Juggling Dynamite

Many people believe there is a point at which one makes so much money, they must be able to afford anything and everything.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Life lesson number one:  if our bucket is full of holes, it doesn’t matter how much is poured in, we can still wind up empty.

The Johnny Depp saga offers warnings for everyone.  Lack of personal discipline, overspending, debt and bad financial advice:  classic ingredients for financial implosion.   See Johnny Depp:  A Star in Crisis.  The insane story of missing millions.

Today Tesla announced that its revolutionary Solar Roof is now available for pre-order, here on the Tesla website, with US installations set for this summer, and outside the US for 2018.  This is what smart looks like.

When paired with an integrated Powerwall, energy collected during the day is stored and made available any time, effectively turning a home into a self-sustaining personal utility:

Solar Roof is more affordable than conventional roofs because in most cases, it ultimately pays for itself by reducing or eliminating a home’s electricity bill. Consumer Reports estimates that a Solar Roof for an average size U.S. home would need to cost less than $24.50 per square foot to be cost competitive with a regular roof. The cost of Solar Roof is less.

The typical homeowner can expect to pay $21.85 per square foot for Solar Roof,¹ and benefit from a beautiful new roof that also increases the value of their home.

Solar Roof uses two types of tiles—solar and non-solar. Looking at the roof from street level, the tiles look the same. Customers can select how many solar tiles they need based on their home’s electricity consumption. For example, households that charge an electric vehicle every day may want more solar tiles on their roof…

At Tesla, we believe in transparency and putting the customer in control. That’s why we created a Solar Roof calculator that lets homeowners estimate the upfront price of Solar Roof, as well as the value of the energy it can generate for their home. The calculator is based on factors like roof size, the average local price of electricity, and how much sunlight a neighborhood receives throughout the year.

The new book from Natural Capitalism author and environmental entrepreneur Paul Hawken, is called Drawdown.  Written as a how-to-guide, the book maps, measures, models, and describes the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming currently available. Work is already underway on a second volume of another 60 key technologies in process.

In a recent interview with VOX, Hawken talks about the dominant challenge currently facing life on our planet.   See:  A new book ranks the top 100 solutions to climate change. The results are surprising.

While attention has been building in recent years around high-profile areas like renewable energy and electric cars (and these are important), Hawken reminds that we cannot get to reversing the level of greenhouse gases just through smarter energy and vehicles.  Drawdown will require transformation in seven key categories: energy, food, women and girls, buildings and cities, land use, transport, and materials….The number one solution is educating girls and family planning, followed by plant-focused diets and refrigerant management:

A combination of educating girls and family planning, which together could reduce 120 gigatons of CO2-equivalent by 2050 — more than on- and offshore wind power combined (99 GT).

Also sitting atop the list, with an impact that dwarfs any single energy source: refrigerant management. (Don’t hear much about that, do you? Here’s a great Brad Plumer piece on it.)

Both reduced food waste and plant-rich diets, on their own, beat solar farms and rooftop solar combined.

As far as what harm Trump and his climate denying federal policies can inflict on the world, Hawken offers context:

…let’s be honest: The US has never led in this area. Ever. When they’ve tried on an executive level, they’ve never been supported by Congress. States have led, cities have led, but never the federal government.

Now the federal government is what it is. When [Trump] was elected, I went over every one [of the Drawdown solutions]. I said, “What can the [US federal] government do?” And it really isn’t that much.

I don’t want to in any way whistle past the graveyard of the enormous damage and harm President Trump can do, in terms of security and war and suffering. It’s just that people in the United States think that they’re the leaders on this stuff. They’re not. It’s Germany, China, France, Denmark.

They’re not cueing off the Trump administration. The rest of the world doesn’t take him seriously on this stuff.