Throwing a few solar panels on your roof can reduce your energy bill. And the ones that cover many school parking lots in my county are a step in the right direction. But to make the kind of impact required to hit climate related goals, we need massive solar installations and for those we need big plots of land. But here's the rub: "To meet these federally mandated climate goals, the solar industry requires land, and lots of it, but many rural and predominantly conservative areas remain unfriendly to renewable energy." One solution catching on is called Agrivoltaics: "The practice of sharing energy and food production on the same plot of land — that can include a range of agricultural practices, such as farming, beekeeping, agroforestry, aquaculture and solar grazing." The lightbulb moment: When landowners realize that they can monetize the same plot of land twice. WaPo (Gift Article): Under a Texas sun, agrivoltaics offer farmers a new way to make money. 2Throwing ShadeSolar is all about capturing the sun's energy. Some more newfangled climate efforts are aimed at blocking some of that energy. "As the perils of climate change become more extreme, interest in the idea, known as stratospheric solar geoengineering, is growing. Scientists at Harvard, Cornell, Colorado State and Princeton are studying it and the University of Chicago recently launched an ambitious research program. But all geoengineering is not created equal. While universities are pouring millions of dollars into research, others, avowing concern about global warming and seeing a business opportunity, are barreling ahead without any scientific study. Mr. Iseman got the idea for Make Sunsets from a sci-fi novel." And so we join a group of start-up employees with "mohawks, mustaches and camouflage shorts" as they head for the hills with tanks filled with sulfur dioxide and helium. NYT (Gift Article): In Silicon Valley, a Rogue Plan to Alter the Climate. (These guys already made me nervous when they were building AI Chatbots...) 3Foe MoFrom SCOTUS to book bans to abortion laws to anti-LGBTQ legislation, the religious right is central to American politics. It's also often central to foreign relations. And, particularly when it comes to anti-gay movements, the movement has made for some interesting bedfellows. WSJ (Gift Article): Russia and U.S. Religious Conservatives See Common Foe in Africa: Gay Rights. "Slater, a prominent Mormon activist and the wife of a senior Intel executive, has spent the past quarter-century working with officials from Africa, Europe and the Middle East to oppose abortion, gay marriage and sex education not centered on abstinence. Now, the mother of seven’s efforts have merged with a broader, ultraconservative movement that encompasses the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, African politicians and activists from the American Religious Right." (If you're pursuing the same goals as Putin, maybe you're not on the path toward righteousness. But then again, these folks tend to love Trump, too.) 4Sight Unseen"There are factors that make it much more likely - living in East Asia is one of those. It is also down to genetics - the traits children inherit from their parents - but there are other factors too, such as the particularly young age (two years old) that children start their education in places like Singapore and Hong Kong. This means they are spending more time focusing on books and screens with their eyes during their early years, which strains the eye muscles." Whatever the reasons, the problem is growing and the pandemic era seemed to make it even worse. BBC: One in three children short-sighted, study suggests. I had to adjust my glasses to make sure I was reading that stat correctly. 5Extra, ExtraBorderliner Notes: "As midnight nears, the lights of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, fill the sky on the silent banks of the Rio Grande. A few months ago, hundreds of asylum-seeking families, including crying toddlers, waited for an opening to crawl through razor wire from Juarez into El Paso. No one is waiting there now. Nearly 500 miles away, in the border city of Eagle Pass, large groups of migrants that were once commonplace are rarely seen on the riverbanks these days." AP: One day along the Texas-Mexico border shows that realities shift more rapidly than rhetoric. 6Bottom of the News"It is a fundamental law of media history: as soon as a new communications technology emerges, people will use it to make pictures of cats. And those cat pictures show not only the special relationship between humans and their pets, but the changing ways that humans relate to one another." How cat memes went viral 100 years ago.
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