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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles 
Gary Tulie writes from his home office in Buckinghamshire, England, a bit northwest of London:

Hi Craig, 

This is how the market is going for EV charging in the UK.  Smart chargers are enabling very favourable charging tariffs - about a third of the usual price of residential electricity. 
This is enabled by telling the charger when you need your car charged by, and letting the supplier decide when to do the charging. 

Thanks.  Very good news.  The price of electricity isn't a huge driver of the EV market in the U.S., but a program like this certainly can't hurt.

One hopes that this works out such that the charging is done with renewable energy, e.g., choosing to charge in the middle of the day when solar is abundant.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Does Florida governor Ron DeSantis really believe his own anti-vax rhetoric?  Could it be that he’s playing his hand this way because the state is home to so many morons who believe this crap?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Unfortunately, we as a nation don’t think well enough to understand this.

We simply can’t muster the required intelligence, and, even if we could, we don’t want to.  Trump supporters hate Biden, and reason has absolutely nothing to do with it.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Here’s a gem that combines philosophy and psychology, while pointing to environmental sustainability.

It’s hard to read this and not be reminded of what a loveless society we live in.  Most Americans live transactional lives, i.e., built around getting our share.  Yes, we have loved ones, but love is anything but our predominant mode of making our way through each of our days on Earth.

Can this aspect of culture in the developed world change, or has that train left the station? We saw what happened in New York immediately after 9/11.  In an instant, people realized how precious and fleeting life is.  They were opening doors for one another, smiling radiantly.

Of course, a few months later, it was back to the hustling indifference that had previously defined The City, but perhaps it’s an indication that, when faced with collective tragedy, we naturally respond with mutual compassion and empathy.

Now, I’m not hoping for a “collective tragedy,” but we do seem to see them unfolding around us in the form of pandemic variants, environmental collapse and the trend toward fascism.  Maybe we can find a way to be a more loving species before things get completely out of hand.

 

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, we all want to believe that humankind has the intelligence to get through the times we’re all experiencing.

From this article: He and his wife got COVID-19. She died last week. This week, he went maskless to an anti-vaxx rally (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I had to laugh when I read this.  As if anyone on this globe thinks of America as “the world’s leading champion of peace.”

Iran, Saudi Arabia/Yemen, Israel/Palestine, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Every year a survey is conducted of thousands of people around the world,  asking them to name the country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world, and every year the results are roughly the same.  This year, the U.S. was the overwhelming choice (24% of respondents). This was followed by Pakistan (8%), China (6%), North Korea, Israel and Iran (5%).

To be fair, Jimmy Carter actually is a man of peace.  In fact, his term in office represented four of a total of 16 years in the entirety of U.S. history during which the country wasn’t at war.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

What’s happening in Afghanistan is a grim reminder of the futility of war.

Bringing God into the picture just makes a bad situation worse.  Petitioning the Lord to smite our enemies, while they are simultaneously asking Him to smite us is unthinkably stupid.

Let’s suppose he exists.  Wouldn’t He be telling us both to put our guns down, and meet one another for beer and peanuts?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Occasionally we run into a remark made by one of the great philosophers that has applicability to modern day politics.  Here’s Plato speaking on various kinds of knowledge, where he ranks compassion as #1, and provides his absolutely brilliant reasoning.

Numerous studies have confirmed that liberals are more empathetic to others than conservatives, but when you think about it, it’s true by definition.  To self-identify as liberal is to say you care about the well-being of other people.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

In the little “God and Country” town in which 2GreenEnergy’s “headquarters” makes its home, it’s not uncommon to see pro-beef bumper stickers, such as the one at left and those below. There is no doubt that cattle ranchers view themselves as manly, and look askance at vegans. Most would have a deep resentment towards the people in the story here, who broke a long-standing family tradition and simply stopped butchering animals.

Yet we know that improving our use of land and ceasing the practice of deforestation to make room for cattle is critical if we are to preserve a healthy planet.  Cowboys: get over it.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s another good example of how far to the right U.S. politics has shifted in the last half century. Walter Cronkite had no political bias, which was why he was known as the “most trusted man in America.”  If these same words were uttered today, they would make a statement that is distinctly left wing, and probably be branded by Republicans as “the radical left.”

 

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