Category Archives: energy

Reusable Grocery Bags

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…and reusable shopping bags, generally. These are supposedly better for our environment than nominally single-use plastic or paper bags (though both, until they wear out, can serve other purposes than holding food or other goods—usually two or three reuses until they’re truly ready for the trash or the recycling bin).

The serious questions, though, and ones that have been missed until the current COVID-19 situation has exposed them empirically, are:

For whose environment, exactly, are reusable shopping bags better?

Who, exactly, are the ones doing the reusing?

The answer to the first is…germs.

The answer to the second is…germs.

And today, the threat to us short-sighted humans is COVID-19, right along with our old foes, bacteria. CDC has said that COVID-19 can remain viable on a large variety of surfaces for hours to days—surfaces like the burlap or canvas of some reusable bags—and especially on the plastic linings of many more reusable bags.

Researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University surveyed grocery shoppers and randomly tested their reusable bags. “Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half,” they wrote in their 2011 study….

And this datum:

In 2013 millions of American piglets died amid an outbreak of novel swine enteric coronavirus disease, and after an investigation the US Department of Agriculture concluded that reusable feed totes were the most likely root cause.

This has been a problem of which we’ve been aware for some years.  And yet….

Does anyone really think these reusables aren’t harboring today’s COVID-19? Or the bug du jour of tomorrow’s outbreak?

Reusable bags have become strongly illustrative of unintended consequence.

Carbon-Free Energy

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To the (very limited) extent such a thing would be useful.  Robert Dyson, in his Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal is on the right track:

It’s worth pointing out that the 7,100 acre (11 square mile) Gemini Solar Project is rated at 690 megawatts (when the sun shines, of course) whereas only a few miles away sits the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, occupying only 12 acres and producing 3.3 times as much electricity, but on a 24/7 basis. That nuclear plant currently produces almost a quarter of all the carbon-free power generated in California, yet it will be closed in five years, largely due to the expense of fighting the same “greens” who oppose Gemini. The main argument against Diablo Canyon seems to be earthquake risk. However, the Fukushima Daichi nuclear disaster in 2011 included a magnitude 9-plus earthquake that didn’t cause any radiation leaks. The leaks resulted from a 40-foot-high tsunami, for which there was no planned defense. Despite the resulting meltdown, only one death was attributed to radiation and now, only nine years later, the surrounding land is fast approaching full utilization again.
If carbon-free power generation is important, logic would point to the necessity of nuclear power, not 11-square-mile solar installations.

There’s also our own Three Mile Island incident, in a different extremity, as an indication of the safety of nuclear power generators.

Plus, we have that Harry M Reid Memorial Nuclear Waste Repository nearly ready to go.

“Clean” Cars

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That’s what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) wants Government to subsidize.  He’s proposing Government spend $462 billion to pay Americans trading in our gasoline-powered cars for electric ones.  He wants to drop $17 billion on subsidies for auto manufacturers to “help” them build more electric cars along with batteries and associated parts, and $45 billion on charging stations and associated “infrastructure.”

In addition to ignoring where this money is supposed to come from, he’s also misleading on the “clean” electric car bit.  He knows, after all, where the electricity must come from to charge those batteries, whether at home or at his charging stations.

That electricity is generated by coal-, oil-, and gas-fired generating plants.  In New York, where Schumer’s fellow Progressive-Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo has banned fracking and additional gas infrastructure, those generating plants can’t use clean gas to produce electricity for Schumer’s cars: those plants are dependent on coal and oil fuel: Schumer’s electric cars will have even larger carbon footprints.

“Clean” electric cars, indeed.

This sort of scheme also is an affront to our free market economy and an insult to ordinary Americans’ intelligence.  If electric cars were ready for market, they wouldn’t need government subsidies to be saleable.  If Americans wanted electric cars, we’d buy them in droves on our own, without needing to be bribed into buying them.

Germany…Dithers

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…on the matter of helping protect freedom of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and, presumably, up into the Arabian Gulf.

Great Britain, in an effort that parallels the US’ efforts, is proposing a European naval mission to the region to protect European oil tankers.  Germany isn’t sure.  On the one hand, Norbert Röttgen, Bundestag Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman, says

Our prosperity lives on free shipping.  And we have to make clear that we stand alongside our British friends, partners and allies who are affected. There must be joint European action.

But the US might be involved, so he dithers:

Unfortunately, there are fundamental differences in Iran policy with the US, which is why we can’t cooperate with the US just like that.

No, can’t have that.

The Social Democrats are more open about their reluctance to participate. Karl-Heinz Brunner, SPD member of the Bundestag Committee on Defense:

A German participation is currently neither necessary nor opportune. Of course, securing free trade routes is extremely important, but I am convinced that this would also be possible by diplomatic means. In the current situation, military options could contribute to further destabilization.

Yeah, Iran is open to diplomacy—so long as everyone does exactly what Iran diplomatically says.  Besides, if we took concrete action to defend German or European interests, we might angrify the pirates.

Can’t have that, either.

‘Course, Germany really doesn’t have a dog in this hunt, anyway—it gets most of its oil from Russia.

Update: Germany has decided not to join any coalition ensuring free sea navigation in the Strait of Hormuz or the Arabian Gulf.  Foreign Minister Heiko Maas:

“Germany will not take part in the sea mission presented and planned by the United States,” Maas told reporters during a trip to Poland.
The German government said it remains in close consultation with France and the UK over a European approach to the freedom of navigation crisis in the Persian Gulf.

Close consultation. Chit chat. I’ve already pointed out whence German oil comes.

Responsibilities

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Iran, as I write this (Monday), has rejected efforts to defuse the situation in the Arabian Gulf, a situation it has created with its piracy of and extended threats toward oil shipping in the Gulf and transiting the Strait of Hormuz.  Indeed, in response to a planned British redeployment of a couple of small combat ships to the Gulf to add to the protection of British tankers, Iran had this:

But Mr [Ali, Iranian government spokesman] Rabie warned Sunday that a European military deployment in the Gulf would be viewed as an escalation of the crisis. “Such moves under the current conditions are provocative,” he said, according to IRNA.

Thus, Iran does not want the nations trading in oil to be able to more effectively protect their shipping.  Iran demands to preserve its ability to seize those ships for itself.

This is not the action of a peace-loving nation. Piracy in the Gulf is the responsibility of Iran.