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

Growth of EV Sales

Worldwide, about 6.75 EV's were sold in 2021, which was more than twice the 2020 total of 3.3 million, which itself was a 60% increase over 2019's total of 2 million. In the first quarter of 2022, 2 million units were sold, almost twice the 1.1 million sold in Q1 2021. 

 

No one knows how quickly EV sales will increase in the future, and no one I've seen is predicting that sales will continue to double every year -- but just for fun, just for the moment, let's pretend they will. Double 2022's global total of 6.75 million would be 13.5 million in 2023, 27 million in 2024, 54 million in 2025, 108 million in 2026 and hold it, hold it, because as far as I know, there have never been as many as 108 million motor vehicles sold in any calendar year. If I've got it right, the worldwide record so far was under 80 million, in 2017, and few if any people are predicting as many as 108 by 2026.

I'm sure that a lot of you, including many hardcore EV advocates, are yelling at your screens about now, saying that I'm an idiot and that 100% growth of EV sales every year is impossible. 

Yes, I'm an idiot, you've got no argument from me there. Where we disagree is in the use of this term "impossible." I've long believed that it's an overused term, and that many more things are possible than most of us tend to think most of the time.

The growth of the EV sector over the past couple of years has happened in spite of COVID, in spite of supply chain issues -- and in spite of very, very few EV's having been sold outside of China, Europe and North America. Lots of vehicles were sold in Central and South America, Africa, India. Very, very few EV's. 

About 90% of recent EV sales have been in China and Europe. Why? It's very simple: because laws in China and Europe said that higher percentages of vehicles had to be EV's. Because people decided that EV sales were going to grow.

What's the biggest obstacle to the growth of solar and wind power to run all these EV's, real present-day one plus the imaginary future ones? It's the legal situation again, with the fossil fuel industry and so-called "utilities" hindering the growth of solar and wind, and thus the death of fossil fuels. 

From one perspective it all seems very complicated, and it's true that there are a lot of moving parts here, and that EV sales are just a part of it: exposing the ties between fossil fuels and government, building up solar and wind, smartening up the grid, improving public transportation, encouraging people to walk more and eat less meat, afforestation, re-forestation, rebuilding wetlands, etc etc. Yes, you could say that it's complicated.

From another perspective, though, it's as simple as anything could ever be: do we want to save our own lives? How much do we want it? Do we want it bad enough, or not?

I'm not going to save the world all by myself, one isolated autistic weirdo with a silly blog. How many people are working on these things, how many will join them? People with the brains to make better batteries and smarter grids? People with power, people in positions to pass laws that get more EV's and less ICE vehicles built, laws that speed the growth of solar and wind and kill off fossil fuels, laws which improve education so that everyone is better equipped to improve all of these things? People with the patience and eloquence and intelligence to explain, better than I can, why all of these things are necessary and how important they are?

The Answer is, There is No One Answer

Sometimes when you come across something stupid, the best thing you can do is forget it and move on.

However, sometimes it just keeps gnawing at your brain like a stupid rodent. I suppose that's one of the things blogs are for.

Someone (I'll do him the kindness of not saying who) who seems to think he's extraordinarily intelligent, and has a considerable following who seem to agree, recently made an elaborate online presentation of all of the reasons why evs are not the answer and are not going to solve the climate crisis all by themselves: they are better than ice vehicles, he says, but they still have tires and drive on roads and other very bad things.

 

The thing is, I literally can't think of anyone, offhand, who has claimed that evs, all by themselves, are the answer. It seems to me that almost everyone bright enough to realize that evs actually are cleaner than ice vehicles, also knows that they are not perfect from an ecological standpoint, and also is in favor of addressing the climate crisis in a number of ways: not just with evs, but also with public transportation, solar power, wind power, geothermal, tidal, sustainable agriculture, a sustainable timber industry, afforestation, reforestation, veganism, smarter architecture, cleaner concrete, cleaner steel, cleaner rubber, better science, better education, better politicians, etc, etc, etc.

I say almost everyone, because this guy, after listing all of the reasons why evs aren't the answer,  said that trains, public transportation by rail, ARE the answer.

Maybe he was making a joke and I missed it. I've missed a few jokes in my lifetime. 

And public transportation by rail will be very helpful in decreasing humanity's carbon footprint. Along with with evs and many, many other things. As you very likely already knew. 

Making it questionable whether this blog post accomplished a thing. Except perhaps to warn you against those who believe that there is one single thing which, all by itself, will repair the Earth's climate. 

If there actually are any such people. There probably are at least a few here and there. Possibly even including the train-obsessed jerk who impelled me to write this.

