Tag Archives: Climate Change

Supporting Solar

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I am entering my 11th year in the solar industry! The US has seen 33% growth in this last decade1.

As the climate becomes unpredictable, solar adoption has been on the rise.

The reasons to “go solar” are not just financial. Fossil fuels are finite, polluting resources that are burned and disposed of into our air. This has and will destabilize historical climatic conditions. Dependable energy from renewable sources, like solar, is the foresight and trend we should follow.

Storm clouds over Coastal South Carolina

Why use solar power?

  • Alternative to coal-fired power
  • Diversify our energy sources
  • Bring energy source closer to the energy consumers
  • Possibility of energy storage for emergency use
  • Quiet, clean electricity for home and transportation
  • Plug your EV into the wall outlet. Drive on full tank the next day!
  • Add value to home/property
  • Tax credits and tax forfeiture available
  • Reduce electric bills
  • Fully recoup your investment in your solar upgrade
Wave surge brought sand onto the buffer dunes.
Steps down to the beach now part of the beach!

Generating solar electricity in the community makes a lot of sense. Power is produced and used locally. Sea levels are rising and will not stop until we slow and reverse the trend.

Ask me about your solar potential and start saving money and the climate as soon as possible!

Sources:

  1. SEIA.org

A Changing Climate – South Carolina

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The Palmetto State is a sunny place, with beaches that ribbon the eastern shore. Like other coastal areas, flooding and onshore storm damage is a growing threat.

In my previous post I discuss the state’s solar industry. The emergence of local solar installs in coastal communities is coinciding with the visual evidence of climate change.

Pawley’s Island, road’s end, March 2020

It will be public funding and budgets that will mitigate, prepare and repair the coastal areas. To save places like Pawley’s Island, a breezy retreat settlement from the antebellum period, they will use public subsidy, i.e. taxpayer investment. Should they instead charge the companies that caused climate change or some other thoughtful solution?

Flooding in Charlestown SC, March 2020

In coastal flooding records beginning 1953, 22 of the 32 major or greater flooding events have happened since 20152. More frequent and intense storms ravage and flood South Carolina.

The state’s aquatic conditions and their politics coincided to make the Charleston area a human slavery trade hub in America’s founding. Places made possible rather quickly and majestically by relying upon and exploiting a slave economy and labor market.

If money is invested to save water-side mansions, what about the coastal areas where the Gullah Geechee still live? Or the places that are less symbolic than Old Charleston or Pawleys Island? The residences of poorer people lacking the resources to move or repair damage done by these weather events?

Generating solar electricity in the community makes a lot of sense. Through honest debate, we can collectively heed the science. Establish progressive policy to power our lives with limited harm to ourselves and the world we live in.

Sources:

  1. www.ClimateToothpaste.com boxes with “patented blend of humor”!
  2. www.dnr.sc.gov/climate/sco/ClimateData/yearly/cli_sc2020review.pdf

Dry Creek Beds of Sand Point, The Aleutians, Alaska

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Residents of this village on Alaska’s Aleutian Chain are worried about their salmon. My friend Joanna, and her father Joe Sr., are in search of a solution. Crisis breeds creativity and in this crisis I have seen one social media poster discuss literally plucking and moving the salmon in a water filled flatbed. TBD.

Dry river beds mean there is is nowhere for the salmon to run. The salmon run in late summer, upstream, to spawn.

Locals, natives, all in search of a problem they’ve rarely if ever had before.

Drought in Alaska. Climate change near the poles. Living on an island. The troubles of an altered environment land in a place far removed from culpability for a carbon dump in the atmosphere that is twisting weather patterns. The future of this and other seaside villages is uncertain.

Rising tides across the world encroach upon island nations and low-lying land. From Manhattan to Marshall Islands, leaders take notice, meantime people, and a historic way of life, pay the price.