All posts by keith

Climate

A Pocket Guide to All Electric Retrofits of Single Family Homes – Redwood Energy

This booklet is a simple “how-to” guide to help homeowners, home renters, and utilities and policy makers who want to replace existing gas appliances with efficient electric alternatives. Many of the electric products highlighted here are simple and require no home modifications. This booklet has three sections, the first to explain the costs, benefits and strategies for electrifying a home, the second section is lessons learned from case studies of retrofitted homes, and the third section is an extensive product guide to help choose your electrification appliances.

Source: A Pocket Guide to All Electric Retrofits of Single Family Homes – Redwood Energy

Anarchy, Art, Climate, gardening, Kindness, Monday Musings, survival

Monday Musings 11NOV24

1 Comment

Well, its been a week hasn’t it? I wasn’t very happy with the election results, like many of you out there. I’m not a big fan of the orange man (someone called him a yam which I think is funny and somewhat appropriate)and voted for Harris.

Not a big fan of her either, but I wanted the Dems to stay in power because a lot of their agenda aligns with mine (climate, unions, anti-monopolist). That isn’t happening, and it’s time to dig in and do it ourselves, which is pretty much par for the course.

I don’t really expect the government (on either “side”) to do much for us, since both Reps and Dems are in bed with the global elites/big business. Although Biden was definitely making waves in monopoly busting.

So what do we do now? How do we address climate change, union busters, genocide in Gaza, monopolies, etc.?

We need to organize. That means unions need to step up. If your workplace isn’t a union shop, organize one. There are unions for everyone. If you can’t find one join the IWW (wobblies). They are a worldwide grassrootsunion, with a long history, that can help you organize your workplace (even us self employed workers–I belong).

Josh Hill has a nice post about this with several resources at the end. Here (Time to Prepare)

Worried about book bans? Join your school board, and/or the board of your local library. Give to your local library. Also, here’s an organization that organizes country wide. https://www.librariesforthepeople.org/

Climate change is a monster. What do we do about that? Solar and wind power are getting cheaper. Put some solar on your roof, add a windmill somewhere on your property. Buy an EV, car or bike. Bikes are great in cities and small towns. Battery life on vehicles is getting better all the time, and prices are actually coming down. Start a garden, or just grow a few plants if all you have is a patio to grow on. Buy local at farmers markets. Better food, and shorter distances for it to get to you. Invest in a heat pump, electric appliances. You can still grill, don’t be a jackass.

Make sure your utilities are investing in and using alternate sources of energy. Join organizations that are trying to mitigate climate change. Boycott and protest big oil, join, or donate to organizations that do that.

Here’s one https://regeneration.org/

Don’t like the wars we’re involved in join a peace organization. Preferably local. Protest, make sure the politicians know.

Don’t like abortion laws, write your reps, join, or donate to, Planned Parenthood

There is so much more to do. What’s important to you? Find organizations that work on that problem. No organization, build one. Do what you can to the best of your ability.

Make art, write, help a senior.

Speaking of which. Write letters to seniors or others that can’t get out and about. Here’s a couple of sites that ate specifically for that:

https://www.lettersagainstisolation.com

https://www.postcrossing.com

https://loveforourelders.org/letters

Feed people. Join a food bank, volunteer in a soup kitchen, find a chapter of Food not Bombs near you.

Find something you can do. The government isn’t going to help.

It never was.

Anarchy, Politics

Beyond Hope – Orion Magazine

Removing a major stumbling block to acting on behalf of the Earth

But when you give up on hope, this exploiter/victim relationship is broken. You become like the Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear.

And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.

In case you’re wondering, that’s a very good thing

 

Source: Beyond Hope – Orion Magazine

Anarchy, inspiration

This Newfoundland Community Pays No Property Tax, Governs Itself – NTD CANADA

 

Source: This Newfoundland Community Pays No Property Tax, Governs Itself – NTD CANADA

It’s also something that could be an example to other communities across the country, said Devin Drover, who is a Newfoundland resident as well as Atlantic director and general counsel for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“Some of these towns really think that if they have to have a municipal property tax, and they need to offer programs and services, other people in unincorporated municipalities should have the same responsibility,”  Drover told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

He doesn’t consider that attitude fair.

“The [unincorporated] model empowers individuals to have more control over their finances, rather than paying a blank cheque to a mayor, or a mayor’s office, to decide how their money should be spent,” he said.

He said the Port de Grave community still manages to offer programming for the area.

“They pull off a great tree lighting every year. I always encourage people locally to attend.”

They also manage to do it without a “central government controlling those decisions,” he said. “The local residents can do it themselves without having to have expensive elections, having to divide the community, and having to basically have one person or a council making those decisions.”

Residents are also empowered to work together on projects they find interesting.

“When people have the ability to choose what to fund, it really shows what is most important to people.

Kindness, Life, Politics

I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People | HuffPost Latest News

I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.

Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.

I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.

If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged.

I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you).

I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.

There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable).

But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.

Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society.

Source: I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People | HuffPost Latest News