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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A reader sent me the meme at left and replied: “Liberals!”

Ha! You’re not alone in your beliefs.  But when we’re gone, you will be living in a country that features:

• Lousy education and even higher levels of ignorance and illiteracy.

• Life controlled by the billionaires.  Extreme levels of corruption.  Your next Secretary of Defense could be an alcoholic Fox News anchor, and your next Secretary of the Navy could be someone with literally zero military experience who’s only qualification was hosting a fund-raiser for Trump at his mansion.  (Oops–that’s happening now.)

Tens of millions of people without healthcare, who either die from treatable diseases or lose their life savings to medical bills.

• The rejection of science, brought to you by anti-vaxxers, climate deniers, flat-Earthers, and all manner of other crackpots.

• Possibly, all the other stuff that liberals have brought to our society: women suffrage, the 40-hour work week, civil rights, the abolition of slavery, etc.

I won’t be on this planet to see the effects of everything you seem to want so dearly.  Best of luck.

 

 

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

High-speed rail is nice, but there are obvious challenges associated with it here in America, e.g., obtaining the required easements and dealing with what I know to be the considerable resistance from the airline industry.

We may need to accept the fact that this isn’t going to happen, especially considering that our planet is rapidly losing its capacity to support organized human society.

If I were writing the budget for U.S. government spending, I would prioritize education and infrastructure that decarbonizes our energy and transportation sectors.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

This guy is correct.  History books will record the truth.

Now, it’s possible that the next four years are going to feature some really sickening “banana republic” stuff, i.e., a president’s using his power to (at least try to) jail his opponents, but this won’t last forever.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

What Sophocles said here was widely accepted in the U.S. when I was a young man, say 50 years ago.  Today, you’ll find shockingly few Americans who actively live according to this rule.

This is why, to take an example, the Volkswagen emissions scandal was so astonishing.  When I was a consultant to the tech giants from the 1980s to the late 2000-aughts, anyone proposing that his company design its products with a hidden piece of software such that they passed government testing, but functioned differently in the real world would have been immediately fired and escorted off the premises.

Same for the guy who suggested that Wells Fargo create millions of fraudulent accounts, to steal huge sums of money from their customers.   Bye!

Now, corporations that bilk their customers are the rule, rather than the exception.

Sophocles, you were a good man.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Does exporting humankind’s woes to another planet seem like a reasonable idea?

Do we really want greed, fascism, war, poverty, ignorance, racism, tribalism, the rationing of healthcare, and xenophobia on Mars?

What would this accomplish of any value?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

“The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the knowledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down.”

~Upton Sinclair, from “The Jungle”

Keep in mind that Sinclair (pictured at left) wrote this about 100 years ago, long before anyone dreamed of the level of quid pro quo and rank corruption that we’re seeing under Trump.

For example, in Herbert Hoover’s day, we didn’t have huge donors to presidential campaigns with no military experience appointed Secretary of the U.S. Navy (see pic of financier John Phelan). It never would have entered the mind of a president in that period of history to do something so bald-faced.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

I boycott Home Depot and Walmart, but I happily shop at Costco. My reasoning is at left.

They treat their employees fairly, they don’t gouge their customers, and they often do something nice for the world.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Let’s not overthink this,, or try to kid ourselves.

The majority of Americans, albeit a slim one, relate to stupidity, vulgarity, and lawlessness.  These are characteristics we gravitate to.

A presidential candidate like this wouldn’t succeed in any other country in the developed world, but here, we relish these qualities; we eat them with a spoon.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

From “Reason Magazine“:

A judge on Wednesday threw out a criminal charge against an Arizona mother who was arrested at a city council meeting for criticizing a public official, calling her arrest “objectively outrageous.”

Maricopa County Judge Gerald Williams dismissed with prejudice the trespassing charge against Rebekah Massie. On August 20, the mayor of Surprise, Arizona, ordered a police officer to arrest Massie during the public comment section of a city council meeting after Massie criticized a proposed pay raise for the city attorney. The mayor claimed she was violating a rule prohibiting complaints against city officials during public comment, and when she refused to stop speaking, he had her forcibly removed and arrested.

“No branch of any federal, state, or local government in this country should ever attempt to control the content of political speech,” Williams wrote in his dismissal order. “In this case, the government did so in a manner that was objectively outrageous.”

At the micro level, I wish the judge had opened a door toward a civil suit on the basis that the mayor had violated the woman’s civil rights.  I would love to see some compensatory and punitive damages here.

At the macro level, it will be interesting to see where legal matters like these go over the next four years.  I’m worried that another Trump administration will not look kindly on the free speech of individuals who are critical of the incoming president.

As I wrote in my recent post, Is America “Back?”, we’re soon to have an FBI director (pictured above) who has sworn to exact revenge against Trump’s enemies.  That doesn’t sound like the America we grew up in.

 

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

From Bloomberg:

 The House Judiciary Committee said it’s found “substantial evidence of collusion and anticompetitive behavior” by the financial industry to “impose radical ESG goals” on U.S. companies.

An interim report published by the Republican-led committee said “a cartel” of financial firms and climate activists sought to replace Exxon Mobil Corp. board members in 2021 after the company declined to make a series of climate pledges.

How pathetic.  It looks like Congress is lining up to take action against the segment of the financial industry that is concerned that Big Oil is on a quest to bake our planet so as to enhance its profit levels.

I advise those wringing their hands about all this to content themselves with the sad fact that, at this point, it seems extremely unlikely that the United States will lead the world in the direction of environmental sustainability.  We just re-elected a president whose entire support base believes that concern for the health of our planet is for woke sissies, and whose cabinet picks are even more aggressive on the subject than the president-elect himself.

My advice: just relax, have a glass of wine, and hope that the other 95+% of the world’s population does a better job here than we Americans.  They can’t do any worse.

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