#NonPolluting

[digambrapowersolutionindia]

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[mushiemellows]

we've really failed as a society because I can't even follow the thrall of the sea without contributing to excessive amounts of environmental damage

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #11

March 22-29 2024

The Administration, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in the lead responded to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Working with Governor Wes Moore and Mayor Brandon Scott (both Democrats) The Department of Transportation promises to clear the harbor and rebuild the bride. DoT has already released $60 million in emergency funds as a "down payment" and President Biden is expected to seek $1 billion from Congress.

Vice President Harris announced a number of actions and investments designed to improve the quality of life of the peoples of northern central America. driven by poverty, lack of economic opportunities, and out of control crime people in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are taking great risks and trusting criminal human traffickers to try to reach the US. The Administration is working to improve conditions in the Northern Triangle so that is no longer necessary. Vice President Harris announced $1 billion dollars in new investments as part of the Central America Forward public-private partnership, since 2021 it has invested $5.2 billion in the region. Harris also announced $175 million dollars of direct aid from the US to Guatemala at a meeting with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo.

The Department of Energy announced a $1.5 billion dollar loan to help restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant. This would mark the first time a nuclear power plant was brought back online after being decommissioned. The hope is keep the plant running till 2051, this 100% green power source is projected to prevent 111 million tons of CO2 emissions in its new life time, the same as taking 100,000 cars off the road. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer touted it as key for her state reaching its goal of 100% clean energy by 2040.

Vice President Harris launched a social media push to inform the public about the Biden-Harris Administration's SAVE Plan. The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan was launched last year as part of President Biden's efforts to bring student loan forgiveness to millions of borrowers. Currently 7.7 million people are enrolled in SAVE, under which anyone making $16 a hour or less has a monthly payment of $0 on their student loans. 4.5 million SAVE enrollees are making $0 a month payments and another 1 million pay less than $100 a month on their loan repayment, over 150,000 people so far have had their loans totally forgiven. Republicans are suing to try to shut down the SAVE Plan

President Biden took keep steps to ensure quality healthcare this week. Biden extended the window for low-income Americans to apply for Obamacare. The original deadline of July 31st has been pushed back to November 30th. Biden also rolled back Trump era rules that allowed subsidies for "Junk Health insurance" These plans offer very little coverage and often mislead consumers into believing they have insurance when they aren't covered. These short term plans also don't have meet Obamacare standards and can refuse coverage for preexisting conditions.

The EPA announced new regulations aimed at "turbocharging" the number of electric trucks on the road. The new rules aim to have 25% of new long-haul trucks, the heaviest often diesel trucks on the road, and 40% of medium-size trucks (box trucks and landscaping vehicles) be nonpolluting by 2032, currently just 2% are. The regulation would apply to more than 100 types of vehicles including tractor-trailers, ambulances, R.V.s, garbage trucks and moving vans. The new tailpipe limits are expected to prevent about a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2055.

the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services  announced that thanks to President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, 41 different drugs will coast those on Medicare Part B less money than it did last year.  An estimated 763,700 people on Medicare use at least one of these drugs every year. Some enrollees will save as much as $3,575 per dose.

The Department of Energy announced $6 billion for an effort to decarbonize energy-intensive industries. The investment in 33 projects across 20 states will eliminate 14 million metric tons of CO2 emissions each year when finished. Each project is meant to be highly replicable and serve as a blueprint for future private sector ventures. 

President Biden signed an Executive Order to Strengthen the Recognition of Women’s History. The Order will launch a review of all historic sites run by the National Parks Service to determine ways to better highlight the role of women, from all backgrounds, in American History.

The Senate Confirmed President Biden's nominees, Ernesto Gonzalez, and Leon Schydlower to federal judgeships in Texas. This brings the total number of federal judges appointed by President Biden to 190.

