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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I’m sure most readers agree with the author of the meme here.

There are two other major ingredients that I would add to what we can expect to experiece:

Arrogance, i.e., an unfounded confidence in the correctness of Trump’s observations.  This is part of what it means to be a cult leader: your viewpoints are unassailable.

Wanton cruelty.  If you’re a wealthy Republican who’s been consistently loyal to Trump, you can expect smooth sailing.  Everybody else: journalists, congressional Democrats, the working class, political activists, humanitarians, students, asylum seekers, women, LGBTQs, people of color, non-Christians, is going to live under pressure.

Trump has been quite clear over the last few years that, if he were to be re-elected, he will exact revenge against all the people who stood against him.

Being a little guy with very low visibility, I don’t worry about this.  But think about  people like Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci.

What exactly did Dr. Fauci do to earn him the biting hatred of about half of all Americans?  He wouldn’t go along with Trump’s anti-scientific methods for dealing with the pandemic.

Liz Cheney famously said, “You can be loyal to the Constitution, or you can be loyal to Trump, but you can’t be loyal to both.”  Lord only knows that Trump and the MAGA Republicans have planned for this brave woman.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

As the story of Brian Thompson, the late CEO of United Health, ripples into and ultimately out of our news cycle, the subject of corporate greed resurfaces once again.  It’s clear that this guy’s organization, known for its exuberance in denying healthcare claims, pissed off one too many of its customers with its avarice and lies.

There is so much wrong with the way that corporations interact with us, it’s hard to know where to start.  Here at 2GreenEnergy, we tend to focus on environmental sustainability, where we routinely point out that Big Oil, the most profitable industry in human history, bolstered by tens of billions of dollars in annual subsidies from the U.S. government, is in the process of purposefully baking the planet, so as to profit to an even greater degree as global warming due to fossil fuel emissions roasts us alive.

Private healthcare is a different animal, but only slightly.  Like Big Oil, it works by lobbying (bribing) public officials to create legislation that enable it to profit from public misery.  This system results in the fact that the United States, the only developed country on the planet without universal healthcare, has the most expensive and least effective healthcare on the planet.  Ask yourself how it’s possible that people in other countries have far longer life expectancies, lower incidents of infant mortality, and far better outcomes than we do across dozens of different metrics, given that our country is by far the wealthiest and most powerful on the planet.

If I were the CEO of one of these corporations whose profits derive from the suffering of its neighbors, I’d have personal protection so robust that it would make the Secret Service look like a few Boy Scouts with bean-shooters and slingshots.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Climate Change

When we see video clips of Greta Thunberg speaking to large audiences during international conferences, she is normally mad as hell.  And given the truth shown in the meme here, is there any reason why she shouldn’t be?

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I’ll grant that the Albert Einsteins of the world are actually harmed by schooling.  Of course they’re bored, but perhaps worse, their capacity to employ their creative genius is thwarted by the authority of the academic status quo.

It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that, for all but about one hundred millionth of us, education is what enables us to to understand science, so as to become our civilization’s doctors, engineers, and chemists.  Want healthcare?  Bridges?  Air travel?  It won’t happen without these horrible “classes.”

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The author of the meme here suggests: “We’ll revisit this post (about the price of a dozen eggs) in four years.”

Sure we will.  We have the attention span of hamsters.

On top of that, we have propaganda machines that change the way we view American politics every few days, not every four years.  The idea that we’ll be reviewing our economic status on an apples-to-apples basis, or doing anything else rational four years from now, is ludicrous.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

I was on a Zoom call the other day with a guy who was defending Fox News on the basis that it’s “for people who want both sides of the story.”

The cartoon at left speaks to this.  If you’re talking about a matter of opinion, e.g., who was the greatest baseball player of all time, there really are two (or more) sides of the story.

In science, that’s simply not the case. No one with any sense wants to hear why Donald Trump thinks climate change is a hoax.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

If you think there is a single kid in our schools who’s being taught to hate his country, you are a true moron.

Yes, it’s part of America’s present-day ultra-right-wing agenda to do its best to prevent us from thinking critically. But who honestly believes that school teachers are trying to convince our children that they should hate the United States?

Sorry, but that’s some hardcore stupidity.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

Pictured here, it’s an indoor open flame, a fire outside of the fireplace if you will, the perfect present for a family with little kids.  Some ads show five-year-olds preparing smores next to the Christmas tree, captioned, “bringing the whole family together, one roasted marshmallow at a time.”

No chance for an accidental housefire, right?

Attorneys are already preparing their cases to support a class-action law suit in which thousands of plaintiffs who lost their tiny children in fiery deaths demand huge settlements of compensatory and punitive damages.

A Saturday Night Live segment in the 1980s offered a kerosine-soaked pair of pajamas as a Christmas gift called “Johnny Flame.” It was a joke.

This isn’t a joke; it’s a real, lethally destructive product on the market, and it’s representative of how greedy and stupid we’ve become in just 40 years.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Biofuels

I’ll bet anyone $100 against his $10 (10:1) that no investor in this biofuels scheme sees a single dollar return in the next five years. That may seem like a long time to wait for $10, but, if you have a free minute, you may want to look at this, and I think you’ll get my point.

This type of scam, btw, is one of the most predominant of our age: offering techno-idiots a chance to invest in things they know nothing about.

Biofuels in general is a great example. This industry, I believe, had a chance when I was learning about the potentially available ways to decarbonize our transportation sector 15 years ago.  It was abandoned by anyone who knew anything about it long ago.

And do these people really have anything like a breakthrough?  Again, read a bit about it.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Perhaps you’ve seen earlier versions of the ultra-right-wing “Kids’ Guide,” which present Donald Trump as an honest effective servant of the American people, and expose the  “radical left” nature of mainstream media.  They lay out the “evil” of certain social issues as well: LBGTQ rights, women’s rights to an abortion, DEI, wokeism, Critical Race Theory, etc.

The one at left, called the “Dynamic Duo” (Trump and Elon Musk) enables you to “teach your kids how these two men are shaping their future.” God only know what BS it contains.

The true shape of America’s future, unless these folks are stopped, will feature:

• The further looting of the U.S. treasury to make a few billionaires even richer

• The smashing of Social Security and other systems that were put in place to bolster the working class

• The end of America’s participation in environmental responsibility and climate change mitigation in particular

• More overt racism

• Social safety nets to prevent impoverishment and starvation

• Economic chaos that experts predict will ensue from huge tariffs

• The widening of the two-tiered justice system where the rich and powerful can commit crimes with impunity

• State-controlled media, where journalists with views that dissent from Trump’s are squashed

• The consolidation of power in the executive branch

• The further empowerment of Vladimir Putin and other world tyrants

We’re in a terrible place right now, and it’s propaganda like this that is largely responsible.

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