To-Do List

This is by no means a complete list. It mentions a few things which can be done right away, a few things which can be ramped way, way up.

 

1 electric vehicles 

1a electric unicycles 1b electric skateboards 1c electric scooters 1d electric bicycles 1e electric motorcycles 1f electric cars 1g electric trucks 1h electric trains 1i electric ships 1j electric aircraft 

2 green electricity

2a solar power 2b wind power

3 efficiency

3a smart grids 3b efficient HVAC of buildings

4 materials

4a cleaner steel 4b cleaner concrete 4c cleaner asphalt 4d recycling 4e less harmful mining 4f less plastic

 

5 plants

5a afforestation 5b reforestation 5c restoration of wetlands 5d renewable logging 5e climate-friendly agriculture

 

6 animals

6a responsible pet ownership 6b increased levels of vegetarian and vegan diets

Solar Power and the Environment

The environment -- you know: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the birds in the skies, the fish in the seas, the plants we eat, the cute furry animals some of us eat -- the environment. Or to put it another way: our home. Or to put it in a much more precise way: the stuff we need in order to live. 

 

Just now, in an online group devoted to discussing solar power, a lively discussion had broken out when someone appeared and claimed that rooftop solar was not as good an investment as the S&P 500. Vigorous advocates of rooftop solar responded, saying that the stock market did not always go up, so that you'd have to find an investment with a guaranteed return in order to make a sensible comparison. Someone pointed out that the price of electricity had been going up, and that this had been left out of the comparison to the S&P. 

I didn't carefully read every single word of every comment in that discussion. I stopped reading after a while, after having seen not a single word about the environment. Not one single comment to the effect of: I put a value of X on spewing less poison into the air and water. Not one single comment to the effect of: if we all kill ourselves, money will be worthless. 

An entire conversation about solar power, entirely missing the actual point of it. Or what used to be the point, before greedy human pigs figured they could save a lot of money with solar. They've figured out that solar power is actually not a Chinese hoax, but they still haven't figured out that life does not entirely boil down to how much money they have.

And this means that there will be a lot of people who favor solar power because the economic advantages of it have become obvious enough that they can see the payoff for themselves personally, but who still are not quite bright enough -- despite all of the terrifying weather, despite all of the scientists and government agencies screaming their heads off about it full-time -- to have grasped that if we do not implement a bit of togetherness, and make changes including solar and many other things, we are all going to die. But they think they are smarter than anyone else if they have a lot of money. And a lot of us who should know better also believe that anyone who has more money than we do is smarter than we are, because that's the sort of simple-minded thinking which has become so pervasive since the days of that grotesquely overrated simpleton, Adam Smith, who assured each of us that if we just concentrate on the amount of currency we personally own, the Invisible Hand will take care of everything else.

If you're making economic calculations, and you assign no worth to the environment, you're not merely calculating inaccurately. You're entirely missing the point of any human calculation.

General Motors and Electric Vehicles

The first mass-produced modern electric car was the EV-1, made by General Motors beginning in 1996. Over a thousand EV-1's were leased -- not sold -- to customers primarily in California. Then in 2002 and 2003, all of the EV-1 leases were ended by GM, who collected all of the vehicles and destroyed them. 

 

Then, in 2006, GM began development of the electric Chevy Volt, which went on sale late in 2010, and from then until the present day, General Motors has been selling electric vehicles -- with less than complete enthusiasm, although so far, after the EV-1, they have not gone so far again as to destroy any of their own cars.

Last Sunday, GM ran a Super Bowl ad in which Will Ferrell hears the news that Norway bought more EV's than ICE (Internal-Combustion Engine) vehicles in 2020, and goes on a rampage, vowing that the US will outdo Norway in this. Also on Sunday, commentaries appeared saying that, although the commercial is wonderful, GM itself is a big part of the reason why currently EV's account for only about 3% of new car and truck sales in the US, compared to 54% in Norway, pointing out that GM lobbies heavily against fuel-economy regulations, which a company set on pivoting to EV's would not do. And recently, GM has announced its intention to produce only zero-emissions vehicle by 2035. 

