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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

What mid-20th Century screenwriter/TV producer Rod Serling, famed for “The Twilight Zone,” said 50 years ago seems to have come true.

There really is no other explanation for Trumpism, a set of beliefs so lowly and base that it’s really hard to understand how American society could have possibly arrived here.

I met a middle-aged couple from Limoges, France (between Paris and Bordeaux) yesterday. They’re not thrilled with Macron, though they regard him as “just a politician,” i.e., one who will do whatever’s required to be reelected.

They say that Trump enjoys virtually no support in France.  I responded that this is not at all surprising given that country’s grounding in education, environmental responsibility, art, and other aspects of culture.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

The graphic here shows why we do best to shop at grocery stores that source their produce locally, or at least as close to home as possible.

Even Trader Joes falls down here, to some degree.  They explain that every single SKU, e.g., a pound bag of sliced white mushrooms, should be identical in each of its 563 stores nationwide.  Sorry, but I don’t share that concern.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here, Marla Vous is pointing to our two-tiered system of justice, in which people at the top can do essentially anything they want.

As the poem below suggests, this has been a part of Western jurisprudence for quite a while.  Having said, it certainly has been elevated to an art form since Trump came on the political scene.

It sure would be good to see Ginni Thomas’ name at the top of an indictment.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

As previously mentioned, FAIR is a national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.  It’s best known for its weekly radio program “Counterspin,” syndicated across 160 stations.

This week’s broadcast, “Richard Wiles & Matthew Cunningham-Cook on Climate Disruption Filtered Through Corporate Media,” explores how corporate media issues little honest coverage on the decades-long disinformation campaign that Big Oil is using to cover up what it knows about the climate change catastrophe and its efforts to continue the consumption of fossil fuels indefinitely.

At the same time the industry is pledging to make progress in decarbonizing our transportation sector, it’s increasing drilling in the Permian Basin by a factor of ten, while actively slowing the development of wind energy.

My favorite line from the show: “Right behind hydrocarbons, the second main product of the oil companies is lies.”

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Social media is littered with memes like this one, each trying to convince us, that a college education is unnecessary, or more commonly, simply a bad thing.

Now, if you’re today’s Christian-oriented, ultra-right-wing Republican party, it’s easy to guess the reasoning here.   College educated people tend to vote against things like abortion bans, climate denialism, cuts to public education and healthcare, white supremacy, and, to be sure, immunity from prosecution for former presidents who tried to overthrow the U.S. government.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Not to split hairs, but the 2024 election is not an opportunity to end Trumpism for good, if by the term you mean the hate and ignorance of the many tens of millions of MAGA Americans who carry this terrible infliction around with them.

I have every confidence that major right-wing political issues and the politicians who support them will lose at the polls, but all this stupidity will not simply vanish into thin air; it will go into dormancy, only to arise at some later time.

Dormancy is actually a best-case scenario, because here’s a related question: What level of violence can we expect if Trump is convicted and incarcerated on one or more of 91 felonies with which he’s charged?

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

It would be a better world if what Heraclitus said were true, but it certainly appears that good people can suffer terrible fates and vice versa.

This brings to mind the ultimate destiny of Donald Trump, certainly among the worst human beings in our history.  People all around the globe are hoping to see him go down hard.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

December is a good time of year to remind ourselves that our consumerism as a society is a choice; it’s not a requirement.

On a related note, when we support the thrift-store economy, we’re reducing the amount of resources that are extracted from the Earth and providing those with lesser means the opportunity to have clothes and other items that they otherwise couldn’t afford.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

Re: the meme here, a reader notes: This climate meeting was all about fossil fuel strategies and alliances to wipe out renewable energy.

There is no doubt that this was the focus on the part of Big Oil.  Looked at from that perspective, the “justification” is clear: show the world that fossil energy is here to stay, and as they say in science fiction, “resistance is futile.”

Their problem, of course, is that the costs of solar and wind continue to come down, and the power of pure market forces will eventually make energy from oil, gas and coal, prohibitively expensive.

Precisely what this planet will be like at that point is impossible to determine, as is the prognosis for keeping temperature rises to a workable level.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Fossil Fuels

This cartoon by “Stines” reminds us that, when they grow up, naughty kids turn into bad adults who have no compunction about destroying the planet’s capacity to support life, if that’s what’s required to make them rich.

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