Steve and Judy's Travels!

Judy went outside with the dogs and discovered a grasshopper on the deck.  I went out to take a picture,

But before I could get a good shot, the grasshopper flew in the open door to our living room.  We didn’t really want it in the house, but that gave me a better chance for a picture anyway.

I think it’s called an “obscure bird grasshopper”.  Bird grasshoppers tend to fly well and even land in trees if disturbed.  After the kodak moment in the house, we were able to liberate it back into the night.  It flew off in the dark and landed in a tree across the road.

How do we fund roads and bridges?  Gasoline taxes.  Every vehicle that uses roads and bridges pays its share.  Except electric vehicles.  They don’t pay any gasoline taxes.  Uh oh.  Electric vehicles are a necessary component of our response to climate change, but how are they going to pay their share for road use? 

There is no national solution.  It’s a state-by-state issue.  I checked with Colorado.  They have added an annual tax on top of their registration renewal each year for electric cars, for the average amount other cars pay in fuel tax.  Not a perfect solution, people that use their electric cars less than average end up paying more than their share, but Colorado has done something and that’s better than nothing.

Texas has instituted an initial $400 fee for registering an electric vehicle, and an annual $200 fee after that, which is actually punitive because it’s more than the average gasoline powered car pays in fuel taxes.  Whatever.  Even if the system for each state isn’t perfect, at least it’s something.    Some states haven’t done anything at all.  They need to step up.  We don’t want the quality of our infrastructure to suffer because we’ve improved our methods of getting out and about.

You can put guards on utility poles to discourage birds from roosting or nesting there.

But nesting ospreys are not easily dissuaded.

It got a little big while we were gone.  Now we can just get around it to get to the thicket.  There are still plenty of flowers left for the hummingbirds.  I could have trimmed it more, but I didn’t have any more room for the clippings in the compost tumblers.

In this heat and humidity, it won’t take long for this batch to cook down.  Then I can smooth out something else.  Maybe the orange Esperanza.

Rooftop solar collectors seem like such a good idea.  They generate the electricity right where it’s going to be used.  They don’t require any additional land use.  They’re disbursed, so they’re resilient to natural disasters and local weather events.  And if they generate more than the house needs, they can feed the excess back into the grid.

What I wonder about though is that there seems to be a limit for how many to put on a roof, that limit being meant to cover the average energy use of each house installing them.  I recognize that not everyone can afford the up-front costs to install solar panels, but my thought is that if we have such a wonderful way to generate electricity, why would we want to limit it?  For those that can afford it, encourage them to install as many panels as they want.  Let them feed excess power back into the grid so the utility company doesn’t have to generate as much with oil and gas.  If the energy grid can’t support the privately generated amount, update the grid.  If the utility fee structure can’t support privately generated electricity, update the fee structure.  Incentivize private citizens to generate more than they need and take advantage of it instead of building more power plants!