Many people, in the light of all of this, have described GM's attitude toward EV's as schizophrenic. But "schizophrenic" implies one mind which is in conflict with itself, whereas GM consists of hundreds of thousands of employees who have routinely held sharply conflicting opinions about all sorts of things, EV's being just one example. GM is a very different company than Tesla, which is basically a cult built to do the Will of Elon. Was the EV-1 designed and built by very enthusiastic GM employees? Yes indeed. Was it at the same time viewed with horror by other GM employees, further to the Right politically, who saw it as a hippy monstrosity? Without a doubt. I also have no doubt that many at GM are very happy that their company has committed to zero emissions by 2035, and that many others believe that global warming is a hoax, perhaps Chinese in origin.

Like the rest of the world generally, GM is moving toward a more enlightened stance on the environment, while being hindered by many individuals dragging their feet, some out of conviction and others out of greed. The situation is complicated, and some parts of GM are fighting other parts.

Speaking of complication: that same Norway which is doing such a fine job of switching over to clean energy usage domestically, is also one of the world's biggest exporters of oil.

Economics: Beyond Quantity

As I've mentioned several times already on this blog, there appear to me to be (at least) two different kinds of socialists: those whose primary enemy are wealthy people, who want to eradicate great personal fortunes; and then those like me, who would much rather eliminate poverty, and do not believe that eliminating wealth and eliminating poverty are one and the same thing.

It also occurs to me that there are (at least) two different kinds of entrepreneurs: those who feel that the way to become rich is to squeeze whatever money is left in the possession of poor people out of them; and those who do not. It could well be that the first kind of socialist is only able, for some reason, to perceive the first kind of entrepreneur. Michael Brooks, for example,

a left-wing American radio news-talk guy who often and flatly states his belief that billionaires are evil, and that the quantitative category of billionaire must be eradicated, may, for some reason, only be able to perceive billionaires to the extent that they resemble Donald Trump. Brooks lives in New York City, so if he wanted to, he could look around himself and see rich people doing all sorts of un-Trump-like things, from leaving decent tips to giving to charity to raising money for the Democratic Party... Maybe Brooks sees all of this every day, and he doesn't consider those people to be actually rich unless they're actually billionaires. I don't know, I don't know how Brooks thinks, except that I suspect he doesn't think very deeply or in great detail, at least not when it might contradict certain flatly-held beliefs. (You gotta hold those flatly-held beliefs way down low, out of the wind, they might get knocked over and you'd actually notice something for once.)

Conversely, some people, some of whom have studied Adam Smith and then ceased to think about economics (although in many cases continuing to write about it and win Nobel Prizes in economics), believe that rich people are morally better than poor people, and that everything entrepreneurs do is a blessing for mankind in general. It's hard for me to imagine how anyone can read Smith and not perceive that the world has changed beyond all recognition since he published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, but, quite obviously, for many businesspeople, Smith is still quite literally the last word. Just as, for many Medieval people, beyond a few miles from the coasts the oceans were full of dragons and death, so, for many economists right up to the present day, beyond Smith lies Marx, who is pure evil and has nothing to give to mankind except agony.

Although I believe it is possible for someone to become wealthy and to benefit mankind at the same time, ironically, the economics of Smith, who believed that to become wealthy was to benefit mankind and vice versa, have given ideological cover to entrepreneurs who thrive while behaving in ways which are utterly predatory, and much worse than useless for the common good.

Also, and this is very important in any meaningful discussion of economics: there are (at least) two different ways of measuring someone's well-being: the first simply adds up the monetary value of everything that person owns; and the second one, the one I use, recognizes that life is not nearly that simple: well-being is a matter of your health, where you live, the air you breathe, what you eat, what opportunities you have, and so forth. And these things are not always strictly measurable in monetary terms. Comparable good things can cost much more for one person than for another; or they can be free in some cases; or, in other cases, they may not be available for any amount of money. (I just mentioned the common good: quick now, what is the common good worth in dollars and cents?)

