War: what is it good for?

 https://www.ukraineoversight.gov/Funding/

 

As of September 30, 2024, the U.S. Ukraine response funding totals nearly $183 billion, with $130.1 billion obligated and $86.7 billion disbursed.

* * * * *

Consider the cost of war.  The US has not spilled a drop of blood in this war, yet it is costing us quite a bit.  Russia has had over 750,000 casualties since they invaded Ukraine (killed or wounded).  It's estimated that Russia spends about $750 million per DAY on the war.  And why?  It should be obvious by now that Ukrainians don't want to become Russians.  They want to be left alone, not taken over.  Putin started a war for his own benefit, not for Ukraine's, nor even for Russia's.  And he can't back out now without losing face.

Those who start unnecessary wars are the worst people on earth. 

Replacement for plastic: finally a good one!

 

Balcony solar panels!

 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/18/if-a-million-germans-have-them-there-must-be-something-in-it-how-balcony-solar-is-taking-off

 

With solar balconies, no such consent is required unless the facade is listed as of historic interest or there is a specific prohibition from the residents’ association or the local authority. Furthermore, as long as the installation does not exceed 800 watts it doesn’t require certification, which can cost from €100 to €400, depending on the area.

“The beauty of the solar balconies is they are flexible, cheap and plug straight into the domestic network via a converter, so you don’t have to pay for the installation,” says Santiago Vernetta, CEO of Tornasol Energy, one of Spain’s main suppliers.

* * * * *

This looks like an obvious solution.  You don't need a system huge enough to run your house. You need one that is cheap and easy, and will save you $.

 

Mossy Earth: thoughtful restoration of the planet

 https://www.mossy.earth/

 

To be suitable, the project must aim to achieve one or more of these objectives that are central to rewilding:

1. Restore biodiversity and/or abundance of native species
2. Restore key ecosystem processes (e.g., flooding, migration, herbivory, predation)
3. Improve habitat integrity and connectivity
4. Protect unique and threatened ecosystems and species
   

 * * * * *

I don't know much about these guys but it looks like a good group.

Deconstruction!

 https://youtu.be/4x8ZT-M2Dok?si=h80VeueqS6CoHgNU

 

Did you know that 40% of what goes into our landfills is from construction projects?  Companies are springing up to recycle much of the old construction material.

the Obvious things we should be tackling, before it's too late

 

Why don't people in power talk about the obvious most important things?

during the 2024 presidential campaign, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump seemed to struggle to find topics that would sway voters to them. Harris promised to provide $25,000 toward first-home purchases, alluding to the shortage of housing. Trump, sticking to his anti-immigration theme, worried that that immigrants to the US are “eating the dogs, they're eating the cats” in a small town in Ohio. Both candidates steered clear of the most obvious and important topics. I'd like to shine a light on what they should have been focusing on.

The writers of the US Constitution stated their goal was “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Housing and illegal immigration do fit in there, but I submit that there are more clear and important areas to consider.

Climate IS talked about, which is good. But what was said is not. While Trump called protecting the environment a “green new scam,” Kamala Harris has said she will “unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis.” Not a lot of detail in either campaign though.

Now on to the easy ones.

The US has about 5000 nuclear weapons. Why? The cost for upgrading and maintaining these weapons is estimated to be $756 billlion over the next 10 years. (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59054) Let's negotiate again with our “enemies” and cut this down to about 100 nukes. Savings: about $700 billion, and probably the salvation of our species.

Here are the countries that don't have universal health care: the US, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, China. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-notable-countries-that-are-still-without-universal-healthcare.html Our own NIH says universal health care is about 13% cheaper than private health care. This is a savings of about $450 billion per year. It's simpler and more equitable.

