July 2024 “More Facts, Less Opinion” – A Response
A few weeks ago, our newscast at WDEF-TV featured information regarding an accident of a seagoing tanker transporting natural gas and another tanker carrying crude oil. Tossing to me after the story for the weather tease, the anchors led with the statement “This appears to be an ongoing problem, as you have been telling us about recently, Austen?”
Which I indeed had been regarding any environmental stories that were included before the weather segments. Mentioning that clean energy, while not completely clean due to some material used in construction, were certainly less problematic and dangerous for transport than old Leave It In The Ground fossil fuel transport.
This evoked an email response from a local viewer:
“You are my choice of weather forecasters in our area..but your comments tonight about “clean energy” were not comforting for those of us affected by the price increases that may come as a result of the most recent weather .
Yes, clean energy is a great concept, but we are years, even decades away from aborting fossil fuels, in the meantime comments such as yours tonight do not change that fact.
Please be considerate that 100% of us rely on this source of energy. More facts, less opinion please.”
In turn, I provided my answer.
Mr H.,
Many kind thanks for the initial compliment. I am wholeheartedly pleased you are enjoying the efforts.
Back in my hometown of Topeka, Kansas, my late father, an architect, spent most of the late 1970’s around and after the oil crisis promoting clean and renewable energy practices in his buildings and conservational practices to reduce waste and overspending. He was roundly laughed at, derided by others in his field, told to shut up and go away and quit embarrassing himself… we were America, which meant we could waste energy as often as we wanted and be as foolish as we wished to be. Paying for foreign oil was just what we could do and had to do. The whole “clean energy” thing was for crunchy-granola, tree-hugging hippies and not Mr. & Mrs. America. Clean energy? What were we? Sweden? Denmark? Japan? How dare my dad suggest that Americans have to change their ways? If we want to pay huge amounts of money for our transportation and our heating/AC bill by using polluting energy sources,, then so be it, because That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It.
In choosing not to listen to his detractors, or their backwards-looking attitudes, he set out promoting more about clean energy in every structure he and his office designed. His architectural practice thrived on his continued willingness to stand against fear and ignorance and choosing, deliberately, to look towards the future. He designed a wind farm on a farmer’s pasture around Ozawkie that paid for itself and generated energy for surrounding homes. He designed a new headquarters for the American Heart Association in Topeka that was four times the size of the old building but used one-quarter the energy thanks to his techniques and additions that he knew could work, causing a 10,500 sq ft office building to have the energy signature of a small apartment. He advised members of the Topeka City Council, local legislators at the State Capitol and other audiences where he was asked to speak about the future of clean energy, being able to conserve energy reserves while saving us money, always looking forward to the next development that could help us reduce our need of fossil fuels altogether.
Also, he designed our family house using the techniques of passive solar, passive underground, cool tubes, heat pumps, angular seasonal solar collection structure, all working together to use less energy. Our average monthly winter bill – in northern Kansas – was $50.
Having seen all of this personally, and lived with the benefits of cleaner practices, I find it hard to light a candle and hide it under a bush. The comments regarding clean energy were not meant to be comforting, nor offensive – they simply were a statement of fact. You may disagree with those facts, and – as is your right – classify it as “opinion” but you cannot argue against it. The opinion that ending fossil fuels makes you uncomfortable I would posit is based on your fear of change and the future. The fact that transporting fossil fuels anywhere involves risk, whether it is an oil spill or a natural gas tanker explosion or having to supply energy through war zones or from counties like Russia (threatening to cut off natural gas supplies to countries that disagree with the invasion) makes no difference.
Clean energy sources have little to no risk when compared to fossil fuel development, usage and transport: a solar spill is called a sunny day, not an unfolding ecological disaster. My statements regarding fossil fuel usage and transport, while disturbing to you personally, were completely and totally factual.
In one aspect, I must concede that you are correct; we are several years away from a removal of fossil fuels. However, your fear of this, and speaking out against, change is confusing. You mention correctly that we are decades away from a total changeover, and you accede that the changes in energy prices affect greatly those who use it, making you concerned with weather’s affectations. Why you would not welcome a change to a more stable and dependable use of energy, why you would wish to promote the idea of staying in the past, why you may think that keeping our heads down and hoping that energy prices will not increase because of some foreign leaders’ malevolent actions or wishes to line their pockets with our money, because the mere mention of a better future on-air makes you nervous is extremely confusing to me.
