Saturday, April 29, 2023

POWERED BY THE SUN Electric vehicle fueled with solar energy

I drive an electric car. It is a 2019 Chevy Bolt that we bought new. I consider it a gift from my Mom, since we used inheritance money to purchase both the car and the solar panels on the roof of our home. That's  a life-changing combination. Thanks, Mom.

My bumper sticker says  

POWERED BY THE SUN

electric vehicle fueled with solar energy

It disturbs me a little when I read that the average new electric vehicle costs $75,000. That's true, but misleading. Some of those EVs are luxury cars at luxury prices. Don't confuse "average" with "usual." 

I don’t have any desire for a $108,700 Hummer EV Pickup, but I have ridden in a Tesla. It was great fun. Still (no offense), to me it was not much different from my Bolt. Both are quiet, smooth, and zippy.  Both have lots of new-tech amenities and safety features. 

Range issues? Not really. 300 miles is plenty. We charge in our garage. Rarely do we charge anywhere else, but back when we did take regular trips to a club in the next state, we just ran a heavy-duty 220 outlet there (like a dryer or RV hookup). 

Road trips can be a little bit of an adventure, checking ahead for charging options, but less so every year, and we know we can always just rent a car if that makes better sense. We used to do that anyway for family trips. 

I mean, do we REALLY need a cross-country caravan vehicle for everyday jaunts to work, school, meetings, or groceries? Nah. 

The Bolt does it all for everyday. The back seats have the easy hooks for grandchildren's car seats, and they just as easily lay over to let me use it as a truck. It's got a good radio that does podcasts and phone and maps and locates public chargers.

A brand-new 2023 Chevy Bolt EV starts at $26,500. That’s before applying EV tax incentives (currently a $7,500 rebate from the federal plan), so you can knock that price down at least somewhere in the $19,000s, maybe lower.   

And, for you "average" EV customers, whoever you might be, for less than that "average" $75,000 you could get JUST a wonderful electric vehicle of your dreams, or you COULD package a less-expensive wonderful EV car with a magical 25-years-of-sunshine-power package! 

Yes, you, too, can be powered by solar energy. Solar panels on your house to charge the house and car? Solar panels on the garage wall? On the garage roof?  Battery storage to even out the load? Battery storage to be a backup for your house? Package your car with a solar-paneled carport for yourself AND your neighbors? Buy into Community Solar through your electric utility or co-op?

That's a lot of lifestyle choice. Trust me, you won't miss having to go to the gas station. 


Friday, April 28, 2023

Amanda Gorman "Earthrise"

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Amanda Gorman "Earthrise"

Monday, April 17, 2023

When a shoe drops in the forest, is there any sound?

The other shoe has dropped in Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest. As Friends of Bernheim learned this week, “Bernheim is filing an appeal to the March 31, 2023 Bullitt Circuit Court opinion in the case of Louisville Gas & Electric Company v. Isaac W. Bernheim Foundation and Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund.

 The opinion found that LG&E had the “right to take” the easement that it sought for construction of a 12’’ natural gas pipeline across property owned by Bernheim.”

This was disappointing. Bernheim is taking on the expense of protecting the legal way we protect clean water, endangered species, conservation easements and the vanishing wildlife corridors. We need that.


The other thing that concerns all of us is this new piece of fossil fuel infrastructure being built at all. It will run 12 miles across two counties. When this court case was presented in January, the usually calm and collected LG&E attorney actually sounded emotional about potential gas customers who had been turned down for service in the extended area. Apparently this argument was effective.


What the lawyer didn’t mention in court was how many of those customers still need the pipeline. Both the natural environment and the energy production environment have changed a lot in the intervening time.

 

We might feel nostalgic twinges about the vroom and fumes of gasoline powered engines and propane and gas heat, but households and businesses function very well with electricity. Electric heat is clean and affordable. Electric motors deliver plenty of oomph. Electric appliances work great. The move to tackle climate change has strong support and multiple financial incentives.


Are the people of Bullitt and Nelson Counties going to be saddled with a messy mistake?


As a gas AND electric company, LG&E can choose to get up to speed connecting their customers with efficiency upgrades and improvements while helping people all over the world working furiously to meet very important pollution deadlines. Who better for this job than LG&E? If not now, when? What’s the plan? The judges in the race to hold global warming to 1.5ÂșC are the laws of physics, and these laws are not swayed by emotion.


In the forsythia bush outside my window, there is a beautiful cardinal, mostly gray with red streaks in her wings and tail, piercing black eyes and a red beak.  All morning, she has been flying into the glass (Bam! Bam!) attacking her %reflection. Hopefully she will give up on this illusion before she comes to harm. 