[nita-engle-reference]

Feeder Stream Nita Engle (1925-2019) Watercolor, 1989

"I have often been surprised — even struck — by the luminosity of the outdoors: the woods in certain light, the bark of mixed hardwoods and evergreens, of light shining through and being refracted up from the water below. I have often noticed in the woods in summer — in a season of seemingly endless green uniformity — that the leaves are not uniform at all but many-colored, almost in autumn coloration. The light shining through the trees on the water and refracted back to the trees takes on a luminosity, a glow lighted from within. If trials and tribulations make the rewards sweeter, then surely wading a trout stream is a case in point. A river observed from a bridge or painted from the shore or fished from the bank has its own mysteries, but to actually enter a river is to become a part of it, to feel the whole force of the river in your lap. All the senses are engulfed; wading a river is a very physical experience. You not only hear but are one of the causes of the river sounds as the water rushes past. To be an intimate part of the scene — finding an exciting new eye-level perspective from the center of the stream; looking down into and through the water; feeling the exhilarating effect of spray on skin — these are matters not of watching but of doing. Wading and fishing is exhausting. The going is rough enough in the steam, but the bank is even worse — trying to maneuver a fly rod through a jungle of tag elders and brush. After all of these difficulties, to find another joy of the woods, a feeder stream entering the main river, is a great joy! It means, in my area, a fresh, ice-cold, nonpolluted drink of water. It means greater opportunities to catch trout as they wait about for their next meal to enter the river, and the best opportunity to paint watercolors." - N. Engle

[outer-space-youtube]

Heleum3 or Batteries?

@thelimitingfactor tells us about the need of more Megapack Factories for more batteries to reinforce the use of nonpolluting energy sources. My question is, ‘Why stop using fossil fuels if we know how to clean 90% of the pollutants in the air, in 24 hours?’  People say the resources of Earth that are needed to power our future are running out. The same people don’t want us using fossil fuels to…

[scottguy]

.. Levin called equity a “prescription for tyranny and totalitarianism,” ranting that it was “not the government’s job” to improve the quality of life of American citizens. 

It is ABSOLUTELY government's job to improve the lives of American citizens.

You enjoy clean air? Nonpolluted water? Safe food? Effective medicine? Protection from corporate rip-offs? Public schools? All that is a product of "government."

The government's ONLY job is to improve lives. What else would we need it for?

What the hell does Mark Levin think the purpose of government is?

Levin wants an every-man-for- himself world. Levin wants American society to be a jungle where the strong and rich prey on the weak & poor. "I got mine and to hell with everyone else," is Levin's twisted vision of American life. Government gets in the way of that so he hates it.

"Government" is not aliens from another planet. (as right-wingers seem to feel) Government is fellow American citizens upholding laws we asked Congress to pass to...

...guess what?

.... Improve our lives!

Mark Levin has an oligarch's view of "government" which is that it's BAD because laws stand in the way of corporate profits that could be even higher IF ONLY the rich could more freely pollute, create even bigger monopolies, price fix more, sell unsafe products, and just plain cheat Americans with phony extra charges because they can get away with it.

Let's be clear, it's greedy oligarchs and corporations making life hell for average Americans with low wages, greedflation, increasing housing costs, increasing food costs, and obscene medical costs for both treatment and medication.

Mark Levin is PAID by rich oligarchs to lie to you about what government is and should be. This is why Levin is pro-Trump.

Trump is on the side of the corporate cheaters who WANT HIM to END DEMOCRACY so they can milk Americans for every last cent in their pockets ... forever.

They want Trump as a TOTALITARIAN leader.

Kamala Harris is the exact OPPOSITE. She is on the side of average American citizens and continued democracy in the United States. That's why Levin hates her.

The rich are terrified that Americans are FINALLY fed up with being screwed by Republican policies for decades. That's why the right is willing to resort to a totalitarian dictator. They know average Americans won't stand for the unconscionable greed of oligarchs much longer.

We, the left, are SO SICK of Republicans pointing the finger at Democrats and accusing US of the WRONG things they are actively supporting right now.. such as fascism and totalitarianism, under a Hitler-like Trump.

We can either not vote, just give up, and suffer misery THE REST of OUR LIVES under Trump and his Nazi-like regime.

Or...

We can vote and elect Kamala Harris and claw back the wages we've been denied, the absurdly higher prices we have to pay for anything necessary, and make the rich PAY THEIR TAXES... just like the rest of us have paid all along. (After all, the rich can easily afford their taxrs and still be obscenely rich.)

Vote ... and vote Harris. Let government KEEP making your life better like Biden already has with lower prescription costs, improved infrastructure, support for unions, and nearly countless other programs that are good for AVERAGE Americans.

The alternative is an American life under Trump that is a nightmare almost too horrible to imagine.

