the thing i don't understand about the oil industry is how they weren't at the forefront of creating clean, sustainable energy. and before you go "well duh, of course they're against the concept, it cuts into their business model", consider for a moment that, logically, it should have been their business model from the start.

for example, no matter what your stance was on fossil fuels in the early 2000s, everyone seemed to agree that these resources were nonrenewable. it was in the name. limited, finite. that was the consensus we had, everyone knows this shit will eventually run out if we keep digging, no matter if you acknowledge that climate change exists or not. hell, we even had several projected models giving us a pretty good idea of when. so you would think, from a purely business perspective that it would've made sense for these oil companies to be like "huh, well maybe we should invest in cleaner, more sustainable technologies now so we don't run out in the future, AND we can control the clean energy too." it makes no financial sense to continue to drill holes in the ground while ignoring the very real reality that their entire business model will eventually, literally cease to exist if they don't do something about it.

again, this is just from a business/numbers point of view, not even taking into account the effects of climate change and the morality/ethics of extracting these resources from the earth. fossil fuels should have only ever been a stepping stone in the history of humanity's quest towards generating a theoretically limitless amount of energy that pays for itself, forever, and has a minimal-to-zero impact on the environment. i wouldn't even have necessarily minded having it controlled by corporations, because at least in the grand scheme of things our fucking planet wouldn't be on fire.

in the depths of my mind is an ongoing territorial dispute between debilitating anxiety and hatsune miku

Haha wouldn't it be crazy if man's instinct for destruction outpaced nature's creative forces? I sure am glad this is science fiction.

tfw you watch a pretty convincing video essay whose central thesis is that if you cracked open putin’s skull there would just be a lot of crude oil sloshing around in there

when i awaken it shall be time to drive to the Big Tube once more so they can look at my little squishy tubes full of blood

i anticipate a pleasant meditative experience once more ☺️

I don't think it really hits for most people how much topsoil is an incredibly depleted resource that is virtually nonrenewable under current land management practices.

Topsoil you buy at a garden center most likely is not real topsoil, but rather simply compost mixed with sand. Many people have never touched topsoil. In vast swathes of inhabited land, topsoil simply does not exist anymore.

On the lawn care subreddit, people will occasionally be alarmed that their soil feels "mushy" and "soft" after the addition of lots of organic matter, or post something greatly alarmed about the area of "soft" soil in their yard.

These people would shit their pants in awe if they felt the soil in a forest. Their frame of reference for "soil" is so completely, sadly spoiled by compacted, concrete-like lawn dirt. This is a big reason I'm "anti-lawn." Lawns consistently have some of the worst, most devastated soil imaginable.

Topsoil is a LIVING community of microbes, plant roots, decaying organic matter, and perhaps most importantly of all, fungal mycelium. You cannot buy it. You cannot synthesize it. No amount of fertilizer will turn compacted lawn dirt into topsoil. It takes a hundred years to build one inch of topsoil.

In the USA, prairie soil was plowed up to make fields, and we all learned about the Dust Bowl in school, but we don't talk enough about the fact that plowing up the prairies engulfed half the country in devastating dirt storms that turned the sky black and had people choking and coughing up dirt all the time and sweeping deep drifts of dirt out of their houses. Like that happened. Damn.

What we did was something utterly devastating, the near total destruction of hundreds and hundreds of years' worth of an irreplaceable natural resource. And it's happened all over the country. We will never comprehend how much we lost when we lost the topsoil.

Article by: noel kirkpatrick (September 5 2018)

Call it Apocalypse 2040.

In the early 1970s, a computer program called World1 predicted that civilization would likely collapse by 2040. Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had programmed it to consider a model of sustainability for the world.

The prediction has resurfaced because Australian broadcaster ABC recirculated a 1973 newscast about the computer program. The program's findings, however, never really went away, as its results have been re-evaluated over the nearly 50 years since they first appeared.

The bad news for us is that the model seems to be spot-on so far.

The computer model was commissioned by the Club of Rome, a group of scientists, industrialists and government officials focused on solving the world's problems. The organization wanted to know how well the world could sustain its rate of growth based on information that was available at the time. World1 was developed by Jay Forrester, the father of system dynamics, a methodology for understanding how complex systems operate.