Reasons For Optimism About the Climate

There's no pressing need to convince people that the Earth is round, not flat. There actually are a few people who still believe it's flat, and Lord knows, they're hard to reason with, since they're very stupid -- but their numbers have become so few that they barely matter any more.

Similarly, the general public has become better educated about the climate, and the effect of human activity upon the climate. Soon, there may be no more real need to debate climate change deniers anymore, since we will be able to easily out-vote them. It's becoming more and more unusual for someone to flat-out deny that global warming is happening. People who used to deny it are now saying that, yes, the Earth is getting warmer, but that humans aren't causing it. And people who used to say that are now saying that th dang environmentalists don't know how to fix it and are just making things worse. And people who used to say that have shut up and started buying electricity generated from solar and wind, and even driving electric cars, because it's cheaper. Because of good old fashioned greed. Boy, wouldn't it be ironic if Gordon Gekko was right about greed all along?

I'm not going that far -- but: environmentally-friendly human behavior is becoming more widespread, for a variety of reasons, including greed. What just a few decades ago was called the environmental movement, and was regarded by many as fringe lunacy, is now mainstream, and growing fast, and getting laughed at less and less often.

This video is delightful:



Yes, it focuses on a list of 10 commonly-given reasons for not buying an electric car, soundly debunking all 10, but in the process it gives a lot of information about much more broad topics of green power and green technology. And it's also very witty and fun to watch.

I'm feeling optimistic about the climate today, because there are so many different ways in which human behavior is changing, each one helping the climate: more and more people are buying electric vehicles instead of vehicles with internal-combustion engines. More and more people are ceasing to drive at all: instead, they take the train or the bus or they walk or bike. And if they really, really need a car, there's cabs and Uber and Lyft, and soon there will be robot cars. Yes, robot cars. Yes, soon. Google it if you don't believe me. And most, or, probably, all of those robot cars will be electric, and will get their juice from solar and wind and other green sources.

And the price of electricity from solar and wind and those other green sources is already lower than the price of electricity from coal or gas in many places, and it just keeps getting less expensive as the green technology becomes more large scale and more efficient. And coal and gas and oil and gasoline are not getting cheaper.

And rooftop gardens keep popping up in cities, and forests keep getting planted along the edges of deserts, turning the deserts green.

And more and more people stop using plastic water bottles, and start using re-usable cloth shopping bags.

And paying attention to the behavior of individual corporations and politicians, and shopping and voting accordingly. And so forth and so on. So many different reasons to be optimistic. They add up.

Are We Technologically Prepared For 100% Renewables Right Now?

For any given challenge facing a society, there seem typically to be at least two, diametrically opposed sorts of responses: 1) This challenge can't be overcome; or 2) How exactly will we overcome this challenge? Response type 1 has said: We can't cross this river, we can't cure this disease, we can't fly through the air, etc, etc, and response type 2 has enabled progress to occur.

Of course, there can be dishonest reasons for claiming that something is impossible. Perhaps some slave owners didn't really believe that it was impossible for society to exist without slavery, but claimed that it was impossible, because they were making lots of money as slave holders, and didn't want to face the economic competition which would come along with the abolition of slavery. Perhaps some steamship operators knew as well as anyone that airplanes were technologically feasible, but didn't want the economic competition of airlines.

Today, response type 1 says that we can't generate all of the electricity we need by means of renewable energy, that we will have to use natural gas and nuclear power as well, because we can't make all of the batteries we would need in order to store as much electricity as we would have to in order to make 100% renewable energy work. Do I really even need to mention that some people might intentionally exaggerate the technical challenges associated with 100% renewables because they're financially invested in petrochemicals and nuclear and don't want the competition from renewables, or was that already perfectly obvious to all of you?

Response type 2 is busy building better batteries, as well as ways to store energy made by renewable means in other forms than electricity, which can be converted into electricity when needed. Batteries and other energy-storage technologies are rapidly improving, and the potential for further improvement appears to be vast.

In the case of this challenge, there is also a response type 3, which says: we don't need any breakthroughs in energy-storage technology, the technology we have right now can enable us to rely 100% on renewable sources of power. Breakthroughs in energy-storage technology will be nice, of course, and give us still greater flexibility and a still more reliable grid, but renewables plus today's energy-storage technology can already add up to a more reliable grid than the one we have today, still powered mostly by oil, gas, coal and nukes. The lovably geeky Amory Lovins lays out a type 3 scenario in under 5 minutes in this TED talk video:



There are all sorts of people today purporting to be experts in energy technology, contradicting what other supposed experts are saying. I would encourage you to consider conflicting assertions, and think for yourself.