This seems an apt metaphor for fossil fuel companies still chasing the illusion of never-ending fossil fuel production. They have a choice to re-align their assets and their employees’ skills, expertise and customer base to provide renewable energy to a world that will warmly welcome their service. 


I hope LG&E will heed the urgings of Louisville Metro Council and so many others to redirect its energy into clean energy and let Bernheim continue to do its thing, which it does very well.


References:  
McKibben, B. (2022). The Persistence of Fossil fuels. In Greta Thunberg, The Climate Book (1st ed., Vol. 1, p. 220). Penguin Press. https://theclimatebook.org

Published April 19, The Kentucky Standard

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Bullitt County Public Schools National ENERGY STAR Partner award, IRA -- LTE to Pioneer News, CJ

I don’t know how many people know this, but we can be proud that Bullitt County Public Schools was awarded a national 2023 ENERGY STAR Partners of the Year Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. BCPS reduced energy use by 50% since 2016 and achieved recognition as an ENERGY STAR Certification Nation Premier member by earning the ENERGY STAR for eighteen (18) schools in 2022, and is a Sustained Excellence winner for one year. I think we can all be glad about this, and thank hard-working staff, site-based leadership, and school board members for their effort.

As local trend-setters, the school system is undoubtedly saving taxpayer money on energy bills, providing cleaner air for students in buildings, and making a commendable dent in heat-trapping carbon pollution let loose in Earth’s atmosphere.  


As we come to Earth Day, April 22, there is good news for all of us. The familiar ENERGY STAR label program that helps homeowners with appliances and home heating is being upgraded and expanded as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that passed Congress in fall of last year. This IRA program is coming on line at all levels--for homeowners, renters, commercial buildings, churches and schools--as America sets out on a ten-year plan to, among other things, reduce energy bills, energy use and energy-related pollution by 75% by weatherizing our buildings and upgrading to highly-efficient electric.


I’d like to encourage everyone here to start watching for this in appliance stores and consider what plans you would like to make for yourself. Be aware that financial support is available, probably a lot more than you expect (see rewiringamerica,org/app/ira-calculator), because what we do for ourselves, we are actually doing to improve the lives of all our neighbors and our children’s children.


====================================================================================================


Sources:


Energy use reduction source: rewiringamerica.org  rewiringamerica.org/policy/householdreport graphic    "Annual average energy use per U.S. household, kWh equivalents"



EPA Source:    Email from Environmental Protection Agency via IFTTT

U.S. EPA Honors 2023 ENERGY STAR® Partners of the Year Award Winners in Kentucky

Region 04

FRANKFORT, KY. (March 28, 2023) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 4 and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are honoring four ENERGY STAR partners in Kentucky for their outstanding leadership in promoting energy efficiency and tackling climate change.

“As we accelerate historic efforts to address climate change, public-private partnerships will be essential to realizing the scale of our ambition,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “I applaud this year’s ENERGY STAR award winners for working with EPA to deliver a clean energy future that saves American consumers and businesses money and creates jobs.”

“We congratulate our 2023 Energy Star Partners of the Year in R4 States for their leadership and commitment to taking action that will help us leave a healthier planet for future generations,” said EPA Region 4 Administrator Daniel Blackman. “The awardees demonstrate national leadership in cost-saving energy efficient solutions which help benefit communities in the Southeast.”

For more than 30 years, EPA’s ENERGY STAR program has supported the transition to a clean energy economy by fostering innovation, jobs, and economic development, while protecting public health. ENERGY STAR certified products, homes, buildings, and plants helped save American families and businesses more than 520 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and avoid $42 billion in energy costs in 2020 alone. 

Here are a few examples of how 2023 ENERGY STAR Award Winners in Kentucky are taking action:

  • Shepherdsville, KY - Bullitt County Public Schools, a school district in Kentucky, sustained reductions in energy use of 50% since 2016 and achieved recognition as an ENERGY STAR Certification Nation Premier member by earning the ENERGY STAR for 18 schools in 2022. Sustained Excellence winner for one year.
  • Lexington, KY - Lexmark International, Inc., a global technology company, certified 100% of products introduced in 2022, with over 85% of products earning the ENERGY STAR label.
  • Louisville, KY - Schneider Electric, an energy management and automation services company, submitted nearly 160 buildings for ENERGY STAR certification and benchmarked more than 59,000 properties. Sustained Excellence winner for five years.
  • Georgetown, KY - Scott County Schools, a school district in Kentucky, earned the ENERGY STAR for 12 schools and leveraged ENERGY STAR to engage stakeholders, district officials, custodians, teachers, and students. Sustained Excellence winner for six years.

