Plug-In Solar!!!

climate

One of the most promising climate solutions that is in reach for LOTS and LOTS of people in the US is plug-in solar (aka balcony solar). Personally, I couldn’t be more excited about this particular way of reducing emissions, saving money, and democratizing energy!

Plug-in solar systems are small panels that plug-into a regular wall outlet, just like a toaster! You don’t need any fancy equipment or expertise to install them – they’re easy to attach to a balcony or deck railing, a fence, or even just on brackets in your yard. (Though I’m clumsy enough with DIY projects that, if I had a place to put one of these, I’d ask my neighbor Kate to lend me her hands for a few minutes to get the job done well.)

Unlike with large rooftop solar arrays, to get balcony solar, you don’t need thousands of dollars upfront, you don’t need to hire anyone, you don’t need to wait for and pay for a permit, you don’t need access to your roof, and you don’t even need to own your own home. Finally, clean energy generation for us renters of the world!

When the sun shines on them, these systems feed energy into your home to power things like your refrigerator, but without drawing power from the grid. So they reliably save you money and can pay for themselves in just a couple years (timing varies depending on how much sun you get and local electric rates – check out this tool to calculate for yourself).

These systems are safe. There are well over a million in Germany alone, with many more across Europe – and they’ve been in use for years without incident. If the power goes out, they automatically turn off, so they won’t hurt any electric workers doing repairs to get the grid back up. But they can be attached to a battery, which would come in handy during a longer outage!

9 US states currently have laws in place allowing for these systems – Utah was the first to pass that (bipartisan!) legislation (unanimously!) in 2025. In the other states, the only laws on the books regarding solar are old laws, with much bigger systems in mind, which is why so many folks are working so hard to get legal permission for balcony solar systems extended to more states – you can see where things stand in your state here. (Hurry up, Illinois, there are lots of balconies in Chicago that are perfectly suited for these small systems!)

If you’re interested in learning more or buying a plug-in solar kit, I recommend you check out Bright Saver. They are a 501c3 non-profit that educates the public, lobbies for state legislation allowing plug-in solar, and sells plug-in solar systems at cost (with no markup, no profit for themselves)! That makes them the most affordable systems I know of.

If you become a member for $29 (as I did), you can get a 180W system for less than $300. I decided that even though I don’t have a place to put a panel like this right now, I want to support them right now! And full disclosure, that’s a referral link in the previous paragraph, because I definitely want to see massive uptake of balcony solar, and I wouldn’t mind getting a Bright Saver t-shirt as a referral reward and conversation starter.

Because I’ve been talking to folks about balcony solar every chance I get for the last year and a half, and everyone I’ve spoken to gets it right away: plug-in solar is a game-changer. People want these things, and they want them now. Let’s help lots of folks learn about and get them!

cover of "Fire Weather," a book by John Vaillant with the title written in white on red

Book recommendation: Fire Weather

book recommendations, climate,

In the summer, for some reason, I tend to gravitate more towards books with lots of action. And Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World by John Vaillant, certainly does not disappoint in that department!

The book gives a precise, almost minute-by-minute, account of what happened in the Canadian city of Fort McMurray in May 2016, when an apocalyptic wildfire overran the city (which, not coincidentally, is the beating heart of the country’s oil industry and the biggest foreign supplier of oil to the US).

But the book also puts that event in context by detailing the economic and political history of the region, the science and history of wildfire, and the impacts that fire has and will increasingly have on human communities in the age of the climate crisis.

The writing is gripping and masterful. The underlying research is thorough and impressive. And the topic is crucially important, especially to everyone living in the North American West and the other parts of the world increasingly at risk for catastrophic fires.

Documentary recommendation: “Earth’s Greatest Enemy”

climate, justice, movies,

The US military burns more fossil fuels than any institution on the planet – more than over 100 countries combined. We can’t stabilize the climate without reducing military emissions, but they are currently exempt from all major international climate agreements. They aren’t tracked and publicized in a transparent way or talked about much either.

We’ve got to change that. One place to start learning about this important topic is with the new documentary, Earth’s Greatest Enemy. It illuminates many of the real-world consequences of vast US militarization for not just the climate, but for air quality, water contamination, human health, and the well-being of living things across the globe.

“Caregivers, Kids, and Carnist Structural Injustice” published

food, justice, philosophy, , , , ,

My co-author, Jeremy Fischer, and I just published our latest joint article, “Caregivers, Kids, and Carnist Structural Injustice,” which you can find in the Journal of Applied Philosophy as part of a special issue about food, families, and justice.

This is our second paper about carnist caregiving (that is, caregiving that trains and encourages kids to regularly eat animal products). In it, we argue that existing social structures make it unreasonably difficult or unthinkable for many caregivers to avoid carnist caregiving. We make the case that these caregivers are unjustly induced and/or pressured into carnist caregiving. So justice requires reforming the social structures that systematically prevent caregivers from providing plant-based caregiving for kids.

War Is a Racket Zine

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Here’s a zine I made about an absolute classic of an anti-war book, War Is a Racket, which I recommended in my last post.

Feel free to download, print (then cut and fold), read, and share/distribute this zine as you see fit. You might take some copies to pass out at an anti-war rally, or simply drop them in a neighborhood Little Free Library.

If you’re not familiar with how to fold and cut an 8-page mini zine, check out this video for help.

