Cut American emission in half Overview: EIAOverview of sources: EIA Where we need to do the most work: 50% of Northeast Ohio’s emissions come from electricity production. Geothermal plants could reduce this significantly. gcbl Wyoming has the most emissions per capita. 57% of their energy is for housing. Geothermal heating could significantly reduce emissions in …
Author Archives: stidmatt
City beautiful
I really enjoy looking at how good cities are designed as opposed to bad cities, and have found a list of several policies which I believe would be good to improve the livability of cities around the world. These policies should be applicable to cities of all sizes in most situations. Free Transit which serves …
Venezuela February 2019
There is a lot of talk about Venezuela currently with people making many erroneous claims. This is meant to be a relatively in depth study of Venezuela’s economy, political structure, and history. History Pre-History Venezuela has been inhabited by people for thousands of years. Colonialization Venezuela was conquered by the Spaniards in the 16th century, …
Green New Deal
Representative Ocasio-Cortez presented her green new deal plan this week, and it s a non binding resolution. This is useful to give a signal which representatives are going for support a more es expansive policy, but it still leaves out details on how to do it. Wired did a fantastic job outlining the policy. She …
Why climate policy is stalled in Olympia
There has been a lot of talk over the last couple years about carbon taxation due to the work that I did along with friends of mine at Carbon Washington for Initiative 732, the first and most progressive carbon tax proposal in American history. We based it off of the highly successful carbon tax which …
Today’s musings
Today’s ban on transgender folk serving in the military is disheartening, and is going to make a lot of people upset. On top of that I witnessed a Lummi woman being poorly represented by her public defender in court today, and wish I had known where to refer her to get proper legal assistance. I …
Political Platform
I have written a lot on this blog over the last 9 years, and I have written about a lot of different topics. Here is a summary of my political values in a bullet format. Local elections (Bellingham and Whatcom County) Investigate the ability to have fare-free buses Have a local carbon tax, like in …
US border insecurity
Statistics: The American-Canadian border is the longest shared border in the world. The American-Canadian border is the only shared border between highly developed (GDP per capita > $20,000) in North America. there are 30 such borders in the world, 3 are with Saudi Arabia and its rich gulf neighbors, and the other 26 are in …
Status of the 2020 election, Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019
The 2020 election is ramping up right now, and the candidates are lining up, and there are multiple fantastic candidates right now. The Republican Nomination will almost certainly go to Trump in 2020, but on the Democratic side of the aisle we have several really amazing people running, or who are almost certainly going to …
Continue reading “Status of the 2020 election, Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019”
Free transit for King County now!
Sawant calls for free transit during Viadoom — could it work? We all know that once people get used to not paying $104 a month for a monthly pass and then more for peak hours that it will be very difficult to make it extremely expensive again. On top of that, the easiest way to …