Your clean energy holiday guide
Hey friends, it’s holiday time. I noticed this recently while sunning myself in the meadows by the Silver Lake Reservoir. The sun dipped below the mountainous horizon around 4:30, then the ambient temperature plummeted through the 60s with terrifying velocity, and suddenly I had to put a shirt on.
In an epoch in which temporal differentiation is hard to come by, I find 2020 holidays to be of the utmost psychic importance. So much so that I will endeavor something that strains the limits of credulity: a clean energy themed holiday gift guide. I don’t know if it can be done, but I’m going to start writing and see how far I get.
I should say that, though influence I may have, I am not one of those influencers who gets paid to rep a particular product. Any recommendations here come purely from my personal enjoyment of the item, and not through any elaborate kickback scheme. I’m a writer, not an Ohio utility regulator.
Also, thanks to all my readers who responded with Movies on HBO Max That Are Actually Good. You made my experience of the undifferentiated passage of time just a little bit brighter. Lastly, apologies for shipping this Wednesday instead of the usual Tuesday—the hot toddies got the best of me. And I’m taking next week off, so let’s see if absence makes the inbox grow fonder.
Can you make a clean energy gift guide?
At first glance, this appears an impossible challenge. “Got a spare $15K lying around and a child who owns a house? Give the gift of solar…”
But the more I drank from my scratch eggnog (50/50 bourbon/brandy, but I’m still tinkering with it) and stared at the twinkly lights on my Christmas tree, the more doable this seemed. After all, had I not spent several months recommending books, board games, cocktails and experiences at the end of my newsletter? Were those not the segments of the newsletter that consistently drew the most reader feedback, no matter how much effort I put into the themes and issues in the main body?
As William Mulholland said upon completing the L.A. Aqueduct, “There it is. Take it.”
Wash your home in the warm glow of energy efficient bulbs and pure clean energy knowledge.
Gadgets and doodads
A mobile battery pack. Grid storage is sometimes referred to as “the holy grail” of a clean grid by people who aren’t accustomed to getting what they want. But you can obtain energy storage for yourself, and it will keep your phone charged up when you’re on the go and can’t squat by an outlet for a few hours. I have a compact and effective one from Anker, and I actually did get a set for my family one Christmas.
Solar+battery combo. This is more upscale, but if you’re going off grid for a while, or just live in California and therefore lose power regularly, a portable solar panel with some built-in batteries can really elevate your experience.
LED Christmas lights. They’re cheap, warm, AND energy efficient!
Board games
Scythe. As covered in an earlier episode of Bright Ideas, this game pits contestants against each other in cultivating the war-torn lands of Eastern Europe in a diesel-punk alternative history, circa WWI. It’s energy related because you have to harvest oil from the tundra to power your mechanical military contraptions. And for those of you quarantining with non-gamers, it has an elegantly designed single player mode that animates a faction to oppose you.
Terraforming Mars. The point of this game is to do climate change, but on Mars, where it makes things nicer for us humanfolk. The energy-inclined will delight in building power plants to electrify Martian colonization efforts, and to release energy into the atmosphere and gradually heat it up.
Books
The Parable of the Sower. Octavia Butler’s prescient novel from 1993 envisions the perils of a climate-changed Southern California in the 2020s. But it’s also a vision of a post-fossil fuel society, because the gasoline supply chain has dried up, forcing people to get around on their own steam. It works both as a thrilling page-turner and as a meditation on how to build new forms of community in a chaotic, collapsing world.
Superpower. WSJ report Russell Gold guides the reader through an ambitious attempt to build a multistate superhighway for clean energy. But developers of new transmission lines must navigate a thicket of dense and varied opposition. This is fast paced, high stakes business journalism on a topic that will be crucial to the long term growth of clean energy in America.
COVID survival gear
Tiki drinks. Give the gift of a tropical escape from whatever ice-whipped environs your friends and family are holed up in. Start with Easy Tiki, by cocktail reporter Chloe Frechette. But tiki pantry items make good gifts, because they’re not things most people would think to get for themselves. Like orgeat, the almond syrup that lends its silky nuttiness to many a tiki classic. Or passionfruit syrup. Who just has that lying around? Specialty liquor stores do, these days, and so can your loved ones.
While we’re on the topic of drinks, I heartily recommend the book Drinks, by Canadian cocktail expert Adam McDowell. He’s got a viewpoint and he’s not afraid to share it (I especially appreciate the chapter entitled “Vodka is over”). But he manages to give highly effective guidance on whipping up some pretty fancy stuff without any pretension. There’s even a section for “Ad-hoctails, for those times when you’re truly desperate,” which instructs us in the art of approximating a White Russian with vodka and a lunch-box carton of chocolate milk.
The greatest gift of all
That would be the fact-based optimism that can arise from reading Bright Ideas. The thing is, Bright Ideas is free, so it’s also the easiest gift to give. Simply guide your friends and loved ones to the Subscribe button, and their days will be merry and bright. I’ll help you locate it, just a little further…
There are some newsletters on related topics that you actually can give someone as a gift, though.
Last year, Emily Atkins quit her job at the New Republic and launched Heated, an independent reporting outfit dedicated to accountability journalism around climate change. Even reputable outlets regularly take money from major fossil fuel companies for ads or “sponsored content;” Emily is proving that reader supported journalism can make a sustainable alternative. I find that super inspiring. Plus, she’s temporarily offering 25% off annual subscriptions, so you can gift a year’s worth of journalism for $56.
Speaking of the reputable-publications-to-Substack pipeline, climate and energy reporter David Roberts just left his paying gig at Vox to write directly for subscribers on this platform. He’s calling it Volts, and it’s sure to include wonky deep dives aplenty into the worlds of energy and politics. It’s free now, but you can gift annual subscriptions for $60.
Got any energy-related gift ideas I missed? Send me your picks! And your favorite hot drinks! We’ll get through this year together, it’s just a few more weeks!
