JC’s Confessions #27

In the first few seasons of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert did a recurring skit, then a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.

JC

For decades, I’ve dreaded having to answer the question “What do you do?” or to fill in the blank for “occupation” or “profession” on forms.

Usually, those questions are about earning money and the truth is that I have earned very little money over my lifetime.

What I’ve been used to be called housewife, a term I never liked because it sounds like you are married to a house, not a person. I do sometimes choose the homemaker option from lists that don’t allow me to insert a customized response, although that term also seems too centered on the inanimate. I prefer the term caregiver as more reflective of my role as a daughter, spouse, mother, and grandmother. I think it is unfortunate that the current usage of caregiver has focused on the paid or unpaid work of caring for someone with medical needs, although I’ve dealt with more than the usual share of diagnoses among the generations of family involved.

I will often add volunteer, if I’m given the option. I’ve done many things as a volunteer that others are paid to do, such as church music ministry or facilitating a spirituality book study group. I did major committee stints when my daughters were in school, including a site-based decision making team, curriculum planning committees for music and gifted education, and high school honors program planning, for which the teacher participants were paid, a fact they tried to hide from me as they felt badly that I was spending a lot of time working on these things for free. I also spent a lot of time fighting fracking and advocating for action on climate change, although the vast majority of people doing that are volunteers, with just a few people who are paid to be community organizers. (We laughed when the fracking proponents accused us of being paid by George Soros or whomever, which we certainly were not, all the while knowing that some of them were actually being paid by fossil-fuel-company-financed front groups.)

In more recent years, as writing has become an important part of my life, I’ve wondered what to do with that. Should I list myself as a writer on forms? Is it disrespectful to the people who actually make a living as writers to call myself that? To date, I have never been paid to write, although when my chapbook Hearts is published in the coming months, I will make (a tiny bit of) money. On social media, I tend to list myself as poet/blogger. Most poets and most bloggers earn little-to-no income from those activities, so maybe that is a better descriptor than writer?

Or, now that I’m 62, maybe I should just give up and list myself as retired.

But retired from what? The caregiving, volunteering, and writing still go on…

delayed, partial justice for Dimock

I live in Broome County in New York’s Southern Tier. My town is on the border with Pennsylvania. During the early years of the fracking boom – technically, horizontal hydraulic fracturing with long laterals or shale gas drilling – I was involved with efforts to keep fracking out of New York and to support our PA neighbors who were being devastated by it. My main role was providing factual comments on articles in the media and reading research and articles to make sure I was accurate and up-to-date.

I also attended rallies, panels, and press events, with a bit of bird-dogging on the side. (Bird-dogging is the practice of showing up in places where a public official is speaking or visiting with signs for your cause in order to increase your visibility with the official and, if you’re lucky, the press. It is not illegal or disruptive.) Through these events, I heard from the people of Dimock, PA, which is about thirty miles south of my home, and their allies about the horrible environmental impacts and suffering that fracking was causing there.

Cabot Oil & Gas was the company that was drilling there at the time. In 2008, they contaminated the water supply but refused to take responsibility for the damage. The elected officials and Department of Environmental Protection did not intervene as they should have. Cabot did settle with some people whose homes were affected but with gag clauses that prevented them from saying anything about the situation, although the fact that some houses were torn down and that the lots were restricted from new construction spoke volumes. Meanwhile, other neighbors continued to live in houses without usable water, their properties basically unsaleable. Cabot was eventually restricted from further drilling in a nine square mile section of Dimock, but the damage had already been done.

Finally, on November 29, 2022, Coterra Energy, which includes what had been Cabot, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor violation of the PA Clean Streams Law, even though they had originally been charged on fifteen counts, including nine felonies. They are ordered to pay $16 million for a water system to bring fresh water to Dimock, which, like many rural towns, has gotten its water from individual water wells. Coterra will also pay the water bills for 75 years for current and future residents.

