1) Duke Energy has a legal monopoly on the energy market in NC
2) McCrory (R) worked for Duke his entire non-gov't career (28 yrs)
3) NC is in the path of a HUGE, Duke-backed frack gas pipeline build
4) McCready (D) ... runs a solar energy firm.
Should he make it to Congress, McCready will be part of a D-dominated House. That House has a mandate to pass a Green New Deal and require FERC (agency in charge of approving pipelines) to give more than the casual rubber-stamp treatment they've given to pipelines to date.
"Blue carbon," or carbon sequestered in marine environments, is a pretty new field of science. It covers carbon held in plant life like seaweeds, mangroves, seagrass meadows, and tidal marshes.
Seaweeds (aka macroalgae) are probably the marine plants we have the most data on for carbon sequestration.
Bc it's twitter I'll refer to this group as "kelp" from here on bc kelp's such a heavy hitter in seaweed biomass. But also covers any macroalgae like Sargassum, Ulva, etc.
For the fertilizer & trucking, you can either say "These emissions are from beef!" or "These emissions are from the chemical manufacturing and transportation industries!"
Basically, you can slice up the statistics to say whatever you want them to say.
I don't like to be that cynical about information. But the end result is confusing and paralyzing.
I want folks to at least understand why there are so many contradictory headlines about what "the leading sources of greenhouse gas" is.
Conservationists have been saying for years that using farming techniques that put more C in crop soils will make more money, because crops yield more.
And now there's hard data behind it.
Put another way: grain farmers already all the financial incentive in the world to sequester carbon.
How are more financial incentive supposed to change the behavior of people who don't respond to financial incentives?
That's because in hot dry places, there's waaaay more than enough sunlight to grow grass-- and not enough water.
Solar cells cast partial shade that still leaves plenty of light for grass. Then water doesn't evaporate as fast, and there's more left in the soil for plants to use.
A lot of solar installations already graze sheep underneath the panels just because they're a cheap easy way to keep weeds from growing over the panels.
(this is a job for sheep- cows are so big that they can break panels, and goats like to climb which can also break panels.)
Pasture-raised animals release more methane than grainfed, so if you just look at emissions, grainfed is way better. But if you look at C sequestration of pasture vs C release on cropland... oh wait we don't really have a lot on that.
The amount of carbon that grasses can pile into the soil varies WILDLY depending on management, length of growing season, rainfall/irrigation, plant species mix, etc.
So it's wibbly wobbly.
Policymakers HATE wibbly wobbly.
And IME when faced with "X can work amazing but you have to do it right" or "Y only works half as well but it's *guaranteed* to work half as well," policy makers & nonprofits will pick Y every time.
And that's ok bc IME working in agriculture, size has nothing to do w whether a business is virtuous anyway.
It's all about management's attitude toward & treatment of labor. So large, vertically integrated farms & food co's that are employee-owned can work great.
I can't say this enough times: size doesn't matter. Being small or family-owned doesn't make a farm or business good.
The number of "small family farms" I've busted using unsafe pesticide practices, bad labor, etc? SO MANY. I'm so sick of how we act like small = virtuous.
It really just starts to look like the "small is beautiful" axiom is the food movement's "four legs good two legs bad." It's a nice catchy jingle and has absolutely fuck-all to do with real life.
Grapes for eating have be reasonably clean & attractive, have clusters about the right size & shape to fit in a bag, individual grapes have to size up right & not be deformed-looking, no scabs, etc. Plus right sugar content, etc. *That* takes rigorous tending.
Table grapes have to be harvested by hand bc we haven't found any way to machine harvest them that doesn't smash.
That means the vines have to be pruned-- by hand-- to keep the vines open enough for workers to reach the grapes, let clusters have enough space to not deform, etc.
Rolling out to Bladen Country to collect voter affidavits on what happened w their absentee ballots
I'm the only Democrat in this van lmao
Also we gotta drive real careful because the county sheriff is somehow so involved in the election fraud that they just got subpoena'd and might be feeling really proactive about stopping out-of-county license plates rn
YES. Historians & social scientists (of capitalism, ag, political history, EVERYTHING) treat agriculture like it's this special world apart from the rest of society. It's not- it's the foundation of modern society, & deserves every bit of critical treatment we can throw at it.
I haven't had a chance to read through that particular book but yeah there's something distinctively shitty about English-style agriculture that carried through the colonial process.
stay with me here
An old, very experienced crop scientist made an off-hand comment to me once in grad school that I'll never forget.
"English farmers visit their fields. German farmers work all day in their fields. Dutch farmers SLEEP in their fields."
