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Recently I was very happy to visit with my granddaughters. I had to travel, by plane, across several states and the Mississippi River. I confess that such travel is a terrible indulgence, but I took the increasing risks because visiting with my grandchildren inspires me to keep working for their future. I hear the advice that we should talk with our neighbors. When surrounded by strangers, I used to always keep to myself. On this trip I took a book with me, one chosen to evoke questions from fellow travelers. Petroleum-238, by Justin Nobel, has a catchy subtitle on the front, “They’ve known for 110 years but haven’t done a thing to stop it. It is the secret of the century.”

The man sitting next to me in the airplane, a pharmacist from Ohio, did ask me about what I was reading. He even took a phone picture of the front of Petroleum-238. I described what Nobel documented about radioactivity in fossil gas and the many people who got seriously ill from exposure to this. I said that California is going in the right direction. For example, Mark Z. Jacobson designed an energy system for Stanford University which allowed turning off the gas powered electricity generator there in 2016. 

The pharmacist replied that crazy things are going on in California. They will kill the economy. He went on to say that he admires Elon Musk as a decision maker, but no one can afford to pay $65,000 for an electric car. I was almost speechless. All I said was, I recommend that you check out the books Professor Jacobson wrote (see, x.com/mzjacobson). Later I thought that I should have replied with the story of a young Uber driver working in Florida. He could afford a second hand Tesla. This cost him less than $35K to buy and nothing to run, because of course there was no cost for gasoline at all. The Uber driver reported he was doing very well on tips. Vacationers are glad not to breathe gasoline fumes. By the way the 2025 Nissan Leaf price starts at $28,140 (nissanusa.com).

I have to look back at Mark Jacobson’s old notes on X to report that for the year April 2023 through March 2024 South Dakota produced 99.5% of the electricity it consumed with #WindWaterSolar. 12 states in the US produced > 54% of the electricity they consumed with #WWS. Seven of those states were among the 10 with the lowest cost for electricity. Maine now has 22.&% of its energy from wind, 28.1% from hydro, and utility and rooftop PV (solar) make up a total of 62.5% of electricity from clean energy sources. This is good for the economies that are not bound by fossil fuels. Why should those states buy gas from PA or Ohio? Meanwhile our taxes are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. 

Perhaps you joined this letter opposing tax dollars for oil and gas extraction: https://forms.gle/56fwPwmLAJeu6Zcu8

Original signatories: Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace USA, Institute for Policy Studies Climate Policy Program, Oil Change International, Our Revolution, Oxfam America, Science and Environmental Health Network, Sierra Club

There is no reason to believe that geologic carbon dioxide sequestration will ever be a meaningful tool of climate mitigation. To the contrary, using carbon dioxide to enhance extraction methods is climate fraud. It serve to squeeze out the veritable last drop of oil and gas from the earth, while perpetuating harms to communities and releasing additional greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere. 

I am too old and slow to debate, but I know what is correct because I keep reading many sources. These all say that we have no time to waste on false solutions. This includes tax breaks for more fossil fuel projects. 

Listening to webinars about environmental harms of the extraction of fossil fuels and everything downstream to LNG & beyond, I agree that the costs of these industries to our lives, to the lives of our unborn children and to our climate are devastating. Land & water are heavily polluted in the Arctic and the Gulf South and in so many places in between. Even though I don’t speak quickly I will keep working for our future.