Will Liberals laud Walmart?

A year ago--in September 2013--I blogged about Walmart being way ahead of other businesses on at least one aspect that liberals love to talk about.  Yet, this news junkie hasn't read anything to that effect from the usual suspects.

So, what should liberals be applauding Walmart for?

Its adoption of green energy--solar power.

In that September 2013 post, I noted:

Among the corporations going solar, the biggest one is Wal-Mart.  Yes, that same Wal-Mart that the solar-loving left typically loves to hate.  Unlike the left that pushes expensive solar for reasons other than a dollar bottom-line, Wal-Mart does that precisely because it sees money in it

Now this update from Slate, which makes the story even more exciting:

105 MW.  That is huge.

the company now has more solar capacity than 35 states and the District of Columbia. 

How was the situation in that post a year ago?

From 65 MW to 105 MW!

You think that the Walmart-bashing, Apple-loving, liberals will cheer this?  Will faculty, who even organize their students to boycott Walmart, bring this to their students' attention?

Imagine if left-leaning environmentalist faculty get their students to write to Walmart appreciating the leadership the corporation has shown in this important issue of greener energy sources!

Of course, none of that will happen.  For one, we typically see only what we want to see, and we tend to dismiss evidence that does not resonate with our ideological perspectives.  Which means that chances are high that the liberal faculty who rail against Walmart and fossil fuels might not even know that Walmart is way ahead of them.  For another, even if they are aware of it, chances are pretty good that they won't give the devil its due.

As Slate notes:

Walmart's notoriously ruthless cost-cutting might actually burnish solar power's reputation as an economically viable choice rather than some goofy liberal fixation. The company wouldn't be building out an entire state's worth of capacity if solar didn't make fundamental financial sense. Corporate America doesn't get any more hardheaded—or mainstream—than Walmart, and that's great news for green energy.

Indeed.  Solar energy might really catch on if people and businesses found out that even the ruthlessly cost-cutting Walmart is going solar in a big way.  As they say, follow the money ;)

The sea floor was "a graveyeard." Revisiting the BP spill

We are fast zooming in on the first anniversary of the catastrophic explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico,  The incident began on April 20th of last year, and the final sealing of the leak itself was completed on September 19th.  I haven't forgotten how transfixed and depressed I was while obsessively following that story.

Claudia Dreifus, whose reputation as the NY Times science writer has now been eclipsed by the fame and notoriety as a result of the book on higher education that she co-authored with Andrew Hacker, has a neat interview with Dr. Samatha Joyce, whose team of scientists were the first independent trained and qualified observers to investigate and report on the crisis.  In response to Dreifus' question comparing Japan's recent and ongoing nuclear crisis with the BPO spill, Joyce replies:

No one can prevent earthquakes. That’s up to Mother Nature.
However, building nuclear power plants on an island adjacent to an active tectonic zone is inherently dangerous. Likewise, deepwater drilling into gas-overcharged sediments is dangerous. For me, both of these disasters are a very loud plea for green energy.

Yes, indeed.  Every major energy incident over the last forty years ought to have sharpened our attention on how much we are tied down by fossil fuels and nuclear power, and yet here we are in 2011 with carbon and nukes even more dominant in our lives than ever before.  

I wonder why.  Is it because technology to tap into other energy sources has not developed at the rate at which we think it ought to have?  Were/are we naive to think that somehow green energy technology will arise out of whatever levels of science and technology we now have?  If we were to use a comparison, and suppose that an iPhone symbolizes the level of green energy technology.  How much ever something like an iPhone might have fascinated people fifty years ago, well, it would have been impossible at that time given the scientific understanding we had then and the technological capabilities, right?  So, along that line of thinking, how far are we from an "iPhone green energy" technology?

For sure, I would hate for us to continue to burn, smoke, spill, and radiate for another fifty years.