The Casual Blog

Tag: renewables

November 26, 2025

Some backyard birds, and a few words on our energy policy

Blue jay

Last week I drove down to Clemson, SC, for a nature photography weekend sponsored by the Carolina Nature Photography Association. My main interest was to take some pictures at The Nut House, a marvelous birding oasis created by Carl Ackerman.  It has three blinds where photographers can sit concealed and watch birds come to various tasty attractions.  

The weather was chilly, and the birds were neither uncommon nor numerous.  Still, it was fun to watch those that appeared, as well as the scurrying squirrels and chipmunks.    I also enjoyed meeting some nice CNPA members.

Eastern chipmunk

As usual, it was a bizarre week in Trumpworld, with too many terrible things happening to think carefully about them all.  It was particularly terrible that Trump called for death by hanging of members of Congress who’d pointed out that armed services members should obey the law and the Constitution.  

Who knows how many Trump believers might take this seriously as a call to action?  We learned from the January 6 insurrection that such people exist.  But thankfully there are still responsible Republicans who support free speech and oppose political violence.  May their numbers and their voices increase.

Red-bellied woodpecker

In other news, Trump staged an elaborate fawning tribute to a murderous Saudi Arabian tyrant, Mohammed Bin Salman.  This was, on its face, shameful and disgusting.  Why, I wondered, did he do it? 

In an interesting piece in the NY Times, Noah Shactman proposed some interesting possible explanations.  Shactman says that Trump has long viewed with envy the Persian Gulf petrostates, with their great luck in having lots of oil and their autocracy.  Now, he’s collecting billions in crypto and other business deals from the Middle Eastern autocrats, which is another reason for trying to please them.  

Eastern gray squirrel

On top of all that, or underneath it, is Trump’s view of fossil fuel as a source of power and means of domination.  As a historical matter, this is not crazy; oil and coal powered the major industries of the 20th century.  

But it’s crazy now.  Renewable energy (solar and wind power) have dropped so much in cost that in many places they are now as cheap or cheaper than fossil fuels.  And the CO2 from burning fossil fuels is on course to destroy the world economy and upend human civilization.  

Northern cardinal

As most people now know, climate change is not hypothetical – it’s here.  Average temperatures are hitting new highs, with disasters occurring as predicted – huge storms, floods, fires, droughts, eroding coastlines, along with failing farm systems, economies, and governments.  

Eastern phoebe

But Trump still claims that climate change is a hoax, and that efforts to address it are scams.  He proposes instead to increase the very programs that are root causes of climate change – more burning of coal, oil, and gas – while trying to undermine renewable energy alternatives that would mitigate the catastrophe.  

Yellow-rumped warbler

Through tax breaks and subsidies, Trump has conferred huge windfalls on the oil and gas industries, while the costs of electricity have gone up substantially.  And absent a change in course, there’s worse to come.  A recent study ound that Trump’s energy program, if pursued until 2055, could result in 340,000 premature deaths and $6.7 trillion in additional healthcare and energy costs.  

Chickadee

Somehow Trump’s horrific climate policy is still not high on the public’s discussion agenda.  But that too may be about to change, as climate change hits the housing market.  In a recent piece in the December issue of the Atlantic, Vann R. Newkirk II reports that insurers are pricing in rising climate risks, and so homeowner’s insurance in some areas is becoming prohibitively expensive. 

If insurance becomes too expensive or unavailable, homes become unmarketable.  See also this NY Times report on this same issue. Where homes become unmarketable, a cascade of problems follow – retirements undone, generational wealth eroded, community businesses closed, public services ended, and ghost towns.  

With all the risks we now face, Newkirk reminds us that all is not lost: we may yet wake up and take action. In ringing tones, he finds hope.

[P]erhaps Trump, through his very extremity, has provided a galvanizing opportunity. In his reflexive culture-warrior rejection of climate change, he has backed into a climate policy of his own, and has linked that policy to his power. With his single-minded, bullying determination to reverse course on renewables—which are part of life now for many people of all political stripes—and to dismantle programs people rely on, Trump has essentially taken ownership of any future climate disruptions, and has more firmly connected them to oil and gas. In advancing this climate-accelerationist policy alongside an antidemocratic agenda, he has sealed off fantasies of compromise and raised the political salience of dead zones, where devastation and exclusion go hand in hand. Trump’s intertwining of climate policy and authoritarianism may beget its own countermovement: climate democracy.

Climate democracy would be aided by the gift of simplicity. At present, the only way to ensure that America avoids the future outlined here will be to win back power from its strongman leader, or possibly his successors. The places facing existential climate risks—especially those in the Deep South—are mostly in states that have long been considered politically uncompetitive, where neither party expends much effort or money to gain votes. But they could form a natural climate constituency, outside the normal partisan axis. Poor and middle-class white communities in coastal Alabama, Mexican American neighborhoods in Phoenix, and Black towns in the Mississippi Delta might soon come to regard climate catastrophe as the greatest risk they face, not by way of scientific persuasion, but by way of hard-earned experience. Some of them might form the cornerstone of a new movement.

With the right message, plenty of other people may be persuadable: those upset by higher electric bills, or poorer storm forecasts, or the coziness of Trump with the oil and gas industry, or weather-related disruptions in everyday life. To paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, Americans learn best from catastrophe, and they will learn that the help they once took for granted after disasters might now be harder to come by. Autocracy takes time to solidify, and building popular support in opposition to it takes time as well. But in the reaction needed to build climate democracy, perhaps heat is a catalyst.

