You know its not always easy doing this job.
Welcome to the Monday Good News Roundup, where your friends at the GNR Newsroom head out to gather a weeks worth of good news for you to enjoy on your Monday morning. Myself, Killer300 and Bhu at your service.
So Midterms. Its a few weeks away, and people are anxious and nervous. Especially me because I have anxiety issues. Ever since 2016 every election fills me with dread. Its even worse because this is Halloween season, when I binge horror movies, and I’m having trouble enjoying even that for this bullshit.
So you know, ignore the pundits, ignore the polls, go out and vote, hope for the best prepare for the worst, all of that. Just remember whatever happens in two weeks, the sun is gonna rise like it always does, life will go on, we’ll find a way to go on too. We always have and we always will.
Well enough of my hand wringing. Onto the good news.
Neighbors opted for the latter, starting a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to install community-owned, solar-panel-charged streetlights that operate independently of DTE’s grid. That initial response has since grown into Soulardarity. The nonprofit, for which Garcia serves as communications director, has built its community organizing strategy around what it calls its “blueprint for energy democracy.”
“What Soulardarity really champions is equity in systems,” Garcia said. The institutional racism that has held back public- and private-sector investment in communities such as Highland Park translates into neglect or harassment by the monopoly utilities that serve them, he said.
Nearly half of Highland Park’s residents, 88 percent of whom are Black, live below the federal poverty line. DTE Energy has pushed through a series of rate hikes over the past six years, and utility bills can claim from a third to a fifth of a typical Highland Park family’s income.
Sounds like a really cool enterprise. Very excited to see more from them.
Across the U.S., communities are creating ways to access affordable clean energy at the local level. Tired of polluting fossil fuels, expensive energy bills, and power grids that fail in extreme weather, people are starting solar cooperatives, forming virtual power plants on tribal lands, training local workers to assemble wind turbines, and more. In this special series, Canary Media explores how Americans from all walks of life are democratizing the clean energy revolution.
Clean energy is coming, whether the old guard wants it or not, so get in line or out the way.
Experts worry that de facto single-person regimes in previous multiparty states (Russia, Turkey, Venezuela) and norm-defiance in existing democracies (Brazil, Hungary, the United States) signal a coming authoritarian age. Without examining the broader record, however, it is hard to know whether such tremors presage a global convulsion. A century’s worth of evidence (1920–2019) shows that contemporary democracies are sturdier than they look. Above all, high levels of economic development continue to sustain multipartism; OECD democracies have faced less risk than often intimated. Further, competition among political parties, regardless of national affluence, contains a momentum that even the most willful demagogues have had trouble stopping. These economic and institutional bulwarks help explain why democratic backsliding, which seems so portentous, has preceded democratic survival more often than breakdown. Even as executive aggrandizement and rancorous partisanship roil the world’s most venerable democracies, they are unlikely to produce new autocracies absent permissive material conditions.
Whatever happens, I believe our democracy will continue to move forward, and we’re gonna keep fighting against those who would tear it down and subvert it.
Now, 60,000 in five years in a huge state isn’t transformative. But it’s not nothing. It’s certainly not a negligible number. Building an ADU is a new thing for most homeowners, not something they’re familiar with, whether it’s how to actually build it, how to finance it, how to be landlord, etc.
Many thousands of people must have looked into it seriously or semi-seriously and decided not to move forward. Many more must have thought about it. The universe of people, from curious to committed, is much larger than the number of permits actually issued.
Its weird because that’s kind of close to where I live now, basically a bunch of rooms turned into different apartments above a bar. Its a great deal.
The current protests in Iran sound the death knell of the Islamic Republic. The killing in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested for wearing the hijab incorrectly, has unleashed a wave of angry and bloody demonstrations, boycotts, work stoppages, and wildcat strikes that have exhausted the country’s security forces and spread to more than 100 cities. The government has endured major protests before, notably in 2009, 2017, and 2019, but these demonstrations are different. They embody the anger that Iranian women and young Iranians feel toward a regime that seeks to stifle their dearest desires. And they promise to upend Iran’s establishment.
Tyranny never lasts forever, and all it takes is a spark to start a revolution.
n 2012, Kloppenburg and half a dozen like-minded agriculture experts founded OSSI as an alternative to the monopolies. OSSI’s aim is the “free flow and exchange of genetic resources, of plant breeding and variety development,” Kloppenburg says. With global warming, disease and changing climatic patterns, “we need novel plant varieties that are capable of responding to the changes. Farm to table is popular, but we really need to talk about seed to table.”
The movement faces an uphill battle, particularly in the US where most farmers plant seeds that are patented by the big corporations. Still, about 50 seed breeders have already signed on with OSSI in the US to offer nearly 500 seed varieties. And other open source seed organizations are making their own way in Europe, Argentina, India and more.
Good. The patenting of seeds is one of the dumber things our capitalist society has produced (and that is saying something), so its nice to see some push back on that.
