paying better returns, 12% better. In counting they included companies with at least a fifth of income was environmentally focused: solar, clean water, energy efficiency, etc. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19062026/green-economy-hits-10-trillion-in-market-value/
For four years, banks have been making more money on green than fossil said Nat Bullard's 2026 slidedeck. Slide # 40. In slide 42, he said annual investment in power generation is equal to fossil fuels. In slide #54, Nat said the S&P Global Clean Energy Transition Index is a lot higher than the S&P 500 or NASDAQ 100. In #67 he said China is doing half the investing.
Please move your own money to institutions that support clean energy. At least stay out of the big banks and move to a credit union. I found my car insurance company, State Farm, was investing my premiums paid in in fossil fuels. So I switched to AAA who doesn't. Learn more at https://www.alignmoneywithvalues.org/
A major issue is that Big Oil stock valuations are based on their oil reserves, so basically they have to keep pumping for those reserves to have a value. That's why they won't give up and will do everything they can (including financing lobbying and institutions and other actors of AG climate science denial) to discredit clean energy and climate concern.
fossil fuel people are a minority. But they are organized. We are organizing too. Bill founded www.ThirdAct.org to organize elders for climate. It's my favorite group.
Re. balcony solar, the states approving them require the units to be UL certified - it's called UL3700. Unfortunately, there are no panels on the market at this time (Including the Bright Solar ones) that are compliant. You risk burning down your house (and not having your insurance cover it) if you are an early adopter of an uncertified panel.
Bill, please use your voice and platforms to advocate for keeping the technology to recycle panels and batteries cleanly apace with adoption. I am sure there are comparisons for the byproducts of all kinds of energy production, but just as a human who is able to enjoy the woods here in VT, it hurts my brain to think about the consequences of recycling technology not being available as panels and batteries age out on a massive scale.
Sometimes I wonder if there is a quote somewhere about a civilization being judged by how it deals with the garbage it generates.... seems like there should be!
Google Ai says To recycle the entire unit responsibly, utilize specialized solar recycling firms like SOLARCYCLE or First America Metal Recycling. Or sell them for $20 or $30 on craigslist.
Bill, while your efforts to sound the alarm on our climate emergency are undeniable, your article "Setting money on fire" exposes a profound paradox at the heart of mainstream environmentalism. By framing the transition to renewable energy as a way to "save GDP" and protect financial portfolios, you are attempting to solve our ecological crisis using the very capitalistic logic and metrics that created it. This is not pragmatism; it is a systemic contradiction that avoids the deeper, uncomfortable reality that infinite physical growth on a finite planet is structurally impossible, regardless of the energy source.
The fundamental flaw in this narrative is the illusion of decoupling. Swapping our power source does not resolve ecological overshoot; a global "green" transition still requires an unprecedented, front-loaded consumption of fossil fuels, devastating mineral extraction, and massive material throughput. Furthermore, this transition relies on a deeply inequitable "lifeboat" dynamic where the electrified, high-tech future of the Global North is built directly on the back of intensive, destructive resource extraction in the Global South. Framing this shift as a clean, painless economic win glosses over the stark reality of who actually bears the physical costs of these new supply chains.
We have long passed the point where we can negotiate a profitable, painless exit from planetary limits. To suggest we can preserve our hyper-consumptive way of life while keeping the global financial ledger happy is simply rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship. We do not need a more financially efficient way to fuel an unsustainable global machine; we need the systemic honesty to face our limits and prepare for an inevitable, deep contraction of our resource use🤔 E&OE
There’s a saying Nan, you’ve maybe heard it: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”.
I’m sorry Nan, it won’t make a scrap of difference, just because you wish it to be so doesn’t mean it will. The longer you believe these fantasies the more you’ll need Sarah Wilson’s “I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World”.
Globally only ~20% of energy is supplied IN THE FORM OF ELECTRICITY, and over 40% of that is provided by REbuildables, sorry, Renewable/Alternative Energy (of which Nuclear Power is a 9% share), leaving ~80%, that’s right ~80%, of total global energy still reliant on FOSSIL FUELS.