Mark Levin and his ilk don't give a damn about YOU! Average Americans are just cattle to be harvested for profit. The middle class exist only to be milked for money.

The rich don't care if you die of starvation or sickness. They're RICH! It's not their problem. Nothing is quite so easy to bear as another person's sorrows. They get together to party on their yachts and thus put the misery they cause for hundreds of millions of much poorer people out of their minds.

Don't listen to fools like Mark Levin pimping for filthy rich people who only laugh at your poverty.

[puroxipurewater]

Puroxi Retentive Formula gives you the advantage of absorbing a large amount of water and locking it firmly. It's Eco-friendly material and it is non-toxic, harmless, and nonpolluting.

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: California Pushes Electric Trucks as the Future of Freight by Peter Eavis and Mark Abramson

By Peter Eavis and Mark Abramson A mainstay of cargo transport will be phased out at ports as California bans new registrations of carbon-fuel trucks in favor of nonpolluting ones. Published: December 28, 2023 at 12:07PM from NYT Business https://ift.tt/WHp2rDk via IFTTT

[skminerlas]

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[ariesgadablog-blog]

My fears are countless as the mass of liquid yet I chose to stay afloat rather than sinking into it, because strength is developed through facing an obstacle one at time, and the hardship from it is what keeps me humble.

[dangerousfanbread-blog]

Wide shot of moving tram and waiting pedestrian.

[equatorjournal]

Ebba, 1970"s. "The good life depends on intimacy and small numbers." - Aristotle. "Briones was once a small, peaceful community of farmers and fishermen, retired people and commuters, and a haven for poets, artisans, and counter-cultural activists. But in the early 1970s, a giant oil spill polluted its shores and a state imposed multimillion-dollar sewage system threatened its tranquillity. Orville Schell, one of the elected officials of the town, describes in his personal and eloquent journal the efforts of these people to defend their town by building an ecolog ically viable community. The town began to plan nonpolluting waste disposal systems, to experiment with new regulations to control runaway land speculation, to promote alternative energy sources such as the sun and the wind. But these bold innovations often brought fierce opposition from state, federal, and county agencies. The townspeople had to fight to build ingenious forms of low-cost housing that violated the bureaucratic health codes. They organized against a massive highway-building program which would have led to an enormous development program. Though Briones is a unique town, its people are dealing with the general issues of ecology, energy, and unlimited growth which confront us all today." From "The town that fought to save itself" by Orville Schell, 1976. https://www.instagram.com/p/CdyoIqWNZLn/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[officialbillhader]

Mac's been here for hours, odering nothing, staring into space, tie done up to his neck, shirt wrinkled where it's haphazardly tucked into his belted pants. No one sits across from him, the waiter hasn't checked on him in two hours, people walk in and move around and walk out, but he just sits there. He doesn't move, he doesn't see, he doesn't hear, he lives in his own world, of the dancing light across the skin of the man who left him, of the lives that grow around him, leave him behind, force him to drag them back when the light leaves it all, stops dancing, sits and stares, stagnant life after stagnant life.

He's right where Dennis would expect him. The table in the corner, the wobbly chair, the swinging door. The piano softly playing, begging for Dennis to sing over it; useless, useless begging, because Mac is utterly abandoned and alone, while Dennis lives a blissed out life across the country, small feet on tiled floors, shoes put on the wrong feet, messy hair, no care. Kids, kids, kids more important than Mac, breakfast on a kitchen island, burnt toast and cheesy eggs, highchair that has to be wiped down, flashing images of blonde hair, teeth growing in a mouth open with laughter, fingers stealing a nose, kid's cartoons flashing 2+2=4 across the screen. The perfect life.

Not a dirty bar situated down an alleyway, five beers a day, water pressure too low, friends that swear too much, dusty signs and sticky floors, chapped lips, tongue too rough, never enough, never what he wanted, not since he was in high school imagining his life.

People laugh and they cheer and they move on and Mac sits there, because he has to stay, right where Dennis left him, right in the failing life, the same apartment, same bed, same smell, same moon to stare at through the buildings of the city.