During this same period, however, the rising global movement against racism had decided to boycott South Africa’s all-white rugby team, seeing it as a pressure point on the apartheid regime. They figured that denying the South African Springboks the opportunity to play other nations — particularly those within the British Commonwealth, where rugby was most popular — would force the South African government to change its ways.
The people in New Zealand, therefore, were heavily conflicted about the scheduled games for 1973. Rugby fans were salivating at the thought of New Zealand proving its rugby players were the best. And of course the New Zealand anti-racist movement saw a golden opportunity: The goal was to force the government to cancel the games and add pressure on South Africa to open up.
As winter of 1972 approached, I was asked by New Zealand Quakers to lead training workshops for the national movement against apartheid sport. The New Zealand movement leadership was interested in organizing mass civil disobedience if the Springboks came, but recognized that in some other countries the result had been fights, injuries and even deaths. Perhaps, they thought, training in advance could be helpful.
I happily agreed to a three week agenda: three major workshops (in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch) for leaders and aspiring trainers who would carry on after I left. I would be taken care of by Michael and Marilyn Payne, two Quakers from Wanganui. They told me they were taking their children out of school so the whole family could accompany me on their microbus around the country.
A blast from the past and a reminder that organizing and protesting work.
If they hadn’t heard the advice from Guterres, they might have gotten the idea that digging up ancient oil deposits was not a promising career path from somewhere else. The billionaire Bill Gates recently predicted that oil companies “will be worth very little” in 30 years; CNBC’s loudest finance personality, Jim Cramer of Mad Money, has declared he’s “done” with fossil fuel stocks.
It’s part of a larger social reckoning that threatens to make business harder for oil companies. Big Oil is becoming stigmatized as awareness grows that its environmentally-friendly messaging, full of beautiful landscapes and far-off promises to erase (some) of its emissions, doesn’t match its actions. Well over half of millennials say they would avoid working in an industry with a negative image, according to a survey in 2020, with oil and gas topping the list as the most unappealing. With floods, fires, and smoke growing noticeably worse, young people have plenty of reasons to avoid working for the brands that brought you climate change.
Oil is on its way out, and everyone can see it.
A judge in the Tyumen region in Siberia, Russia, has cleared 30-year-old Alisa Klimentieva of charges of “discriminating against the Russian army.” She wrote with chalk on the pavement of a public square the words “No To W–” (“Нет В—Е” in Russian) and drew a peace sign on September 24, 2022. She was detained by the police that same day. In court, she explained to the judge that her sign didn't mean “No to War” (“Нет Войне”) but “No to Vobla” (which is a fish that shares the first and last letter, and the length with the word “war” in Russian). The sign, then, she said, was against the fish: “Нет ВОБЛЕ” not against the war (Нет ВОЙНЕ). She felt a strong dislike towards this type of fish, she claimed, and the judge Sergei Romanov supported her and dropped the charges. He also ruled that the blue chalk she used was to be returned to her.
So once again things not going well for Putin in Russia. He’s being pushed on all fronts and its only a matter of time before he topples.
The government announced plans Tuesday to award millions of dollars in grants to expand all-hours mental health and substance abuse care in more communities around the country.
“Today we’re talking about providing to Americans 24/7 support for crisis care,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said. “That’s something that’s only been available to some, in some places. But depending on your income and ZIP code, you could be totally out of luck. That’s going to start to change.”
I hope Biden is still able to keep doing awesome stuff like this through the remainder of his presidency.
BERLIN (AP) — Insurance companies that have long said they’ll cover anything, at the right price, are increasingly ruling out fossil fuel projects because of climate change — to cheers from environmental campaigners.
More than a dozen groups that track what policies insurers have on high-emissions activities say the industry is turning its back on oil, gas and coal.
The alliance, Insure Our Future, said Wednesday that 62% of reinsurance companies — which help other insurers spread their risks — have plans to stop covering coal projects, while 38% are now excluding some oil and natural gas projects.
Once again, everyone is abandoning fossil fuels. You love to see it.
President Joe Biden recently signed into law new legislation that includes larger investments in renewable energy and measures to address climate change. Among its provisions is a 30% solar tax credit that could spur more Americans to “go solar” over the next decade.
While residential solar power currently generates just a fraction of the country’s overall electricity, it has continued to grow rapidly in recent years, despite COVID-19-related supply chain issues, import restrictions and other obstacles.
Residential solar power installations rose by 34% from 2.9 gigawatts in 2020 to 3.9 gigawatts in 2021, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), a government agency that collects and analyzes information about the energy industry. And in the second quarter of 2022, residential solar set its fifth consecutive quarterly growth record, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Two things I love are solar panels and wind turbines. We could use more of both really.
That does it for this week I think. I wish everyone a pleasant rest of the month and lets go into November with high hopes and determination, and get to Thanksgiving with something worth being thankful for.