Growing inequality is a danger to our democracy. Are we going back to the time when the kings and princes lived in their castles, and the rest of us peons scraped by in our hovels outside the castle walls? It seems so. Tax the money hoarders. There is no reason that any one person needs more than $10 million (using that as an arbitrary limit). Consider the tax rates in the 1950s, and look at how much better off the middle class relatively was then. Single breadwinners in each family, most households could afford a car, a home, and higher education. And the rich? Despite tax rates of up to 90%, the rich somehow stayed relatively wealthy. https://youtu.be/q2gO4DKVpa8?si=7rPGCe4M3XI5O3C3

The US debt, $36.1 trillion, is a huge anchor on our economy. As with any household, if you're just paying off your debt instead of paying for improving your life, you are stuck in quicksand. This huge debt requires a huge percentage of our GDP just to pay for our past, not our future. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/

There is a little talk about the homeless, about the housing shortage, about the lack of healthcare for some, etc. All this should just be bundled into one point: there should be a baseline for all people below which we strive to let no one fall. This baseline means not that people can dawdle around and still live comfortably. It means that those who are temporarily or permananently unable to support themselves will not have to live hungry and cold under a bridge somewhere. Once this baseline is reasonably calculated, the argmnents from then on should only be about how to make sure people do not scam the system.

All corporations should be Benefit corporations (i.e. have to be of benefit to society). No longer should our capitalist system allow a corporation to gain profits by making the world less habitable. No longer should corporations be able to exploit the citizens so they can have fancier cars. A Benefit corporation must not only strive to give a profit to their shareholders, but must show that their activities also benefit society in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

Plastics are everywhere. Plastics are inside our bodies, at the bottom of the ocean, and in just about every product made. About 380 million tons of plastic products are made every year. In contrast, all humans alive today weigh about 600 million tons. We will not only drown ourselves and the planet in plastic, but it is also invading our bodies and our food. Why? For profit and convenience. Humans, we may soon find out, prefer convenience to self preservation.

We try to help the planet by working on our energy use. We make appliances and vehicles that use less energy. We switch to sources of energy that are safer for the planet. And yet, our use of energy is growing exponentially. And besides all the people on earth who are beginning to also have access to cheaper energy, we also have energy gobblers popping up. Crypto currency, for example, uses about the same amount of electricity as the nation of the Netherlands. Crypto mining requires enormous amounts of computers working 24/7 on calculations to create crypto wealth. Artificial intelligence (AI) applications have also massive computation requirements, which again suck up enormous amounts of electricity. And why? So we can make cute videos of cats playing piano or some silly thing? AI is being used in more and more industries, so more and more computing and energy hogging will be coming our way. As we try to switch to safer energy sources, we may not be able to keep up with expanding energy demands even if we keep our carbon guzzling power plants. Does anybody talk about this? No.

So I can see why people are tired of how our country is run at this time. Our politicians talk about everything under the sun except the most important topics. Trump, for example, brought up an immigrant problem he perceived in one town in Ohio during the presidential debates. Really? Nothing more important to bring up? Harris promised $25,000 to new home buyers. Really? Who still could afford a house? And where will these non-existent houses spring up?

We cannot let our politicans and power brokers steer us away from the bigger problems we are facing. They are obvious. They are existential problems. They will affect our country for generations. And they all have solutions. We must hold those in power accountable and require them to deal with the obvious problems first. I don't offer solutions here. I offer the direction we should look and the things we should see that are actually right in front of our eyes every day, if we'd only take the time to notice.

turning shopping malls into apartments

 https://youtu.be/J1GIF6VNipE?si=hW-sXpIfptB09WOi

 

192 malls in the US plan to include housing sections.  

Plastic will drown us soon

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/24/world-unable-cope-10-years-talks-un-global-treaty-to-end-plastic-waste

 

This year, various researchers found microplastics in every sample of placenta they tested; in human arteries, where plastics are linked to heart attacks and strokes; in human testes and semen, adding to evidence of the ubiquity of plastics and concern over health risks. The plastics crisis is widely recognised as a threat to human health, biodiversity and the climate.

 Two years after a historic agreement by 175 countries to adopt a mandate on negotiations for a global, legally binding treaty to address the whole life cycle of plastics, delegates remain widely divided on what to do – and a deadline is looming. Progress has stalled over a row about the need for cuts to the $712bn plastics industry. The last talks, in April, failed to get an agreement to put production targets – seen as key to curbing plastic waste – at the treaty’s centre.

* * * * *

So we're killing ourselves, but it's ok because we're making a lot of money???  Humans are weird.