Economic discussions often focus much too narrowly on quantities of currency, and not nearly enough on qualities of existence. The latter, the quality, is really the only thing that matters. The only reason that the quantities of currency matter is that they can sometimes affect those qualities.

Quantities of currency can affect people's lives very much. You can improve people's lives very much by giving them cash, and, there's no doubt at all, you can kill a lot of people by depriving them of cash. But it isn't the actual cash or lack of it which helps or hurts someone, it's the things which cash can buy. And cash can't buy everything. It can buy exactly what a buyer and seller agree that it can buy. That's exactly how much it has always been able to buy. If someone owns a house and is calculating how much they might save buy installing solar panels, and they're really not thinking about saving human life on Earth, then their economic calculations are appallingly primitive. So, how much would you pay to save human life? Hopefully you can see how absurd the question is. We can't buy a clean atmosphere. We're going to have to actually clean it up, and cleaning it up may well involve putting much less emphasis and worth on quantities of cash, and much more on things like qualities of substances and of behaviors. It may be environmentalism which will finally force many people to confront the fact that money isn't really reality, it's just a tool we've been using for a while, which we can set down whenever we choose, and pick up a new one.

So, to Michael Brooks, I say (ha ha, just kidding, I know damn well Michael Brooks isn't listening to anyone saying anything resembling any of this), focus on the effect people have, and not on the size of their stack. No doubt, in many cases, billionaires actually are complete bastards, just like you say they are. So, in those cases, tell us, news-talk guy, tell us specifically, what bad things they are doing. If you happen to know what those bad things are. If not, maybe you should do some research before the next time you open your mouth. Be careful, though! Research, when diligently and earnestly done, has been known to upset long-cherished beliefs!

Unconvincing Concern

It's interesting how all of these concerns about pollution produced by electric vehicles (often referred to by the cool kids as EV's), and environmental havoc caused by the production of wind energy etc, are brought up by people who were never one bit concerned about the environment before EV's and alternative energy were allegedly harming it. Strip mining, oil wells and refineries, coal-powered electric plants, elimination of wetlands to build condos and golf courses, whatever, they're just fine with all of that, but a Nissan Leaf? OMG THE LITHIUM MINING, YOU MONSTER!!!!! A wind power station? OMG YOU'RE GOING TO KILL ALL THE BIRDS!!!!!

Yeah, right, your concern is so touching and authentic. PS: Wouldn't a bus pass beat driving any kind of car? I suppose it would depend on the kind of bus and other factors. Well, there are plenty of very smart engineers and scientists we can ask about that and other things. And we can check to see whether they're funded by oil or coal companies. I've been thinking about getting a bus pass. The buses here are biodiesel hybrids. I would rather that they were all-electric and charged 100% from solar and wind, but they're not. Yet.

And by the way, yes, a certain amount of pollution is caused by manufacturing the batteries which power electric vehicles, but that pollution is typically offset several times over by the emissions avoided by driving an electric vehicle over the lifetime of the car. In some cases, it's offset by the reduction in pollution during several months worth of driving. Also, the emissions caused by manufacturing those batteries are steadily sinking, in significant part because the people who manufacture and drive electric vehicles actually care about the environment and are constantly learning about such things and improving their practices.

And that thing about windmills killing birds? Yeah, turns out that doesn't really happen. Strip mines, on the pother hand, and oilfields, and refineries, and oil and gas pipelines, and emissions from gasoline- and diesel-burning vehicles? It may shock you to learn that all of those things actually do harm birds, and other animals, and plants too.

The US: A "Leader" In Combating Climate Change?

