Plant-based meats, which once seemed destined to help us reduce our consumption of slaughtered cows and lower the vast ecological damage that the beef industry is inflicting on our planet, seems to have failed. Beyond Meat, which is the only …
Author: craigshields
Big Money Still Controls Planet’s Energy
When I was in college in the 1970s, I recall hearing people say, “We’ll have solar energy when the Rockefellers own the sun.” Nothing’s changed too much in half a century.
Even Trump’s Endorsement Can’t Ruin This Guy’s Chances in His Race for Office
It’s hard to imagine how certain politicians can lose in the 2026 midterms, even with “the kiss of death” (Trump’s endorsement). This guy’s district in Texas is largely the panhandle, far from the more educated and sophisticated parts of the …
Even Trump’s Endorsement Can’t Ruin This Guy’s Chances in His Race for Office Read More »
A Metaphor on the Natural Forces that Support Human Life on Earth
I met a guy yesterday who told me, “We live on this planet at the generosity of the forces of nature. These privileges can be withdrawn at any time, and without notice.” I thought that was clever.
Progressivism
Everyone living in the United States benefits from our federal, state, and local governments in many dozens of different ways, from roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, banking insurance, help for veterans, national forests, public schooling (K-12), firefighting, criminal justice, fuel pipelines, …
America’s Worst Presidents
Historians point to Andrew Jackson, with his butchering of the Native Americans, to the presidents immediately before and after the U.S. Civil War, and to Warren Harding as the previous “worst presidents in our nation’s history.” Having said that, regardless …
What it Means to Be a Conservative
The meme here is a reminder that to call oneself a “conservative” used to mean something, other than the desire to conserve America’s racist and imperialistic heritage. There have been conservatives all throughout U.S. history. For some reason, our nation’s …
Tagged with: activist Naomi Klein, America's racist and imperialistic heritage, and Story of Stuff founder Annie Leonard, climate advocate Bill McKibben, David Attenborough (naturalist), Jane Goodall (primatologist), John Muir (national parks pioneer), Rachel Carson (author of Silent Spring), Steve Irwin (wildlife educator)
The Constant Torrent of Disinformation Targeting Clean Transportation and Favoring Big Oil
Sadly, the world must deal with the cottage industry that has arisen to generate and publish malicious bullshit about electric transportation and clean energy more generally. The efficiency of internal combustion engines is in the 20s, where the efficiency of …
Tagged with: efficiency of internal combustion engines, Favoring Big Oil, malicious bullshit about clean energy, malicious bullshit about electric transportation, the efficiency of charging batteries and discharging them through electric motors, Torrent of Disinformation Targeting Clean Transportation
Things Should Have Turned out so Differently
Imagine what our country, and our world, would be like today if the United States had addressed Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the U.S. government as the act of treason it was. Former president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro staged a …
Myth Busting in Renewable Energy
I met a guy earlier today who told me that wind and solar are controversial, and that some people say that the mining and manufacturing of wind turbines requires more fossil fuels than the turbines themselves produce. I told him …
Tagged with: discredit the clean energy, each wind turbine freeway will generate at least 18 times as much energy as was required in mining fabrication installation maintenance and decommissioning, energy return on investment, EROI, generation of disinformation of renewables has become a cottage industry, keep Big Oil in place, Myth Busting in Renewable Energy, the EROI of wind is somewhere between 18 and 30, wind and solar are controversial
