Since this is Earth Day Awareness Month (Earth Day is officially Thursday, April 22) the weekly services and UU Support Page will be featuring content related to our shared eco-ball and our role as responsible global citizens as we look to the future.
This week’s video meditation takes us to a little known scenic spot in the north woods that is especially dramatic as the Spring runoff makes its way through the Saint John River Watershed. You’ll have to watch this week’s service to find out where I went. This week’s talk comes from something I scribbled on a Truck Stop napkin 25 years ago titled “The Diner Sermon” and Brad and Cory provide the music.
There are several articles in this week’s support page by Juan Cole from Informed Comment on interesting developments in the renewable energy industry and encouraging statistics. Cole is a professor of History at the University of Michigan specializing in Middle East Studies and energy development studies. There is also a short Q&A with Buddhist writer/psychologist Sylvia Boorstein. I tell one of her entertaining (and enlightening) stories in my talk this week so tune in.
Have a great week-end everyone and I hope you can join us for the UUHoulton weekly service on Sunday.
The recorded service will be available to view at 10AM on Sunday morning and archived so it can be watched later at your convenience. I will send out the service link to YouTube later today and the link will be live on Sunday morning at 9:45AM (in case you want to come to the service early). If you subscribe to our YouTube channel you can locate it automatically on your YouTube home page under subscriptions. The 10AM service will be followed by a Zoom coffee hour and check-in at 11AM for those who are interested in discussing the service or just want to check in. I’ll send the Zoom links out today.
Practice patience and kindness.
In Ministry,
Dave
Virtual Offering Plate
If you would like to send in your pledge or donation (we still have to pay the bills) simply drop an envelope in the mail. The address is listed below. Thank you for your support!
UU Church of Houlton61 Military StreetHoulton, ME 04730
Still a Schmuck?
As part of the #MeditationHacks series, a reader asks Sylvia Boorstein: “What’s the point of practice if it’s not making me a better person?
Sylvia Boorstein
I’ve been meditating for a long time, but I don’t seem to be a better person than when I started. And to be honest, my non-Buddhist friends seem to be just as good people as my Buddhist friends. If I’m not acting and treating people better, what’s the point of practice?
Sylvia Boorstein: His Holiness the Dalai Lama likes to say, “The point of life is to be happy.” Recently, I heard him emphasize that it does not matter to him whether a person is a Buddhist or not. “What matters,” he said, “is whether someone is an ethical person.” Here is the connection between ethicality, practice, and happiness, as I see it.
I was brought up to be fundamentally ethical. My parents were kind and moral, and nonharming behavior is what they admired. Since then, I’m sure that my mindfulness practice has strengthened my commitment to ethicality and kindness. It alerts me, sooner than it used to, to the arising of unwholesome states (greed and anger) in my mind so that they do not, for the most part, find expression in word or deed.
I did not start my practice because I wanted to learn kindness. I wanted to be less anxious. I am less anxious. But I am also kinder. And happier.
I feel bad when I do something motivated by greed or anger. Greed and anger are painful, just by themselves. So also are the guilt and shame I feel afterward when I realize I have behaved heedlessly and caused pain.
My husband asked me, many years into my practice and study of Buddhism, “How has all of this changed you?”
I replied, “I became kind.”
He said, “You were always kind.”
I said, “Then, I became kinder.”
I did not start my practice because I wanted to learn kindness. I wanted to be less anxious. I am less anxious. But I am also kinder. And happier.
Earth Day Awareness Month Content:
Atmospheric CO2
March 2021
417.64
parts per million (ppm)
Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (NOAA GML)
Preliminary data released April 7, 2021
Daily CO2
Apr. 8, 2020 = 416.96 ppm(350 ppm is generally regarded as the target level)
Scotland is First Industrialized country to generate 97.4% of Electricity From Wind and Solar
by Juan ColeInformed Comment juancole.com
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In 2011, Scotland’s government, urged on by visionaries like Richard Dixon, set itself the ambitious goal to get 100% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. At that time, it only only got about a fourth from clean energy sources, and a lot of that was hydro.