When deciding the fate of civilization, the program considered several variables, including pollution levels, population growth, the availability of natural resources and global quality of life. These factors were considered in tandem with one another as opposed to separately, following the Club of Rome's perspective that the world's problems are interconnected.

Such an approach was novel in the 1970s, even if the forecast World1 produced wasn't intended to be "precise." The program produced graphs that demonstrated what would happen to those metrics in the future, without even accounting for things like climate change. The graphs all indicated a downward trajectory for the planet.

According to the 1973 ABC segment, World1 identified 2020 as a tipping point for civilization.

"At around 2020, the condition of the planet becomes highly critical. If we do nothing about it, the quality of life goes down to zero. Pollution becomes so seriously it will start to kill people, which in turn will cause the population to diminish, lower than it was in the 1900. At this stage, around 2040 to 2050, civilized life as we know it on this planet will cease to exist."

This was not the end of the model. In 1972, the Club of Rome published "The Limits to Growth," a book that built off the work of World1 with a program called World3, developed by scientists Donella and Dennis Meadows and a team of researchers. This time the variables were population, food production, industrialization, pollution and consumption of nonrenewable natural resources.

"The Limits to Growth" pushed the collapse of civilization to 2072, when the limits of growth would be the most readily apparent and result in population and industrial declines.

Criticism of the book was nearly immediate, and harsh. The New York Times, for instance, wrote, "Its imposing apparatus of computer technology and systems jargon ... takes arbitrary assumptions, shakes them up and comes out with arbitrary conclusions that have the ring of science," concluding that the book was "empty and misleading."

Others argued that the book's view of what constitutes a resource could change over time, leaving their data shortsighted to any possible changes in consumption habits.

The tide for the book's finds have changed over time, however. In 2014, Graham Turner, then a research fellow at the University Melbourne's Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, collected data from various agencies within the United Nations, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other outlets, plotting their data alongside the findings of the World3 model.

What Turner found that was that the World3 model and then-current statistical information tended to coincide with another, up to 2010, indicating that the World3 model was onto something. Turner cautioned that the validation of World3's model didn't indicate "agreement" with it, largely due to certain parameters within the World3 model. Still, Turner argued that we were likely on "cusp of collapse" thanks to a few different factors, in particular what Turner called the end of peak easy oil access.

Writing in The Guardian, Turner and Cathy Alexander, a Melbourne-based journalist, explained that neither the World3 model or Turner's own confirmation of it signaled that the collapse was a guarantee.

"Our research does not indicate that collapse of the world economy, environment and population is a certainty," they wrote. "Nor do we claim the future will unfold exactly as the MIT researchers predicted back in 1972. Wars could break out; so could genuine global environmental leadership. Either could dramatically affect the trajectory.

"But our findings should sound an alarm bell. It seems unlikely that the quest for ever-increasing growth can continue unchecked to 2100 without causing serious negative effects – and those effects might come sooner than we think."

Just a reminder to myself mostly, but theres absolutely no point arguing with a braindead Fox News Facebook article individual who feels they’re smarter than the average “sheep” because they believe whatever second-option information they’ve been spoon-fed. As long as it isn’t the generally accepted information, they’ll believe what they’re given and feel everyone else has been manipulated by “liberal media” to believe what has been scientifically proven and has garnered results for a conclusion. For example, I’m talking to this guy at work (or rather he’s talking at me) about how solar energy is counterproductive and worse for the environment. Which obviously isn’t true, he just can’t comprehend how much energy we use, how harmful nonrenewable energy sources are for the planet, or how much energy the natural nuclear reactor we have in the sky produces. These people don’t actually want to have a discussion, they just want to interrupt you with “facts” they pulled out of their asses or read from someone else’s ass, already having concluded you’re a ~dumb liberal~ for believing we can and should do better for our planet. As soon as you start presenting the ACTUAL facts about how not everything is perfect but the negatives of the alternative have reached unacceptable levels, they start interrupting to jump into their next “fact”. These people think anyone who places value on our planet and the preservation of innocent, invaluable life on it is a stupid hippie tree-hugger who just wants everything to be sunshine and rainbows but that ain’t the way of the world! Just a complete waste of space. I often wonder, if these people have no concern for life, no compassion, why do they waste their own time here lol like they’re just using resources while existing as a self-righteous loser with an inordinate amount of confidence, people who have 0 capability to think for themselves??? But convince themselves they do? Creating a false sense of arrogance resulting in condescension with no basis. These people are wastes of time trying to share your perspective or even the objective truth because they probably believe the moon is fake and was put there by the ancient CIA

