Originally published at: ‘Another Day, Another Catastrophic Oil Spill’: Leak in Texas Fuels Calls to ‘Keep It in the Ground’
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Happens so often in the Gulf, doubt that they will bother to attempt to clean it up.
Big questions:
Are YOU still driving a car instead of using public transportation?
If there is no public transportation where you must go, can you start it, or can you move closer where you need to be?
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There are some draw backs to that.
If we grocery shop every week or two there is a trunk and back seat of groceries. The alternative, if following your lead, would be to grocery shop every day using the bus.
Not ready or willing to do that.
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Mni Wiconi
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Yep, now I get groceries three or four times a week. Using dry goods helps. Also if I got a little pull cart I could go less often.
Another thing I did last year was go with other people, three people going to get groceries once a week in one car.
We can’t leave the Petro in the ground if everyone needs it…
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" How we clean oil spills hasn’t changed in decades. These scientists want to change that."
More effective cleanup material
The penalties and consequences still result in obscene profits and no imprisonment. Yah, just another day, another spill, another billion dollars. Essentially a parasitic relationship. Well, another geological period of time, another mass extinction. Thank goodness.
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#TotalRollingNonCooperationNow
Instead of repubs and dems we could have The Amish Party and the Criminal Party. 30 years from now that will be the choice. Either way, we mammals will exist to serve insects for a long long time. Insects get hungry and they have their own version of creation. Like Randy Newman said, “We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground.”
As Texas is tending to do everything in its power to make the country go backwards, it will continue to learn the hard way that they are fast forwarding themselves and the country towards disaster.
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I was born in Texas City, we left when I was four, my folks moved back when I was eighteen. Dad was a research chemist in the petrochemical industry, which largely inspired me to devote my career to healing the earth. He never truly understood the environment. My sister processed leases for oil and gas projects. My brother, who designs antennae for missiles also doesn’t get the big picture. Compartmentalization is a powerful tool. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair
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Yep, constantly increasing population means constantly increasing demand for petroleum from citizens and industry will respond by supplying more oil when we demand more oil. It’s really very simple, no different in any way from when every family quadruples in size and they demand more hamburgers which means more cows need to be killed, which means more cows need to be raised, which means clearing more forest to grow more grain to feed the cows, and more trains and planes to haul the cows. Oil is the same, as long as we keep breeding like flies and demanding more oil, oil suppliers will accommodate our demand.
Almost all tankage on the planet, and ALL tankage in the USA, have berms around them so you can drain them with zero pollution.
This is a ridiculous, uninformed, and silly article. They need to be calling for fewer people, reduced demand, not cut off supply and have half the planet unemployed, starving, and freezing in the dark. Supply side economics are BULLSHIT GOP LIES and do not work, CANNOT work. We progressives should not try to out-stupid the Nazis, we need to work to save our species from extinction.
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Public transit systems are deliberately designed to be prohibitively inconvenient for all patrons other than the poor and very poor alike. Standard 40’ rattletrap buses do NOT convert to EV very well, nor are they suitable for typical stop-n-go circuitous routes.
They are only suitable during rush hours on Express or BRT routes.
60’ articulated buses are in many ways worse.
Perhaps more important, cities and suburbs designed for the automobile lack neighborhood stores within reach of a short walk or a little further on a bike or even a short drive by car as big box stores like Costco, Walmart and Winco bankrupt small store competition. Amazon has the same effect of bankrupting small stores which could deliver better than Amazon and generate less traffic congestion overall. There is no simple solution to car-dependent cities and suburbs. Electric cars alone CANNOT solve the myriad problems associated with car-dependency.
We’re told EVs are the future, but the first big order is freight trucks.
Each freight truck battery pack could instead power:
500 Household Prius plug-in hybrid PHEV (rated 110+mpg) or
140 Chevy Volt (rated 150+mpg),
160 subcompact Smart Car BEVs (60-mile range) or
30 Tesla ‘S’ road lizards.
Quick charging reduces battery pack life to 150,000 miles in the freight truck. Small PHEV freight truck packs last 200,000 miles which distributed to 5 PHEVs delivers 1 million miles instead of 150,000 miles in the BEV freight truck.
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Talk to your people about plug-in hybrids. Ask if they prefer the new Ford f-150 “Maverick” hybrid or the f-150 “Lightning” all-battery BEV, a big battery to replace at say 200,000 miles.
How about this? We, meaning homo sapiens, use a lot less stuff. A LOT less. 99% of what we have, we don’t need. And what we do need, we either grow ourselves, trade with others, and make from renewable materials.
Ancient Futures, about the region of Ladakh and its culture, details a place where people cooperate, not compete, where arts and creativity prevail, and people have ample amounts to eat, grown without the use of machines or chemicals, but with animals. The horses, dzos, yaks, goats, sheep provide fuel, wool, milk and butter, and clothing.
At least, it was like that, until our Western ways entered. Now it’s trying to survive, but has lost two generations to greed, competition, and consumption.
I do not drive. I walk, up to five miles if needed. When absolutely necessary, I use senior transportation. Luckily I live in a complex near to a grocery/drug store, and have a cart. A catastrophic brain injury over five years ago put paid to driving and a lot of other things forever.
With a lot less Stuff, we wouldn’t need so much electricity, either. During a recent four day blackout, I would have done quite well just making a lodge in the woods, a small fire for cooking and warmth.
Look to the past to see our future. We may find true happiness in knowing we’re part of Gaia and not competing for Stuff all the time.
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“They need to call for fewer people and reduced demand, not any supply cut off, half the planet unemployed, starving, freezing in the dark. Supply side economics are GOP lies that cannot work.”
This edit summed up my sense of what you’re getting at, population growth as a solution, and, reduced demand (which is a solution) in ways that can be defended. My take on EVs is that plug-in hybrids - even with current fossil fuels and service stations - delivers 150mpg by driving less than 20 miles per trip in a Prius PHEV or 50 miles in a Chevy Volt PHEV. Drive more and mileage drops to 40-45mpg.
Driving less reduces demand, reduces infrastructure costs and impacts, reduces traffic hazards, accidents and road rage. BEV tech is a plan expecting more driving, more trucking too according to overlords Bezos and Musk ilk who could be said to be committing crimes against humanity. How about we NOT direct the lion’s share of our battery resources to Bezos trucks and vans and long distance freeway sedans?