I respectfully regret to inform you that I cannot and will not be changing my ways in regards to this topic. Dr. Martin Luther said correctly that to go against conscience was neither right nor safe, and I cannot sit here and stop talking about improving the planet when there is so much more to be said and done, and we are falling behind in getting people to help out and do their part. I feel that I would be letting my dad down for continuing all of his hard work if I quit now because some folks might find talk of clean energy (again, confusingly) disturbing. I, for one, welcome the change that a clean future would bring, and am completely willing to confront the all-too-pervasive We’ve Always Done It This Way attitudes. I invite you to re-examine and confront your fear and look forward to in faith and hope what clean energy transitions would have to offer and help out by spreading the word of what a better world clean energy usage will bring.
The future is green and clean. I believe it, I’ve seen it work, and I will continue to speak out about it. Together, as one planet and one humanity in the goal of saving our planet, we can make it work. Many thanks for writing us at WDEF-TV News 12.
AO
The Fire Next Time – Earth Day 2022
Sunday, April 24, 2022
***CAVEAT: TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide***
In the incredibly overlooked Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series, season six’s episode “Rocks And Shoals” takes place during a war between the worlds of the Federation and invaders from the other side of the galaxy, the Dominion. One of the principal characters of DS9, a militia member of the planet of Bajor and Federation liaison Major Kira Nerys (expertly played by Nana Visitor) is doing her best to continue life as usual behind he lines. Bajor has signed a nonagression pact with the Dominion and is doing its best to not cause problems until, hopefully, the Federation can rescue them. The Major goes through her days as the war drags on, numbly working side by side with the Dominion overlords as best as she can, doing her best to fit in, not make waves, not cause problems for anyone around her, hoping against hope that things will change, but not seeing the end of the war anytime soon.
A Bajoran monk visits Major Kira to hope to convince her to talk to the government to get them to change their minds and eject the Dominion, to which she urges him to hold on, keep his head down and wait for outside help. He rejects this and, several days later after a short announcement, hangs himself on the space station’s promenade as protest his homeworld’s allowing invading forces to occupy and organize, his last words being, “Evil must be opposed.” It was the only way left that he felt any message would be heard, to wake up his fellow Bajorans to the danger of being too much on the wrong side, even when you reasoned your way out of it by saying you were on the fence or hadn’t made up your mind yet. It just was. Why argue? There was nothing you could do about it, so why not just accept it? There comes a time to stand.
After the monk’s final act shocks Major Kira into realizing that things are not normal, they are nowhere even close to normal, and if she and everyone she knows does not act soon, the alien occupiers could mean the death of everything and everyone she knows and cares for, Bajoran and Federation alike. The veil has been lifted over her own eyes as a shroud is lowered over the one who tried to give you the warning. It is an ugly epiphany: the knife is at your throat, but you have become comfortably numb to the feel of the blade pressing hard against your skin, and – like a frog being slowly boiled – you have come to accept it, and do your best to work around it, adjust to the inconvenience, try to forget about it. Sure, it might kill you eventually, but – for now – you’re just fine, so get on with the everyday stuff. You live small and quiet, in the hope that the wolf bites someone else who makes all the noise. Eventually, you die just the same way. Mission accomplished.
On Earth Day 2022, a man named Wynn Alan Bruce immolated himself on the US Supreme Court’s front steps to protest the policies in place that are leading our planet to a state of ruin. Bruce was a climate change activist and a Shambala Buddhist, following other monks and protestors who had done the same over the course of history. His friends and fellow Buddhist colleagues respected his act, recognizing it as part of a much larger message, one that – as Mr. Bruce acted upon – is not being listened to:
“This act is not suicide. This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis. We are piecing together info but he had been planning it for at least one year. #wynnbruce I am so moved.” – Dr. K. Kritee on Twitter
As a policy, television news does not cover suicide for fear of provoking more acts, neither do they show the act or the remains of the act on-air. There was precious little coverage of this act in the media. My friends and family who bemoan The Mainstream Media Won’t Cover This So Share It All Over are usually wrong. In this case, I’m afraid that I have to agree with them, at least in part: the media should be covering this, at least what led to it.
For decades, scientists and the scientific community (those not paid off by fossil fuel companies) have been warning that our overuse of fossil fuels to power our planet has been the cause for climate change and global warming that is slowly boiling us alive on the only planet that can support human life in the solar system. In an organized rebellion scientists around the world have been participating in public acts of civil disobedience, blocking roads, gluing themselves to buildings and desks, making noise that has made the news… at least a little bit.
