As Earth Day approached, I invited the amazing Rei to co-found this new Daily Kos Group, and Rei kindly agreed. Earth Day, as you may have noted, was in April, and two months later this group has yet to be announced officially. Spring is my busiest time of year (full-time job plus evening teaching). So instead of Earth Day it’s happening on Solstice Week.
Technically, this is not our first posted diary; a month ago I republished Mokurai’s excellent reclist Renewable Friday EV diary, and immediately thereafter Mokurai became our first invited group member, and has posted another EV diary since then. If you want to join, feel free to message the group. Everyone will be at least a Blog Editor, and I’m contemplating making all of us Blog Admins. I’m a big fan of “flat” egalitarian org structures. We have too few of those in life.
Ok… now to a quick, but viscerally related (for me at least) meta passage.I’ve been a bit disheartened by the direction this site has taken in recent months.
The site’s motto for the past few years is News Community Action. It seems that for most of Spring, the “News” was mostly about how terrible/ridiculous *45 and other republicans are. Actually, the “News” front has been like that since 2017. “Community” has become mostly 2020 candidate fantasy league, as well as complaining about Mueller and impeachment. Action there has been precious little of.
These past few days, I have been encouraged by the flurry of action-oriented diaries on the border-concentration-camp atrocities. People are not just writing about what’s happening, they’re doing something about it. Diaries providing direct media contact links, or donation links to effective organizations, with a matching offered by the diarist. Or diaries announcing nationwide rallies, before I’ve even heard about them anywhere else. This is inspiring. This is helpful. This is News Community Action at its best. As Margaret Mead said, it is small groups of thoughtful and committed citizens who end up changing the world. Not large groups who sit around and use their powerful expensive platform mostly to joke/whine in public about *45, or to daydream about his replacement a year and a half in advance.
Is this current mobilization a sign of awakening, that we are going back to 2017’s #resist mindset that has been so effective, or even further? Or is it only a temporary exception? Time will tell.
But I’ve got some good news - we can also do this: organize and link people to action in a proactive manner, not only in response to emergencies, atrocities, and elections. We’re big and interconnected among us and within our own social circles. We are motivated and aware and committed. We can help accelerate many, already existing positive trends where the wind is actually in our back. Let us weaponize this potential, in a good way. This is true in particular with respect to global warming mitigation and environmental action.
Rei is a top expert on all things Tesla.I have been trying to do this here on one niche, writing fairly regularly, to encourage action on electric vehicles. Simple straightforward stuff: “Get an EV if you can; if you personally can’t, you can surely find friends who can — get them to get one. Here’s some actionable information”, and so forth.
After initial reader enthusiasm in 2017, my diaries (despite providing new information every time) have been seeing fewer and fewer eyeballs, and among those eyeballs there’s been quite a bit of pushback, for various (IMHO misguided) reasons. Maybe it’s just my bad writing or bad attitude. All the more reason to set up a group. But maybe it’s related to the site’s recent sense of fatigue and passivity that I mentioned above.
Either way, be forewarned: I do intend to use my space on this group to nudge more and more Kossacks out of your comfort zones, in order to accelerate EV adoption across the social networks spun by us. There’s a method to my madness: having driven an EV for 7 years and advocated about EVs for nearly as long, I am fairly certain that the main obstacle remaining between us and rapid market transition to EVs, is the average person’s comfort zone — and deliberate manipulation of that comfort zone by oil and climate-denial interests.
So yeah, I will continue poking and poking at that comfort zone. As well as providing news and useful information.
Rei is a kinder person than me, and a much deeper, more experienced EV expert than I will ever be. So s/he will use the group according to their style. Mokurai’s style is nicer than mine as well. Other editors welcome, see above.
But we’re not here to futz around. This group’s mission is to get more EVs on the road, displacing bad old ICE (internal combustion engine). And to help make it happen faster.
Will you join?
Action Resource Table DON’T BE FOOLED! THERE IS A GREEN CONSENSUS ON EV’SEV’S ARE READY FOR PRIME TIME
PLENTY OF AFFORDABLE EV’S OUT THERE. EV’S ARE SUPER-GOOD AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING...BUT WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT COBALT IN THE DRC.Here’s Sierra Club. Here’s Union of Concerned Scientists. Here’s Friends of the Earth. Here’s Greenpeace. Here’s the EU position. Here’s my own perspective. |
Maybe you are not in a position to get an EV that meets your needs yet. But you surely know someone who is. Find them and help them get it. |
Note the potentially bad news under YRWV (tl;dr, in very cold winters range can easily be 30-40% below average), and the good news under Don’t Panic I/II. See this diary for recommended EV model lists. |
New EV purchase deals. AND New EV lease deals (that’s how we got our Leaf!) Some used EV deals; for more see your local Craigslist, etc. |
Don’t nickel and dime your own personal footprint of buying an EV. Every transition has its costs. We’re playing the long game here. It is long, but urgent: we need YOU to join. |
| EVs consumed ~10% of mined cobalt in 2018. And one-third of EVs have no cobalt at all (e.g., Gen 1 Nissan Leafs, most e-buses). But we must do more to curb “artisanal mines” where child labor/slavery is widespread. DRC’s children deserve better. |
INSIDEEVS.COM
EV SALES BLOGTRANSPORT EVOLVEDELECTREKGREEN CAR CONGRESSFULLY CHARGEDGREEN CAR REPORTSEV NEWS DAILYMy favorite EV site. Used to be independent, now bought by a media company. Still the best. Home of the monthly US plug-in sales scorecard — which has become the standard source for US EV numbers. I write there occasionally ;) |
| Current/historical numbers from most global EV markets. The main resource for my annual Top 10 Countries in the EV Revolution series. |
| EV website and Youtube channel with weekly episodes, by tireless EV pioneer Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield. |
| Newer than insideevs, flashier, but very Tesla-dominated. |
| Often takes a deeper dive into technical and academic articles. |
| This Youtube channel has been created and hosted since 2010 by English actor Robert Llewellyn. Specializes in reviews of new EVs, from a pro-EV angle. |
| Pretty similar to insideevs, but not limited to EVs only. |
| Daily digest in plain-text format, plus a podcast if you prefer your news that way. |