Yesterday, Michael Bloomberg published an op-ed in that liberal bastion, the New York Times -- you ever notice how many conservatives publish op-eds in our nation's supposed liberal bastion? Good! If it were just one conservative now and then, it might be seen as a refreshing sign of open-mindedness, but when it's a constant slew plus a whole bunch of the Times' regular columnists, it ought to be one more huge clue that the Times is a huge joke, and that our country doesn't have a liberal bastion -- in which he assured his readers that Trump will not be able to wreck the environment, and that wind and solar and other clean sources of energy will triumph no matter what Trump does. Many people have been reassured by Bloomberg's column -- but should they have been?

Before we go further, since many of my readers come from countries other than the United States: in the previous paragraph, I used the term "liberal" in the American sense, meaning "Left" or "progressive." Most of the rest of the world, when they say "liberal," mean what we in the US mean when we say "libertarian." Michael Bloomberg is what most of the world would call a liberal, and what we in the US call a libertarian.

His column, asserting that Trump won't be able to stop or slow down the conversion from fossil fuels to wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, etc, is completely libertarian in its outlook, subscribing to Adam Smith's quaint notion that some markets are free, and that free markets are morally good. He says, in essence, that Trump won't be able to stop the conversion to clean energy because that conversion is good.

Bloomberg certainly isn't the only one who is confident that Trump will not be able to have a significant impact in the transition from fossil fuels to clean sources of energy. And I certainly hope he's right. I just don't see anything in his column in the Times which convinced me that he knows his ass from a hole in the ground.

For example, he refers to "American leadership on climate change." I certainly wasn't the only one who said, "Huh, what?!" when I read that.

Here is a page with statistics about electricity produced from renewable sources. I realize that the use of electricity is not the same as all energy consumption. There may be some definitive statistics on energy consumption and pollution out there somewhere. Or maybe there aren't.

There are two lists of this page: the first lists the 10 countries which produce the most terawatt-hours per year from renewable sources.

The second lists all the countries in the world. It includes the percentage of each country's electricity which is generated from renewables. Unfortunately, it does not list the countries in the order of this percentage (Do I have to do every freakin' thing myself?!), or even in the order of total electricity produced by renewables: it lists them alphabetically.

The top 10 in total number of terawatts from renewables is, in descending order: China, the US, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Russia, India, Japan, Norway and Italy. Oh, another problem with this page: it includes hydroelectric among renewables, and although huge dams don't have huge smokestacks, that doesn't mean they don't wreak any environmental havoc. And #1 renewable producer China generates 4/5 of their renewable total from hydroelectric dams, and #2 US nearly half of its total. And it seems that many of the world's countries generate all or nearly all of their electricity from hydroelectric dams. Should dams be ranked somewhere mid-way between coal and oil on the one and wind and solar on the other in terms of negative environmental impact? I honestly don't know whether that would portray dams too negatively or too positively, or about right.

Anyway, keeping that in mind: China generates only 24.4% of its electricity from renewables. But that's better than the US' 14.27%. The rest of the countries on the first list: Brazil generates 83.98% of its electricity from renewables, Canada 64.48%, Germany 32.70%, Russia 16.59%, India 19.11%, Japan 15.53%, Norway 98.47% and Italy 45.90%.

9 out 10 of the top producers in terms of total wattage, AND MOST OF THE REST OF THE COUNTRIES ON EARTH, generate a higher percentage of their electricity from non-fossil-fuel sources than the country Bloomberg refers to as a leader on the issue of climate change.

Here's a list of countries ranked by the kilotons of carbon dioxide they produced in 2015. The top 10 is quite similar to the top 10 producers of electricity from renewable sources. China and the US are 1-2 again. So, I couldn't blame the residents of many countries, or residents of the US who attempt to think globally, if they got angry at someone like Michael Bloomberg for referring to the US as a leader, or even the leader, in tackling the problem of climate change.

Here's a state-by-state breakdown of the US, giving percentages of electricity with and without hydroelectric dams. Vermont leads both with hydroelectric dams (99.8%) and without (44.3%).

How To Get People To Stop Paying Attention To You And Shun You

The only thing wrong with that meme is that other vegans have been telling him the same thing and he always assumes they must be non-vegans because how could a vegan find fault with him? Him?!