In a situation such as this, the idea that the media should be sitting back and worrying about upsetting the one viewer who will threaten to never watch their station again is, in itself, worrisome. As Poynter has written about on Earth Day, journalists need to be doing more. This is no longer climate change. It is a climate crisis, and the volume regarding the crisis needs to be raised to eleven by scientists, by the media, by legislators, by customers of the companies that are causing the most damage to our planet’s environment, by every human on this planet who gives a damn. The news directors of the news departments need to get this on their radar and on to the websites, the radio speakers and the television screens with a local-angle This Is Why It Should Matter To You headline.
Now.
As in the comment section of the Twitter thread from XR Cambridge:
“The complete lack of curiosity on the part of the media speaks to it’s comprehensive understanding of the climate crisis and our inability to do anything about it in enough time to make any difference at all.
@XRCambridge
It’s an ignorance is bliss policy.“
I understand the ideas behind not wanting to broadcast information about suicides, and, if it is, underscoring with readily-available information regarding mental health and suicide prevention. I have been subject to the strange rules of the newsroom where the news directors are not wanting to risk losing viewers/eyeballs, countered with the strong feeling that the newsroom is the last, best bastion against fascism and corruption so we should be able and willing to take on City Hall, Big Business, Corrupt Elected Leaders with a passion worthy of Woodward & Bernstein Following The Money. The time for the leaders of media across this, and all other countries with media outlets that are free to choose when to act, should use the passion they supposedly believe in to this cause. The world, our world, the only world we have, needs that passion and that voice, particularly now.
My heart hurts for anyone who feels like they are not being listened to, especially to the point of suicide. I have never felt that suicide is an option; I have always been taught that there is another option, another way out, that you must look for it no matter how painful or hopeless things might seem. Wynn Alan Bruce felt he had no other option. He saw the warnings, like a lot of us have, and also heard the silence when there should be noise. A lot of angry noise. A lot more than there has been until now. The danger will only continue to grow. The pot of water for us frogs will continue, like the amount of carbon dioxide we are putting into Earth’s atmosphere every day, to rise inexorably towards an unlivable situation.
Mr. Bruce must have felt that this was the only way to get people to start acting. I’m sorry that he felt this way. I respect his will to carry out such an act, especially for, and on behalf of, the rest of the planet. I’m sorry that we, collectively, as humans, have either dragged our feet or plugged our ears, not being willing to raise more of a ruckus, and I’m sorry that you felt that this was your only option. May your death not have been in vain. May we listen to what you were trying to tell us, what we should have been hearing all along.
The final thought is, if it were even more possible than the act taking one’s life, even more cruel, and on point where the media is concerned. As Mr. Bruce’s final act about attempting to wake people up from a dangerous and quiet hopelessness and not about himself only, that last shout should echo forwards by media sources everywhere: the planet is dying so act like your world depends on it. Mr. Bruce’s act might not have fallen short of the media’s attention had he chosen another way to act out, Again, from XR Cambridge’s Twitter post comment section:
“I am sitting on my couch with tears in my eyes because my brain just thought this: If he had burned property instead of himself it would have garnered more attention.”
We, as humans, have nearly reached the point of no return with our planet and its livability. The fire that Mr. Bruce chose is similar to the fate that we ourselves will bring upon ourselves: a trial by fire that could be avoided, if we choose to act, together and quickly. We must speak. We must dare to act. We must remind the leaders of our countries who elected them to office and demand that they are informed, intelligent and forward-thinking. We must do more to lower our global temperature: lawmaker, voter, CEO and company/organization alike must walk together on this, or boil together when the tipping points are reached. The ones who are helping to destroy the planet must find other ways to carry out business or their collective products should not be purchased.
The media must set an equally hot fire underneath its collective self: the word must be spread. Silence is no longer an option: Rome is burning. Now. Drop your fiddles and fight the source of the flames. Use your words. Use your experiences. Show the world the problem and continue to ask for solutions. The media directors and managers have much to answer for in their reluctance to voice a solution. That can change. This must change. The media must do more.
Fires can be fought. Inaction can be overcome. Fearful silence can be broken by determined voices. As Dr. Carl Sagan put it so eloquently: We are one planet. The warnings have been issued. Many are trying to get the word out. Let us all find the fire within us to listen, to voice, to fight, and to burn with zeal rather than death by flame.
Let us oppose the evil of doing nothing.
#PowerTo$ave: On Your Station’s Bill
Making News: What Is Your TV Station’s Energy Bill? (And why does it matter?)
