For nearly 20 years, I've been remarking pretty much continuously, about the thousands of deaths that take place every damned day from air pollution, tens of thousands actually.
Every damned day on this planet is an energy tragedy.
From my perspective, this is always dramatic.
Always...
Every damned day.
The world is going through climate change. The whole damned world. Always. Continuously.
I regret that California is burning. I regret that 19,000 people will die today from air pollution, perhaps more because of these fires.
When I lived through hurricane Sandy, over at Kos, a person there, Tim Lange, "Meteor Blades," remarked to me that I had solar cells on my roof, I would have had power. I was without it for two weeks. (I oppose solar energy.) There was no consideration of the fact that some people lost their roofs. It was a great time, I think, to remark on how wonderful distributed energy was, wasn't it? Every man and woman for himself or herself. The irony is that there was solar panel lying on my street after being ripped off poles. PSEG installed them to be "green." (No one picked it up for nearly a year.)
The reality is that nothing gets through...no amount of drama. This particular day is maybe a little more dramatic than when 19,000 people died from air pollution on September 10, 2019, but the cause of those deaths that day is the same as the cause of fires on September 10, 2020.
When, exactly, would there be a day of no drama to remark on reality?
Sometimes reality is cold; at other times it is hot.
It's well established that closing nuclear power plants "to be safe" kills people.
Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)
Since I know that, and I remark on it regularly - and it doesn't get through - I find every damned day to be fairly tragic.
This post may be "cold and cruel," but from my perspective the California energy policies - shutting nuclear plants before banning fossil fuels - are "cold and cruel." They're popular, but they're cruel.
They are not working. It may sound like "cold and cruel" schadenfreude, but whether anyone cares or not, believes me or not, I know in my heart it is accompanied by weeping.
I lived in California for a long time. I knew great love there, some of the most beautiful days in my life. I was, in fact, reborn there in a sense.
None of this had to be this way, but in California, as many other places around the world, the ignorance associated with selective attention triumphed and there will be no sober time to remark upon it. With climate change, every day is a tragedy.
I'm sorry for the losses in fires, heat, what have you, but I'm very sorry for the whole world, not a particular province.
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