He knows Dennis has clear fields, blankets to lay across the long grass, bug spray to fend off the mosquitoes, fireworks to be mesmerized with, a child in his lap curling into his shirt when the booms are too loud, but when it's all over Dennis can point at the moon in the clear, nonpolluted night sky, and he can explain what it does for the planet and then lie and say it's made of cheese, all to prying ears, an underdeveloped smile, youthful eyes. A woman next to him, just another brunette added to the list, never the list Mac wants, because he thinks of her and what she gave Dennis and he forgets who he is.

He sits and he stares. He crosses and uncrosses his legs when they go numb. He's frozen in the timeline he never asked for, the one where he has no car and no ride home, no one to go home to, a starving ghost at the restaurant table, gaining the weight of it all and losing it just the same.

They tell him they've closed, he'll have to leave soon, but he's been here for years, ever since Dennis sang to him, burst something unknown in his chest sits, before he froze Mac by leaving Philadelphia forever, left it all behind, nothing there, apartment the same as it ever was, Mac sobbing into the pillows on Dennis's bed, pathetic, because he never used to be this way. He was everything before Dennis, he was half of it during Dennis, he's nothing after him. He's the swinging door smacking onto the wobbling chair, he's the missing fish, he's the dog in the macaroni, he's the abandoned man sitting alone in the corner of the restaurant, dust upon his head, air in his hands, warmth ripped out of his body. He could be dead and he'd never know.

They force him to leave, but he's been here since Dennis left it all, such a rush decision, the picket fence family, the horror story come to life, the whining dog and hissing cat and crying baby. But he's gone, so it doesn't matter. He's gone and Mac's been at this table since he met him.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Podcasting "Hope, Not Optimism"

This week on my podcast, a reading of my latest Medium column, “Hope, not optimism,” in which I describe a theory of change that distinguishes activism from novelism.

https://doctorow.medium.com/hope-not-optimism-943e88291b

Plotting a novel is a process of radical simplification: a character goes through a linear progression of challenges of increasing difficulty and consequence, until the stakes are raised to their utmost when the tale reaches its climax.

That’s nothing like the real world (perhaps that’s why fiction is so satisfying!). Here in reality, the terrain we’re trying to traverse is so complicated that we can’t even know it, much less plot an efficient route through it.

Actually it’s worse: the terrain isn’t just complex, it’s adversarial — our ideological opponents devote enormous energy to rearranging the terrain to put blocks in our way, suppressing human rights from the right to shelter and the right to vote to basic reproductive rights.

Trying to plot a course through terrain this complex isn’t just a waste of time — it’s counterproductive. By the time you’ve drawn a map, or even planned a map, the terrain will be so altered that you need to start over.

Figuring out the course from here to there is a trap that ensures you go nowhere.

Addressing this kind of complexity is routine in computer science: we frequently need to write programs to “solve” unsolvable problems — from weather prediction to route-planning.

Yes, weather predictions could be better if we let the computers run so long that the weather had already happened before the program delivered its guesses; we can shave second off complicated routes if we don’t mind waiting for days to compute them.

But we can’t. We need the answer right now — even if it’s imperfect. In cases like these, we replace deterministic, perfect solutions with probabilistic, good-enough ones — instead of using rules, we use rules of thumb.

One important rule of thumb (a “heuristic” in computer science jargon) comes from a technique called “hill climbing.”

Think of hill climbing in terms of how ants find high ground. The ant’s forward facing eyes mean that it can’t just look around and find an ascent.

Instead, the ant can poll its legs and determine which one is highest up — that is, which direction will take it most steeply up the gradient. The ant takes on step in that direction and reassesses: now which direction should I go?

Rather than mapping the terrain, the ant discovers it, one step at a time, knowing each step it takes will reveal new pathways.

That’s how activists do it: from your current vantagepoint, assess which of the directions open to you makes the most progress towards your goal.

Once you’ve materially improved your circumstances, even in small ways, you discover new steps you can take — steps that were invisible before. One step at a time, you can move across the complex, adversarial world, towards a better one.

Ants have six legs — six directions they can move. Activists have four directions — four tactics — they can deploy, as articulated by Lawrence Lessig in 1999’s CODE: Code, law, norms and markets.

That is, our world is shaped by the limits on social acceptability, legality, profitability and technological possibility. No one does things that are technologically impossible, things that are illegal or immoral get done less, and profitable things get done more.