I found out about the plea from this video by area resident, fracktivist, and citizen-journalist Vera Scroggins. It shows the press conference from the courthouse. The main speaker is Josh Shapiro, current attorney general and governor-elect of Pennsylvania. His office brought the charges against Cabot in 2020, before the merger that formed Coterra. Also speaking is Victoria Switzer, a Dimock resident who has been a leading voice in the cry for justice. After the press conference, Vera includes clips from a rally at the courthouse, featuring more familiar faces and voices from the anti-fracking movement.

I appreciated seeing the people who fought so long and hard for some measure of justice for the affected residents of Dimock, even though it is fourteen years late. As Victoria Switzer pointed out in the news conference, some people have passed away in those years. Others were forced to move out of the area. The fractures among townsfolk may never be mended, as some who had leased their property for drilling became hostile toward those whose water was contaminated because Cabot had to stop drilling and, therefore, paying royalties.

I am sickened to learn this week that, on the same day the plea was entered, the Department of Environmental Protection changed the order regarding gas extraction in the nine square mile area in Dimock. While Coterra may not drill vertically in that area, they are now allowed to drill horizontal laterals into it. These miles-long laterals will be burrowing into the Marcellus shale from vertical wells outside the exclusion zone and then explosive charges will fracture the shale to release fossil methane and potentially other types of hydrocarbons. Theoretically, that methane is then collected from the well for use. In practice, though, some of it also migrates through the rock layers for thousands of feet where it can contaminate aquifers or even reach the surface and cause atmospheric pollution. Additionally, fracking can mobilize radon and other naturally occurring radioactive elements, as well as waste products from the fracking fluids and brine. I am dumbfounded that DEP is risking further pollution in Dimock when so many have already suffered so much.

Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution states, “The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.” It’s (past) time for the Pennsylvania government to honor that Constitutional provision.

SoCS: methane

Over the last ten or so years, I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about methane than most people.

This is due to the fighting against fracking here in my region with the Marcellus shale, in the shale plays in the US, and the export of the technology around the world.

I will spare you all the detailed things I learned about fracking and methane’s effects on climate from Bob Howarth, Tony Ingraffea, Sandra Steingraber, Walter Hang, and so many others back in the thick of the fight in New York State, which led to first an administrative ban and later a legislative one. One of my roles at the time was to comment on media articles as part of a rapid response team. I learned to argue from economic, health, environmental, social, and other perspectives, depending on the circumstances.

Fun times.

N0t really. It was super stressful. It was also important to get accurate information out into the public and I was very grateful that we were able to get some better policies in place.

Unfortunately, the damage done by fracking and by methane leakage is still with us, widespread and massive.

Atmospheric methane levels are at record highs and are part of the supercharging of global warming that we are seeing now. As a greenhouse gas, methane is more short-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide but it is much more powerful in the near term. In a ten-year timeframe, methane is about a hundred times more powerful than carbon dioxide, so it is imperative to cut emissions of it now to avert various tipping points.

There was a major methane reduction initiative signed last year, which is good. The problem is that emissions have not been carefully measured or monitored by governments and the fossil fuel industry and estimates have been much lower than what some scientific studies have shown. I was just reading about a study earlier in the week and will try to insert the link after I’m done stream-of-conscious-ing.

It’s cold comfort that the problems the scientists and environmentalists have been pointing out for years are finally being more widely acknowledged when so much damage that could have been averted has already been done.

We need to stop adding fossil methane to our climate system in order to have any hope of meeting the 1.5 degree C level in the Paris accord.

I am very distressed about the breaks in the Nordstream pipelines. Every time I see video of the roiling, methane-saturated sea water, I feel sick, knowing how dangerous it is. It’s especially upsetting to see it in juxtaposition with the footage of the devastation caused by hurricane Ian. Most media coverage is finally acknowledging the role of climate change in supercharging storms but I wish they had been doing it years ago when it would have been easier to avert this level of greenhouse gases. We finally have some decent federal legislation in place but the scope of the problem outstrips that level of spending. The damage estimates from Ian will be higher than the climate spending in the law.

