Tesla. The Cybertruck. I slept on it. Here are my thoughts:

The truck may not look great to most people, but there are a few very important things about it.

1. bulletproof means that it can withstand a bullet. My Lexus (which I absolutely love) windows are double-paned to isolate sound and give strength. It would have smashed if treated to a high-impack metal ball.

Most metals, it should be noted, are much harder, and thus are more destructive, than lead.

Living in CO- you get a lot of rock chips on the windscreen of your car-- the Rocky Mountains are literally rocky because they’re so old that they’re falling apart. This glass could save a lot of people from replacing their windscreens.

2. You get a LOT of truck for the money compared to, say, a Toyota Tacoma or Hilux. $40k gets you a very capable rock crawler, and a very, very capable daily driver that could haul most families.

3. Take a look at those range stats. Within as little as three years, all gasoline-powered vehicles should be obsolete. Especially if Tesla's super-charger is adopted and distributed by other automakers (<--that's a BIG 'if").

4. If it's too wild for you, but you still want a truck, but don't want the drama of a gas guzzling beastie or the zany lines of the Tesla CyberTruck, then check out *Rivian.* They're an electric truck company backed by Ford, the manufacturers o the very popular F-150.

Platte River Power Authority signs PPA for 150 MW of new wind power capacity →

Colorado is a windy place. Let's make use of that.

“More than 30 percent of the electricity currently supplied to Platte River’s owner municipalities comes from carbon-free resources (hydro, wind and solar). This amount ranks among the highest levels provided by wholesale electric suppliers in the Rocky Mountain Region and is about twice the national average. By adding the 150 MW of wind power in late 2020, Platte River could achieve a 48 percent carbon-free energy portfolio for its customers.”

— -Robin Whitlock

We Need More Electric Car Charging Stations →

These are the sorts of things that private citizens can't pull of alone. The government they elect has to be used to incentivise private business to build these chargers. Otherwise we'll never escape from petrol-based personal commuting.

GM suggests Congress fund EV charging, Toyota asks for hydrogen fueling support →

John Voelcker over at Green Car Reports put together an interesting story about how auto companies are approaching the US federal government in preparation of infrastucture legislation.

First, the good news. GM is trying to use the environment to get more funding for EV chagrin stations. It's essential to the zero-emissions future. Here's the meat:

“GM had sold almost one quarter of the 200,000 plug-in electric vehicles delivered in the U.S. last year.

In her remarks, Gross focused on “two areas where your committee could help sustain continued growth: the first is consumer adoption and the second is aiding with charging infrastructure build-out.””

— Britta Gross, GM Director of Advanced Vehicle Commercialization Policy,

Now the bad news. 

While CES 2018 saw Toyota make a move toward taking its fleet's powertrain over to battery electric; a turn of events I celebrated earlier this month, it seem that Toyota still hasn't given up on the awful Mirai concept, and wants money spent on Hydrogen fueling stations - an idea I've considered utterly foolish for years now. The problem is that they're not the only ones. Voelcker says that Toyota was joined by Honda in the request for hydrogen fueling infrastructure.

I've noted it time and again and I'll note it here now: Hydrogen, while likely the most abundant substance in the universe, is difficult to obtain on Earth. One needs to burn natural gas to get it. That's not eco friendly.

Solar jobs growing 12x faster than US economy →

A couple interesting points below based on the article, which you can find here.

1. What it takes to pop solar on rooftops takes far more workers than the big industrial stuff that would replace coal fired power plants. The efficiency at scale is real.
   
   Rooftop installations drove much of the growth this year. Household projects accounted for 63 percent of the industry’s jobs, with 15 percent of the workforce tackling commercial projects and 22 percent building utility-scale installations. That points to an interesting disjoint in the way the industry operates: the type of solar installation that replaces the most greenhouse gas emissions represents a smaller share of the solar workforce. The report says this is because utility-scale projects are less labor-intensive.

2. If this sort of growth continues, then Solar jobs will be the energy sector's most dominant type of work. That can seriously change the way Congress is lobbied. to be sure, Congressional representatives of places that still extract fossil fuels will be against it, but all that means is that companies need to look at the map and choose sunny places to hire people so that they can break those representatives constituencies and thus ensure long term growth with government support. Let's not forget-- government always picks winners and losers.

3. Going back to point #1 above-- there's a huge win-win-win for the president if he can see past the sterotypical GOP dislike of renewable energy. Power plants are usually government monopolies, which means that they receive corporate welfare. If he gave incentives to solar companies and the 50 states to ramp up on rooftop solar, it would begin the obviation of traditional power companies while ramping up the need for these workers. The third win is that opposition party Dems would have to work with him or look like they're not genuine about energy and the environment. Whether the opposition party works with him or not, he'd look like he was putting "America First" with regard to jobs and any dependence the US has to foreign energy sources.
   You save a lot of oil if you don't have to transport coal by truck or diesel locomotive.
   You also require less natural gas and oil pipelines if most electricity is coming from people's rooftops. 
   And a bonus? The idea of each homeowner generating and managing their own electricity usage falls inline with the individual responsibility and self-reliance ideals and principles of US conservative politics. 

The environment, specifically, the carbon crisis, is probably the most important issue of our time. Let's use political and scientific realities to solve it.