The report card is in for 2020 and Scotland generated 97.4% of its electricity demand from renewables last year, just a whisker less than the 100% goal.
Scotland will host the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in a few months, and is well placed to assert climate leadership.
Scotland no longer has a coal plant, and its one natural gas plant is under-utilized and seems likely to close in a few years.
Some 70% of Scottish electricity now comes from onshore wind farms. The rest is from hydroelectricity (15.8%), offshore wind and solar. Scotland still has vast hydroelectric potential and some of it may be used for pumped hydro storage (you use wind to drive water uphill and hold it there until you need it, then release it to make electricity when the wind dies down).
I’m glad to be corrected if I am wrong, but I believe that Scotland is the first industrialized country to reach this near-100% renewables landmark for electricity production mainly from wind and solar.
Norway gets 98% of its electricity from renewables, but heavily depends on hydroelectricity. Ironically, both Scotland and Norway are oil states, but they nevertheless have made a push to drop hydrocarbons.
Offshore wind is also beginning to generate substantial electricity, and Scotland is constructing two gigawatts more of it right now. Some 14 gigawatts in permits for further renewables have been granted by the government.
The Seagreen wind farm off Scotland will be finished in 2022 and will generate enough electricity for 1.5 million households (see video below). Actually, since the households are more or less covered, maybe it can heat the homes as people switch to electric furnaces.
Electricity is only one kind of energy that a country consumes. Transportation by internal combustion vehicles is typically responsible for about 28% of carbon dioxide emissions, and the heating commercial and residential buildings accounts for 29%. Scotland now wants to press ahead on these other fronts.
Scotland now gets about a quarter of its over-all energy demand from renewables, Its leaders want to double that to 50% in 2030.
At the moment, only about ten percent of Scotland’s heating demand is met by renewables. So electrifying heating and transportation and increasing renewables capacity are the next big steps.
I should declare my interest that one of my grandfathers was a McIlwee, and so I am especially proud of the responsible Scottish politicians who have shown the world how greening a G20 economy can be done, in short order. There is a lot more to be done, and social equity to be achieved by transitioning oil workers to other good-paying jobs.
As Biden seeks 30 gigawatts in Offshore Wind, Report shows this source could Generate all US Electricity
by Juan ColeInformed Comment juancole.com
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Biden has announced an enormous offshore wind corridor. So report Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis at WaPo. I wrote earlier this month about the 84-turbine Vineyard Wind projectoff Massachusetts, which has just been permitted, which will generate 800 megawatts.
Biden wants to generate nearly 40 times as much as the Vineyard Wind installation will– 30 gigawatts, with projects off the East Coast, by 2030. His administration looks set to fast-track the permitting where the installations are in federal waters. The plan will attract $30 billion in private investment and generate tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.
Britain, by the way, already gets 10 percent of all its electricity from this source. The US is so backward because of the baleful political influence of our coddled fossil fuel billionaires, who have bought much of Congress. Biden, who is willing to try to make the Greens in his party happy if it benefits the country (it does), is about to change all that.
Offshore wind will not only provide clean, inexpensive electricity (air is free), but the development of these projects will require infrastructure upgrades at ports where the turbines are constructed and from which they are installed. Since turbines in the sea require upkeep, they will generate high quality jobs, another Biden goal. WaPo says, a little weirdly, that petroleum pipelines generate more jobs, but that is apples and oranges. We don’t typically generate electricity from petroleum in the United States. The question would be offshore wind versus natural gas plants for job generation. Also, if you burn fossil fuels and summon mega-storms and sea level rise and wildfires and debilitating heat for outdoor summer labor, you might get rid of a lot of jobs that way.
Just to underline how keen Biden’s vision is, a new report finds that if the United States utilized all its potential for offshore wind generation, it could generate 7,200 terawatt-hours of electricity every year.
Here’s the kicker. The US only uses about 4,222.5 terawatt-hours annually.