Our family over these last years has taken steps to stop using methane. When we installed a geothermal heat pump a few years ago, we were able to disconnect from the methane system. Our electricity comes from either our solar panels or a 100% renewable grid supplier, so we aren’t using electricity generated from burning fossil fuels. I continue to advocate for the transition away from methane and other fossil fuels.

It can’t come soon enough.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was to base your post on “me” or a word that begins with “me.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/09/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-1-2022/

healing the earth together

On Thursday, I posted that I had a new poem available on Silver Birch Press as part of their series “How to Heal the Earth.” The prompt for the series read, in part, “Your poem can offer practical ideas of how to heal the earth from a personal perspective (i.e., something specific to you and not didactic or soapboxy) or your poem can offer fanciful thoughts that defy the practical.”

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I came down on the practical rather than fanciful side. (I’ll leave it to you to determine whether my poem or this post is soapboxy.)

I wrote a list poem, helpfully formatted into a checklist by Word, that relates some of the things I and my family have done to help combat environmental degradation and climate change. The list blends practical, individual actions, like using LED bulbs and driving an electric car, with social and political actions, like voting and boycotting. Okay, there are also a few more poetic lines thrown in, too.

One of the excuses people use for not taking individual action is that they don’t think that their change will have any impact in the face of such a large challenge as global warming. It’s true that the impact of any one individual action is infinitesimally small but those actions do add up within your household, in your neighborhood, your region, your country to something larger and helpful. If everyone, though, throws up their hands and accepts the polluting status quo, the condition of the planet worsens faster, often harming worst and first those who did the least to create the problems in the first place. As someone from the United States, which is historically the largest contributor to global warming, I feel a particular responsibility to cut carbon emissions as much as I can and am fortunate enough to have the resources to do so.

Individual actions will never be enough, though, unless systemic changes also occur. The political and economic systems in most countries are heavily weighted toward fossil fuels and those companies wield a lot of power. Trying to counteract that is also an example of needing many, many individual actions to create positive change. For example, I and hundreds of thousands fellow New Yorkers worked for years to ban fracking and enact a climate bill in our state. There were protests, public commentary, writing and calling elected officials, court cases, elections, research, networking, meetings, and on and on, but the needed legislation finally passed. Of course, there is still work to be done as it is being implemented but, if so many of us hadn’t made our voices heard, my region would probably look like our neighboring counties in Pennsylvania with large fracked gas wells and the pollution they bring as part of our landscape.

There is still plenty of work to do on the systemic level in the US and around the world, too. Current efforts include boycotting the banks that fund fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure, despite the danger that the companies may never be able to pay the loans back and will go bankrupt with lots of stranded assets in the form of rights to extract fossil fuels that cannot be fulfilled if the world is going to stay under 1.5, or even 2, degrees Celsius in global warming. There is also a major divestment push against fossil fuel companies with some pension funds, universities, and other large institutions refusing to hold stock in those companies. In the US, we are also trying to get more federal funding for the transition to renewable energy and an end to decades of subsidies for fossil fuels.

All of these efforts have an individual as well as a corporate component. Whether you are inspired by prose or by (the much shorter and easier to read) poetry, I hope you will join me by doing what you are able to do to fight global warming and heal help the earth from wherever you are.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January and/or Stream of Consciousness Saturday! I chose to not take Linda up on the SoCS prompt this week, which is “icing on the cake”, but do want to wish Linda a happy birthday and a peaceful, healthy, creative year to come! You can find out more about #JusJoJan and #SoCS here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/21/the-friday-reminder-for-socs-jusjojan-2022-daily-prompt-jan-22nd/

methane and climate

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last decade plus thinking, writing, angsting, and trying to work on climate change issues. This was especially evident during the protracted battle to ban high-volume hydraulic fracturing in New York State, as we also endeavored to help our Pennsylvania neighbors cope with the damage they were seeing from the industry. I was part of a team that wrote comments on media articles and rebutted industry talking points with facts and science.

