Use electricity, warm the planet

Heat causes global warming, not carbon dioxide (CO2). Everybody knows that now. It is obvious when you think about it.

About 21.9% of America’s electricity comes from 224 coal-burning power plants in the U.S. Collectively, they burn over 114 million (114,000,000) pounds of coal every hour (yes, every hour!) expelling about 9.6 quadrillion (9,600,000,000,000,000) BTUs into the atmosphere every year. It has been like that and more for many decades.

That is just the heat from burning massive amounts of coal to generate electricity. In fact, power plants burning other fossil fuels produce about twice as much heat to generate the electricity we use to keep warm in winter with electric heaters, cool in summer with powerful air-conditioners, and to generate the electricity to run America’s businesses and industries.

All that heat of combustion from fossil fuels goes into the atmosphere, warming it, warming planet Earth, creating global warming, even changing the micro-climates in some regions, such as the Greater Los Angeles Heat-Archipelago, which itself is related to the on going mega-drought in the western states. (Letter, Sept. 9, ‘Whence the anthropocentric mega-drought?’).

All of us are warming the planet everyday, in part with the heat from generating electricity. Everybody knows that now. It is obvious, if you think about it.

— EJ Donmoyer, Paradise

VE controversy not about land-use planning

I visited Farmer Market, and Bill Monroe was nice enough to spend some time with me. He was so impressed he wrote about it.

I like to figure out where people are coming from when they take up a cause, so I visited the Democratic Party table manned by Bill to talk about it.

I wish facts mattered, but they don’t. If they did, we could wonder why Bill believes the Green Line was a mistake. Building housing in East Chico lava beds is bad, but pulling out crops to build housing is A-OK! Houses built on ag land don’t use water, contribute to greenhouse gas, or generate traffic.

Another tall dude collecting signatures and living in Stilson Canon said he was against any growth whatsoever. Living along Chico Creek in the easternmost, wealthiest development in Chico is fine for him, but for anyone else, the door should be firmly shut behind him.

But facts or consistency are not the issues, blaming the “right” people, true or not, is the ticket. That is the value of politics, not of science, evidence, or law.

The people of Chico are being asked to abandon the defined, systematic, and orderly rules for long-range land use planning in favor of mob politics. Mob rule and the rule of law are not compatible. Any old western movie scene where the Sheriff stands between an accused and mob torches reminds us which one is right.

— Rob Berry, Chico

When the shelter became the Ant Farm

Cop: Get up. You can’t camp here.

Homeless man: I’ve been here, like, 10 minutes.

C: Eyes everywhere now. I’ll take you to the Ant Farm.

H: Ant Farm?

C: The shelter. You “aint” got a home, so you’re an “Ain’t.” Ain’t became Ant. The shelter became the Ant Farm.

H: Sleeping outside’s criminal?

C: Is here. Man gotta sleep, man got no property, man gotta sleep in public. But the property owners made it criminal. Then Martin v Boise. Maybe the lawyers should’a fought for freedom to sleep in public spaces. It’s everybody’s planet. Instead they fought for freedom OR a shelter bed. So property owners bought your freedom for the price of a bed in a warehouse. Maybe even the lawyers didn’t want tarps and tents across from their homes. I don’t know.

H: Campgrounds?

C: Nope. Easier to close ‘em than to clean ‘em. But there’s always room at the Ant Farm: “Three-thousand beds, no waiting.” Where’d you come from?

H: Redding.

C: Let’s see I.D. (Homeless hands over I.D.) “Provost, Utah.” Third one this month. We’ve got funds for a bus ticket home, just don’t come back.

H: (laughing) That’s what Provost said when they gave me the ticket to Redding.

C: Get in. I’ll take you to the Ant Farm.

H: Isn’t Oroville that way? I’ll head there instead.

C: Sure. They call their shelter The Bug House.

H: Okay. Your shelter then.

C: The Ant Farm kid. It’s called the Ant Farm.

— Peter Bridge, Glenn