It’s the 317th birthday of Voltaire, one of my favorite people in history. I loved Candide, the work for which he’s best known today, but I admire him even more for his free-minded political philosophy, exemplified by this pithy remark: “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.”
I invite you to contemplate the state of the world for a moment and realize how true this is.
Here’s another must-see video from Annie Leonard at The Story of Stuff, this one called “The Story of Broke.”
I hope everyone will invest five minutes and check this out. Note how much of what she’s saying sounds like what we have here at 2GreenEnergy, e.g., factoids like this: the senators who voted to continue subsidies to the oil companies received five times as much in campaign contributions from Big Oil as those who voted to end those subsidies.
While you’re watching, think of what this world would be like if a few major countries were run by people with this level of honesty and enlightenment. When your finished, you may want to send it to as many people as you can who are concerned about the direction in which we’re headed.
Question: How much trash does the average American generate daily?
Answer: Can be found HERE.
Relevance: As suggested in this brilliant video, The Story of Stuff, our ultra-consumer society is on a crash course with sustainability.
Considering the externalities of fossil fuels — from lung disease, to environmental damage, to empowering terrorism, to a crushing national debt – there sure are a bunch of people bashing electric vehicles and renewable energy.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. comments on this phenomenon in a recent article: (more…)
Here in the U.S., we have climate change deniers, and all manner of other opponents to renewable energy. In essence, they’re the oil and coal companies, the members of Congress they influence, and those who believe the enormous amount of propaganda they generate on “clean coal,” “safe nuclear,” etc.
In the U.K. however, they come in the form of certain members of the nobility. According to The Guardian, the Duke of Edinburgh has made a fierce attack on wind farms, claiming that “they don’t work,” and describing them as “a disgrace” and “absolutely useless.” Pictured here, however, he looks rather jolly. Who would know that such scathing (and foolish) statements lie behind such a winsome smile and excellent breeding? (more…)
Here’s the latest report of the International Energy Agency, which is run by many of the world’s largest oil-consuming nations. It’s an annual piece called “World Energy Outlook,” and warns that without radical changes in the world’s energy infrastructure in the next five years, humans will make climate change irreversible.
Bob Dylan fans will recognize that the last few words of the title come from “A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall.” Let’s do our best to make sure that’s not the case, i.e., that a hard rain does not, in fact, fall.
Hey, we just went over 1500 total blog posts here at 2GreenEnergy. That’s a considerable body of work; my profound thanks to all who have helped.
About once a week, someone asks me for my take on the latest about Fukushima, how concerned we should be, or what the upshot will be in terms of world energy policy (as if there is such a thing). I immediately refer them to Ace Hoffman of Carlsbad, CA, who’s been studying the nuclear power industry for more than 40 years — since he was about fourteen years old. He writes with depth and passion, and I recommend that anyone interested in the subject follow his blog here.
He’s testified at over 100 nuke hearings, and written over a thousand essays, including the one I’ve excerpted here: (more…)
Question: Approximately how many trees are ground up each year to make junk mail?
Answer: Can be found here.
Relevance: A big part of the business I ran for almost 30 years was direct mail. Note that I refer to it as “direct” and not “junk,” as we made a huge effort to make this as relevant, personalized, and high-quality as we possibly could. Here are sample campaigns; I hope you’ll agree.
Having said that, I’m not sure I’d want to be in that business now. I think (hope, anyway) that all our communications will come with greater respect for our environment and natural resources.
At the risk of stating the obvious, there have been huge mistakes made in governments’ promotion of renewables. But who should be surprised by that? Just because clean energy is a good thing doesn’t mean that there won’t be bad (greedy, corrupt) means taken to extract profit while screwing it up.
This article in The Economist gets at this central point, and concludes with some wisdom:
There is much that governments can do to encourage such progress in the future without repeating the mistakes of the past. … They should remove subsidies for technologies that compete with solar. … Above all they must fix a price of carbon that gives innovators the confidence that competing with fossil fuels for the long term will be a rewarding, and perhaps hugely profitable, undertaking. If politics prevent them from setting a substantial carbon price, they might consider requiring utilities to have a carbon-free component to their generating portfolios, as happens in many American states. But that needs to be open to all carbon-free technologies, not just the ones that the politicians like, so that the most efficient can prosper.