One terawatt-hour is the electricity it takes to burn 10 billion 100-watt light bulbs for one hour.
That’s right. Offshore wind alone could power the entire United States nearly twice over. Of course, we need better battery and other storage techniques, since even offshore the wind doesn’t blow all the time.
These are the findings of The Environment America Research and Policy Center and the Frontier Group, non-profits that form part of the Public Interest Network.
Looking at the various coastlines of the US, the report says that the Atlantic from Maine to Florida has two advantages– strong, consistent wind and a shallow continental shelf (into which you could anchor the wind turbines). This technology already exists and is widely used, so it is a no-brainer. Offshore wind turbines there could generate 4,6000 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, which is four times as much power as the coastal states themselves used in 2019.
The Atlantic Coast is clearly the gold mine for offshore wind in the US.
Off the Pacific Coast you have a deep and narrow continental shelf, so you couldn’t sink the turbines into it. You’d have to use floating wind turbines out there, the way the United Kingdom is doing. You could get 869 terawatt-hours that way.
The Gulf isn’t as promising. It typically has low wind speeds, and its fishing and other sea-oriented industries might mind a lot of wind farms. Still, you could get 1,400 terawatt-hours of electricity from this region.
You could also site offshore wind farms in the Great Lakes. The report worries that seasonal ice floes could damage the floating turbines. I’ll let them in on a secret. There won’t be many ice floes after a while. Lake Ontario hit about 77 degrees F. in surface temperature last August, a record, and we’re only at the beginning. You could get 344 terawatt-hours there, which would be half of all the electricity the coastal states use.
The report says the federal government needs to set standards for the equipment, and step up its permitting game, as well as deploying tax subsidies for this industry, if it is to take off.
A Green New Deal: Arkansas School District goes Solar, Gives Teachers $1000s in Bonuses with Savings
by Juan Cole Informed Comment juancole.com
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Climate Wire reported last fall on a remarkable story about the way renewable energy not only saves the earth from the destructive climate emergency but can at the same time improve our lives and those of our children.
Our hero is Michael Hester, who some years ago became the superintendent of the Batesville School district in Independence County, Arkansas. He faced the problem that his district was underfunded and the teacher pay was in the bottom quarter for the state. Teachers kept resigning because they could not live on the pay. The American custom of supporting local schools mainly with local taxes means that poor communities have poor schools, which is not right.
Back in 2017, Hester was having to pay $600,000 a year in utility bills for heat and electricity generated by coal and gas, which generate 38% and 28% of the state’s power supply respectively. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, putting out enormous amounts of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide, which sits in the atmosphere and prevents the sun’s heat from radiating back out to space after it strikes the surface.
Hester told Climatewire that after he got an estimate on the savings from going solar, he suggested, “Let’s use that money to start pumping up teachers’ salaries . . . It’s the way we’re going to attract and retain staff. And it’s the way we’re going to attract and retain students in this day and age of school choice.”
So Hester in 2018 partnered with Entegrity, an Arkansas-based solar company, to put 1,500 solar panels on school land, which is plentiful, and well as above the bus stops and the entrance to the school. He also had the schools made more energy efficient. (Some 25% of buildings in the US don’t even have insulation.)
Jordan Howington of the THV-11 television news station in Little Rock, Arkansas did further reporting on the story in December.
Unlike coal, gas and nuclear, which use pricey fuels, solar panels convert free sunlight into electricity. Free fuel is free. Of course, you have to pay for the panels. But they get paid off pretty quickly, and then it is all gravy. I put up solar panels on my house and my summer electricity bill in Michigan has been as little as $14 a month (and some of that is natural gas for our oven). That’s with air conditioning. So, yes, it saves a lot of money along with the planet. Those who own their own home and plan to be in it for at least 10 years are actually costing themselves money by not putting up solar panels.
Since 2018, Hester’s project has saved the school $1 million in utilities costs.
What comes next is the kicker. Hester used the savings on his district’s utility bills to give the teachers bonuses, ranging from $3,000 to as much as $15,000 a year.