Fucking hate anti-environmentalist leftists. it's so spiteful and contrarian too because they know fine well progress is possible without mass environmental destruction, and that nonrenewable resources don't last forever- they just want to own the "ecofascists."

There's never any nuance- you either want to turn yellowstone national park into a parking lot or you're an anti-progress anticiv primmie.

Solarpunk Gives Me Hope

For the past couple of years, I’ve been really interested in the solarpunk genre. Up until now, it’s been a flirtatious relationship, but I’m ready to settle down. Sustainability and Environmentalism have been a big part of my adult life; I always knew that I wanted to have a positive impact on the world at large, and what better way to do that than to put time into preserving that very world? However, as I got deeper into the sustainability space, I saw a lot of reductive, holier-than-thou behavior and apathy toward meaningful action. Like, recycling is great (if it actually gets recycled, thanks America), but is that it? Is that all we can do? Environmentalism as a movement also has a history steeped in white supremacy, a trend that is bubbling up again.

As you can tell, I got really frustrated with the landscape of the environmental movement. I never heard anyone acknowledge the issues that exist on both sides of the aisle; there didn’t seem to be a lot of care for the people that are most vulnerable to climate change in those conversations. It led me to move away from the sustainability space, wholesale. I didn’t really understand why until I discovered solarpunk. Hearing about this subgenre-meets-movement lit the fire in my heart. Solarpunk represents what I think is the most exciting way to think about not only saving our planet but saving ourselves.

What is Solarpunk?

People have their own definitions for solarpunk, which is as liberating as it is frustrating. One of the best ones that I found came from Solarpunk Rising. Their definition is for solarpunk is “a creative movement that encourages optimistic visions of the future while responding to the climate crisis as well as social inequality”. I’d like to crib off of that one to explain how I think of solarpunk: “a creative movement that combines Art, Sustainability, and Social Liberation with an optimistic lens. It helps us imagine the world we want to see so we can create it.”

I don’t think it’s super useful to gatekeep what is and isn’t solarpunk beyond this definition. It is important, however, to highlight the liberatory, social aspects of solarpunk. While it’s fine and dandy to see solarpunk as a cool aesthetic, the real power comes from the real-life, tangible impacts that the movement can have.

Some things that I’d consider to be solarpunk actions in real life:

Proposing legislation to your local government to prioritize walkability in new developments

Writing articles about DIY ways to lessen your reliance on big corporations

Seed bombing an empty plot of land with native species

Airdropping anti-fascist memes to people in public

Solarpunk to me is any activity that centers a genuine excitement for how the world can be with an action-oriented approach.

Connected ideologies

Solarpunk has a lot of compatible ideologies, some of which you may have picked up on already. Just to list some important ones:

DIY: Being able to lessen your own consumption by fixing and repairing/repurposing what you have is super solarpunk

Optimism: It’s hard to imagine a better world if you don’t believe the world can get better. Solarpunk positions being an optimist as the most punk thing you can do in a world that feels made to keep you down.

Renewables (a la Solar): Surprise suprise, solarpunks tend to be into solar! One of the biggest harms to our planet is our relationship with energy. While trying to lessen the total amount of energy we use, we must also replace nonrenewable energy forms with those that are replenishable. Our amount of appropriation of resources can’t continue to exceed nature’s ability to replenish those resources.

Sustainability: Tying into the above ideal, across all facets of society, sustainability should be the goal. We should be able to find a sustainable level of interaction with the environment, with our consumption and lifestyles, and our systems of governance.

Liberation: None of this work would be worth it if our sparkly new world was built on oppressive practices. Centering equity as the lens though which we do all of the above work will give us much more in return.

