Trade tensions continue to mount between the U.S. and China. This is sad, in that our trade relationship in agriculture with China was proceeding just fine, year after year.
Notice the use of capitalization in “Economically Hostile Act,” as if it were the name given to a crime. Not sure we need more hostility in the world than we already have.
We might also keep in mind that most of this crap began with our tariffs.
Insofar as 2GreenEnergy “headquarters” is near a little Danish town in California that has considerable appeal to European tourists, I often have the opportunity to meet people from the Continent.
When the conversation turns to politics, as it often does, I have the opportunity to listen to others’ viewpoints about what’s happening in the United States, and the leadership of Donald Trump in particular.
I can’t remember a single person who voiced any support for Trump or expressed any tolerance for the idea that America should forfeit its democracy to a would-be dictator.
It is for that reason that the list of countries participating in the “No Kings” rally (see above) is quite large.
In my day, though we didn’t have electronics means of chatting, we certainly had clubs of young people with conservative values, e.g., the Young Republicans.
I never attended their meetings, so I can’t say for sure, but I would bet that the conversation stayed within certain boundaries of legality and perhaps even civility, depending on what you mean by that: libertarianism, the promotion of family values, heterosexuality, segregation, anti-globalism, and especially, anti-communism; I’m quite sure it didn’t extend to killing or raping one’s enemies, or pro-Hitler ideas like the gas chambers and the “final solution.”
Today, of course, what once was simple conservatism is now pure hate and stupidity.
Do savvy investors take advice from right-wing Trump-supporter talk-show hosts?
“This is the age of faith, of hope and of God,” he says.
And of gold too, I guess.
This guy has a terrific point.
Such a strange and sad time to be an American.
This takes us back to the absurd notion that Trump supporters stand behind law and order.
At left is something quite pathetic, albeit completely common for today’s right-wing America: slandering those who care enough about their country to stand up and articulate their feelings.
“Let’s see who shows up,” says Trump mouthpiece House Speaker Mike Johnson. Well, I can answer that right now: approximately 10 million people in cities all over North/Central America and Europe who are concerned that Donald Trump is shutting down U.S. democracy. These folks see that the United States is well on its way to becoming Turkey, Russia, Hungary, China, or any of the ~60 other authoritarian states worldwide, and they’re committed to preventing that.
What makes the Trump administration’s moniker “the Hate America Rally” so particularly asinine is that it pretends not to know that most of our nation’s top military leaders are in complete agreement with the aims of the “No Kings” rally. See below.
I hate to think of myself as prejudiced, i.e., making judgements about people before the facts are available, but I suppose I’m really kidding myself. When I see someone driving a truck like this, I can’t help but think he’s a pig–a thoughtless turd who could care less about anyone or anything around him.
You need to carry stuff around, but you need a vehicle that destroys the planet in the process? And you’re proud of that?
In virtually all arenas of technology in which there are (or were at one time) many different competitors, we inevitably reach the point that “the winners win and the losers lose.”
In renewable energy, we recently said goodbye (except for niche applications) to concepts like hydrokinetics, geothermal, and biomass. In automotive, one could say that biofuels took its last breath when Chevron gave up about a decade ago after 30 years of effort, and, per this post, hydrogen expired today.
While I grant that this is a controversial matter, I think that winnowing out the competition and leaving us with the strongest players–to strengthen even further–is a good thing.
In renewable energy, we have solar and wind; in automobile drive trains, we have electricity. Concentrating on what we do best is, I would argue, the most effective way to decarbonize the energy and transportation sectors—an absolute must if this civilization is to deal effectively with environmental collapse.
Just yesterday, we learned that:
GM has ended its development of next-generation hydrogen fuel cell technology for everyday passenger vehicles, citing a need to focus resources on its electric vehicle (EV) strategy. As part of this change, the company has canceled a planned hydrogen fuel cell factory in Detroit and laid off employees from its Hydrotec brand. GM stated that it wants to put all its effort toward its EV future, as the path to a sustainable business in fuel cells for consumer vehicles is “long and uncertain.”
“Uncertain” seems to be putting it kindly; absolutely impossible sounds more apt, especially given its history.
The effort to establish the “hydrogen economy” began in the early 1970s with the OPEC embargo on gasoline that did great damage to the U.S. economy and angered the hell out of the American consumer.
Yet we learned quickly that replacing gas with hydrogen was to be an enormous undertaking, as:
Hydrogen was difficult and expensive to produce
Hydrogen fuel cells, the devices that create electricity from hydrogen, were also expensive, and fragile as well
Replacing the fuel delivery infrastructure (more than 150K gas stations) with hydrogen was costly beyond measure.
It’s hard to know exactly why it took the American automakers more than half a century to make this decision. Common wisdom is that the world of Big Oil/Auto wanted to prevent the world from moving to electric transportation, so they held out the bogus notion that hydrogen was “right around the corner,” and that just a bit of patience was required.
Well, it seems like today may be the day that this notion died, after five full decades.