JAMES: No-one who is not a vegan can call himself an environmentalist. (ACTUAL QUOTE!)

Class, what is going to be the effect of James' statement? Is it

A) More people will become vegans;

or

B) Fewer people will call themselves environmentalists?

That's right, it's

C) Fewer people will listen to James.

Which is a shame, because James was providing a lot of fascinating information about the food industry. And for all I know, James' information about the food industry may have been 100% correct. But James was wrong in his assumption about who is and isn't allowed to call him- or herself an environmentalist. And he's reinforcing the stereotype about vegans being judgmental douchebags.

I'm sure that if I dug through James' life I could find something which is less than environmentally-friendly. Instead, since I only have one life and I'm trying to use it efficiently, I'm blowing James off and moving on. It's not enough to be right in politics, and everything is political.

I'm Not Watching "South Park" Anymore

Who cares? I would imagine maybe 2 or 3 people care. The usual number of people who care about my opinions. If anything, this post might boost "South Park" viewership, because that's the way the world is. I don't think Trey Parker or Matt Stone will lose any sleep because I've decided they're dicks and that watching their show will from now on just remind me about what complete dicks they are.

It became too much for me a couple of nights ago, partway through the episode "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow," from 2001, in which the kids reunite Terrance and Phillip for the South Park Earth Day Brainwashing Festival. I don't remember when I changed the channel, but it wasn't long after Clyde said, "Ah, excuse me? My Daddy is a geologist and he says there actually isn't any concrete evidence of global warming." Ah, excuse me, Clyde? Your Daddy gets paid to lie by oil companies. I don't think Parker and Stone have that excuse. I could be wrong, but whether they're getting paid off or they own a lot of Exxon and BP or they're actually that dumb, or whether they actually do realize that global warming is real and they do shit like this just to spite Sean Penn DOESN'T REALLY MATTER all that much any more to me.

It's the message of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night again, the one I've quoted so often in this blog, the one which has become almost a mantra for me: "We are what we pretend to be." In the introduction to Mother Night Vonnegut said he didn't think it was a particularly deep message. I must disagree. It's very deep, and its applications and implications are wide. I did a bit of research for this post, trying to find something concrete about Parker's and/or Stone's views on global warming. A quote, one way or another, "I think global warming is a hoax" or "Of course we know global warming is real and catastrophic, we're just torturing Sean Penn." A massive donation to the Republican Party or the Audubon Society. I found squat. Besides being done with "South Park," I think I'm done with RationalWiki too, which claimed that Parker and Stone are climate change skeptics and offered no evidence for this beyond "South Park." And I'm sorry I ever saw Encyclopedia Dramatica in the course of searching for info on Parker and Stone. Again, it's the we-are-what-pretend-to-be thing: if Encyclpedia Dramatica isn't a neo-Nazi website, it's pretending to be one convincingly enough that it actually is one.

I'm not telling anybody else what TV shows they should watch. Some people can't watch movies with Tom Cruise or John Travolta, because of Scientology. In some cases some of those movies used to be among their favorites, but in the meantime they learned more about Scientology, and now they just can't stand those movies anymore. I have no problem watching movies with Cruise or Travolta in them. Scientology doesn't bother me nearly as much as global warming. To me the main difference between Christianity and Scientology is that Scientology is a lot newer. But if people want to boycott movies with Cruise or Travolta, or keep watching "South Park," that's fine with me. I understand. Sometimes I can separate art from politics, as I do when I read Eliot and Pound and Yeats. I can understand progressives who love Wagner and progressives who can't listen to Wagner. I can separate the art from the politics.

Some of the time I can. But not all of the time. Not with Parker and Stone, not any more. Not with the treatment of environmentalism on "South Park," not with Parker being a Libertarian either, and not with Stone saying stupid shit such as that W and Michael Moore are equally clueless and that Alec Baldwin is even worse.

It would be great if one of them had a big come-to-Jesus moment about the climate, and they started to have a huge bitter public feud over the environment. That would be awesome. "Terrance and Phillip: Behind the Blow"-in-real-life-level awesome.