Conclusion

Before I go, I want to mention lunarpunk. Where solarpunk is yin, lunarpunk is yang. They can be seen as two differing halves of a greater whole, focused on different aspects of their utopic goals. Solarpunk stuff will mostly be focused on tech, while lunarpunk is much more likely to include fantastical, occult, or spiritual ideals. I’m not as well versed on that, so I’m not going to go too deep, but I think it’s worth mentioning, as it’ll probably come up in your research.

I hope this was somewhat interesting to you! I really am jazzed about this world of solarpunk and find the ability of fiction to be a tool for creating the future. It can be in negative, dystopic ways, sure, but I feel like the positive outcomes are also ripe for the taking! I hope that you’re interested in exploring more, as I’ll have some links listed below: my inspirations for this post, along with my list of cool solarpunk stuff that I am constantly updating. Hopefully, we can dream of better futures together!

Sources

A Solarpunk Manifesto (English) – ReDes – Regenerative Design. https://www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/. Accessed 23 Nov. 2022.

Andrewism. How Degrowth Can Save The World. 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQrI2GBvn5Q.

How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future (Ft. @Our Changing Climate). 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz51PkJy2c0.

How We Can Make Solarpunk A Reality (Ft. @Our Changing Climate). 2021. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-JvyfZVkIM.

Humanity Is Not A Parasite. 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j42RbUjofm0.

Solarpunk Is Not Enough. 2021. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaSb2gi1Ew.

We Need A Library Economy. 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOYa3YzVtyk.

What Is Solarpunk? 2020. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHI61GHNGJM.

meningeal. “New to Solarpunk? Start Here!” R/Solarpunk, 13 June 2022, www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/vb1ky1/new_to_solarpunk_start_here/.

Our Changing Climate. How We Can Build A Solarpunk Future Right Now (Ft. @Andrewism). 2022. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twGcjDnOb_U.

Why This Gives Me Hope for the Future (Ft. @Saint Andrewism). 2021. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3aauiR9M88.

Reina-Rozo, Juan David. “Art, Energy and Technology: The Solarpunk Movement.” International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace, vol. 8, no. 1, 1, Mar. 2021, pp. 47–60. ojs.library.queensu.ca, https://doi.org/10.24908/ijesjp.v8i1.14292.

“Solarpunk.” Wikipedia, 29 Nov. 2022. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solarpunk&oldid=1124508051.

“Solarpunk: A Genre of Activism.” Solarpunk Magazine, 13 Oct. 2021, https://solarpunkmagazine.com/solarpunk-a-genre-of-activism/.

Solarpunk.fun, Team. “Evergreen: Basically, Solarpunk.” SolarPunk, 25 Mar. 2021, https://www.solarpunk.fun/2021/03/25/basically-solarpunk/.

Solarpunk Reading List

Frisk: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? YOU DO KNOW OIL IS A NONRENEWABLE RESOURCE RIGHT!?”

CC: “yes… And they deserve it.”

For context, (just as a joke and made purely for fun) it’s canon that CC could eat a LOT of inedible things without any consequences (as a part of their half-dead aspect lol).

They could probably eat things like cars, bricks, parts of buildings, random miscellaneous objects, and other ridiculous things that shouldn’t make any sense LOL!

This detail was just made purely as a joke however, so in reality they probably won’t go and do things like this much and would stick to eating things that would actually give them energy to keep them alive like meat and plants or something XD

But they’ll still probably eat something very bizarre on occasion though lol

prefacing this with i am on a train and can't check my books: what if the reason the houses are so 'behind' when it comes to tech (swords instead of guns, plastic pens being archaic) is jod's interpretation of returning to a less wasteful existence? he was someone who wanted to save humanity from a death they brought on through wastefulness and industry. what if, being built on one man's ideas, the nine houses are designed on an earlier existence - one without plastic, or true paper, or other resources dependent on nonrenewable natural resources

How to start and end emails in Russian

If you are writing a formal email in Russian, and you don't know your addressee very well (or at all), here are some tips:

Start with Уважаемый (m), Уважаемая (f), Уважаемые (pl). This is the most neutral way to formally address somebody.

