Tesla and other BEV manufacturers should make their charging ports capable of both charging and discharging

Tom Friedman predicted in one of his books, possibly The World Is Flat, that someday in the future Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) would be rolling batteries that when plugged into the grid could either charge or give the grid a buffer for peak demand.  Ford provides a two way charge port on their “Lightning” BEV truck, one that can receive a charge and deliver one as well, which makes for a very valuable energy backup system for home owners if combined with a battery backup system collecting solar energy. It would make a weeks-long power outage such as the one suffered in Texas last winter survivable. But what about an everyday money saving system for consumers and a load sharing during peak demand solution for the power generating utility?

In the North East there is enthusiasm for solar energy but not enough Sun to make it economic so that the market for battery backup systems collecting and managing solar energy from the rooftops of New England homes will remain small. Nevertheless utilities everywhere always have the capacity to generate more power than needed in the middle of the night. Connecticut has load shedding agreements with some of its business customers where they agree to cut back on the energy drawn from the grid when power is in peak demand. These agreements allow the companies to enjoy off peak pricing which is substantially less than that provided to retail customers.  I suggested in an editorial in the Connecticut Mirror that the State Legislature should allow utilities to make the same offer to homeowners with Battery Backup systems, solar or not. 

Should Tesla and other BEV manufacturers make their charging ports capable of both charging and discharging than homeowners would have access to tripling their backup storage in the event of a power outage by keeping their vehicle plugged in their home system while they wait out the storm.

Germany's politically powerful Green Party gives influence to those who harm nature and biodiversity contrary to which they are joined to protect.

Two recent exposes, one by the New York Times over Europe’s ancient forests being reduced to wood pellets for fuel and the other by the BBC over old forests in British Columbia being harvested to fuel a former coal burning power plant in Britain, put a lie to their government’s goal of reducing carbon emissions and does actual harm to the biodiverse habitat Green Parties are joined to protect. Even more dismaying is how powerless, or worse disinterested, all are to stop obviously perverse outcomes against the entrenched interests developed in their name.  What the green movement lacks is a true north, a vision which understands what protects and nurtures the environment while also pursuing the betterment of the human condition. Without such a guiding light they are condemned to be forever conned by the political class.

A satellite view of the Earth at night shows areas of light and others of complete darkness. One could argue that the brighter the light or the higher the energy consumption the better the human condition. Contrary to the green intuition that high energy consumption is a bad thing, areas of low or no light are where the impoverished live. It’s where for the lack of fuel people resort to burning dung in confined quarters to cook and heat themselves and breathe in carbon laden smoke. It’s the opposite of cities consuming intense energy.

The green movement suffers from a willingness to be conned and stay conned by solutions that sound like they address their concern for the environment but which actually do it harm because of a preference for intuition over rigorous mathematical calculation. They appear to have no understanding of how the growing intensity of energy benefits the human condition. They look backward to wood for example over the newer source, petroleum while not appreciating how it replaces the need to clear cut forests of biodiversity for energy. Years ago Matt Ridley criticized Britain for defining wood pellets as a renewable form of energy with a satellite shot of the Island of Hispaniola with Haiti on one side and the Dominican Republic on the other.  One country was brown and the other green delineated by a clear crisp border. One country burned every piece of wood that could be found and the other subsidized the use of propane gas to save its forests. His point being that modern fuels have a place in saving swathes of geography of unfettered biodiversity. Haiti’s wasteland caused by poverty showcases why people who describe themselves as green must understand energy and its intensity and the inverse relation they both have to poverty and geography.

Germany’s Green Party objection to Nuclear Power is clearly one of intuitive fear over rigorous mathematical calculation in the war against carbon emissions. That it  lacks the vision of bettering the human condition clearly shows as Chancellor Olaf Scholz passes a gauntlet of anti nuke protests on his way to a meeting where he was only able to save two of three nuclear power plants from shutting down as planned this year despite Germany’s incipient economic depression and prospect of its citizens freezing. The lights will go dim this winter in Northern Europe as people are forced to burn wood to keep warm, read by its light and breathe in its carbon laden smoke.

Germany’s submission to the fear of nuclear power while also trying to reduce carbon emissions was disastrous for reaching climate goals and left the economy defenseless against  Putin’s energy blackmail.  Yet the green dummkopfs protest the raising of the village of Lützerath to expand a coal strip mine without realizing this open scar against nature comes from their fear of recommissioning a few idyllically placed  nuclear power plants. Without a vision that protects nature and promotes the betterment of the human condition the green movement can be duped into offering policies that have perverse outcomes. Worse yet the politically powerful Green Party, lacking the will to test assumptions and educate its members, gives influence to an ignorant mob that harms what they are joined to protect.

