appears to be over

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The dirty secret of California, specifically Los Angeles, is that large amounts of its electricity comes from coal plants in other states. Now, the state is mandating that coal power be substantially cleaner. This will also open the door for increased use of renewable power as the price will become more competitive, as well as being clean.

And why, you may ask, does L.A. import energy from coal plants in other states? Because coal plants are illegal in California, that’s why. To make things even more ethically challenged, many of those coal plants are on Native American reservations, which certainly sounds like it could be environmental racism, eh?.

Transmitting the power for several hundred miles to L.A. results in a power loss of more than 10%. It would be hard to come up with a worse system for power generation than what L.A. has. Coal is a dirty, filthy, highly polluting way to produce energy, both in the huge acreages it despoils as well as in the pollutants it produces during power generation. If L.A. is to be taken seriously about getting green, they need to stop using coal completely.

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A woman close to Sue and me has survived breast cancer twice, even though she’s only in her 30’s. They thought they got it all. They didn’t. Now it’s metastasized and is on bones in several areas. She started radiation and some chemo today. She can no longer walk and is in a wheelchair. They hope the meds will enable her to walk again in a couple of months. Meanwhile, she’ll be going through many tests, radiation, and chemo.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Theologians call it “the question of evil, ” and it is of course unanswerable by logic. The answer comes from somewhere deep within. As does the courage to keep on hoping and trying, and not giving up.

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