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Ask Solarman [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-01
This will be a semi-frequent column. I ask you to pose questions and make comments, to drive an ongoing conversation. In this way we can educate and cause you & your fellow humans to take personal action. I’ll explain pretty much anything you want to know about the practical actions we can take to reduce our own carbon emissions- as individuals, property owners, renters, and businesses.
Some topics I’m already writing for this column:
• California utilities won a years-long battle at thePUC to destroy the value of Net Metering. I have the solution.
• I rent, so what can i do to reduce my carbon footprint?
• Can US made solar equipment ever beat the cheap foreign-made?
• Reduce the produce… huh?
• The war the utilities continue to wage against solar- for profit.
The first topic: Why I am Solarman
I’ve worked in renewable technologies for the past 16 years. I recently retired, as I am certainly of the age to slow down. I then started a nonprofit to continue on The Mission of implementing carbon free power. I am an economic modeler by aptitude and avocation.
www.zerocarboncommunities.org
I’ve developed solar projects over the past 16 years– from the East Coast to Hawaii, from small to large. My Team at non-profit Zero Carbon Communities, has specialized in combining energy efficiency and renewable technologies, to make the strongest possible economic case for carbon free power. We have experts in most technologies.
It’s funny– my first career (and college) was all about words and now I work deeply in numbers. In building spreadsheets to express the immediate and ongoing economic opportunities of solar, energy efficiency, etc. Ironically the combo is working out well, as I can translate the numbers & techs to plain language, what can compel people to act. When clearly and horrifically the growing dangers of climate catastrophes don’t.
Money drives our culture and, in fact, humanity. It’s a sad truth that we put more priority on it than other beautiful aspects of being human. And for far far too many money has become their god, their only means of judging the merit of any activity or animal, including humans. This both devalues all that is good on this planet AND emphasizes the short term, the immediate. it devalues the future. It ignores anything not immediately calculable into dollars. And callously, in the process, makes sure that too many have too little.
Money is the most powerful tool humans have created. But it is just a tool. We must find ways to put a value on the difficult things, those vast things like worldwide heating which are truly difficult to put into dollars. The age-old philosophical question of the value of a life. The incremental value of slowly degrading the local environment, the larger environment.
I am thankful beyond words that we unified to elect this Democratic leadership, as they have put into place the mechanisms to accelerate our country’s conversion to carbon free living, working and transportation. They put hundreds of billions of dollars into action. They are showing, every day in implementation, the world how to do this.
Your turn. Comment and/or DKosmail me with questions or topics.
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