Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

Nearly every analysis of energy policy in California, to the extent it delves into the numbers, tends to focus on one variable, CO2. But if you’re just trying to figure out how much energy we use today, where it’s coming from, and where we intend to source the clean energy of tomorrow, data on CO2 emissions is unhelpful. To understand those tradeoffs, you have to talk about units of energy, namely, TBTUs and gigawatt-hours.

So here, using those variables, and in as few words as possible, is a breakdown of where we are, and where CARB intends to take us within just two decades.

Californians today consume roughly 7,000 TBTUs of raw energy inputs per year. That acronym stands for “trillion British Thermal Units.” This variable is often used when measuring and reporting large amounts of energy such as produced or consumed by states or nations. For example, the entire world uses around 600,000 TBTUs per year; the United States uses not quite 100,000 TBTUs per year. That’s how much energy goes into the system. How much of that energy actually turns into useful services?

We are still not very good at converting raw energy inputs into so-called energy services. Estimated end-user consumption of energy in the form of horsepower, heating and cooling, pumping, communicating and computing, etc., is only 2,500 TBTUs per year in California. Approximately one-third of the energy we combust or transmit or electrify is realized by end users, and the other two-thirds ends up as friction, exhaust, and other so-called “parasitic losses.” That’s a lot of wasted fuel.

As we have just finished observing the 75th anniversary of NATO at the recent Washington summit, it is a good time to consider how that alliance could be renewed.

NATO must be considered the most effective alliance in the history of the world. No other multinational alliance involving a potential responsibility to go to war has endured so long, and none has been more successful. The purpose of NATO was to contain the Soviet Union; it did so successfully for 42 years until the USSR disintegrated without a shot being fired. Since the end of the Cold War, the alliance needs and purposes of the West have evolved considerably, and while there has been some flippant talk in some circles of disposing of NATO, a much better idea is to renovate and partly repurpose it.

The greatest strategic needs of the Western world now are to assist countries that may be under aggressive and unacceptable threats from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Once the adequate levels of resistance against aggression or merely pressure from those countries are in place, and even as they are being established, the West will wish to bring the war in Ukraine to a satisfactory end and, with it, ensure that Russian attempts to unwind the Western victory in the Cold War and reintegrate into Russia by coercion republics, apart from Ukraine, that shall have departed from it, are adequately deterred by reinforcement. This will ensure that those republics can defend themselves and deter aggression against them of the kind that Russia inflicted upon Ukraine.

When these goals have been accomplished, it will be time to address separately the different countries that at the moment have arrayed themselves aggressively against the Western interest. The attempt of the People’s Republic of China to convert international waters adjacent to it into Chinese territorial waters and to intimidate the Philippines and other countries, as well as to strangle Taiwanese independence coercively, must be resisted. The attempt of the Russians to destabilize former Soviet republics and reassert themselves in what Russia calls “the near-abroad” must be met with different levels of resistance depending upon the country involved, but Russia must not be allowed to exercise an influence upon any of them that exceeds what may be reasonably determined to be its historic rights. This relates to Ukraine, the Baltic countries, and the Caucasus countries. Belarus is already a satellite, and the West is not concerned with the Muslim republics.

En el momento de la muerte de Herman Hesse en 1962, sus obras eran prácticamente desconocidas en los Estados Unidos a pesar de que había obtenido el Premio Nobel en 1946. El obituario publicado por el New York Times afirmaba que sus obras eran "inaccesibles" al lector norteamericano. La obra del autor alemán-suizo se popularizó gracias a que su mensaje resonó en el movimiento espiritual de la década de los 60s. En poco tiempo, Hesse se convirtió en el autor europeo más leído y traducido del siglo XX.

Demian y El lobo estepario trazaron una especie de borrador del subconsciente que conectaban su existencialismo con el mundo simbólico de Carl Jung. Su autor nos condujo por historias como Siddhartha y Narciso y Goldmundo que han ayudado a generaciones de jóvenes y adultos a encontrar, o por lo menos intentar descifrar, el misterio de la vida.

En su libro, Herman Hesse, el autor y su obra (1984) Alexander Suárez, concluye que la obra del escritor es iniciática: primero, porque pertenece a la literatura de formación. Sus protagonistas coinciden en ese momento de la existencia en que acceden a la edad adulta. Segundo, porque sus temas nos sumergen en una trama de esoterismo oriental, introduciéndonos en la mejor literatura hermética que seduce la imaginación de muchos lectores juveniles.

In democracy, it is vital to listen to each other, including our political and ideological adversaries, before making an electoral decision and, in this pre-electoral period in the United States, it is vital to dedicate at least one hour a day watching and listening at each of the Party Conventions to what some of the personalities have to say conveying their ideas, projects, and aspirations. 

In this way, we will have heard the arguments of various personalities from both parties, including the presidential candidates, in order to compare the sincerity, depth, and purposes that will influence the march of events in the new 4-year period starting next January.

The Republican Convention is already part of history and, unfortunately, the vast majority of the supporters of the Democratic Party preferred to marginalize from their daily lives what their opponents have to say. On the contrary, I trust that many Republican voters would dedicate some time listening to Democratic proposals and arguments at the next Convention of that party. Hopefully, the Independents will do the same. Thus, they all would be able to calibrate what their adversaries propose so that they could properly defend their preferences.