Book Recommendation: War Is a Racket

book recommendations

Possibly the best book about war I’ve ever read is the short, straightforward War Is a Racket, which you can read (or reread) for free at the link provided.

War Is a Racket was by written Major General Smedley Darlington Butler after twice receiving the Medal of Honor and retiring from the US Marine Corps. He knows whereof he writes.

War Is a Racket was first published in 1935, but sadly, there’s never been a moment since when it hasn’t been incredibly timely.

War Is a Racket – enough said.

Chicago Should Enforce Its Energy Benchmarking Ordinance

Chicago, climate,

Kudos to my climate friend, Charlotte, for getting an op-ed published in the local business press about Chicago leaving millions on the table by ignoring its energy benchmarking law.

Here’s the basic gist: in Chicago, about 70% of greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings. Since 2013, the Chicago Building Energy Use Benchmarking Ordinance has required buildings over 50,000 square feet to report their energy usage and emissions data to the city annually.

But the ordinance has never been enforced. That means the city is neglecting to collect millions of dollars in fines every year. And, of course, they’re also failing to collect high-quality data about our progress toward our climate goals and missing out on key opportunities to help folks learn about and implement about cost-saving and emission-cutting measures in big buildings.

So, a bunch of us have been advocating for the city to put money in the 2026 budget to hire an inspector in the Dept. of Environment who can enforce the ordinance. It’s common sense. Whether your main concern is a balanced city budget, averting the worst climate chaos, collecting high-quality data, or just plain old accountability and rule-following, getting the resources in place to enforce the benchmarking ordinance would be a win.

If you live in Chicago, you can use this template to contact your alderperson and tell them that you support enforcing the benchmarking ordinance.

Book Recommendation: Here Comes the Sun

book recommendations, climate,

As yearly rhythms bring us back to colder, shorter, darker days, I’m more inclined to curl up with a good book than ever. I do love fall, but I’m definitely feeling tired and yearning for some (literally and figuratively) warmer, brighter days.

If that sentiment resonates with you, may I recommend Bill McKibben’s Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization?

This latest book from a stalwart in the climate community is packed with high-quality reporting and research, presented for a very wide general audience. Best of all, the main message is good climate news: we don’t need long-shot, unproven, potentially dangerous technologies to get back on track to a stable climate.

What we need is political will and capital investments in the proven, scalable, clean solar (and wind) technologies that have already started transforming people’s lives for the better all around the globe. Solar power is the cheapest way to generate power, it’s a boon to human physical health, and it’s here to stay. The question is whether we’ll deploy enough of it fast enough to reduce emissions, stabilize the climate, and ensure a livable future for everyone.

For the first time in a long time, the experience of reading a climate-themed book was actually enjoyable for me – I powered my way through this one in two afternoons!

If you do read it, and want to talk about it, Climate Reality Chicago will be having a book club meeting where we discuss it on Tuesday, December 9, at 6:30 PM Central time. If you email me, I’ll be happy to share the link to the Zoom meeting with anyone who would like to join us!

Double Mega Climate Win in Illinois

Chicago, climate, justice

Just when I was starting to think that there was no such things as good news anymore … At the very end of the Illinois General Assembly’s veto session this week, two major wins for the climate (and for regular folks’ cost-of-living around here) passed.

The Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability (CRGA – pronounced “surge-uh”) Act is an omnibus bill that will lower utility bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through efficiency programs, stabilize volatile energy costs by implementing virtual power plant (VPP) programs and by adding 3GW battery storage to the electric grid (so we don’t have to buy energy from the most expensive fossil fuel peaker power plants when demand is high), improve grid reliability by reducing transmission bottlenecks, spur innovation by supporting thermal energy network (TENs) pilots, improve access to data about energy usage and emissions in buildings, and more.

The Northern Illinois Transit Authority (NITA) Act will not just avert a looming fiscal disaster for regional public transit, but it will make investments that are crucial for improving safety, reliability, and comfort for riders. But even folks who don’t use public transit will benefit from the resulting cleaner air, reduced climate pollution, economic and social stability that depends on workers and friends being able to get where they need to go, and reductions in traffic congestion and sprawl.

It took literally thousands of us to make this happen, and I want to personally say THANK YOU to everyone who made a phone call, sent an email, filled out a witness slip, posted on social media, lobbied, mailed a postcard, attended a meeting, talked to a neighbor/colleague/loved one about these efforts, did supporting research, designed a poster, tabled at an event, volunteered at a lobby day, canvassed, hung flyers, or anything else to help!

Our work as activists isn’t over – we still need to implement these new policies, and there’s a lot we can do to build on these successes to get closer to the clean, healthy, stable, affordable, equitable future that we all want and deserve. But for now, kudos to all my climate friends!!

Book Recommendation: Ruin Their Crops on the Ground

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Whether you are a seasoned food justice activist, legal scholar, or just anyone interested in dipping their toes into neglected parts of American history, Andrea Freeman’s Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch is likely to teach you a bunch of things you didn’t already know about food-related policies and their use as tools of control.

The book is written in a really accessible style, with lots of interesting anecdotes from members of impacted communities in their own words. The scholarship uniting those tidbits with the large-scale social/political patterns in which individual lives unfold is pretty impressive.

I was initially drawn to Freeman’s work on milk/dairy, but I’m glad I didn’t stop there – she provided lots of insight about Native foodways, assimilationist pressures on various immigrant communities, and the ways in which slavery and its aftermath were/are intertwined with food policies, among other things!