Because of this, I read a lot of science and heard a lot of speakers on the topics of fracking, fossil fuels generally, and climate change. Because the Binghamton area where I live was one of the most heavily targeted by the fracking industry, there were frequent rallies that drew experts from the Ithaca area, most of whom were connected to either Ithaca College or Cornell University, which is where my daughter T did her undergraduate degree in environmental science.

One of the many environmental warnings that we sounded was the risk of accelerating climate change, particularly due to methane leakage, which occurs at every point from production through transport, storage, and use.

The powers that be didn’t listen.

Atmospheric methane levels climbed to all-time highs, which has the effect of forcing climate change effects in the near-term. While methane is much more short-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is much more potent in trapping heat than CO2, over a hundred times more in a ten-year timespan.

Finally, at the COP26 climate change summit currently meeting in Glasgow, over a hundred countries have agreed to limit methane emissions. In the United States, the Biden administration is finally putting in place regulation of existing fossil fuel wells regarding methane leakage as well as tightening of other rules regarding methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry. Previous efforts targeted new wells only.

One of the sorrows of dealing with climate change is the “what if” factor. What if governments and industry had acted to curtail methane emissions over a decade ago when scientists and activists were pointing out the dangers? What if government and industry had taken global warming from carbon dioxide seriously over fifty years ago when scientists, including industry scientists, made clear the dangers of burning fossil fuels?

If they had, we would not be dealing now with the large increases of extreme weather events, heat waves, floods, and droughts; rising sea levels; loss of glaciers and polar ice; ocean acidification and massive death of corals; weakening of ocean currents; climate refugees; and the threat of even worse consequences in the decades to come.

We can’t redeem the missed opportunities, but we can take action now, including helping those already suffering from climate change impacts.

We can’t afford further inaction.

Governor Cuomo, continued

I wrote here about the developing situation with Andrew Cuomo, our governor here in New York State, where I live in Broome County, far from both New York City and Albany, our capital. In the week and half since I wrote, things have become increasingly contentious, both on the reporting of nursing home death issue and the sexual harassment/bullying issue.

The nursing home death reporting issue parameters are largely unchanged. The administration reported deaths where they happened, whether in a hospital, nursing home, or elsewhere, such as a private residence. Some people wanted to know how many of the hospital deaths were people who had come to the hospital from nursing homes; they wanted the term “nursing home deaths” to refer to people who had likely contracted the virus in a nursing home, regardless of where they died. The newest wrinkle in this is that it appears some of the governor’s top aides edited a report over the summer in such a way as to not reveal how many of the hospital deaths were people who had come from nursing homes at a time when the governor was writing a book on his leadership during the pandemic.

In reaction to all this, the legislature has rescinded the broad authority to take executive action that it had granted to the governor last spring. This is their right to do, of course, but I would feel better if they committed to staying in session past June. Getting things through the New York State legislature is often a long, drawn-out affair and there are times with the pandemic when things change quickly and new policies need to be enacted as expeditiously as possible. The governor can continue to extend existing executive orders.

I am grateful that the existing orders can still stand because, by and large, they have worked well in keeping as many New Yorkers safe as practicable. While the initial outbreak in New York was horrible, the policies the governor enacted in conjunction with public health, medical, scientific, and legal experts were adopted by the public and brought the infection rate down well below the national average. Although there have been spikes, for example over the holiday season when many people travelled and gathered in groups against the state and public health recommendations, New York has not suffered the fate of other states that didn’t implement mask mandates, distancing requirements, gathering size restrictions, etc. or that lifted restrictions too quickly. By being thoughtful and incremental in re-opening and by gathering, analyzing, and adjusting in response to data, most New York businesses and schools are open and are expanding hours as our vaccination rates go up and infection rates go down. New York needs to continue on its science- and data-driven path to keep from suffering the spikes we have seen in other states that were less thoughtful in their plans. Governor Cuomo made mistakes during the past year, but he took responsibility for them and changed policies to correct problems. His leadership mattered and I will always be grateful for what he did because he helped as many New Yorkers as he could to survive a devastating year.