These interrelate, of course. Normalizing cannabis use paved the way for legalization which made dispensaries more profitable and drove new growing and processing technology.

Code, law, norms are markets are the activist’s cardinal directions — if you want to stop polluters, protests (norms) can drive regulation (law), which makes polluting unprofitable (markets) and drives alternatives to polluting processes (technology).

But also: the existence of nonpolluting technology (code) makes it easier to ban old polluting systems (law), and prompts people to reconsider which products and services they buy (norms), which spurs investment (markets).

Starting with law might be more efficient than norms, or maybe new tech is the spur that makes change — we can’t know. Just trying to figure it out will take so much time that we’ll get less done than if we just pick whatever seems most effective right now and run with it.

All this offers a new gloss on the critiques of “solutionism” and “consumerism” and “proceduralism” and “political correctness.”

It’s true that tech on its own can’t solve problems (solutionism), but when you can’t get a law passed (proceduralism), a new tech can change what people perceive as possible and therefore moral (political correctness) driving boycotts (consumerism) that finally spur change.

In other words, it’s not that any of these tactics are useless — they’re just incomplete.

This suggests a method: when you’re losing hope because you’ve spent years pursuing a cause without progress, stop and assess whether a different course will open space for more.

If you’re writing amazing free/open code but all your friends are stuck in walled gardens, maybe you need to talk to your local government or school board about procuring tech that is free and open (laws).

Or maybe you can offer workshops at the local library on using human-rights-respecting tools (norms). Or you can volunteer for a local refurbisher and install Ubuntu on the laptops they resell (markets).

Importantly, this method is grounded in hope, not optimism. Optimism — like pessimism — is a form of fatalism. The optimist thinks things will get better no matter what they do; the pessimist thinks things will get worse no matter what they do.

They both agree that what they do doesn’t matter.

That’s fatalism, and its opposite is hope: the belief that if you do things, you can make things better.

An optimist says the Titanic doesn’t need lifeboats because it’s unsinkable. A pessimist says that there’s no point in trying to stay afloat because there’s no hope of rescue.

To be hopeful is to tread water if that’s all there is.

Not everyone who treads water gets rescued — but everyone who gets rescued treads water. Hope is the necessary but insufficient condition for survival — it’s how you can overcome paralysis and discover which actions you can take.

Hill climbing won’t always get you to the highest ground, either — if an ant starts climbing at the base of a foothill, then it won’t get as high as if it had started at the base of the mountain next door. Sometimes, hill climbers have to descend and start over.

Likewise, sometimes nothing you do can fix your situation, because you can’t get there from here. After all, the effective solutions to the Titanic problem isn’t treading water — it’s more lifeboats and fewer icebergs.

Some situations are unfixable — some activists are doomed to fail, because the terrain is impassible. When that happens, all the rest of us can do is learn from them — try to figure out what timing and context can help us find another approach up the hill.

It’s messy and inefficient, and if it was the plot of a novel, no one would publish it. Life is messy and inefficient, too.

Here’s a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/articles/2021/10/10/hope-not-optimism/

And a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive, they’ll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_404/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_404_-_Hope_Not_Optimism.mp3

And here’s the RSS feed for my podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The $1 trillion infrastructure deal reached by a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday would make a significant down payment on President Biden’s ambitious environmental agenda. But the money for provisions to cut the pollution fueling climate change is a fraction of the $2 trillion that Mr. Biden once vowed to spend.

The plan, which has $550 billion in new spending, includes the first federal funds designated for “climate resilience” — to adapt and rebuild roads, ports and bridges to withstand the damages wrought by the rising sea levels, stronger storms and more devastating heat waves that will come as the planet continues to warm.

Hours after the deal was reached on Wednesday, the Senate voted 67 to 32 to take up the infrastructure bill, as Republicans joined Democrats in clearing the way for action on a crucial piece of President Biden’s agenda.

Though it falls short of Mr. Biden’s goals, the White House sees the bipartisan measure as a first step toward passing a separate $3.5 trillion bill that Democrats hope to push through on a party-line basis, over the objection of Republicans.

“As climate policy, this is an appetizer,” Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said of the package unveiled on Wednesday. “It’s not the main course.”

Democrats intend to build significant climate programs into the second bill, including a provision that would essentially pay electric utilities to generate energy from nonpolluting sources, and tax incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles.