Warning: the unexpected path to environmental insight opinions here are half-baked. More research is in order, and RantWoman may or may not be able to dial the sarcasm level back to less plainspoken or better quakerese levels.
RantWoman's two most consistent messages in Meeting for Worship are about the importance of praying across differences and about help coming from surprising directions.
Consider RantWoman's leading from time to time to visit Rep. Lauren Boebert's (R CO-3) Twitter Feed.
RantWoman permits herself to visit Ms. Boebert's worldview both out of morbid fascination and because "them's mah peeps." Rep. Boebert represents the part of CO where the RantFamily long ago lived and where there are still many kinfolk from RantMom's side of the family..
Aside from the tweet about pronoun referenced above, two other Tweets have tumbled provocatively out of the stew of Trumpian and :they're coming for our guns" tropes.
Tonight's Tweet in reference to this Reuters item Biden Looks overseas for minerals needed for electric car batteries Ms. Boebert quote Tweeted the article link with a common accusing President Biden of not caring about children in the Congo having to mine minerals with their bare hands when he could be creating good jobs in the US.
RantWoman always appreciates it when politicians go for easy low-hanging fruit--like defending the human rights of people ensnared in child labor. Actually reading the article and the Reuters framing of Biden administration priorities kind of made RantWoman go "ewwwww" and not only because there was no mention of child labor. The part about do all the polluting in Africa and all the value added work in the US does not enchant RantWoman. But then RantWoman is already an electric car skeptic. Electric cars are heavier than other cars and therefore more likely to tear up roads and more dangerous for any pedestrian they hit. Can't we just have fewer cars, more transit, better bike and ped infra?
Yes, yes buses also tear up the roads and we do not get instantly to rebuild every city in the US to be a 15-minute city, the kind of place where one can get everything one needs within a 15-minute walk. But we still need better bike and ped infra. And RantWoman fears all this would be lost on Rep. Boebert anyway.
But RantWoman digresses from the life and extraordinary career of Rep. Boebert. Maybe if Ms. Boebert could find someone to regularly brief her about that science stuff, she might be able to work on environmentally friendly ways to use resource deposits in her own district. Maybe?
The other recent tweet that sticks in RantWoman's mind is about President Biden waiving sanctions against Russia and signing off on something to do with credits to help build Nordstream 2, a pipeline from Russia to Western Europe. The pipeline is routed to bypass the ability of Ukraine to collect transit fees for oil passing over its territory. Waiving sections and allowing pipeline construction to proceed is meant to reassure NATO countries that, unlike the previous occupant of the White House, the Biden administration cares about the US relationship with western Europe. Rep. Boebert is sore about approving things to do with Nordstream 2 instead of support all the jobs supposedly connected with the Keystone Xl pipeline.
Rep. Boebert's comment makes RantWoman scratch her head. Actually, if people in North America are supposed to leave the hydrocarbons in the ground, shouldn't that also apply to Russia?
RantWoman recognizes that this suggestion is from WAY out in left field. RantWoman remembers one academic conference in 1990 or 1991 when the Soviet Union was busy falling apart and the geopolitics of pipeline routings were topic number 1 on several panels. In the murky world of post-Soviet nations, the US is trying simultaneously to nurture democracy or at least foster accountable civil society, to fight corruption, and to express displeasure about hacking US elections and military incursions on the border with Ukraine or Belarusian dictator forcing a commercial flight to land in order to kidnap a journalist.
With apologies for blurring issues related to several countries, RantWoman is just not sure waiving sanctions against Russia to build a pipeline that will allow more greenhouse gases to be spewed into the air is a great idea. RantWoman guesses she is supposed to thank Rep. Boebert for making her think about all this. RantWoman also finds herself sincerely hoping Rep. Boebert has someone competent on her staff knowledgeable enough to help sort out all the different angles.
And that is even before the US gets to figure out who from Russia hacked the software running the colonial pipeline!
PS. What do you know! There is a Petition calling for a Moratorium on NS2 signed by many people from different Eastern European countries, two former US ambassadors to Russia and a scholar RantWoman was in grad school with.So now, RantWoman not only wonders what Rep. Boebert is thinking; RantWoman also wonders what President Biden is thinking.
And one more Topical item from the Financial Times
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