Tag: climate-change

  • The Solar Story Is More Complicated Than the Brochure

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    There was a window — and I think most people missed it. A few years back, the federal government and New York State were practically paying you to put solar panels on your roof. Between the federal tax credit and the NYSERDA grant, we were looking at roughly $10,000 coming off the top of a…

  • Drowning in It

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    There’s a moment every four to five weeks that snaps me back to reality. I load up the car, drive to our local transfer station, hand Dan a coupon, and drop off a single 44-gallon bag of trash. One bag. And I think — okay, we’re doing our part. We compost, we recycle obsessively, we…

  • Is the Iran War America’s Biggest Self-Own of Self-Owns?

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    Three and a half weeks in. Twenty-four days of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, oil at $112 a barrel, thirteen American soldiers dead, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, and the administration now scrambling to lift sanctions on the very country we’re bombing — just to keep gas prices from completely destroying what’s left…

  • Divided We Fall Part 7: Climate Change

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    I put a heat pump in my house last year. Bosch 5-ton, replaced an oil-fired system that came with the place. I’m not telling you that to flex green credentials — I’m telling you that because the math finally penciled out, the technology has gotten genuinely good, and the federal tax credits at the time…

  • BrokeCon by Design Part 24A: The Environmental Extraction – They Profit Today, We All Pay Forever

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    On August 3, 2015, Alpha Natural Resources filed for bankruptcy. In January 2016, Arch Coal did the same. On April 13, 2016, Peabody Energy — the largest coal company in the country, founded in 1883 selling coal off a cart in Chicago — filed too. Between them, the three had promised to clean up their…

  • What’s the Future of EVs/ICE? Why Aren’t We Talking About Onboard Generators?

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    I own an EV. I am not opposed to EVs. And the more I drive mine, the more I think going fully electric — meaning battery-only, plug-only — is short-sighted. ICE alone is a worse answer. The complexity, the maintenance, the dependence on a fuel that has to be extracted, refined, and trucked everywhere —…