Notes

I woke up around 5 AM this morning and it was dark out to run to the bathroom. I put on a pot of rice and coffee and went upstairs, starting noticing smoke, took down the smoke detector and meant to turn down the rice pot and not the coffee perculator but I grabbed the wrong knob. Went back stairs, still without my glasses on and started to notice even the smoke wafting up the stairs. Ran back downstairs to notice flames shooting up from the burner as crap burned on it, I thought I could blow it out before grabbing a pot lid to smother it but I ended up spreading fire brands from whatever was burning on the burner. The fire brands quickly burned out on the floor and I had flames extinguished, the rice was put on back on stove, and coffee was done with burner turned back on.

I just needed some excitement to get up. 🤯 It’s not like yesterday wasn’t full of high drama in the office doing both my job and the two supervisors I am covering for in the office. Fortunately the operators are really good and help guide me on my way, and I kept things moving forward even if at times I kept closing my office door 🚪 to roll my eyes 👀 way into the back of my head. My contacts were irrating me again after camping and the grass over the weekend. 🌾 The rice will be good with onions and garlic shallots. I also cooked them up with cornmeal pancakes that I made up this morning.

Driving in today because I have that meeting in Colonie on the proposed solar facility in the Pine Bush. ☀️ On recommended full protection area, which has been used for farming in the past and as a airport landing strip but the Karner Blues dig the disturbed soils and edge habitat. 🦋 If you can’t find development everywhere, you should at least try to save unique ecosystems near the city limits. The Albany Pine Bush is such a unique place, 🎄 I am actually planning to go out hiking there this evening after the meeting, which starts at 6 PM and probably will be done by 6:30 PM. Plus it’s fire dependent, and I like burning shit. It’s funny to read about the controversies over the first controlled burns in Pine Bush decades ago, how people worried about air pollution from them burning over the landscape as is necessary to protect it, in a world full of billions of cars. 🚗🚗🚗🚗🚒🚛🛻🚗🚗🌲 🦋 🚗🚗 🚚 It’s not bad that I’m driving in and not breathing in all that smoke as I ride down the bike path. I often find the pollution is particularly bad along the river, some of it I think is from the asphalt plant and the temperature inversion they get along the river. And to think only a generation ago they were burning 300 tons a day of garbage in Empire Plaza Steam Plant with the only pollution controls being blowers and an electrostatic precipator. But this was before the Clean Air Act of 1990 that really tightened up industrial emissions. Driving in I won’t have to leave so early, so that is nice. And later I leave the less traffic there will be but I’m sure there is already work awaiting me in my office.

I found another half decent bucket out on the curb 🪣 the landlord left out there after sealing the driveway, this one I’ll use to replace the bucket I use for my bucket shitter that works but has gotten a bit smelly even with all the ammonia and bleach I’ve dumped on it and is falling apart. Those two buckets I have to add to my collection will mean I enough buckets for camp – one for camp trash to burn, one for bottles and cans for recycling, one for gear and one for shitting in. I much prefer to sit on a bucket with a garbage bag and toilet seat 🚽 then try to dig a hole and sit over it. Nice and strong with the remainder of asphalt sealer lining the bucket. Already, I am digging the bucket I’m now using for holding compost, 🍏 much easier and less messy then coffee container on my counter top, as I can just let the apple cores, banana peels and corn husks drop in there rather then trying to compress them into a coffee can. 🗑️ Hopefully it will reduce the number of ants and fruit flies I’ve been finding on the counter there. I hate using garbage bags, but I put one in there, but I’ll reuse it once I dump out the compost either for holding burnables or in bucket shitter. I just hate spending money 💰 on something that I’m literally going to set on fire in a few weeks. 🔥 I tell you when I own my own land, I’ll spend so much time looking for pallets and buckets and exploring dumpsters for things I can use, turn into fuel, compost or for bonfires. A dumpster full of grocery stores waste can makes hogs very happy. 🐽

For years now I’ve warned about the dangers of absolutism in the climate movement, how saying we must reach X level of reduction by X years is a dangerous proposition, how it not only enables bad policy making but also fuels opposition to climate policy due to it being framed in terms of absolute harm elimination.

There is a growing acceptance of the importance of harm reduction most notably in the substance use space, but it’s a philosophy we should be adopting in more realms of public policy. I am quite alarmed by the County’s Health Departments advertisements that say, “One Child’s Death is Too Many”, not because it’s catchy and well meaning slogan or that I endorse the death of children but because it’s an absolutest philosophy,. We should be working to reduce childhood deaths and enormous pain they cause, but such reductions must be balanced against other priorities like protecting liberties and right of children to explore their world and take risks for their betterment. Children are better off if they ride their bikes on street with speeding cars and become strong swimmers in the backyard pool even if it means they’re sometimes unsupervised and risk drowning. If a few children are scraped off the pavement by meat-wagon, it’s a tragedy but also leads those who survive to be resilient and strong.

Climate change is a serious threat that is already impacting our lives, as witnessed by yet another smokey morning. There is no question it’s real, as breathing the outside air over 24 hours  is currently as toxic as smoking a quarter pack of cigarettes. But what can we do about it? Certainly the goal of a 90 percent reduction of carbon emissions by 2035 or as it was reframed as 350 ppm was never realistic, it was a laughable matter as people picked the best possible outcome and insisted anything less then that would be a failure. Psychologically, saving every child is a notable goal, as one own’s children smashed into the asphalt or found floating in the pool is a gruesome image in one’s mind. But what’s the alternative? No motoring or swimming pools on these hot days?

Had reducing climate emissions been put into a more reasonable goal of harm reduction rather then harm elimination, things would have been different. Had vehicle emission standards and electrification been goals that were pushed at a rate that was technologically justified, things could have been different. Had solar and wind been implemented only after thoughtful reviews and kept out of ecologically sensetive areas, it could have been different.

There is a very legitimate debate on how tough the standards should be based on avaliable technology. We should be pushing for better, and noting that many renewable technologies are far from perfect. Some of first and second generation technologies will prove to be flimsy, bolted on designs on top of legacy designs. But capitalism pushes refinement and cost reduction. Already as you see with solar, wind and electric cars, things are quickly becoming better – but are hard from perfect. I am amazed how much better the integrated split-phase hybrid inverters are compared to even ten years ago.

It seems absurd that the Trump administration is rolling back the well established science that says climate emissions are a serious threat to our well being. That’s obvious and we shouldn’t turn our backs on science. But we should weight it against other concerns, develop right technologies that meet human needs while reducing the harm to the climate both for our generation and futreu generations.