I often like to compare fossil fuel addiction to heroin addiction …
To which I often get response that fossil fuels aren’t chemically addicting, they don’t change the brain’s chemistry, re-wiring it to crave more and more of them. But is that true? There is a lot of evidence that humans become as addicted to fossil fuels as opioids and that the behavior around fossil fuels is very similar to a person who is addicted to heroin, although fossil fuel addiction is much more socially acceptable.
Speed, warmth, light tickle and change our brains
Humans crave speed, warmth, and light — especially colorful lights. Our fossil fuel society makes such things very possible and easy to access. How to make people happier? Go faster, make it more comfortable, make it more bright and colorful.
Spending enormous amounts of money on the habit
Fossil fuel production and consumption is an enormous part of our economy. The average household spends $1,977 a year on gasoline alone. Is that amount of money spent to incinerate refined dinosaur bones, a largely non-sensible activity, is a classic sign of an addiction.
Denial of an addiction
Most people are in denial that they have a problem with fossil fuels and energy consumption more generally. They often dismiss how much energy they consume, they make excuses that it is necessary for modern living. People often react strongly when their utility rates or gas prices go up, or efforts are made to restrict motoring by reducing the number of lanes on roads or parking spaces.
Bizarre behaviors as a result of addiction
Addicts often engage in bizarre behavior when they high. Not only are people likely to defend oil and gas development in terrible places, they’re much too willing to accept climate change, as the price of fossil-fuel freedom. Wasting energy is totally acceptable, if it makes us happy.
Seeking alternative ways to get high
How do people plan to address the climate crisis? Usually it involves building industrial wind turbines and large solar farms, and switching to electric cars. Conservation is often pushed to margins of debate. And lifestyle change is dismissed as being impractical. People — at least on paper — want to address climate change by driving to Walmart in electric car.
Between the Tug Hill Plateau and the Western Adirondacks runs a narrow band of excellent agricultural soils in the Black River Valley that produce many a bushel of corn 🌽 and silage. 🐮
THINKING ABOUT Going SOLAR??? Boy, oh, Boy did you know Empire Solar Scam Sales has the PRODUCT For You!
Drinking PFOAs in your DRINKING Water?! Got Cancer? Call our attorney’s today!
Ready for bathroom renovation? Need new windows? New new siding?
I get so annoyed with targeted advertisements. You watch a video about the latest in Off-Grid Solar or Off-Grid Properties and soon your feed is full of advertising for solar scam companies. Watch a video about self-improvement, and be ready to see dozens if not hundreds of ads anywhere you go from Better Help! Have an honest question about the science behind PFOAs? The trial lawyers are ready to serve you ads. Interested in different materials to build an off-grid property? Roofers, windows companies, bathroom renovators are standing by to sell, sell, sell.
I actually really enjoy trolling those advertisers, making bullshit comments and copying and pasting random things in their comment sections, and clicking on their ads, just to get them charged money. But all it does it cause the algorithms to dig deeper, and think you are actually legitimately interested in the product. I know the algorithms are done, and it’s only causing advertisers to loose a few pennies to the sites their underwriting, but I still find it all so incredibly triggering.
I know real people aren’t actually choosing me to specifically push ads in front of in most cases. While some platforms like Facebook allow name matching, most of it is based on algorithms that look at words and sites I’ve visited in the past to try to guess what I’m interested in, even if most of the guesses are stereotypical and wrong. Maybe because it’s a because I have such unique tastes, but also I think humans are generally unique and algorithms are at best guesses of what might interest the person. And indeed, there are many products that I would be interested in buying today, or maybe tomorrow, though not all of those companies have advertising budgets or the intelligence to actually put advertisements in front of me. And algorithms have a bad time guessing humor and what real humans are thinking.
It should be noted that NYS Department of Environmental Conservation headquarters at 625 Broadway is built in the 100 year flood plain (shown in orange; red is the 500 year flood plain).
That means it has a more then 1 in 4 chance of flooding in any 30 year period. If the building had been privately financed it would require the purchaser to buy flood insurance to get a FHA-backed mortgage under federal regulations.