Read more about the ENERGY STAR Awards and Award Winners’ achievements.

About ENERGY STAR 

ENERGY STAR® is the government-backed symbol for energy efficiency, providing simple, credible, and unbiased information that consumers and businesses rely on to make well-informed decisions. Thousands of industrial, commercial, utility, state, and local organizations rely on their partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to deliver cost-saving energy efficiency solutions. Since 1992, ENERGY STAR and its partners helped American families and businesses avoid more than $500 billion in energy costs and achieve more than 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions. More background information about ENERGY STAR’s impacts can be found at www.energystar.gov/impacts

Monday, March 27, 2023

Transition Time 2.0

This coming full moon marks the time people all over the world remember transition--leaving the known for unknown territory. 

We know the story. Moses in a basket, enslavement under Pharaoh, centuries of suffering, unheeded plagues, disease, cataclysmic events. Exodus. Rebellion at Massah and Meribah. Moses led the Israelites out of slavery into a new promised land. Great, right?  

Tradition tells us it didn't start out that way.  

After four centuries of being slaves, the Israelites wouldn't have known how to live independently. Their lives had been all about building pyramids to the wealthy. Life essentials--food and shelter--came from the masters, food probably cooked and distributed at the workplace. They were frightened and confused. And really angry.

To them, traveling the “wilderness” was shockingly impossible. There was no food distribution. They yelled, “Are we going to die here of thirst with our livestock and our children?” 

Moses knew he was likely to get stoned, but with the help of his God, he persisted.

Looooong story short, (behold!) the wilderness of the natural world provided manna, honey, and water from the rock. There WAS food and shelter in that new space, and a civilization to rebuild. The Israelite communities learned to be free again. 

This life-changing reawakening has been retold for three thousand years.

We are at one of those great transitional inflection points right now, and it might not seem so great. The fossil fuel yolk of Earth is behind us now. We have to pass through to a different life. Can we do it well?  Can we free ourselves from the gas pump and the coal mine that have enslaved so many lives in the past and continue to do so today? 

A disturbed Earth is telling us there is no time to waste. Benign wind and sun are ready to support our communities. We have the technology. Thousands of scientists, engineers and planners have worked for years to put it all together for us.  

It’s time. Reach out your hand. 

We are all leaders in some sphere, and it's our chance to do this with grace, compassion and love. Simplify your life, weatherize homes, electrify everything, rebuild community for closeness and intimacy. Revere and restore the natural world. Just find a piece of the puzzle that matters to you and start wherever you live and work.  

There is lots of help. Look at: 
The Climate Book:The Facts and the Solutions -- Greta Thunberg, ed.



Thursday, February 02, 2023

Fingernails, a gas pipeline, and a migration corridor

Fingernails, a gas pipeline, and a migration corridor

As a person who has very recently turned 70, I spend more time than I like visiting funeral homes.  It makes you think.    

Factoid: After a person dies, their hair and fingernails continue growing. 

This is not something I think about a lot, but I’ve heard it all my life. Shocking and scary, but that’s life. I get it.

What I CAN’T grasp is the logic that after I die MY hair and MY fingernails could continue growing, but I’m dead.  My living brain won’t focus on this and slides around the idea in a really funky way.

Psychologists know it’s hard to get our heads around ideas that conflict, especially when they involve survival. Thinking about LG&E-KU’s proposed gas pipeline bulldozing through a protected migration corridor is one of those funky conflicts. 


I live in the same woods as Bernheim Forest and so, I have a particular interest in how that conflict resolution is going, but I didn’t always live here. 


I grew up in a gas-connected neighborhood in Louisville. My great-uncle was the land developer. 


The entrance to Willmar Avenue was distinguished by two brightly lit gas lanterns, and we cooked on a gas stove and had not one, but two gas furnaces in our basement. Natural gas absolutely provided a tangible improvement over coal, kerosene or wood heating. Louisville Gas & Electric infrastructure was something we took for granted, but I do recall gas commercials on a black-and-white TV set.


Now I live in a different place and time where conservation of natural resources is obviously not keeping pace with land development. Bernheim Forest’s Cedar Grove Wildlife Corridor shores up a dangerously weak point in migration between forests to the north and the great Daniel Boone and Appalachian forests south and east. The value of protecting and enhancing that disputed bit of a wildlife corridor is clear as day to some people and invisible to others. I see that. Again, it’s life.