I have to say that the Native farm, food, & land management operations I've run into are genuinely impressive. That thing about how "business" has problems due to short-term thinking? It's real. And it's a *cultural problem* that *we* have as Anglo Americans. Not everyone does.
There's really no better showcase for it than this story. A couple fitness entrepreneurs hijacked a Native recipe & sold it to General Mills, which promptly scaled it up way past what the actual supply of ingredients could handle.
An oldie but goodie: Jordan Peterson, corporate shill.
"Peterson tries to Latinize the bourgeois kitsch with mediocre calls of self-actualization. But the self is not actualized: it is told to kill or be killed in capitalism’s endless competition."
"We must reject the characterization of Peterson’s fan base as normal people who are sick and tired of the politically correct left; this assumption simply repeats Nietzsche’s disdain for the common struggles of the oppressed."
"Peterson does not speak for what is 'normal.' His jargon of authenticity — that he is just a simple academic fighting for truth amid so much political correctness and censorship — masks his authoritarian ideas."
But if you want organized union strikes in the last year, I dunno, it sounds like you're really into labor activism so you've probably heard of the 2018 storm of teacher's strikes? Y'know, the one that started in the south? Right?
Again: the biggest contributor to thinking there's "no labor activism" in the South is thinking the only kind of labor activism they think exists is WHITE DUDES IN FACTORIES. The exact same fallacy you're perpetrating here.
The Southern labor movement has a long, successful, & noisy history.
The reason you don't hear about it? It doesn't fit the image of the South as backwards & obedient to its masters. Labor activism has been sold as all about white guys in northern factories and it's just NOT.
Textile mills in NC were the site of some of the largest strikes in US history.
Loray Mills in 1929: strikes fizzled after key organizers were murdered. But they set the stage for ramped-up labor activism & victories across the entire US. You're welcome!
High Point in 1932: 15,000 textile workers walked off the job. Remarkably, there was no union or formal organizing involved in these strikes. WILDCAT STRIKE. FIFTEEN. THOUSAND. PEOPLE.
You guys I had to rent a car yesterday but the only vehicle left on the lot was a giant jacked-up red pickup truck. This led to more Adventures than usual for an audit run
First of all, important note, jacked-up pickup trucks are 10% for hauling stuff
and 100% for looking down on everyone else while you drive around in a living room on wheels. This truck made me feel SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN I WILL EVER TRULY BE
A MINIVAN WITH CONFEDERATE FLAG VANITY PLATES GAVE ME THE "OH NO, *YOU* GO AHEAD"
All a sample can tell you is that one sample, from that place, on that day, was clean.
That doesn't mean the water source is good all the time. Or is still clean once it's been through the farm's irrigation system. (*cough* Flint *cough*)
That's why day-to-day management is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than water testing.
And that's why I'm really irked that the consensus is turning into "gee I guess this happened bc no water testing."
IME immigration crackdowns are an effort to keep this exact thing from happening. US farm industry (yes, family farms too) have documented history of going bonkers trying to keep farm workers down every time they start getting a bit of market power.
I don't want to jump out & say "I know exactly what happened here," bc the info is still coming in.
But my feel is that what's happening right now with romaine lettuce is SO MUCH BIGGER than 1 FDA rule getting pegged back.
If this lettuce is in the mainstream commodity markets, then it should be coming from fields & harvest crews that are getting 3rd party food safety audits.
Which ... guess what, require water testing! Even if the FDA doesn't!
Once worked with a food photo shoot that painted glycerin onto oysters to make sure they stayed juicy & fresh-looking. I mean... they looked AWESOME. But worth keeping in mind.
We recognize that most photos of humans we see are doctored.
But to some degree, so's most of the food that we see. And we *don't* talk about that.
Visual media (glorious pics of glorious food) is such a huge part of the food movement & sustainability culture. And, erm, a lot of it's built on lil white lies.
me: wow not looking at phone or computer for a few days and just catching up on all self-care, maintenance, & sleep that got put off during the election was amazing. we should talk about this
NGL Gabe's plan to use this FAKE DATING to trap his tightwad dad into doing the right thing is pretty genius. This move is consultant-approved, 12/10 would con again
Here it is! A review of sexy cowboy book Rocky Mountain Angel by @VivianArend.
Or, if you need it to sound SFW, an Exploration On The Role of Ranching In Popular Culture.
This book has everything: cowboys, awkward family power dynamics, the constant quest to not find so much as confirm identity via relationship with the land, FAKE DATING.
Full disclosure, the ~cowboy aesthetic~ isn't really my bag. But as w all things, you gotta respect it when it's done well.
This thing wastes no time- right on page 2 we cut to our manly protagonist Gabe, brooding over his massive ... bills.