I think New Yorkers need to remember that Governor Cuomo is also a regional and national leader. He spearheaded an effort in the Northeast for states to cooperate on policies and on procuring supplies after the prior federal administration decided not to have a national strategy. In 2020, he was vice chair of the National Governors Association; in 2021, he is chair. This gives him even more opportunity to advocate for policies to help everyone in the US in these trying times. In a few days, it is likely that federal aid to state and local governments will finally be enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan, an initiative that Cuomo has been championing since last spring.

I admit that I am somewhat perplexed that people are surprised by Cuomo’s personal behavior. Any casual observer of New York politics or regular viewer of his pandemic press conferences has seen him being combative and displaying his sense of humor, which ranges from dry to caustic. His sense of what is appropriate to say in public is – um, let’s say – less circumspect than one would expect. He seems especially unable to understand younger people’s sensibilities. For example, when his three 20-something-year-old daughters and one of their boyfriends were living with him last year, he said any number of embarrassing things regarding them. I don’t think he really understands current mores on what is appropriate to say or do in work settings, which is why I think his apologies following the young women’s stories of feeling uncomfortable with his behavior are credible. He is as clueless as Joe Biden who faced criticism for touching and whispering in the ears of women while on the campaign trail or George W. Bush who tried to give German Chancellor Angela Merkel a shoulder rub.

I think that the independent investigation that is ongoing is very important to gather evidence on stories of sexual harassment and hostile work environment. If there is evidence of impeachable acts by the governor, then that should take place. Unlike a corporate executive, the governor is elected by voters, not a board of directors, so there is no relevant authority to fire him or force him to resign. While some state legislators have gone on record calling on Gov. Cuomo to resign because these investigations are a distraction, the governor is carrying on with his duties, adjusting the pandemic policies as conditions warrant and getting ready for budget negotiations with the legislature. Unlike most states, New York’s budget is supposed to be passed by April first, so, once the American Rescue Plan is signed into law, there will be a short window in which to finalize and pass the state budget. Although Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul has been involved in the pandemic response, especially in her home region of western New York, it would be much more disruptive to the state budget process to have Gov. Cuomo step down at this time.

While I admire Governor Cuomo’s leadership through the pandemic, I do not admire him as a person. I find him to be arrogant, overbearing, and a boor. Unlike his father, the late Governor Mario Cuomo, who was principled and articulate, Andrew has always been a bare-knuckles brawler and bully as a politician. Despite being a Democrat, during his early years as governor, he governed more like what used to be a moderate Republican. He and then New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were willing to inflict the health and environmental consequences of fracking on our area, as long as the watershed for New York City water supplies was kept free of drilling. (The eventual fracking ban in New York was thanks to Dr. Zucker of the Health Department and later passed into law once the Democrats had the majority of both houses of the legislature.) It wasn’t until it was clear that the national electorate was becoming more progressive and the Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature that Governor Cuomo started to govern and talk like a Democrat.

Because past Republican candidates for governor have been unqualified and put forward ideas which I oppose and because I didn’t like or trust Andrew Cuomo, I have been voting for the Green Party candidate for governor, whose platform aligns most closely with my own. Granted, in heavily Democratic New York, it was unlikely that my choice to vote third-party would have any real bearing on the outcome of the elections, but I wanted to make clear here that my admiration of the governor’s handling of the pandemic was not a reflection of my being a fan of him personally. Likewise, my observations of his personality and behavior are not coming from a place of partisanship.