Nan, Read the below👇 just so you understand I’ve not biased the question in any way, then paste it into your favourite AI/LLM/Search Engine, to gain an understand what’s really happening.
"According to official International Energy_ Agency (IEA) reports, data shows that global fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions are hitting all-time highs despite record-breaking renewable energy deployment. Explain the macroeconomic and systemic factors that cause this apparent paradox. In your answer, explicitly address to what extent the fossil fuels consumed during the heavy manufacturing, supply chains, and infrastructure build-out of renewable energy converters contribute to this global rise in emissions compared to general global energy demand growth."🤔
The energy transition means no need to EXTRACT and ship all those fossil fuels. Humanity saves. It saves shipping cost. It saves ecological destruction of drilling and fracking. Electric transport is 3 or 4 times more miles per unit of energy. Humanity saves.
I keep trying to teach my activist pals my lovely theories but they aren't interested. I'm doing well to spoon feed them a couple of ideas. The idea I focus on now is "We can do this. Solar and other cleantech are selling like hotcakes. Oil use is about to fall hard and fast. Tell your friends to divest to avoid being stuck with stranded assets."
Here in Texas we need a few celebrations of our accomplishments. The morale here stinks. We in Texas are in the heart of a culture war over oil. Too many of us get punched in the nose.
My point is, that we have to keep our message simple. Alan Atkisson said humanity has the brains of an amoeba. I do love his model of social change on https://www.context.org/iclib/ic28/atkisson/
My ask for you is "How can you frame your message positively?"
I deeply appreciate your candor, Nan, and I completely understand the psychological toll of fighting these battles on the front lines in Texas. When you’re in the heart of a culture war, morale is a vital survival resource, and celebrating localised shifts away from direct extraction is a necessary way to keep spirits high. We are indeed dealing with a collective human response that often resembles an amoeba's reflexes, and simple, encouraging narratives are essential tools for immediate, local coping.
But to answer your question of how to frame this positively without selling a comforting illusion: the genuine positive framing lies in the profound liberation of facing the truth. True positivity isn’t promising that we can transition our high-tech, hyper-consumptive lifestyle onto solar panels without consequence, which merely shifts the ecological debt and devastating extraction to the Global South. Instead, the positive message is that accepting our biophysical limits frees us from the exhausting, impossible task of trying to sustain an unsustainable global machine. It allows us to stop frantically trying to "save" a broken, high-energy arrangement and start focusing on what we can actually preserve: our local communities, our shared humanity, and our direct relationship with the natural world.
Framing a deep resource contraction positively means presenting it not as a tragic defeat, but as a long-overdue return to reality. There is immense peace, dignity, and genuine wealth in learning to live with less, stepping off the treadmill of endless consumption, and appreciating what nature provides for free. If you and your activist pals are looking for a roadmap on how to navigate this without succumbing to doom, I highly recommend Sarah Wilson’s recently published book, “I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World”. It is an incredibly thoughtful guide that confronts the reality of systemic collapse head-on, while showing us exactly how to find profound beauty, meaning, and humanity within a crumbling reality🤔
Herons often abandon rookeries and set up shop elsewhere--this may have happened in the case recounted here, but it's hard to know. So maybe there is some hope in this otherwise distressing incident.
Reading this makes me wonder if the trump admin is actively exacerbating climate change. If so, to what end?
Mar el lago is at sea level. It would be inundated. Would they build a wall around it? Would it become an island, perhaps an independent citystate in the sea of what used to be Florida?
I was just confirming how bad the smoke is, wasn't try to get anyone to do anything. I don't believe there is much more the Canadians can do to keep the forest fires down, might just have to hope for rain.
To me, in this time of drought and fire in the West, I feel like we are killing the whole world of fauna. Yes, I feel deeply sad. I live in a more remote place than I did in childhood, yet I have not seen a turtle or tortoise outside a park in years.
Herons do move their rookeries for various reasons unbeknownst to us humans, many things can and do effect them in addition to climate change. Might be wise to check in with a local birding group to see if it’s been relocated or what exactly is going on….. Great Blue Herons do raise their young in groups from what I’ve seen…..
This message is to Jane and Keith, who are absolutely right in feeling swindled and punished by their respective utility companies which are legal monopolies who feel they can do anything they want with the grid. There's a different world outside of Amerika, however, as Henry Miller always referred to it. Here in France where I'm living I find it a more democratic government which is more dedicated to the 'welfare of the people'. For example, it has long had a national healthcare program.
Back to your situation. When 'plug-and-play' solar hit the market here in France many people bought them (as I did). Some did so with a wish for green electricity and to reduce their electric bill; others, however, saw an investment scheme to make money by running their electric meters backward with a large number of solar panels and then have their utility pay them! The French electric utilities saw the danger to their profits in both cases and started to fabricate restrictions, making up 'dangerous scenarios' if users (the technically unwashed) could access 'their' grid at will.
Accordingly, the utilities immediately put up a 'fire wall' of restrictions if customers tried to install a solar kit. It ran something like this (fasten your seat belts): before you could plug in your solar panel you would need a 'qualified' electrical engineering company to inspect your home's electrical system to make sure there were no 'faults' that could endanger you or their grid. If that went okay, then you would next need a 'certified' solar installer to just plug in your solar panel to make sure it would not compromise 'their' grid or spark a fire. All this would cost you a lot more money than what the solar panels cost you. And if you still wanted go ahead with your plug-in solar panel dream, then getting an appointment with any of their 'approved' electrical engineering companies and 'certified' solar installers would take several years! Good luck, as they say.
When the French government got wind of this scandal the utilities were foisting on solar users, it quickly went into action. Within little more than a week, the French legislative Assembly in Paris passed a sweeping national law stating emphatically that all French households had a clear right to generate all the electricity they used without any restrictions or further processing. Period.
The French government did, however, have their technology staff investigate the utilities' claim that 'serious' damage to the electrical grid could happen. The technical group reported back there was no such threats regarding home solar panels. The one difficulty, however, was that if the utilities had to shut down the entire grid to repair it (very rare), the connected solar panel outputs could pose a danger to repair crews. In response to this, the solar panel producers offered a quick and easy fix. This was a small module connected between the solar panel and its plug-in cable. The module senses the line frequency in the home circuit (grid), if it doesn't sense it, i.e., the grid is shut down, the module disconnects the solar panel. No danger to repair crews. Everyone who bought a plug-and-play solar panel got this security fix, at no cost.
I would like to clarify something here, as well. In the US utility companies are given monopoly rights over the regions they service, that's why they can act as little dictators over their American customers. This was the same in France when I first moved here, EDF was the boss of French electricity and it sternly ruled and prices were high, choices inflexible, modernization moved at a snail's pace. Then the European Union came into existence and this abolished all national utility monopolies such as electricity and telephone. Overnight new utilities sprang up offering lower prices to customers and more customer service. At that moment EDF immediately had a new competitor: GDF (Gaz de France). No one was the 'boss' anymore.
A short while later something else happened that made me smile. A group of investors mostly related to the Greenpeace movement suddenly 'opened shop' on the French electrical grid, calling themselves Enercoop (as in energy cooperative). What they offered customers was something unique at that time: electricity service generated exclusively from wind turbines and solar panels! When I called EDF to drop my subscription with them they told me I had to wait several months (cooling off period?) and I also had to fill out a number of forms related to bank charging authorization.
With the wind out of my sails at that point, I called Enercoop and told them of my delay to join with them. The agent told me not to worry, asked for my bank account number and then my electric meter number. I gave the agent these items hoping it would set up things ahead of time while I dealt with the EDF forms. Then the agent told me they would take care of everything necessary and from that day forward Enercoop would be my electricity provider. I was amazed and have been with them ever since. This is the difference between free-market providers and state-authorized monopolies.