March 26, 2022 LinkedIn Article
As I write this, it is only a few hours until #EarthHour2022. For those unfamiliar, the date and event started in 2007 by “@WWF and partners as a symbolic lights-out event in Sydney to raise awareness of #climatechange”, challenging people around the world in a grassroots effort to consider their own impact on the planet, and how they can reduce waste and overuse of energy, all by turning out the lights and other electronic devices, which will hopefully become a habit, especially for Americans.
“Earth Hour has also gone far beyond the symbolic action of switching off – it has become a catalyst for positive environmental impact, driving major legislative changes by harnessing the power of the people and collective action. Earth Hour is open-source and we welcome everyone, anyone, to take part and help amplify our mission and impact.”” @EarthHour2022
Yesterday, I saw a Tweet from WFLA-TV (Tampa Bay) Chief Meteorologist and Climate Specialist @JeffBerardelli thanking his station @WFLA “for embracing #climatecommunication!” This is a refreshing change in attitude, one that has been (and should not have been) a long time in coming (with the growing #ClimateCrisis on the way) and one that I wish I could have personally experienced at my last station, which in any mention of #ClimateChange on-air was discouraged and often feared as a cursed phrase of some sort. Twere that it were that more stations would embrace the idea of climate change coverage. Here is an idea, and a challenge, before Earth Hour 2023…
Before Earth Hour, in 2002-2003, I created an energy-saving public awareness campaign that worked. More on that later. For six years, on this night, for this event, I went around my last station and conducted an experiment. I kept track of how many lights and various electronic apparatus were left on. Using information from @MLGW and @TVA to calculate how much energy was being wasted, and how much money was being overpaid because of that waste (which was substantial). I presented this information to the public on the weekend weathercasts and on my Your Environment podcast, ugly numbers and all, about our station’s practice and what we were wasting. Hundreds of electronically-dependent lights and systems, were left on, each day, each night, each weekend, each holiday, which cost the station tens of thousands of dollars per year. These lights that stay on 24/7/365 take a toll. Some you can see, on your bottom line utility statement. Some you don’t, except in international news coverage talking about rising oceans, dirty atmosphere and surging temperatures around the globe. “Oh, why should we do anything? Climate change, if it’s real, affects other people. Not us in the States.” Wrong. And we need to change both how we tackle it and how news covers it.
We need to start turning things off and we need to start encouraging others to do so. In our news coverage and in our personal lives.
Yes, I know that security lights and systems need to stay on. I’m not suggesting employees become unsafe by turning off everything. Some lights should stay on for safety.
Bathroom lights when not in use overnight do not.
Conference room lights do not. (Seriously…why are your conference room lights on all weekend?)
Sales office lights do not.
Closet lights do not.
All those alcoves for storage in the engineering office? Turn them over to motion sensors and stop wasting your corporations’ moneys.
Americans don’t like inconvenience. They don’t like expending the efforts in trying to conserve energy and save the environment so much that they often fail to turn a light off in a room as they exit. Why? The overall idea and attitude is that Someone Else – Maybe Me Maybe Not – Will Eventually Use This Space And Since We’re Americans We Can Waste Money On Energy Because We Are Americans And Will Always Have Cheap Energy So Why Should I Waste My Efforts?
Because… it matters.
Leave your lights on and you will pay for it. A lot of it. Midnight Sunday to Midnight Sunday. 168 hours a week. ALL week. The station sure was.
Find a way to selectively turn off what is not necessary to keep on constantly. If timers and motion sensors can deactivate supernumerary sources of drain, you will be paying for less energy in the long run. A lot less. 108 hours less on a Monday through Friday 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM schedule. Yes, your producers and photographers may have to expend extra effort turning on the lights and edit decks in the edit bays from time to time, but your bottom line will thank you. Imagine the advertising campaigns possible. Imagine starting a rivalry between stations: “This is how much WE spent on energy this week. This is how much LESS energy than what we spend last month. We challenge you to do better!”
Why the concern? Why the effort made to something that Americans take for granted and don’t want to (apparently) hear about? If anything, saving the television station thousands of dollars per year. Looks good on the bottom line to the corporate managers, you would think that should be enough. Being a bragging point to the community at large by the creative services and promotional managers should count for something somewhere. Demonstrating to the viewing audience that there is both something that their socially-responsible television stations can do, and that they can do personally, is a remarkably powerful team to create and sustain. What better way to say We Care About Our Community than to show the viewers a way to help reduce their own utility bill at home? “We Can Do This At The Station. How Can YOU Do This At Home?”