At this point, my main motivation is pragmatism. The next couple of months are critical in the course of the pandemic. As national health experts and the Biden administration are pointing out repeatedly, we need to be cautious in ending pandemic protection measures until we have a much higher level of protection among the general public. Texas and a number of states have, as they did in previous waves, lifted restrictions too soon. Governor Cuomo will continue to follow the science to keep us from having a large spike in cases. He is also setting up vaccine sites among underserved populations, trying to address the health and social inequities that caused people of color and those with low income to be hit hardest by the pandemic. I don’t think the New York State legislature is nimble enough to address these issues and I’m not sure if Cuomo’s prior executive actions would stay in force if Lt. Gov. Hochul were to become governor.

Also, the budget negotiations will be very difficult. In New York, for a number of complicated historical reasons, the budget gets hammered out largely by the governor, the speaker of the Assembly, and the majority leader of the Senate. The budget also includes a lot of non-budgetary legislation; one hot topic in the last several fiscal years has been the legalization of recreational marijuana. I don’t think it would be fair to expect Hochul to be thrown into the midst of that process with the deadline coming up in three weeks.

I have often written about how the stress of our governmental function adds to my personal stressors. After the November election, I had hoped that, by this time, the governmental stress might have eased more than it actually has. With the aftermath of the insurrection and the state of the Republican party on the national level and the upheavals with Governor Cuomo, my hopes were not fully realized.

But, hey, what’s life without stress?

I’ll never know.

Blowout by Rachel Maddow

One of the most impressive parts of Rachel Maddow’s book Blowout is the end. No, not the index, but the twenty pages of “Notes on Sources.” I had often found myself thinking as I read the text, “How could she possibly know this level of detail?” but I know that Rachel Maddow and her staff are very dedicated to research and accuracy, so I didn’t doubt the veracity of the stories she was relating. I was pleased to see the “Notes on Sources” because she lists the books, papers, interviews, news stories, videos, magazines, etc. that she had used to find the facts, giving readers a chance to learn more and showing that she and her staff had, indeed, been diligent in their research.

The full title of the book is Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth. That industry is, of course, the oil and gas industry.

Because of my many years in the anti-fracking and climate justice movements, I was familiar with the broad outlines of much of the oil and gas industry story. I appreciated the abundance of details on topics such as Oklahoma, the depths to which it rises or falls on fossil fuel dollars, earthquakes and induced seismicity, and the rise of Oklahoma City, including its entance into the world of big-league sports. I knew that Russia used its fossil fuel exports as a cudgel and that Putin and his oligarchs ran roughshod over whomever stood in their way, but hadn’t realized all the factors involved, including the immensity of the impact of US sanctions that stopped Rex Tillerson’s ExxonMobil from assisting Russian Arctic drilling and spearheaded Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

I was less familiar with the expressions of the “resource curse” in other parts of the world, such as Equatorial Guinea. These stories illustrate how the proceeds of the oil and gas industry flow to the already powerful leaders of government and industry and not to the general populations of the countries, who often remain mired in poverty and ecological devastation.

While I brought a considerable amount of personal background/geekery to my reading, the book is equally as enjoyable and informative for those who know little of the industry. Maddow’s writing is clear and compelling. Much of the book reads like literature, with compelling, recurring characters, rich details, and unexpected plot twists. That the stories are all true heightens their impact.

That we are continuing to deal with the repercussions of the events in this book makes reading it that much more important.
*****
Please join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here:  https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/06/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-6th-2020/

mostly fossil-free home!

A project that B and I have been working on for years is finally complete. With the installation of a geothermal heating/cooling system, we are able to disconnect our home from the methane infrastructure, which in our area means that we are no longer burning fracked gas from neighboring Pennsylvania in our home. Because we had previously installed a hybrid electric/heat pump hot water heater, our furnace had been the only thing still attached to the gas lines. Now that it is gone, we won’t have to pay for methane, which is relatively low-priced at the moment, or the delivery charges, which are relatively expensive in New York. Those savings will help with our electric bill, which will go up, although our panels in a community solar array generate a good chunk of our electricity. In our region of New York, changing from methane to geothermal for heating is considered a wash in terms of cost, but our air conditioning costs will be much lower with the heat pump than with our outdoor compressor unit.