My plug-and-play solar panel is happily generating green electricity everyday on my terrace which I'm using to reduce my electricity bill, with no 'penalty'.
"The most basic point, of course, and yet one often lost in the debate is that once you’ve installed renewable energy you no longer have to pay for fuel."
Couldn't agree more. We need to drill this into people across all political ideologies, because this is one of the most obvious benefits. I was curious what that actually looks like in practice, and it is deeply satisfying that now I can actually pull data from a red state, Texas, and not a blue one to see this in action. Watching the cost of power generation plummet when Texas's solar fleet turns on is a wonderful thing. https://samholmes285.substack.com/p/solar-farms-are-saving-everyone-money
I live in Texas, oil country, and most here are welcoming the energy transition. Those who still don't probably are folks who still work in the industry or who have money in it. Changing jobs is a lot of work. Christine lost her fossil fuel job and took some time off. And then got a green job. Lots of folks have been laid off. Maybe 10% of the industry. But that leaves the 90% of folks who have the same old oily job they have had for so long.
In short, inertia keeps the Oil Industry going. That and the culture war. We say nasty things about them and they back at us.
It doesn't help that talking about the climate crisis at work is ... frowned on. At least.
At a parade, I got to chatting with one guy about my electric car. He was surprised that it was so fuel efficient. Apparently his friends at work have been dissing EVs. So he didn't know. He was surprised and not happy but he believed me.
Unfortunately, almost everything you said is also happening in Canada. All because Mark Carney has gone from a climate change warrior to a fossil fuel cheerleader.
Bill, the heron passage is the one that's staying with me. "No one held a memorial service" — that's it exactly. We've built rituals for every kind of loss except this one, the slow kind, the kind that happens one missing bird at a time until the marsh just goes quiet.
I keep coming back to that same tension in my own writing — the $480 billion in avoided costs is real and it matters, but it's never what moves anyone to actually change. It's the empty rookery. It's the one heron raising her young alone. That's the number nobody can argue with, because it doesn't require a spreadsheet to understand.
Thank you for holding both of those truths in the same piece.
agree.
Yes, it's a story that touches our heart that motivates us. I just read one. Last September, the Gen Z kids in Madagascar risked their lives protesting lack of power. The grid goes down half the time and most rural folks don't even have the grid. Their protests inspired a coup and the President fled the country. In the last 9 months since the coup, little has changed.
Madagascar needs electricity for economic growth. GDP has been stagnant since France liberated Madagascar three generations ago.
Would you lend $25 or more for this solar vendor in rural Madagascar? They have proven their credit worthiness to us. Repayments in 13 months.
https://www.kiva.org/lend/3200760
"once you’ve installed renewable energy you no longer have to pay for fuel." Not quite true, Bill. I pay Vt Elec. Coop $28/month for the privilege of having my solar panels hooked up to their grid. And depending on how much credit I get when there's more sun in the summer, I still end up paying something more -- anywhere between $100-$200/ month in the winter. And that's with heat pumps, a whole lot of insulation, and southern exposure solar gain.
If your government had any sense, those fuckers would be paying you a tariff for the electricity that you are generating for them.
I think the point is the sunlight is free, not that you have enough panels to supply 100% energy in the winter. My Oregon utility charges me $25 for the solar meter as well and I'm providing them power with non-existent transmission losses. The power companies hate competition. That is something we need to change
We have a Utah electric coop, and we keep pushing them about the preferential treatment for electricity from fossil fuel.
In our case, the employees and coop board are Trump voting right wingers. They are in a complicated position.
Sure, you're paying for access to the grid. But you're not paying for the sunshine.
Good topic. At the end I have an easy action.
Here in Houston, Texas, the oil people whine about being abandoned by bankers. The ARE paying a lot more for loans than renewable energy is. Their capital expenditures are almost half of what they were a decade ago says RMI.
There's been huge movement of capital from dirty to clean energy. Rocky Mountain Institute said in their 2024 report that we're halfway through the Great Capital Reallocation. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/06/RMI_cleantech_revolution.pdf
Green stocks are now third largest industry says London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). And green stocks are paying better returns, 12% better. In counting they included companies with at least a fifth of income was environmentally focused: solar, clean water, energy efficiency, etc. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19062026/green-economy-hits-10-trillion-in-market-value/
For four years, banks have been making more money on green than fossil said Nat Bullard's 2026 slidedeck. Slide # 40. In slide 42, he said annual investment in power generation is equal to fossil fuels. In slide #54, Nat said the S&P Global Clean Energy Transition Index is a lot higher than the S&P 500 or NASDAQ 100. In #67 he said China is doing half the investing.
Please move your own money to institutions that support clean energy. At least stay out of the big banks and move to a credit union. I found my car insurance company, State Farm, was investing my premiums paid in in fossil fuels. So I switched to AAA who doesn't. Learn more at https://www.alignmoneywithvalues.org/
We need your help to finance solar in Madagascar. Will you lend $25 or more? https://www.kiva.org/lend/3200760
We're almost done financing the 2 electric cars for taxi drivers in Senegal. https://www.kiva.org/lend/3192962
A major issue is that Big Oil stock valuations are based on their oil reserves, so basically they have to keep pumping for those reserves to have a value. That's why they won't give up and will do everything they can (including financing lobbying and institutions and other actors of AG climate science denial) to discredit clean energy and climate concern.
fossil fuel people are a minority. But they are organized. We are organizing too. Bill founded www.ThirdAct.org to organize elders for climate. It's my favorite group.
Re. balcony solar, the states approving them require the units to be UL certified - it's called UL3700. Unfortunately, there are no panels on the market at this time (Including the Bright Solar ones) that are compliant. You risk burning down your house (and not having your insurance cover it) if you are an early adopter of an uncertified panel.
The sky is falling 🌠🍁🍁🌠. Chicken 🐓🍗 Little was right 👍. That's why he 🤞 ❌ crossed the road 🛣️ ‼️👌👹🌹👋🐯
Bill, please use your voice and platforms to advocate for keeping the technology to recycle panels and batteries cleanly apace with adoption. I am sure there are comparisons for the byproducts of all kinds of energy production, but just as a human who is able to enjoy the woods here in VT, it hurts my brain to think about the consequences of recycling technology not being available as panels and batteries age out on a massive scale.
Sometimes I wonder if there is a quote somewhere about a civilization being judged by how it deals with the garbage it generates.... seems like there should be!
Google Ai says To recycle the entire unit responsibly, utilize specialized solar recycling firms like SOLARCYCLE or First America Metal Recycling. Or sell them for $20 or $30 on craigslist.
Bill, while your efforts to sound the alarm on our climate emergency are undeniable, your article "Setting money on fire" exposes a profound paradox at the heart of mainstream environmentalism. By framing the transition to renewable energy as a way to "save GDP" and protect financial portfolios, you are attempting to solve our ecological crisis using the very capitalistic logic and metrics that created it. This is not pragmatism; it is a systemic contradiction that avoids the deeper, uncomfortable reality that infinite physical growth on a finite planet is structurally impossible, regardless of the energy source.
The fundamental flaw in this narrative is the illusion of decoupling. Swapping our power source does not resolve ecological overshoot; a global "green" transition still requires an unprecedented, front-loaded consumption of fossil fuels, devastating mineral extraction, and massive material throughput. Furthermore, this transition relies on a deeply inequitable "lifeboat" dynamic where the electrified, high-tech future of the Global North is built directly on the back of intensive, destructive resource extraction in the Global South. Framing this shift as a clean, painless economic win glosses over the stark reality of who actually bears the physical costs of these new supply chains.
We have long passed the point where we can negotiate a profitable, painless exit from planetary limits. To suggest we can preserve our hyper-consumptive way of life while keeping the global financial ledger happy is simply rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship. We do not need a more financially efficient way to fuel an unsustainable global machine; we need the systemic honesty to face our limits and prepare for an inevitable, deep contraction of our resource use🤔 E&OE
In the last year India added as much solar as half of the Texas grid from all sources.
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/Indias-100-Billion-Grid-Bet-Is-Accelerating-A-Solar-Manufacturing-Boom.html
There’s a saying Nan, you’ve maybe heard it: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”.
I’m sorry Nan, it won’t make a scrap of difference, just because you wish it to be so doesn’t mean it will. The longer you believe these fantasies the more you’ll need Sarah Wilson’s “I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World”.
Globally only ~20% of energy is supplied IN THE FORM OF ELECTRICITY, and over 40% of that is provided by REbuildables, sorry, Renewable/Alternative Energy (of which Nuclear Power is a 9% share), leaving ~80%, that’s right ~80%, of total global energy still reliant on FOSSIL FUELS.
Nan, Read the below👇 just so you understand I’ve not biased the question in any way, then paste it into your favourite AI/LLM/Search Engine, to gain an understand what’s really happening.
"According to official International Energy_ Agency (IEA) reports, data shows that global fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions are hitting all-time highs despite record-breaking renewable energy deployment. Explain the macroeconomic and systemic factors that cause this apparent paradox. In your answer, explicitly address to what extent the fossil fuels consumed during the heavy manufacturing, supply chains, and infrastructure build-out of renewable energy converters contribute to this global rise in emissions compared to general global energy demand growth."🤔
I agree with you, but ....
The energy transition means no need to EXTRACT and ship all those fossil fuels. Humanity saves. It saves shipping cost. It saves ecological destruction of drilling and fracking. Electric transport is 3 or 4 times more miles per unit of energy. Humanity saves.
I keep trying to teach my activist pals my lovely theories but they aren't interested. I'm doing well to spoon feed them a couple of ideas. The idea I focus on now is "We can do this. Solar and other cleantech are selling like hotcakes. Oil use is about to fall hard and fast. Tell your friends to divest to avoid being stuck with stranded assets."
Here in Texas we need a few celebrations of our accomplishments. The morale here stinks. We in Texas are in the heart of a culture war over oil. Too many of us get punched in the nose.
My point is, that we have to keep our message simple. Alan Atkisson said humanity has the brains of an amoeba. I do love his model of social change on https://www.context.org/iclib/ic28/atkisson/
My ask for you is "How can you frame your message positively?"
I deeply appreciate your candor, Nan, and I completely understand the psychological toll of fighting these battles on the front lines in Texas. When you’re in the heart of a culture war, morale is a vital survival resource, and celebrating localised shifts away from direct extraction is a necessary way to keep spirits high. We are indeed dealing with a collective human response that often resembles an amoeba's reflexes, and simple, encouraging narratives are essential tools for immediate, local coping.
But to answer your question of how to frame this positively without selling a comforting illusion: the genuine positive framing lies in the profound liberation of facing the truth. True positivity isn’t promising that we can transition our high-tech, hyper-consumptive lifestyle onto solar panels without consequence, which merely shifts the ecological debt and devastating extraction to the Global South. Instead, the positive message is that accepting our biophysical limits frees us from the exhausting, impossible task of trying to sustain an unsustainable global machine. It allows us to stop frantically trying to "save" a broken, high-energy arrangement and start focusing on what we can actually preserve: our local communities, our shared humanity, and our direct relationship with the natural world.