He says he no longer has the problem of teachers resigning because of poor pay, and applications to teach in his district have risen.
Climatewire says Hester was surprised by how welcoming the people of Batesville were to the idea. A huge dirty coal plant is just 30 miles away. But people say they know its days are numbered, and the cost savings of solar, and they way it could increase teacher pay, came as a pleasant surprise to them. It quotes Hester as saying, “People know that that coal plant has a limited life . . . It’s a loss of revenue; it’s a loss of jobs. There’s an anxiety about that . . . So when this started showing how there are ways to help offset [those losses] and move on in alternative ways … it became a very pleasant surprise,”
7,200 schools around the U.S. use solar panels to generate some or all of their electricity. There are 130,930 K-12 schools in the U.S., we just have 123,730 to go. It seems especially cruel to use the children’s parents’ tax money to buy them lumps of coal and vapors of natural gas at high prices, and then to burn them for the kids so as to make their future lives more difficult because of the climate emergency. Let’s give our children the gift of a less challenging life with fewer megastorms or wildfires, and solarize their schools.
If we can transition quickly to renewables, we can give everyone in America, on average, a 6% raise.
Let me explain why I say this. In 2018, the US spent $1.3 trillion on energy, which was 6.2% of its gross domestic product.
Six percent is a nice chunk of change if we can recover it from the coal, gas and oil companies by using renewables instead. If someone is making $50,000 a year, that is a $3,000 a year raise, which is $30,000 over ten years.
Let’s give ourselves a raise and save the planet at the same time. What could be more satisfying?
Here is a new feature on the Support Page that we launched last week. During zoom coffee hour people often share interesting movies, books or music they’ve recently discovered so we thought we would provide space to post one selection (or two) a week.
Disk Jockey Turntable
This week’s DJs: Ray Byers & Dave
DJ Ray: “Shake Your Money Maker” by Rev. Peyton and Dom Flemons recorded at the famous Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee.
Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band and Dom Flemons with the legendary Steve “The Colonel” Cropper and Scot Sutherland on Bass performing the classic Elmore James Song “Shake Your Money Maker,” live at Sun Studios in Memphis! Special thanks to our TM, Shane Ferguson for the video! Very excited to share this with you all. It was one spectacular, life altering experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOBDZuDVlzE
DJ Dave: “Thievery Corporation” appearance at KEXP Radio in Seattle, Washington (30 minutes of live music and interview)
I first came across this band 10 years ago (they’ve been around for 25 years) and then lost track of them until Ray posted the Dahka Brahkaa performance last week which was also a live performance recorded at KEXP Radio. The next video on automatic play was Thievery Corporation and I said, “Are these guys still around?” Amazing sounds, message and creativity.Check it out on “Disk Jockey Turntable.” Just watching the bass player is worth the 30 minuteshow.
https://youtu.be/5eK6SYVyZRk
Joys & Concerns
When one of us is blessed we are all blessed.When one of us experiences sorrow we all feel the pain.
Our personalized prayer list is distributed by email and for privacy concerns is not published on our website.
The last of the snow on the church roof for this year…!
Please continue to send in joys and concerns during the week to revdav@mfx.net and I will post them on the Support Page.
The joy or the sorrow of one is shared by all. May our hearts be as one on this day. Let us carry each thought or concern expressed in our heart and may the light of our love and compassion transform suffering into non suffering and ease the difficulties of life. We radiate love and the light that we are. Blessed are we all.
We pray for those recovering from COVID-19 in the state of MaineLocal emergency personnel and hospital staffFor our state and national leaders as they respond to the current coronavirus crisisFor those working for social justice and societal change.
We pray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nation.
Pray for the victims and their families of the mass shootings in Georgia and ColoradoPrayers for Asian-American communities in our country.
Pray for peace and resolution of the protests in Armenia and Myanmar.
The Four Limitless Ones Prayer
May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.May we be free from suffering and the root of suffering.
May we not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.May we dwell in the great equanimity free from anger, aggression and exclusion.
Comments are closed