 

You try saving electricity, then Bitcoin comes along

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/york-judge-rejects-state-efforts-202606195.html

 

A coalition of environmental groups, meanwhile, allege Greenidge is pumping millions of pounds of carbon dioxide into the air, while contaminating the nearby Seneca Lake with daily discharges of heated water required to run the plant.

“The Finger Lakes community has been sounding the alarm on the disastrous impacts of this facility on their water, air, and climate,” said Mandy DeRoche, a deputy managing attorney in the Clean Energy Program at Earthjustice. “We will continue our fight until Greenidge shuts down for good,”

* * * * *

I remember to shut off the lights when I leave a room I won't be going back to for a while.  Meanwhile, Bitcoin roars through enough electricity to run several small countries.  The timing couldn't have been worse. 

And you can't forget AI starting to suck up electricity so we can make funny videos.  Or the Cloud storage instead of just keeping copies at home.  All this takes electricity, which comes from where?

 

Plastic recycling has always been a lie

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/09/23/california-sues-exxonmobil-plastics-recycling/

 

“For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn’t possible,” Bonta said in a statement. “ExxonMobil lied to further its [record]-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health.”

 * * * * *

Just like there's a geological layer that shows the meteorite hit that killed the dinosaurs, so there will be a geological layer full of plastic that shows how we drowned ourselves in waste.

Sustainable aviation fuel on the way!

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg64pwxzln4o

 "Sustainable fuels are synthetic alternatives to fossil fuels, made from renewable sources.

These can include waste cooking oils, vegetable fats and agricultural waste, as well as captured carbon dioxide.

The advantage of burning fuels like these is that it does not add to the overall load of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

* * * * *

The only stickler seems to be difficulty ramping up production.  But once the economic fundamentals are figured out, that should not be a problem.

 

Another successful basic income project!

 https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/29/world/video/denver-basic-income-project-duerson-digvid

 

"The Denver Basic Income Project gave over 800 unhoused Coloradans up to $12,000 over the past year with no strings attached. 12 months later, with a funding proposal up for renewal, CNN’s Meena Duerson examines the pilot’s impact and what may happen to the participants if funding runs out."

 

Another success!  People don't want to be poor. Many are poor just because they are barely under what they need to survive in our society.  A little nudge makes a huge difference in most cases.

Finding replacements for plastic

Plastic is in our bodies now.  It's in the Arctic.  It's everywhere.  And it hardly breaks down.  We need an alternative.

 

Making products from recycled tires

 

This seems entirely possible in any country.

more tiny homes going up

 https://www.newscenter1.tv/news/black-hills-tiny-homes/article_e643a0f6-0700-11ef-9e19-87718a560000.html

 

"When she originally got her tiny house, it was decorated farmhouse/ranch style. Being an interior decorator by degree, Kira revamped her tiny house to fit her style – modern and colorful with a yellow ceiling. She says tiny homes can range from $50,000 to $100,000 with hers being on the ‘tinier’ end of the spectrum.

As far as winter preparation, Kira says her tiny house came insulated, but she had to get creative with snow solutions. One technique she used was spray foam to seal the cervices on the exterior metal sheeting. She’s still working on making it more aesthetically pleasing, she says. Her tiny home is also snow-load appropriate as it was inspected by a private contractor for her own peace of mind and local compliance. It is the landowner, her mother, who took care of the local ordinance compliance with Pennington County for the WeeCasa resort and tiny houses."

* * * * *

The history of homes in the US was a gradual growth in size, but now it appears to be going the other direction.  Home prices are surging, so one way to counter that is to reduce the size of homes.

 

 

Be careful of Fascism

“If one can convince a population that they are rightfully exceptional, that they are destined by nature or by religious fate to rule other populations, one has already convinced them of a monstrous lie.” [How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley, p. 13]

  “Allowing every opinion into the public sphere and giving it serious time for considerations, far from resulting in a process that is conducive to knowledge formation via deliberation, destroys its very possibility. Responsible media in a liberal democracy must, in the face of this threat, try to report the truth, and resist the temptation to report on every possible theory, no matter how fantastical, as long as someone advances it. What happens when conspiracy theories become the coin of politics, and mainstream media and educational institutions are discredited, is that citizens no longer have a common reality that can serve as background for democratic deliberation.” [How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley, pp. 70-71]

 

This is a good book!