Framing a deep resource contraction positively means presenting it not as a tragic defeat, but as a long-overdue return to reality. There is immense peace, dignity, and genuine wealth in learning to live with less, stepping off the treadmill of endless consumption, and appreciating what nature provides for free. If you and your activist pals are looking for a roadmap on how to navigate this without succumbing to doom, I highly recommend Sarah Wilson’s recently published book, “I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World”. It is an incredibly thoughtful guide that confronts the reality of systemic collapse head-on, while showing us exactly how to find profound beauty, meaning, and humanity within a crumbling reality🤔
Sounds like an interesting book. I'll bet I live on less than you do. Want to bet? I reuse my dental floss even. But I DO like cold a/c.
Herons often abandon rookeries and set up shop elsewhere--this may have happened in the case recounted here, but it's hard to know. So maybe there is some hope in this otherwise distressing incident.
Reading this makes me wonder if the trump admin is actively exacerbating climate change. If so, to what end?
Mar el lago is at sea level. It would be inundated. Would they build a wall around it? Would it become an island, perhaps an independent citystate in the sea of what used to be Florida?
Gotta wonder.
Yes, logic has nothing to do with it. Get out the vote for the mid-term elections.
The smoke is so bad where I live that it looks like a dystopian warscape we need to get off the oil and gas kick ASAP!
What are you doing about it? What are you asking folks to do?
I was just confirming how bad the smoke is, wasn't try to get anyone to do anything. I don't believe there is much more the Canadians can do to keep the forest fires down, might just have to hope for rain.
As we win on getting rid of fossil fuels, it's time to turn our attention to land use. WRI says the indigenous do better on keeping fires down. They say we can give them more power to manage forests. https://www.wri.org/insights/extreme-wildfires-indigenous-community-leadership
A new study says indigenous can teach us a lot about land use to sequester more carbon. https://grist.org/indigenous/indigenous-cultural-practices-are-a-climate-solution-report-finds/
Give the power to folks who know what they’re doing and have the credentials to prove it.
To me, in this time of drought and fire in the West, I feel like we are killing the whole world of fauna. Yes, I feel deeply sad. I live in a more remote place than I did in childhood, yet I have not seen a turtle or tortoise outside a park in years.
Herons do move their rookeries for various reasons unbeknownst to us humans, many things can and do effect them in addition to climate change. Might be wise to check in with a local birding group to see if it’s been relocated or what exactly is going on….. Great Blue Herons do raise their young in groups from what I’ve seen…..
This message is to Jane and Keith, who are absolutely right in feeling swindled and punished by their respective utility companies which are legal monopolies who feel they can do anything they want with the grid. There's a different world outside of Amerika, however, as Henry Miller always referred to it. Here in France where I'm living I find it a more democratic government which is more dedicated to the 'welfare of the people'. For example, it has long had a national healthcare program.
Back to your situation. When 'plug-and-play' solar hit the market here in France many people bought them (as I did). Some did so with a wish for green electricity and to reduce their electric bill; others, however, saw an investment scheme to make money by running their electric meters backward with a large number of solar panels and then have their utility pay them! The French electric utilities saw the danger to their profits in both cases and started to fabricate restrictions, making up 'dangerous scenarios' if users (the technically unwashed) could access 'their' grid at will.
Accordingly, the utilities immediately put up a 'fire wall' of restrictions if customers tried to install a solar kit. It ran something like this (fasten your seat belts): before you could plug in your solar panel you would need a 'qualified' electrical engineering company to inspect your home's electrical system to make sure there were no 'faults' that could endanger you or their grid. If that went okay, then you would next need a 'certified' solar installer to just plug in your solar panel to make sure it would not compromise 'their' grid or spark a fire. All this would cost you a lot more money than what the solar panels cost you. And if you still wanted go ahead with your plug-in solar panel dream, then getting an appointment with any of their 'approved' electrical engineering companies and 'certified' solar installers would take several years! Good luck, as they say.
When the French government got wind of this scandal the utilities were foisting on solar users, it quickly went into action. Within little more than a week, the French legislative Assembly in Paris passed a sweeping national law stating emphatically that all French households had a clear right to generate all the electricity they used without any restrictions or further processing. Period.