I'm much more inclined to believe the believers in 100% renewables than the nay-sayers, because the nay-sayers have already been proven dead wrong over and over, as renewable energy grows and grows and continues to actually function really well. I agree with those who say that the major obstacle to renewable energy is corrupt politics propping up old, highly-polluting means of generating energy which, in a truly unfettered free market, would no longer be able to compete.

Dream Log: Romance and Green Energy

Last night I dreamed I was at a meeting of people concerned about global warming, discussing ways to advocate and implement green energy. People at the meeting were discussing the way that advocates for fossil fuels exaggerate the problems involved in switching to green energy; for example, claiming that solar generation of electricity requires 1000 times more land area than fossil fuels -- an extreme example of fossil-fuel propaganda, to be sure. I was there because I wanted to get some reliable figures about such things. In the dream I was -- and now, waking, I am -- under the impression that solar can generate electricity while using less land than fossil fuels. But I was not -- and still am not -- completely sure who has the most reliable figures, and who is making the most sense.

At the meeting, a lot of John Lennon recordings were been played, from the late 60's and the early 70's, recordings he made with the Beatles and solo, from "Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Cept For Me and My Monkey)" and "Glass Onion" to "#9 Dream." In the dream the music was key to the education about global warming and propaganda.

I met a woman at the meeting and we soon became friendly. After the meeting broke up, late in the evening, she and I went for a walk. We began to hug and kiss. Walking along, she said that she was tired. I picked her and carried her for a while, which made her laugh.

She was sad and I didn't know what I could do about it. I tried to be very nice.

We walked through an office building. We were in an atrium several stories above the ground floor. The ground floor was covered in tiles in the shapes and colors of pictures by Matisse. It wasn't clear to me whether Matisse himself had actually made the tiles. I exclaimed about how beautiful the tiles were, she did not reply, and immediately, I was afraid that she disliked Matisse, perhaps more for political than aesthetic reasons.

She smoked a lot. She stepped back outside of the building to have another cigarette. I haven't smoked in 20 years, and I didn't feel good about starting again, but I wanted to be with her, and I find that it's hard to be a couple when one person smokes and the other doesn't, and also I had been smelling so much of her smoke since before the meeting had broken up that I felt I was getting hooked again. So I asked for a drag on her cigarette. I was all-in, even if it meant I had to smoke to be with her.

But then, after I took a puff, she had disappeared when I was looking in another direction. I looked all over and couldn't find her. I didn't have her phone number or address.

Then I woke up.

mee r munkee. mee luv yu. pleez yuze grean ennurjee

mee r munkee. mee luv yu.

mee want 2 liv! greta tunburg also want 2 liv! thairfor, pleez yuze grean ennurjee.

iff mee had 30 bilyun dahlurz, mee kud giv solar rufs 2 milyuns uv howzes an uhthr bildingz.

an then mee kud chalunj uhthur bilyunarez: top that, bil gaitz an warruhn bufut an jef bayzoz and elon musk an yu uhthur bilyunarez! top that, with solar, or win, or tiduhl, or jeeohthermuhl, or uhthur grean stuf! yu want tu bee greanuhst bilyunare uv all time? pruv it! giv away mor kul grean stuf than i jest did! mee luv yu, bilyunarez.

thatts wot mee wud say iff mee had 30 bilyun dahlurz and gaiv uhway milyuns of solar rufs.

speshl mesuhj 2 th coke bruhthurz: stop. jest stop. leev that cole in th grown, an maik grean enurjee insted. mee luv yu, coke bruhthurz. but sumtime it hard 2 luv yu beecuz uhv th cole. not az hard az it iz 2 luv donal chump. but hard sumtimz. so jest stop. thnk yu verr mutch. mee luv yu. mee want 2 liv.

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%).

Arnold And Francis

What do a former Republican Governor of California and the Pope have in common?

They're both intensely interested in something Trump says doesn't exist: global warming. They're both promoting alternative energy as energetically as they can.

Of course you can't sell sunshine and wind with big profits the way you can do with petrochemicals. Who cares if it's killing us all, with oil, with Trump, and Putin, there's money to be made!

But -- is there, really? Are the Dakota and Keystone pipelines going to be able to pay for themselves if demand for petrochemicals is drying up, because everybody is switching to solar and wind and tidal and geothermal and biodiesel and vegetable oil and switchgrass and corn ethanol and hydroelectric and nuclear? Not every item on that list is popular with environmentalists, but every one of them isn't petroleum. And with the possible exception of hydroelectric, nuclear and corn ethanol (the only ones on the list which aren't popular with environmentalists), each one is growing fast.

