Month: November 2024

Above, Riverkeepers on North Carolina’s Green River, devastated by Hurricane Helene’s flooding, work to clean up as yet unknown toxic pollution.

Below, those affected by the floods face tough times as cold weather arrives.

Most of the resistance to clean energy in rural America does not come from long time residents.

The farmers who have stewarded the land, in some cases for a century or more, generally look at clean energy as a way to diversify their incomes and preserve the family land – or at least, they defend the right of any landowner to do as he/she sees fit with their property.

Often the most rabid anti-clean energy activists are well-to-do newcomers who are enamored of their “Green Acres” lifestyle, and view the farmers as little more than sharecroppers – “The Help” – Groundskeepers – whose only job is to shut up and keep growing that corn, maintaining an unchanging pastoral backdrop for newcomers lifestyles, even if they are losing their shirts doing it.

Good example is North Shade Township in Gratiot County, Michigan, where I interviewed John Peck, the Township Supervisor, and Art Kurtze, a longtime trustee.
Before wind turbines, they told me, their century-old township hall did not even have running water or a bathroom. They relied on porta potties for plumbing and an old oil burner in the middle of the meeting room for heat.

Continue reading ““We Had No Bathrooms”. Then Came the Wind Turbines”

The last few weeks I’ve allowed a genre of “You Fucked Around and now You’re going to Find Out” videos to become a major time suck – with a lot of creators venting their frustration against racist White Americans, Trump voting Muslims and Latinos, and the frighteningly large population of voters who do not know that the Affordable Care Act (which they love) is the same thing as Obamacare (which they hate).

The common thread between all these groups voting against their own best interests is a vast cloud of misinformation that has, in the climate context, very much been my preoccupation over the last 20 years.
If we are going to reclaim democracy, finding new ways to cut through dense noise and deprogram a population is pretty core to our task.
Some insights here.

Hachette Book Group:

From one of our leading experts on disinformation, this inventive biography of the rogue WWII propagandist Sefton Delmer confronts hard questions about the nature of information war: what if you can’t fight lies with truth? Can a propaganda war ever be won?

In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies as liars and manipulators over his frequent radio speeches, blasted out on loudspeakers and into homes. British claims that Hitler was dangerous had little impact against this wave of disinformation.

Except for the broadcasts of someone called Der Chef, a German who questioned Nazi doctrine. He had access to high-ranking German military secrets and spoke of internal rebellion. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens, as well as politicians in Washington DC who were debating getting into the war. And–most importantly–Der Chef was a fiction. He was a character created by the British propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer, a unique weapon in the war.

Then, as author Peter Pomerantsev seeks to tell Delmer’s story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the US response to the invasion of Ukraine. In flashes forward to the present day, Pomerantsev weaves in what he’s learning from Delmer as he seeks to fight against Vladimir Putin’s tyranny and lies. This book is the story of Delmer and his modern investigator, as they each embark on their own quest to manipulate the passions of supporters and enemies, and to turn the tide of an information war, an extraordinary history that is informing the present before our eyes.

I continue talking to local farmers and officials in rural areas where clean energy is being deployed, to find out the actual ground truth.

Had a great chat with John Peck, Supervisor of North Shade Township, in Gratiot County, Michigan, yesterday. John wouldn’t let me leave without jumping in his truck, running down the road to meet Township Trustee Art Kurtze. They underlined and amplified accounts that I had heard from other officials in the same county over years.

CBS News has a rundown on a projected warmer than average winter.
Of course, that includes intense storms like those happening across the continental US right now.

Odd how current news reports look an awful lot like Al Gore’s slide show from 25 years ago.

Also underlines why Project 2025 wants so much to break up NOAA – to blind us to the increasingly dire situation.

Continue reading “CBS on Warmer Winters”

Video above from Pro Publica.

When MAGA says “Deep State”, they mean Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, Environmental Laws, a Social Safety Net, and any ability of the government and rule of law to thwart the infinite greed of Billionaire oligarchs, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, the Saudi Royal Family, and of course, Vladimir Putin.

They believe in an All Powerful Presidency, that they call “The Unitary Executive”.

New York Times:

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Friday picked a key figure in Project 2025 to lead the Office of Management and Budget, elevating a longtime ally who has spent the last four years making plans to rework the American government to enhance presidential power.

The would-be nominee, Russell T. Vought, would oversee the White House budget and help determine whether federal agencies comport with the president’s policies. The role requires Senate confirmation unless Mr. Trump is able to make recess appointments.

The choice of Mr. Vought would bring in a strongly ideological figure who played a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s first term, when he also served as budget chief. Among other things, Mr. Vought helped come up with the idea of having Mr. Trump use emergency power to circumvent Congress’s decision about how much to spend on a border wall.

Mr. Vought was a leading figure in Project 2025, the effort by conservative organizations to build a governing blueprint for Mr. Trump should he take office once again. Mr. Trump tried to distance himself from the effort during his campaign, but he has put forward people with ties to the project for his administration since the election.

Continue reading “Project 2025 Author Nominated for Office of Management and Budget”

Forbes:

The realization that Donald Trump is returning to the White House next year is rattling the cleantech industry and unnerving climate advocates – with good reason. The last time he was in office the president-elect pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, called climate change a hoax, falsely claimed offshore wind turbines kill whales and big wind farms are a top killer of birds (house cats are a much bigger threat).

But don’t count out the fast-growing clean power industry just yet. Billionaire investor Tom Steyer is betting that renewable energy and the cleantech sector are going to be just fine, regardless of Trump’s fixation on hydrocarbons.

“Texas has tripled their solar in the last three years and is by far the biggest wind producer. Are they doing it because they like renewables or because they like money? I think it might be because they like money. And so does everybody else,” Steyer told Forbes. “People are making decisions for cheaper, faster, better. That’s the decision, not politics.”

He plans to continue to use the $1 billion his firm Galvanize Climate Solutions has raised and future investments to back companies with advantages in areas like cost-competitive low-carbon cement, ag technology that helps farmers improve efficiency and sustainability, energy management software as well as cheap, continuous geothermal power.

And though he talked about repealing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) during the campaign, that’s easier said than done. Most of those projects have been bringing jobs and investment dollars to Republican-held Congressional districts. Cleantech could even benefit from some Trump policies–like cutting both the corporate tax rate and red tape, including time-consuming environmental reviews, that hold up the siting of green projects and electricity transmission lines.

Continue reading “Clean Energy’s Cost Edge Could Trump Fossil Fuel’s Greed”

If only we had some flooding to put out these fires.