Proceed with a name and patronymic (if you know the patronymic). Yes, you should address somebody you were not introduced to by their name (and, often) patronymics as well! Words like господин, госпожа are way less common, and addressing by the last name is not common either.

Introduce yourself briefly, but sufficiently. Do not add "I hope this email finds you well" - this is only suitable for people who are at least your acquaintances.

Go straight to the point. Time is nonrenewable resource!

End with С уважением (lit. with respect) - this is the most acceptable and typical way to end a formal email.

I think the fact that the us army sends out soldiers to go steal oil from other countries like it’s running out (it is) says something about how we probably shouldn’t fully depend on this unreliable nonrenewable resource.

📓 tell me the visions that plague ur mind

So this isn't quite *fanfic* but- there's this Blorbo, right? He's an OC and my PFP and his name is Corrain and he's a trans man and a bisexual polyamorous disaster trainwreck type of gay. You know, the usual Blorbo material. And he has spawned three fanfics in two separate fandoms already, yes? One of these fandoms has an outline (an OUTLINE. A PLOT OUTLINE) that is 75000 words and counting aaaauuuggggghhhh

So this Blorbo comes to me and is like. "So what if you gave me my own story? 🥺" And I'm no pushover so of COURSE I said yes. (Wait, fuck-)

So, the basic idea behind his story is that, for humans alone, magic is not and *cannot* be an innate thing. It's a resource found in the world around humans, to be used up and drained, kind of like a nonrenewable resource in some ways, except it's very common. Some Animals can have innate magical properties and this be capable of using magic as PART of themselves, like flexing a muscle - and these animals are usually Fae Variants of already-existing species, though Fae-only species also exist.

For humans, however, Magic is studied like a science, learning runes and magical chemistry-type stuff and how to make potions that will temporarily allow them to cast spells with a word and etc.

Enter Corrain....who does magic accidentally, without any aids whatsoever, and discovers...he's a Fae human, somehow. But that's unnatural! Something must be wrong with him! Or he must be morally obligated to use himself up for the benefit of a country or something!

Cue a wild goose chase of Corrain running from governments who want to arrest him, scientists/doctors who want to "cure/study" him, all while being terrified of himself, thinking he's somehow a horrible mistake.

(Oh and btw? Using up all the magic like that? The magic is getting polluted and corrupted and the planet's kind of dying)

But In the end Corrain finds a group of people who- are also Fae humans. They're elves. Ans turns out that Fae humans are pretty common and normal and societal pressures and desire to *use* people end up keeping most magical humans in the closet.

And then Corrain gets to go on a fabulous journey and take down a shitty fascist or two with the Gay Agenda his magical powers

Can you tell where the Very Subtle I'm Sure metaphors are. Is it too much. Maybe. It is still marinating in my head at ALL times help. Why is this one Blorbo so horrid. It is a Mystery. I love him and am going to beat him up because of that.

The Power of Environment-friendly Power: A Sustainable Solution for a More Vibrant Future

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Paragraph 1: In an era where climate change and ecological degradation have become pushing worldwide worries, the requirement for lasting energy remedies has actually never ever been more apparent. This is where green energy steps in as a game-changer. Eco-friendly power describes the manufacturing and application of renewable resources, such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal power, to create electrical power and minimize greenhouse gas exhausts. While the change towards green energy may appear daunting, it provides a plethora of benefits that prolong beyond environmental preservation.Paragraph 2: One of the most considerable advantages of green power depends on its contribution to mitigating environment change. Unlike fossil gas that release unsafe carbon exhausts when shed, environment-friendly power resources generate little to no greenhouse gases during operation. By accepting eco-friendly energy, we can dramatically minimize our carbon impact, combat international warming, and secure the planet for future generations. Furthermore, eco-friendly power resources are often extra reliable and cost-efficient over time. While the first investment might seem higher, the operational costs of renewable resource technologies are significantly lower compared to standard source of power. Additionally, the abundance and accessibility of renewable energies ensure a continuous and lasting energy supply, lowering our dependence on finite nonrenewable fuel sources. By embracing eco-friendly energy, we not only secure a cleaner and much healthier atmosphere however additionally create work possibilities and foster economic development in the renewable resource industry.

Read more here pwht