How does this leave us with expanding demand for oil such as that there is any economic reason for Trump's energy policies even if we leave "secondary" considerations such as the health and survival of the human species completely out of the equation?

The oil companies lied to us for so long about the effects of their products. I think they may be lying to us now about the long-term demand for their products. Losers. Sad.

You're Not Going To Be Elected President In 2016, Bernie. But You Can Still Be A Hero

You're still saying, every chance you get, that you have a chance at winning the Democratic nomination. You don't have snowball's chance in Hell. And if you really don't know this, if you really can't do even that much math -- well, then I'm wasting my time trying to talk to you, and this post is strictly for the benefit of other people.

But assuming that you actually can do the math and that you realize that Hillary will be the nominee, why do you keep acting as if you don't realize it? The thing is, there are a lot of your supporters -- nobody knows for sure how many -- who can't do the math. Are you doing them any service by feeding their delusions?

Over and over, you say that your #1 priority is to ensure that Trump is defeated in the fall. So act on that. You can do more than any other single person to swing votes away from Trump and to Hillary, by dropping out of the election NOW and doing all that you can to persuade your supporters that they must vote for Hillary.

You know Hillary personally, you know she's not history's greatest monster and not a Republican in disguise. You know how close most of her positions are to yours and how far to the Left both of you are from the Republicans. But a lot of your supporters, including a lot of very noisy ones, clearly don't know any of this, and they need to hear it from the only person they would possibly listen to about Hillary: you.

You can go down in history as someone who united a nation in a time of great peril, the peril being the possibility of a Trump Presidency. Oh, you'd be such a hero. And the movement you've been in will go on, but with real power, with many of its people in office, getting things done, all clearly due to you. You will have moved the Democratic party a long way back to the Left, and people will love you for it. They will remember.

The thing is, of course, that the longer you wait to drop out and work to unite people around the goal of stopping Trump, the less your impact will be. The more time goes by, the more people will realize that Hillary has won the nomination -- and not just won it, but won it by miles and miles. The 2016 Democratic Presidential campaign has been very exciting, but it was never close, except in the deluded minds of some of your followers. That delusion is fading. The longer you stay in the race, the more you look like a nut, and the more the people who talk about you being elected President in 2016 look like nuts. In a socially-responsible society, nuts are looked after to make sure they're not hurt, but in the positions of power in politics and other practical affairs, they're shunned. They're not allowed to take over, with very few and disastrous exceptions like Hitler and Trump.

The real Stop Trump campaign, ever since he won the Republican nomination, has been Hillary's campaign, and Hillary's campaign will get on with taking care of business, with you or without you. With you joining it now -- right now -- it could be a juggernaut, not only winning the White House in a landslide, but also winning Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and flipping Mayoral offices and City Councils and judgeships from Republican to Democrat, from sea to shining sea, so that a Democratic President and all those other Democratic elected officials will actually be able to pass laws and appropriate money and get things done, things like repairing the infrastructure and expanding Social Security, and restoring funding to education and reducing tuition costs, and converting the US to wind and solar and other clean energy -- you know: all of that long line of things which Hillary supports just as much as you do, as do the vast majority of Democratic office holders and candidates for office, and Democratic voters.

Hillary is going to take care of business with or without your help. I don't think you can actually cost her the election and get Trump elected -- the very opposite of what you claim is your #1 priority -- but you certainly can make the Presidential election, and all of those other elections, much closer than they need to be. The sooner you get on board, the closer the expansion of the social safety net and the restoration of the infrastructure and the conversion to clean energy, and all of the other things that you and I and Hillary and almost all Democrats want, will come.

But the longer you wait, the less power you have here. The more you insist on behaving like a nut who doesn't know when he's been defeated, the more people will treat you like a nut, and the less of a factor you will be in November.

Unless you actually go full retard and 3rd party. You're acting nuttier and nuttier, but I still don't think you're that far gone just yet.

Assuming that eventually you're going to be supporting Hillary and Democrats in general, the sooner you start, the more significant your support will be. If you wait too long, as I said, I don't think it will actually mean that Trump beats Hillary, but it could mean that the House and the Senate stay Republican, and that a lot of the state and local offices stay Republican as well. And then, what will you have accomplished? You will have thrown a huge temper tantrum, and because of that tantrum we will get much less of what both we Democrats and you want, than if you do what politicians have to do very often: compromise in order to get most of what they want, instead of none of it.

Time is of the essence. The longer you wait to drop out and endorse Hillary, the more you will be ignored by sensible people who have to get on with this -- beating Trump -- with our without your help. The longer you wait, the more you will leave us only with the option to ignore you.