I did not know until this very moment how deeply I wanted to build a beaver society 😂

Personally, I rather prefer Maya Angelou’s take-

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”

Travel is not some magical, all-powerful cure for the ills of the traveller or the world. And when done without care, without awareness, it can do a great deal of harm. But it is also a powerful tool to foster connection, which in turn breeds understanding. And that is dearly needed in our world.

TX lawmakers are going to doom the state, again. “make no mistake, the 9th largest economy in the world runs on natural gas” - more like the largest laughing stock in the world blacked out the whole state on natural gas…

Wind was hit far less by the 2021 freeze, and solar was hardly impacted at all. Meanwhile, they continue to advocate for overreliance on under equipped natural gas facilities that completely failed to maintain functionality - shutting down TX for days, and killing 200 people as a result. Solar is the best option they have to prevent it from happening again, short of a total power grid overhaul, but instead of celebrating growth there, they decide to fearmonger about scary renewables.

Personally, as it currently stands, no. But it could potentially be, given better waste treatment practices and far better regulation and consistently enforced safety requirements.

It’s far greener than fossil fuels, when run carefully at least. But between the persistent issues with waste reclamation and harmful leakage, and the massive amount of damage that can be done when mistakes are made or safety is overlooked, I don’t think it qualifies as “green”.

So from a practical standpoint, I still think new resources are better spent developing infrastructure for solar, wind, geothermal, etc. But as we are phasing out other power sources, pretty much everything else should go before we start to decommission nuclear.

Always nice to see Braiding Sweet grass referenced. And to see Anmism treated with respect. It pairs so beautifully with a solarpunk mentality - each enhances the other.