We have done other projects to make our home more efficient, such as changing to LED lighting and adding more insulation. We use a rechargeable battery-operated lawn mower and electric leaf blower. The only two household things that will still use fossil fuels are our propane grill and our gasoline-powered snowblower, which is only needed a handful of times a year, if that.

We have also cut way back on our use of gasoline for transportation, driving an all-electric Chevy Bolt and a plug-in hybrid electric Chrysler Pacifica. We only use gasoline when we take the Pacifica on longer trips. It gets 30ish miles on battery. When it is running on gas, some of the engine power re-charges the battery, so even when we have no plug-in charge remaining, a quarter to a third of our miles will still be battery powered. It could be even more than that if we are driving on roads with terrain or lots of stop signs/lights because the braking is regenerative, meaning the energy from slowing the car goes toward charging the battery. It’s possible that, as rapid charging stations become more available, we may be able to take longer trips in our Bolt, which would cut our gasoline usage even further. (I know some of you urbanites are wondering why we don’t use mass transit. Unfortunately, our area has almost no mass transit available.)

We have tried to cut down our fossil fuel usage and control our total energy usage as much as is practicable, but I know there is one sector where our carbon footprint will become heavier rather than lighter. I have not been a frequent flyer in my first almost-six decades, but I am likely to be flying several times a year for the foreseeable future. With daughter E and granddaughter ABC’s recent move to London, I see a fair number of airplane flights coming.

The first one will be next month.

SoCS: hole in the ground

For the last three days, there has been a crew in our front yard drilling a 500-foot hole in the ground. That’s about 150 meters for all you people who live in the metric world, which is almost everyone except the US…

The reason for this is not to find water, which happened well before they hit rock at 80 feet. Instead, this very deep hole is to install a geothermal heating and cooling system.

I’m excited because, after the new system is in, we will be able to permanently disconnect our house from the methane supply system. Our cooling costs will also be much lower because geothermal systems are much more efficient than the typical central air conditioning unit.

I will be glad not to be using any fracked gas which has caused so much trouble for our PA (Pennsylvania) neighbors and the climate. We will also helping to support the New York State version of a “Green New Deal”, moving to renewable energy in a way that is supportive of impacted workers and communities.

At the moment, though, we just have a very deep hole in the ground with two tubes coming out of it – and a very, very muddy, messy yard.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “ground.” Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2019/10/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-12-19/

Climate Strike!

The day after I wrote this post lamenting the lack of a local climate strike action, I got an email from a local climate champion saying that there would be an event in Binghamton on Friday, the day that millions of people took part in thousands of actions around the world.

We met in front of the building that houses Senator Schumer’s office. As Senate minority leader, he is our most influential representative in Washington. In keeping with the youth leadership of climate strikes, this was organized by local university students, with lots of energy coming from the students who gathered. There were also a number of allies, many of whom were veterans of the fight against fracking in New York State.

I was pleased to be able to attend and lend support and happy to be part of three generations in my family there. Daughters E and T were both there; granddaughter ABC, at two years old, was the youngest attendee. Several people commented that we were gathered there for climate action for her and her generation, so that they will have a livable planet.

Our climate strike event on Friday was very grassroots, with the co-organizers speaking and then offering the mike to anyone that wanted to speak. Next Friday, September 27th, will be a larger and more formal event with several local organizations as sponsors, featuring speakers, music, tabling, and food. I hope to be able to attend that, too.

There is a lot of work to do in order to keep global temperature rise in check, so much that it often seems impossible, but I am more hopeful than I have been for a while. With young people around the world rallying and demanding action, maybe national leaders will finally find the political will to make a rapid and just transition to a sustainable, though still damaged, world.