I am a person who knows that I and my life-support systems need to immediately change course to use clean energy. Our country and the world are aiming for a target of reducing carbon emissions (the ones that are propelling and intensifying extreme weather).  The target is net zero emissions by 2050. Net zero means completely negating the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity. In order to do that, we have known for over a decade that we can and must reach a halfway point by 2030. 


2030. 


Seven. Years. From. Now. 


Lives depend on this, but as communities, we are all having a hard time coming to grips with scary and conflicting levels of knowledge.


Can we see that now is not the time to be extending carbon and methane emitting infrastructure?   


Even without the Bullitt County pipeline extension, Louisville Gas & Electric can and will continue their mission of supplying energy to customers who need it. The existing pipeline services and jobs are not going anywhere in a hurry. There is a natural lifespan of the transition that will likely work out over decades. 


As energy users, we ARE already transitioning to cleaner, better and more efficient technology, and there is great opportunity in transitioning well.  A corporation whose name encompasses both the new electric power and the old fossil fuel is in a good position to do that.


I expect Kentucky needs and wants continued good service provided by LG&E-KU. 




Maggie Hettinger is a volunteer with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a non-partisan, non-profit, grassroots organization that exists to create the political will for a livable world.


Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E-KU) and Bernheim Forest are in court dispute over land protection vs. acquisition by eminent domain.  



Published Feb 6, 2023  in Kentucky Standard, Bardstown, KY


Monday, January 09, 2023

LG&E / KU Bullitt County pipeline project hearing is at the Bullitt County Courthouse on Tuesday

I would like LG&E  / KU and its government supporters to realize that the Bullitt County pipeline project has outlived its usefulness. It is better to stop now, and I’ll quickly touch on some of the reasons.  

During the many years of this pipeline discussion, any advantage natural gas heating had for new residential customers has declined drastically with the increased availability of electric heat pumps and other high efficiency clean electric heat. At the same time, finding out that one in eight cases of asthma in children in the US is due to the pollution given off by cooking on gas stoves points to gas cooking and water heating as unnecessary risks in an era of Instant Pots and affordable induction stovetops.  


Corporate users of the pipeline (like Jim Beam) may or may not have already figured out that they don’t actually “need” this pipeline any more.  They—long-time patrons AND beneficiaries of Bullitt County—are even more capable of designing their buildings and industry to use more efficient, non-polluting sources of energy, to their profit and our own. 


If this pipeline goes into effect, we lock in 60-80 years of polluting greenhouse gas emitters into this neighborhood, dependent on an infrastructure that starts with fracking in someone else’s backyard and is prone to leaks and methane emissions throughout production and delivery. 


We don’t want this to happen.


I have lived in Bullitt County for all of my adult life. This week I’m scraping 45-year old wallpaper off my walls at home. It was hard work putting it up, and it had a pretty good run, but that’s not keeping me from steaming it off now and planning to repaint. It’s time—just like it’s time to dissolve this outdated pipeline project.



-- Maggie Hettinger is a volunteer with Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a non-partisan, non-profit, grassroots organization that exists to create the political will for a livable world.

Sunday, December 25, 2022

Fwd: Butternut Squash Steaks with Brown Butter–Sage Sauce Recipe Recipe | Epicurious



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Begin forwarded message:

From: Amy Hettinger Pascucci <amyhettinger@gmail.com>
Date: October 2, 2021 at 10:13:30 PM EDT
To: Maggie Hettinger <mhettinger@mac.com>
Subject: Re: Butternut Squash Steaks with Brown Butter–Sage Sauce Recipe Recipe | Epicurious


Oh, cool.  Thank you!

On Sat, Oct 2, 2021 at 8:23 PM Maggie Hettinger <mhettinger@mac.com> wrote:


Maggie
The difference between one and more than one is all the difference in the world. Indeed it IS the world. —Le Guin


--
BA Arts Administration
Ed.M Arts in Education


Friday, October 08, 2021

Faith leaders care for the Earth and speak out against climate change

 Maggie Hettinger    Opinion Contributor   Courier Journal 10/8/21

We’ve seen it in the news. Kentuckians, Americans and people of the world struggle to cope with flash floods, heat emergencies, crop failures, wildfires and migrations—extreme weather effects made worse and more frequent with climate change. An eye-opening report of caskets being swept out of tombs and scattered around a community by Hurricane Ida only underscores the human pain wrought by unsettled natural forces.

Times like these sorely test our faith and, like the casket that found its way to the front door of the church from which it was consecrated, our minds seek help from our faith leaders as much as from civic society.