I tried really hard to find out that Parker and/or Stone was an anti-vaxxer so that I could pile more contempt upon them in this post, but no luck. I'm not saying they're not anti-vaxxers, I'm not saying that it would surprise me to learn that they're anti-vaxxers. Anti-vax is truly rampant in Amuurkin show biz, probably more widespread per capita than in Amurrkin trailer parks, but I have no evidence to show anti-vax tendencies on the part of either Parker or Stone. At this juncture.

Anyway. Trey, Matt: screw you gazz, I'm goin' home.

Pope Francis' Emphatic, Reality-Based Remarks On The Environment

"The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth."

That's from Pope Francis' encyclical "Laudato Si," released today. You can read the whole thing in English here if you like.

As I understand it, Papal encyclicals are still written in Latin, and then translated from Latin into many other languages. I've never been able to find any Catholic documents written post-Vatican-II (post-1962) in book form in Latin, and I haven't been able to find "Laudato Si" in Latin on the Internet. However, to my great surprise, today I found this page on the Vatican website which contains Latin versions of some documents written by Francis, including his 1st encyclical, which was published in 2013, so I assume -- no, I don't assume. I hope, but the Vatican website has disappointed and puzzled me so severely so many times that I no longer assume anything at all about it -- I hope that "Laudato Si," Francis' 2nd encyclical, will soon be on this page in its original Latin.

For now, back to the English version: Francis mentions that every one of his predecessors going back to John XXIII spoke out against the destruction of our environment; that many of those most badly affected by this destruction are the poorest of humanity, that many of the Earth's wealthy seem more concerned with covering up the problems of pollution and global warming than in addressing them; denounces "social exclusion" and "an inequitable distribution of energy and other services;" points out that fresh waters supplies are quickly dwindling while "access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right;” and that plant and animals species are dying out very rapidly, with disastrous results for remaining life; denounces previous political responses to the environmental crisis as weak, saying that international environmental summits "have not lived up to expectations because, due to lack of political will, they were unable to reach truly meaningful and effective global agreements;" opposes free-market capitalism with remarks such as “by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion;” assets that when it comes to how we interact with the Earth's enviroinment, "we need to see that what is at stake is our own dignity." [...]

In short: over and over again in this encyclical, Francis says things about the environment and politics which we all know are true, and which almost of the politicians in the GOP in the US say are false, and it's full of a sort of common decency which is in short supply in the GOP. (I apologize to my international readers for this conclusion to a post about an international figure and his statements on an international problem, but the contrast between Francis and the GOP is so striking that I had to mention it. I'm sure that much of the same is true of many political parties in other countries.)

Climate Information And Misinformation

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." -- John 8:32

It'd be nice to think so. But it's sometimes easier said than done. Many organizations and corporations have the most misleading names. You might think, for example, that an organization with a name like Independent Women's Forum would be concerned with things like women's health and women's rights, but oh noooo: it promotes climate change deniers. It is run by a woman: a woman who formerly was one of Koch Industries' top lobbyists.

Here are a couple of links which may be helpful in our daily struggle against an ocean of well-funded bullshit: first, a detailed list of sources of misinformation provided by Fight Clean Energy Smears, which is not the best-named website in the history of the Innertubes, imho, but it's good stuff. The page I've linked is full of information about organizations, including the above-mentioned Independent Women's Forum, who deny climate change, hinder the growth of renewable energy and do other wonderful things like that. Most of them seem to get funding from oil companies. Many also get funding from tobacco companies. (Maybe the oil-company funding by itself just wasn't evil enough.) Exxon, the GOP, the Koch Brothers: their nasty fingerprints are all over the place here.

The second website I'm recommending to you is the home page of the organization which made the first website, the Natural Resources Defense Council. This website is crammed with facts, facts and more facts about climate change, pollution, green energy, the dirty tricks of oil companies, things which you yes you can do about all of this -- good stuff. The Wrong Monkey approves.