Downy woodpecker
May 20, 2025

Local birds, and Trump’s war on nature

Recently I’ve taken a couple of boat trips on Jordan Lake with the Carolina Nature Photographers Association to see some of the birds that live there.  According to our guide, Captain Dave, there are some forty nesting pairs of bald eagles there now, along with many ospreys, great blue herons, woodpeckers, various ducks, and many smaller birds.  

There was a lot happening.  We saw eagles hunting for food and battling over territory.  Ospreys were incubating their eggs.  Wood ducks were shy and flew away quickly.  Several tree swallows had a battle royale over a strategic perch.  At one point hundreds of cormorants were flying and diving together in a coordinated hunt of the local small fish.  

I’ve also been enjoying listening to the springtime songs of the birds in our backyard.  A few years ago I invested some energy into learning common bird songs and calls from recordings.  Lately I’ve been expanding my repertoire with Merlin, a free app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Listening along with Merlin to the birds from our back deck, I’ve discovered several species whose songs I didn’t know and who almost always hide behind the leaves.  It’s a great little app! 

With American democracy in crisis, and a wide array of related disasters in process, it isn’t surprising that bird song and nature generally are not top of mind for most people.  But I find their strength and beauty inspiring, and a source of strength.  

What’s more, the welfare of nature is the welfare of us all.  It’s such a mistake to think that the world is all about humans, and nature is of secondary concern, or no concern.  We humans are just one part of the grander scheme of nature.  We can’t destroy nature without destroying ourselves.

It’s both bizarre and tragic that part of the Trump program seems aimed at just such destruction.  I’ve puzzled over why this could seem like a good idea to anyone.  Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize-winning economist, offered a possible answer in a recent free email newsletter. 

Krugman usually writes on economic subjects, and I’ve found him helpful in illuminating some of the leading stories coming out of Trumpworld.  In writing about the tax plans now in process, he pointed out that part of the program for funding tax cuts for the rich is cutting government support for clean energy and increasing subsidies for fossil fuels.  

Krugman notes that the reason surely has a lot to do with our system in which campaign contributions buy policy decisions – a system that seems to me a sort of legalized bribery.  The fossil fuel industry contributes much more to Republicans.  But he notes, there seems to be more than just money at stake. 

Why does MAGA hate renewables? They consider them woke because they help fight climate change, which they insist is a hoax. And they’re cleaner than burning fossil fuels, which means that they aren’t manly.

It’s all kind of funny — or would be if it weren’t so tragic.

Krugman writes that the dramatic progress in renewables technology has made it possible for us to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.  The price of wind and solar power has been falling quickly.  But Trump has opposed these technologies and taken aim at the Democratic programs to advance them.  

David Gelles of the NY Times has a good new piece on several aspects of the Trump approach to our climate crisis.  He gives a pithy summary of our basic situation: 

Average global temperatures last year were the hottest on record and 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, a threshold that nations had been working to avoid. Every fraction of a degree of additional warming raises the risk of severe effects and possibly irreversible changes to the planet. Nations must make deep and fast cuts to pollution to avoid a grim future of increasingly violent weather, deadly heat waves, drought, water scarcity and displacement . . . .

Can nothing be done?  In fact, a lot can be done, as demonstrated around the world. Gelles explains that the current administration is unique among major world powers in its preposterous denial of climate change and refusal to act.

Around the world, countries are racing to adapt to a rapidly warming planet, reduce pollution and build clean energy. China, the only other superpower, has made a strategic decision to adopt clean energy and then sell it abroad, dominating the global markets for electric vehicles, solar panels and other technologies. Even Saudi Arabia, the second-largest producer of oil after the United States, is spending heavily on wind and solar power.

Here in the US, we’re taking a different approach, as Gelles explains.

The president’s proposed budget calls for eliminating funding for “the Green New Scam,” including $15 billion in cuts at the Energy Department for clean energy projects and $80 million at the Interior Department for offshore wind and other renewable energy. The administration has frozen approvals for new offshore wind farms and imposed tariffs that would raise costs for renewable energy companies. Republicans in Congress want to repeal billions of dollars in tax incentives for production and sales of solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies.

At the same time, per Gelles,

The Environmental Protection Agency, which has been the government’s lead agency in terms of measuring and controlling greenhouse gas emissions, is being overhauled to end those functions. The administration is shredding the E.P.A.’s staff and budget and wants to revoke its two most powerful climate regulations: limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks.

Mr. Trump has said that relaxing limits on pollution from automobiles wouldn’t “mean a damn bit of difference to the environment.”

But transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gases generated by the United States and its pollution is linked to asthma, heart disease, other health problems and premature deaths.

Trump is also cutting federal disaster relief programs led by FEMA.

As human-caused global warming increases, disasters are becoming more frequent, destructive and expensive. There were just three billion-dollar disasters in the United States in 1980, but that total increased to 27 last year, according to data collected by NOAA. The agency said last week that it would no longer tally and publicly report the costs of extreme weather.

Finally, Trump is undermining the research at the foundation of past efforts to anticipate emergencies and mitigate climate change.’

Last month, the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who had been working on the National Climate Assessment, a report mandated by Congress that details how global warming is affecting specific regions across the country.

In recent weeks, more than 500 people have left the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government’s premier agency for climate and weather science. That has led the National Weather Service, an agency within NOAA, to warn of “degraded operations.”

NOAA also stopped monthly briefing calls on climate change, and the president’s proposed budget would eliminate funding for the agency’s weather and climate research. The administration has purged the phrases “climate crisis” and “climate science” from government websites.

There’s more; Gelles’s piece is worth reading in its entirety.  There are a lot of reasons to stop Trumpism, but the war on the health of the planet is enough by itself.  State and local officials are the next line of defense, and they need our encouragement.