The French government did, however, have their technology staff investigate the utilities' claim that 'serious' damage to the electrical grid could happen. The technical group reported back there was no such threats regarding home solar panels. The one difficulty, however, was that if the utilities had to shut down the entire grid to repair it (very rare), the connected solar panel outputs could pose a danger to repair crews. In response to this, the solar panel producers offered a quick and easy fix. This was a small module connected between the solar panel and its plug-in cable. The module senses the line frequency in the home circuit (grid), if it doesn't sense it, i.e., the grid is shut down, the module disconnects the solar panel. No danger to repair crews. Everyone who bought a plug-and-play solar panel got this security fix, at no cost.
I would like to clarify something here, as well. In the US utility companies are given monopoly rights over the regions they service, that's why they can act as little dictators over their American customers. This was the same in France when I first moved here, EDF was the boss of French electricity and it sternly ruled and prices were high, choices inflexible, modernization moved at a snail's pace. Then the European Union came into existence and this abolished all national utility monopolies such as electricity and telephone. Overnight new utilities sprang up offering lower prices to customers and more customer service. At that moment EDF immediately had a new competitor: GDF (Gaz de France). No one was the 'boss' anymore.
A short while later something else happened that made me smile. A group of investors mostly related to the Greenpeace movement suddenly 'opened shop' on the French electrical grid, calling themselves Enercoop (as in energy cooperative). What they offered customers was something unique at that time: electricity service generated exclusively from wind turbines and solar panels! When I called EDF to drop my subscription with them they told me I had to wait several months (cooling off period?) and I also had to fill out a number of forms related to bank charging authorization.
With the wind out of my sails at that point, I called Enercoop and told them of my delay to join with them. The agent told me not to worry, asked for my bank account number and then my electric meter number. I gave the agent these items hoping it would set up things ahead of time while I dealt with the EDF forms. Then the agent told me they would take care of everything necessary and from that day forward Enercoop would be my electricity provider. I was amazed and have been with them ever since. This is the difference between free-market providers and state-authorized monopolies.
My plug-and-play solar panel is happily generating green electricity everyday on my terrace which I'm using to reduce my electricity bill, with no 'penalty'.
"The most basic point, of course, and yet one often lost in the debate is that once you’ve installed renewable energy you no longer have to pay for fuel."
Couldn't agree more. We need to drill this into people across all political ideologies, because this is one of the most obvious benefits. I was curious what that actually looks like in practice, and it is deeply satisfying that now I can actually pull data from a red state, Texas, and not a blue one to see this in action. Watching the cost of power generation plummet when Texas's solar fleet turns on is a wonderful thing. https://samholmes285.substack.com/p/solar-farms-are-saving-everyone-money
Its sad that even with the price savings, big oil is still pushing their product using political leverage ...
I live in Texas, oil country, and most here are welcoming the energy transition. Those who still don't probably are folks who still work in the industry or who have money in it. Changing jobs is a lot of work. Christine lost her fossil fuel job and took some time off. And then got a green job. Lots of folks have been laid off. Maybe 10% of the industry. But that leaves the 90% of folks who have the same old oily job they have had for so long.
In short, inertia keeps the Oil Industry going. That and the culture war. We say nasty things about them and they back at us.
It doesn't help that talking about the climate crisis at work is ... frowned on. At least.
At a parade, I got to chatting with one guy about my electric car. He was surprised that it was so fuel efficient. Apparently his friends at work have been dissing EVs. So he didn't know. He was surprised and not happy but he believed me.
Nan do those welcoming the energy transition include the MAGA types ?
Yes, I guess so because 87% of the survey respondents in 2024 said yes, Houston "should lead the way in the transition to alternative energy"
https://news.rice.edu/news/2024/2024-rice-kinder-houston-area-survey-residents-worlds-energy-capital-believe-houston It's a ridiculous answer as China is light years ahead of Houston.
Unfortunately, almost everything you said is also happening in Canada. All because Mark Carney has gone from a climate change warrior to a fossil fuel cheerleader.