Climate Change And The Greenies

Trendy to be Green and a WIlderness Advocate

It’s trendy to be green these days, but is eco-marketing good for the planet?

Why Ioppose wilderness areas and parks. It’s not that I’m an environment hater!

People tell me I should just buy one of those plastic-coated houses in houses and drive a 25-year old Honda Civic to work like normal people who are greenies. But I like riding my mountain bike to work. And spending my weekends in the wilderness, smoking pot, drinking beer and burning shit. At least I don’t use styrofoam up at camp anymore even though none of it ever went to landfill. But then again, I think biodegrable soap is a scam. Just don’t wash your pans in creek, I’m swimming there.

We are cooking our planet with Climate Change

I worry about a lot about overly-aggressive Climate Change Action, and some thoughts on state Climate Action Plan. I think we should all admit we are Addicted to Fossil Fuels. I do like SuperDuty. It’s a guilty pleasure. What’s worse, heroin or oil? I skeptical about electric cars, and urban motoring more generally, though they are future. That said, I think a low-carbon future can’t be built in plastic houses with solar panels on the roof in suburbia, but more urban life with bikes and buses. Since James Howard Kunstler has gotten old, he’s gotten werid.

These days, urban recycling has become a joke, when it’s still an option at all. It’s better to justbuy less shit and avoid thealure of Costcos. I really don’t like how aging radicals have become industrial solar salespeople. Do businesses actually compost food waste like the law requires? Or mix it with broken, smashed up television sets? Meal services are mostly garbage delivery services. Is Amazon Subscriptions the real reason so many rural houses are signing up for garbage hauling? There are cheaper ways to fill your garbage can. What’s good for the burn barrel is bad for your health. Maybe I just want a burn barrel out back?

Hot summer day? Why dewpoint dictates comfort.

Big bucks are coming to state-designated disadvantaged communities under the CLCP. Which counties and political districts are in line for the the most pork? Interactive map.

Trying to see through the wildfire smoke in June 2023!

**Farmers, the Original Stewart of Earth**

I’m a big of farmers who are essentially Living Off the Earth and think Rednecks are Noble Savages. Dairy Farming are key to our rural landscape. I’d trust a farmer or a hunter in a pile of guts he’s butchered over any ivory-tower scientist.

Well, poop and humanure

I have been thinking a lot about PFAS and spreading sewage sludge lately, as it’s been in the news Rather then spreading sewage sludge on fields where the nutrient value can be recovered, they’d rather focus on disposal via mounds of massive quantities of poop and toilet paper the cities generate. I think I’d rather just crap in a hole in woods. Certainly with my high-fiber diet I poop a lot.

Stinky old sewage plant next to my office in world data headquarters of NY Assembly in Menands.

Coal Power Plants and Industrial Solar

I visited the Mount Storm Coal Plant and Corridor H in West Virginia.

I am skeptical about roof-top solar, especially in rural areas. It’s much more practical and safer to mount panels on the ground, even if the mounting hardware is more expensive.

Hundreds of multi-acre industrial solar farms are being built in our state. How bad is solar for the environment? It definitely is changing the face of landscape. I didn’t whole-heartingly embrace solar farms, but now I’m starting to see them as a friendly rural neighbor, unlike a suburban housing development which might not look kindly on your pigs, junk cars or trash fires.

I think a solar farm makes a great neighbor! It’s a rural land use? Not a lot of people. So, yes! Maybe they’re a bit ugly, especially from the roadside or the aerial view or from a hillside. But they don’t complain, don’t make a lot of noise – maybe a bit of sixty-hertz hum up close – don’t really smell like a CAFO dairy/hog barn, or manure storage facility. And they don’t call the cops or the town on you. They just soak up the sun, and send kilowatts down the line. I’m not against farms, but I am not sure if I want the flies or tanginess of cow poop to hit me each morning!

And I am not calling for a rubber stamping of utility-scale, industrial solar. We should ask tough questions. But note that our leaders have already asked many of those questions. Virtually all solar farms come with decomissing plans and are built around 30-year farmer leases, where the farmer gets back their land, restored for farming purposes at the end of the lease.