The silver lining of the climate emergency is that at its root, climate change is a physical problem. Carbon (85% of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere) is produced by societies systemically extracting fossil fuel from the ground, with millions of years of compressed sun energy in every chunk or drop.

Every day, that carbon escapes into the atmosphere that causes the warming that changes the weather that tortures the Earth that all of creation depends on.

We know, now, that every drop and chunk of fossil fuel being dragged up out of the Earth is a very expensive pollutant. Our economy ignores that expense as if no one will pay the price — even though we know who pays the price. 

Individual people pay the price in health, health costs, increasing weather costs and loss of security. Geologists, social workers and economists have searched for years to discern a practical way to target and directly reduce greenhouse gas pollution while protecting individuals and businesses during transition. They have an answer. Picture this:

Our economy can be transformed by a policy that sets an honest price on each of those drops and chunks of pollutants at the source. That means when carbon-emitting fossil fuels are first counted at the mine, port, refinery or natural gas compressor plant, the processor pays a fee. Some of that fee will be passed on to customers. (In fairness, fees start small and increase predictably over time.)  There’s a name for this: “Sending a price signal."

A steadily-increasing carbon price signal makes our economy more and more honest, while making fossil fuels less and less attractive, until we all realize we don’t need or want these outdated fuels in our lives.

Here in the United States, the coming days will have important lasting effects on the future of climate change. The U.S. Congress is right now working on budget reconciliation. Both Republicans and Democrats have significant influence. Parts of this package are being worked out by various bipartisan committees, and each member of Congress will decide whether to actively support, be neutral or even vigorously fight against climate legislation. That’s why your local Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby is circulating a letter to Kentucky faith leaders now to give them a chance to affirm their support. The letter and its signers-to-date can be found at https://bit.ly/2VQXuDk. You know some of these people well. 

At Citizen’s Climate Lobby we believe a price on carbon is a necessary component of effective climate action at the scale necessary. We also strongly support that the fee collected go directly to the American people, in equal shares (to spend as they see fit) to act as a leaven and stabilizer throughout our communities. What a wonderful way to bring into being Pope Francis’ affirmation that "all of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation” — Laudato Si'.

Please, plan now to ask your political leaders and faith leaders to support carbon pricing, and thank them for their courage. CCL will deliver their message to government leaders.

Maggie Hettinger is a volunteer member of Citizens Climate Lobby Central and Western Kentucky Chapter. wkyccl@icloud.. 

Saturday, February 03, 2018

Checking in

I haven’t posted here for a long time. Maybe it’s time to start again.  Definitely.   Maybe next week.  ;)

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

This American Life - Seriously - Sara Bareilles and Leslie Odom, Jr.



Let's start with hope
I threw it in the middle like a skipping stone
The ripples won, son of a gun

Some would not have thought so
But I stand here Commander in Chief
And I take that seriously

But along the way
A rogue ripple turned tidal wave
In reaction to what I tried to do

A rebirth of a nation's hatred
Red, white, and blue
Is black in there too?

Seriously?

One man
Rewriting the book on bad behavior
Maybe cheats the neighbors
Feels he gets what they pay for
We can't
Pat him on the back and send him on through
No man's ignorance will ever be his virtue
Is this the best we can be?
Seriously?

Let's talk of fear
And why I don't bring it in here
It's a dangerous word, it spooks the herd
And we all bleed in the stampede
Fear makes a false friend indeed
And I take it seriously

Saturday, August 08, 2015

Soaring at last!

Sunday afternoon Aug 2, 2015, I had the best flight of my life.   Ever.   I have been playing this game for three years, and the longest glider flight I ever made was an hour and a half, always scratching to stay up between 2000 and 3000 ft. (A lot of work. Constant attention to every move.)

But Sunday I finally did it right and went soaring.  I took a thermal up to 5500 ft. and then found areas of lift that later became cloud streets and spent three hours just moving back and forth, a lot of it over Nazareth, checking out my sisters’ homes, mostly moving from one cloud area to another, learning where to move to keep high, circling, circling, then flying on.   Sometimes it was so smooth I would forget I was even in the glider.  Just being there, moving like swimming.  When I finally decided to come in, I was at 6100 feet right over the airport and got to do all kinds of fun maneuvers just to bring it down.

It was everything I hoped it would be, and that was the first time for this grandmother turned aviator.

Here's the flight track.  You can watch it on Google Earth.  You can even fly along. ;)
http://www.cloudahoy.com/api/S.cgi?VgbvpGQ1keegbQ5FTb