Europe's version of the burning of the Amazon rainforests

“Europe Sacrificing Ancient Forests for Energy'' is a damning expose of the unintended consequences of a subsidy developed and promoted by the Green movement that does actual harm to nature.  By some means of convoluted logic the European Union considers wood to be a renewable energy source  because  the carbon it puts into the air is recycled back into the wood of growing trees. Subsidies for wood have made its energy participation greater than wind and solar combined and is proudly noted by the EU as progress in reaching environmentally sound climate goals.  Apparently the New York Times article caused a rethink over the lunacy of subsidising the raping of beautiful habitats of tremendous biodiversity to make wood pellets to fuel home furnaces. “Cutting down forests for energy use is neither sustainable, nor does it help with our energy independence,” said Tiemo Woelken, a German member of the European Parliament who supported ending the subsidies. But there is an energy crisis and so Europe’s version of the burning of the Amazon rainforests will continue.

Years ago Matt Ridley criticized Britain for defining wood pellets as a renewable form of energy, just one not so friendly to a Woodpecker’s habitat pinched from a California forest he argued. The clinching example he used for the idiocy of clear cutting wood for energy was a satellite shot of the Island of Hispaniola with Haiti on one side and the Dominican Republic on the other.  One country was brown and the other green delineated by a clear crisp border. One country burned every piece of wood that could be found and the other subsidized the use of propane gas to save its forests. His point being that modern fuels have a place in saving the ecosystems of large swathes of geography for biodiversity.

John Muir the founder of the Sierra Club must be turning over in his grave with the thought of his beloved Muir Woods being whittled down to pellets for fuel. The Sierra Club is seriously out of tune to the danger to its mission “to practice and promote the responsible use of the Earth’s ecosystems and resources” by ignoring the policy of subsidizing the burning of wood.  Though the club is exclusively U.S. based it has a large international following.  It should  “educate and enlist humanity,” at least our European brethren, “to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.”

Years ago when unlimited nuclear energy was thought to be a new and wonderful possibility the Sierra Club promoted a vision  of a nation of large natural parks with islands of densely populated city states powered by nuclear fuel.  It was a vision that France and Japan took up in the early 1970’s reaching 80% of their electric power needs and leaving great swaths of natural habitat between cities connected by high speed electric powered rail. Despite Japan’s Fukushima disaster, nuclear power is arguably environmentally sustainable and better than geography hungry solar farms pinching food from the world on the precipice of a massive global famine. Which brings up the  other biofuel lunacy, Iowa farms raising corn to feed automobiles!  

Libertarian Party Member but after the anti intellectual anarchistic takeover of the party at the 2022 convention now identifies as #ClassicalLiberal

F. A. Hayek explains in the foreword of the 1956 American edition of The Road to Serfdom that he uses the term “liberal” in the classical nineteenth century sense and is perplexed how the American left appropriated it for the advocacy of government control.  He finds it regrettable that true liberals must describe themselves as conservative because “Conservatism is not a social program; in its paternalistic,nationalistic, and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism with traditionalist, anti intellectual, and mystical propensities.”

The Libertarian Party was formed in 1972 and took its name as means of expressing the Classical Liberal laissez faire nineteenth century philosophy it stood for.  I am a registered Libertarian Party Member since 1992 but as of the anti intellectual anarchistic takeover of the party at the 2022 convention I can no longer call myself as one and now identify on Twitter as a #ClassicalLiberal.

Its innumerates (people who can't count) like Gavin Newsom that are the problem.

Its innumerates (people who can't count) like Gavin Newsom that are the problem. Now take his hero Angela Merkel, Germany's Climate Chancellor as an example of how bad an innumerate leader can be. She decided on an energy policy favoring Wind where there is little coastline for windmills and Solar where everyone goes to Spain to get sunlight.  By implementing that policy forcefully she diminished much wealth in utility assets and after Fukishima she panics and orders the decommissioning of nuclear power plants wiping out tremendously more wealth but which took many steps backwards on reaching the zero carbon emissions goal.  She further exacerbated the climate by extending the mining and burning of bituminous coal, the world’s dirtiest to compensate for diminished nuclear power and for the intermittency of when the wind don't blow. To add insult to injury she declares success by declaring zero emissions for active wind energy even though dirty coal was burning on standby. Finally she embraced Putin's drug dealer tactic of dependence on Russian energy which today puts Germany at the precipice of an economic depression and very cold winters for its citizens.