If you take a look at @EarthHour’s Events webpage, you see no events listed for Memphis, or in any part of the Memphis market area. Perhaps this is the golden opportunity for elected officials, managers of power utilities, news directors, managers of community events for businesses and organizations to show, to actively demonstrate, to put their money where their mouth is, what they care about and how urgent our climate situation is.
My challenge is this, to any city, county or state official reading this, to any news director of any television/broadcast/multimedia news source in the Memphis / Mid-South area (or beyond, especially in the United States): by next year, the climate crisis will still be with us and your viewers – particularly your younger viewers – will be visiting the websites and the broadcasts that cover climate change more than the ones that don’t. Television stations and other media sites can #UseYourPower and can teach their viewers/surfers how to use their power wisely. It is time to embrace the ideas that
1. Some viewers will threaten to never watch you again if you so much as mention Climate Change. You will lose some viewers. Get over it. The costs are far too high to NOT speak about the damage to our planet. Action is required. Now. Local media can do their parts.
2. I have never met a news director who has not tried to turn a negative into a positive. Push headlong into the idea that Some People Won’t Like This Coverage… but Some People Are Desperately Wishing For You To Cover The Topic And Do It Yesterday. These are the viewers you need to focus on.
3. Your power usage, and how to reduce it, could be the next best campaign for your station. I created and ran the Power To Save & Power 2 Save projects back in 2002-03, and it worked (want proof? contact me), and it could still be working now as a permanent station feature. (Want to know more? Hire me.)
My further challenge to any government official involved in planning: suggest to the elected leaders that, from this point onwards, every building in the planning stages should have one-third to one-half of their energy use from renewable/alternative sources, rather than the old Build A Building And Plug It In Who Cares Where The Power Comes From Because We’re America approach. Mayors, CEO’s, governors, legislators should all consider that going green is critical, and there will never be a better time than now to start working towards that, if local and beyond-local governments are true to the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) work theme. Put your money where your buildings are going to go. Is anyone in Memphis or Shelby County listening?
It’s 8:30 as I finish this. Going to turn off lights and this computer and go out and stargaze for a bit, remembering how blessed we are, and how careful we have to be with what resources we have, musing over how many missed possibilities we pass over every day. Are there any news directors or government officials willing to try by this time next year? I hope the answer is yes.
March 26, 2022 LinkedIn Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
ESG Topic: Changing the Landscape – Article for AIA/NCARB – February 2022
The 1970’s, with its energy crises, was the perfect time for my late dad, an architect, to pursue and promote the idea of energy independence across northeast Kansas, ways of improving conservation and ideas of reducing waste and saving money. In the days of pre-Powerpoint, his slide projector and carousel of Kodak slides was a prominent tool as he visited various area groups to speak on this topic. He included a political cartoon which was just as imperative an addition in the Seventies as it is in the Here And Now:
The junior bald eagle asking the senior, “Was it fun being rich, Pa?” A stark, if humorous, look and reminder at who we are to become, based on who we used to be. Carrying dangerous antique sympathies into the future may be the worst of what hamstrings us and our efforts to survive and thrive: politicians who wish to use the Russia/Ukraine crisis as an opportunity to help their Big Oil donors may seem to be helping the American consumer, but pushing fossil fuels in a time of unmistakable connections to climate change actually helps…. Whom?
Eventually, it became part of his architectural repertoire to encourage clients to consider heat pumps, cool tubes, partial/passive underground construction or solar heating. Our house in Topeka was designed and built by him using all of these. Using these methods and technologies, our home was able to keep us warm and dry and only cost a utility bill of fifty dollars per month in the middle of the Kansas winters. Likewise, when he was asked to design the new American Heart Association building in Topeka, using many of the same techniques, the new building was four times larger than their old, outgrown facility, yet used one-quarter of the energy of the old place.
Proof positive that the practices would work and not just be theoretical.
The attitudes towards climate change, and the fossil fuel usage that is driving it forward, have waxed and waned over the years, embraced by some, ridiculed by others. President Carter had a solar hot water heater installed at the White House. President Reagan and his cronies laughed at it and had it ripped out. Now, there’s even more ridicule and vocal disbelief regarding the change in our climate, but there is also more acceptance of the fact that our old ways are causing the planet – our home in space – more accumulative damage, and that we – humans – are responsible for that damage. For some, the wilful destruction of our natural resources is not a laughing matter, and The Way It Always Was is no longer good enough.
