Technology and Climate Change

May 9, 2022

Good morning!

Happy Feast of Saint Mothers’ Day!

Eighty-to-one odds… a big pay day, IF you placed your bet on the right horse.  Did you?  $2 paid $163

Only very recently did I learn there are 14 different races at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day, one of them more famous than the other thirteen combined.

• To our good friends in New Mexico:  Be Safe!
  • Many of those gorgeous mountains and freshwater streams experienced the soles of my hiking boots years ago.

Old Technology

• I’m not a big fan of being burglarized.
  • It has happened to me a dozen or more times.
  • It results in feelings of betrayal, helplessness, vulnerability, anger, disbelief, and a bunch of other stuff.
  • The most recent experience was some of my (U.S. $) cash being burglarized.
  • I enjoy having a few bucks in my pocket for, as they say, walking around town money.
  • I’m not comforted when someone says, “Well, you dummy, don’t keep cash laying around where someone might steal it.”
  • I don’t find those words helpful.
  • Eighteen years ago my beloved and used-daily 35mm Nikon film camera was stolen from my car as I was purchasing petroleum products in Grand Forks, ND.
  • If you are among my younger readers you won’t know what that is, but it was the premier forerunner of the now-ubiquitous electronic telephone cameras.
  • To this day I miss the never-seen/ never-enjoyed photographs that would have been produced from the film that got stolen along with the camera.
    • I hope s/he has framed the best ones and is enjoying them.
  • I’m not comforted when someone says, “Well, you dummy, you should lock your car when purchasing petroleum products!”
• Just when we thought we knew what we should know about anxiety, we receive a compelling counterpoint.
• (Important disclaimer:  This next section in no way minimizes the urgent need for addressing mental/ emotional health at all stages of life; we support it.)
  • (Remember Point – Counterpoint?  It was later parodied and spoofed on Saturday Night Live.)
  • Dennis-Tiwary (Future Tense:  Why Anxiety is Good for You…, 2022) 
  • “… (anxiety) isn’t a malfunction or failure of mental health.  It’s a triumph of human evolution, a response that emerged along with one of our greatest attributes:  the ability to think about the uncertain future and prepare for it.”
  • “When we say anxiety is a public health crisis, what we really mean is that the way we cope with anxiety is a public health crisis.”
  • “Treating anxiety like a disease prevents us from distinguishing between ordinary anxiety and anxiety disorders.”
    • Hmmm?  Pick up the book.

• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that matters.”  (Churchill)
• “When (working) with people, remember you are not (working) with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.”  (Carnegie)
  • (Carnegie used “dealing” which Without A Vision LLC finds offensive and inappropriate… we don’t deal with people, we work, communicate, and relate with them)

Technology and Climate Change

• What technology will do the most to address climate change?
  • Here are a few ideas from supposed experts:
    • Ground-source heat pumps (Fitzgerald, 2022)
    • New high efficiency air conditioning units (Winslow/ Lalit, 2022)
    • Significantly more efficient strategic synchronization of solar, wind, storage (battery), transmission, and forecasting… (Nemet, 2022)
    • Solar microgrids (Meier, 2022)
    • Greener maritime shipping; e.g.., electric boats (Irigoyen, 2022)
    • Here’s Without A Vision’s, but we don’t proclaim expertise:  Lots fewer internal combustion engines — and probably fewer cows (which breaks our hearts to say it).
• Here’s something inspired by Eades… someone different than Without A Vision, but with arguably an identical message:
  • You always have a choice… step into growth or choose safety;
  • Bad growth is rooted in outcomes; good growth is rooted in people and their inputs
  • The words you say to yourself are the most important words you say;
  • The best leaders focus on growing themselves and others — resulting in business being bigger, better, stronger, healthier, happier;
  • Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.