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Senator Joe Manchin is keeping Democrats from a disastrous result for our climate, economy and security

Angela Merkel, Germany’s Climate Chancellor, had the power to implement pretty much every initiative in Build Back America and accomplished a substantially worse outcome for the climate.  Her disastrous decision to kill off nuclear power generation and source domestically mined bituminous coal, the dirtiest least efficient, and Russian oil and gas to smooth out wind and solar intermittency not only has put Germany way behind in reaching its carbon reducing goals but also because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has caused an economic crisis so severe that this winter German industry will be severely rationed and available energy used to heat peoples’ homes.

Senator Joe Manchin is doing Democrats a favor from implementing an innumerates’, people who can’t count, wish list that could lead to the same disastrous result for our climate, economy and security.

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Jurists should presume Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness over the Constitution formed to provide it

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito declared in his opinion annulling Roe v Wade that it did not pull at the thread that unravels decisions based on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, but Justice Clarence Thomas opined that, yes, it did. As the court’s ultimate strict construction originalist he didn’t see the right to an abortion in the Constitution nor for the use of contraceptives, Griswold v Connecticut, nor to a gay marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges.  Not to be cute but he didn’t mention the Loving v Virginia decision which makes his interracial marriage to Ginni legal. Maybe he has difficulty arguing that a document that defines him as three fifths human is sacred and to be followed to its letter.  Maybe he should consider a redirect to the spirit of our founding fathers’ motive which was to form a more perfect union that protected our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Georgetown Law Professor and Political Philosopher Randy Barnett argues for redirecting legal opinion to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence  for which the  Constitution was devised.  His simple suggestion is that jurists presume in liberty and not in constitutionality as they presently do.

The 13th Amendment may have banished slavery but not it’s hegemony in law and opinion over a black man’s status. At the start of reconstruction the Republican victors of the civil war felt something more was required to counter slavery’s mean spirited legacy. The reaction was the 14th Amendment which defined citizenship and attempted to counter the denial of the right to happiness accorded to a citizen in a general manner which in later years through its equal protection clause opened the way to define identity and happiness in ways alien to our forefathers when devising the original Constitution.

The 14th Amendment failed in it’s first test made famous by Justice Harlan’s sole and blistering dissent in Plessy v Ferguson where he decried how slavery’s legacy had prevailed in the “separate but equal” decision and weakened the spirit of the new law trying to keep out hard hearted sentiments. The suggestion that a Jurist should first presume liberty would do much to reassert the 14th Amendment’s spirit and question poor interpretations made from it since its enactment. Professor Barnett argues presuming liberty will leave many legal threads untethered but for the sake of a more perfect union, they should be.

For Justice Thomas presuming liberty would liberate him from the quagmire of what he called uncommonly silly law such as in his dissent of Lawrence v Texas (2003) where he could find no right to privacy in the Constitution. It would liberate him to concentrate on his career long and noble fight for economic freedom or as enshrined in Lochner v New York (1905), another 14th Amendment decision, as “freedom of contract.”  A decision reviled by today’s Jurists of the Administrative State who don’t want to understand that the Lochner decision frees all men from doing their master’s bidding. 

Lochner v New York is cited eight times in the recent opinions of Dobbs v Jackson as an example of the kind of decision that should be reversed or ignored because it substituted the court’s judgment for that of a duly elected legislature, a clear usurpation of the Constitution’s separation of powers. From the perspective of believers in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, denying it, as in an abortion, requires more than the threads drawn from a legal decision reviled by the Warren Burger court yet convenient to formulate an expert’s solution it had no power to do.

Dobbs - Jackson decision reversed what was thought to be settled law. It showed that “settled” isn’t so just because it is stated to be so,  after all Dredd Scott settled the law amid a period of growing belief that slavery was immoral despite millenia of stated approval as written in the Bible and so a horrific civil war was fought over it.  Today we are accepting many behaviors once considered immoral and there are those who want to divide us by enforcing their unchanged values with law.  With the anti-abortion victory the court must now gird itself for a series of uncommonly silly laws as the moral majority exercises its power to stop changes in the perception of what is moral.  The court needs the presumption of liberty to quickly and repeatedly swat away these laws and disabuse the public of the idea that the court is there to restrict rather than enhance our natural rights.

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