Now, as Russia uses fuel as a bargaining chip against other countries, concern turns towards the idea of where we get our power from and how much gasoline is costing us. This is a prime time for rethinking our energy use and our energy production. With climate change bearing down on the entire planet, all sectors of life in the United States must and should play catch-up to the rest of the world, which is leaving us behind as we stick to our The Old Ways Are Always The Best Ways mindsets.
Things are changing, albeit entirely too slowly on this side of the planet. As the federal government is taking steps to both promote and demonstrate reduced usage of energy:
“Biden Orders Federal Vehicles and Buildings to Use Renewable Energy by 2050: Under an executive order, the federal government would phase out the purchase of gasoline-powered vehicles, and its buildings would be powered by wind, solar or other clean energy.” New York Times, Dec 13, 2021” [1]
…wouldn’t this be a golden opportunity for local governments to do the same?
In 2005, at DeSoto Central Middle School, I was invited to attend as meteorologist the school career day fair. At the same event was one of the Mississippi state legislators representing his district and speaking to the students about the job of public service. He recognised me from my work on a local station and began talking with me about various topics. Eventually he asked about climate change, and admitted, gracefully, that there was a lot about the topic that he didn’t understand. I was able to enlighten him about various ideas and give him various scientific sources to read online regarding carbon dioxide levels, methane gas escaping, overuse of coal and other fossil fuels and how we could fix various things like this. It was an opportunity, and a golden one, to speak to someone who creates policy and is (at least, should be) informed and up to date on the information behind the issues. His admittance that he did not know everything about the issue was not so worrisome as refreshing. His willingness to listen and ask questions rather than engage in puffery, dissembling and bluffing was hopeful; he really wanted to know.
Being updated on the facts of climate change and not any anti-global warming talking points, I was able to inform, because I really wanted him to care by being informed. A win-win situation all around.
Normal citizens can and should – to the irritation of some think tanks and political parties – be so engaged and informed.
If citizens are concerned with how much the gas in their tank is costing them, perhaps it is time for those same citizens to be more vocal and communicative with their elected leaders, and time for those same leaders to be more informed, more progressive and less derisive in their ability to govern, looking farther down the road than the next election fund-raising cycle.
The idea that Americans no longer turn off light switches when leaving a room because it takes too much effort is laughable, and worrisome. The idea – borrowed from the 1970’s – that you could, possibly, plan out your route to maximize fuel efficiency so you wouldn’t have to buy as much gasoline now seems considerable and reasonable by a lot of people to whom it wouldn’t have mattered, pre-Russia-invasion-of-Ukraine. Beyond the basics, there is also the idea of informing about responsible investing in green/renewable energy companies, and asking their elected officials to consider reduced energy usage in all sectors to save them, the taxpayers, on their bottom 1040 lines.
The lesson, from the public up to the elected, and the reverse as well, must be learned and learned quickly: that energy production capabilities that can be used as a bargaining chip (or removal of the same as a threat) is a vulnerability to society. Those that use the threat should never be elected (or trusted) with power ever again. We, as Americans, need to understand that the world at large, when it comes to clean energy and attitudes on climate change, are moving ahead and away from us, and have been for decades. The time is already here when the rest of the world is not going to want to play in the same sandbox as we here, especially when we assert our “rights” to pollute as we see fit in the course of our everyday lives. Americans can remain as chest-beating iconoclastic as they wish. When the rest of the world is able to live off of much-cheaper renewable energy, and we wish to pay through our collective noses for pollutive societal energy,
The American society at large should realize – as societies around our small and shared world have done already – that clean energy is, and must be, the future of the planet if we are to survive and thrive. As discussed in a recent post from The Hill:
“Yet, in response to the threat of Russian invasion of Ukraine, many countries are taking the opposite approach, looking to increase gas production with a misguided focus on the wrong kind of “energy independence.” These nations will prove to be the laggards.” [2]
We have much work to do. We have the golden opportunity before us. Are the electorate, and the elected, willing to not only listen but to act? The fault, if we fail – dear Brutus – is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
AO
Bibliography
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/climate/biden-government-carbon-neutral.html#:~:text=the%20main%20story-,Biden%20Orders%20Federal%20Vehicles%20and%20Buildings%20to%20Use%20Renewable%20Energy,solar%20or%20other%20clean%20energy.
[2] https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/596714-russias-attack-on-ukraine-is-a-clear-warning-to-us-to-become-energy
Meteorologist Austen Onek 