Another chemical in the air to be concerned about

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/19/california-toxic-gas-sulfuryl-fluoride

 

"About 85% of US emissions of sulfuryl fluoride were traced by a recent peer-reviewed study to southern California, where the state’s $4.2bn pest-control industry uses it for drywood termite control. Sulfuryl fluoride is estimated to be up to 7,500 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its greenhouse-gas potential."

 

Oh boy, yet another climate-warming chemical to worry about.

No farmers means no food; what to do?

 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/20/pennsylvania-young-farmers-00147753

 

"With millions of acres of American farmland set to change hands in the next 20 years, state legislators and agricultural policymakers are warning of a crisis for domestic food production and fading vibrancy in rural communities. The U.S. has lost over half a million farms since the 1980s and the average age of the American farmer has ticked up to 58. Without reliable domestic food production, they say, America’s ability to feed itself and address global food security could be in jeopardy."

 * * * * *

I spent summers on my grandfather's farm.  I think if he would have taught me how to be a farmer instead of just using me as temporary help, I would have taken over his farm when he retired.  It's not an easy life and requires skill in lots of different areas, from mechanics to crop rotation.  Hopefully we can make it appealing to the upcoming generations.

Turning dry ground to fertile fields

 https://youtu.be/79VUAFq2rbg?si=V-Uy6jK89nug5QT_

 

A community in India spent many years building a water-catchment system that keeps the monsoon waters in their area.  Wouldn't turning desert and dry land into fertile fields help cool the planet?

The Great Green Wall of Africa stops the desert

 

One way to fight global warming is to replace desert land with agricultural land.  And it's working!

Tiny homes catching on!

 https://www.yahoo.com/news/great-compression-151806242.html

 

A decade ago, Jesse Russell was a former reality TV producer looking to get started in real estate. He had just moved back to Bend (his hometown) from Los Angeles, and began with a plot of two dozen 500-square-foot cottages sprinkled around a pond and common gardens. When he pitched it at community meetings, “the overwhelming sentiment was, ‘Nobody is going to live in a house that small,’” he said.

Then the units sold out, and his investors nearly doubled their money in two years.

Russell’s company, Hiatus Homes, has since built about three dozen more homes that range from 400 square feet to 900 square feet, and he has 100 more in development — a thriving business.

* * * * *

I lived 2 summers in a 400 square foot cabin with an outhouse.  It was fine, but I did need to rent storage space for stuff I had accumulated living in a regular sized house. My home today is 864 square feet with a garage and for a single person that feels just right to me.  I have a spare bedroom for guests and a small back yard.  But most importantly, I can afford it.

Obviously families need larger homes.  But more and more it's single people looking to buy.

 

Now the entire world is stuck with plastic everywhere for thousands of years

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report

 

Plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is notoriously difficult to recycle. Doing so requires meticulous sorting, since most of the thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic cannot be recycled together. That renders an already pricey process even more expensive. Another challenge: the material degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can generally only be reused once or twice.

The industry has known for decades about these existential challenges, but obscured that information in its marketing campaigns, the report shows.

The research draws on previous investigations as well as newly revealed internal documents illustrating the extent of this decades-long campaign.

* * * * *

Every living thing on earth is affected by the lies of an industry that would rather make money than worry about the health of the planet.

 

new style of windmill

 

https://youtu.be/TX9tN7yFhcE?si=fdXSxYQNp5jzc8NC

 Blades on an oval racetrack instead of blades on top of a tower?  Check it out.

 

People actually like reducing car dependency

 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240122-from-london-to-new-york-can-quitting-cars-be-popular

 

Moreover, reforms elsewhere suggest that, despite initial resistance, car reduction plans steadily gain public acceptance in the long run. When the city of Ljubljana in Slovenia pedestrianised its city centre in 2007, opposition was considerable, with residents fearing restricted access to their homes – yet a little over decade later, roughly 90% said they were against reintroducing cars.

* * * * *

Yeah, more public transit!  I like monorails myself.