In the Duck Curve video I explained how this very solvable problem is being used by utilities to slow the growth of renewables and batteries on homes and businesses.

And through this example of how a dam can be a mind bogglingly huge battery, once you learn about the innovation of pumped hydro, I show that the utilities could be doing more to access more renewables, solve issues around intermittence and lower costs.

This and other innovations are proving why your Arizona utility and Corporation Commission would rather raise rates on you, and saddle all of us with higher bills for 30 years than support clean energy plus batteries and energy efficiency

In short, Arizona utilities are raising your rates and polluting our skies with new methane gas plants because they don’t want to give up profit –you know, “public service.”

I tell you how in this video.

As I’ve been driving around the west, I’ve still been paying my electric bill back in Phoenix. The folks watching my house are doing a great job conserving energy, but we’ve all been shocked by just how insanely fast the power bill has increased over last year.

This terrible dynamic is even worse for people less privileged than myself. In some parts of the state, people are literally paying the utilities to install more methane gas power plants and, in turn to be provided dirtier air for them and their children to breath.

Once you understand how the key decisions from our utilities are making the air dirtier and saddling us with volatile methane gas prices for the next 30 years, you can’t unsee it.

Watch at your own risk.

When utilities want to tell you how bad renewables are –particularly solar and batteries on homes an businesses– they turn to the duck curve.

The duck curve demonstrates how demand on the energy grid drops off significantly during the middle of the day, due to all the solar panels on houses, and then rockets back up in the evening as soon as the sun begins to set and people come home to turn on all of their heating, cooling and energy hog appliances.

The system, they say, can’t handle the variability.

You still with me? Or did I lose you at “energy grid?”

Well, stick with me because in this video I describe the real reason that utilities don’t want you to have more solar on your home. Spoiler alert, its money. But there is more to it than that, and there is something we can do about it.

The core of the problem is based in a century-old design feature of public utility commissions that regulate monopolies. In Arizona we have the Arizona Corporation Commission, or the ACC, which does this. In our case, our ACC is dominated by people who roll over for the utilities when it comes to clean energy, batteries and energy efficiency. 

Those commissioners and utilities try to scare people with untrue tales of “reduced reliability” due to renewables on your home. Balderdash!

This video is designed to be an intro to the concepts of the duck curve and why renewables + batteries + energy efficiency can solve the problem –and why utilities don’t want that to happen.

We’ve known for some time that this “trifecta of clean energy” is the solution to the problem of the duck curve, but entrenched interests continue to push back. Cries that California has higher energy costs due to renewables are either misinformed or a lie, and you will see why in the video.

Plus, there is more of Ellie.

I know. You are here for Ellie. I’m cool with that.

Thanks, one last time, to our friends at the Cromford Report. Their in-depth analysis over the last 18 years has given me an edge as a realtor. I hope you’ve gained from them as well.

To highlight…

Here are the basics – the ARMLS numbers for September 1, 2024 compared with September 1, 2023 for all areas & types:

• Active Listings (excluding UCB & CCBS): 18,430 versus 11,969 last year – up 54% – and up 5.5% from 17,474 last month
• Active Listings (including UCB & CCBS): 21,047 versus 14,476 last year – up 45% – and up 3.6% compared with 20,320 last month
• Pending Listings: 4,041 versus 4,604 last year – down 12.2% – and down 9.0% from 4,441 last month
• Under Contract Listings (including Pending, CCBS & UCB): 6,658 versus 7,111 last year – down 6.4% – and down 8.6% from 7,287 last month
• Monthly Sales: 5,683 versus 6,267 last year – down 9.3% – and down 8.5% from 6,208 last month
• Monthly Average Sales Price per Sq. Ft.: $290.60 versus $282.14 last year – up 3.0% – and up 1.3% from $286.74 last month
• Monthly Median Sales Price: $440,000 versus $435,000 last year – up 1.1% – but unchanged from $440,000 last month

The re-sale market continues in the doldrums and has reacted very little so far to the lower mortgage rates that have emerged since July. Under contract listings went down a further 8.6% during August rather than staging a recovery. Demand appears to be stronger in the new home sector but that has a relatively modest effect on the MLS statistics because the bulk of new homes are not listed on the MLS. However one look at the stock price charts for the major homebuilders will tell you they are in a good mood.

Re-sale supply usually rises between August and November, but this year the trend got off to an early start and we have 5.5% more listings active and without a contract than a month ago. With demand weak and supply rising, sellers are not getting the break they were probably hoping for. Concession to buyers and price cuts continue to be common and widespread.

The Cromford® Market Index slipped below 100 at the end of July and spent all of August hovering between 99 and 100. We rarely see such little movement in the CMI. The contract ratio is somewhat less stable, falling from 42 to 36 and this represents a further cooling in the market. It seems many potential buyers want to see rates drop below 6% before they make a move.

The only bright spot for sellers is that pricing improved during August with the average $/SF rising 1.3% from July. However the median sales price was unchanged and is up only 1.1% from a year ago. This is less than inflation so in real terms homes are cheaper than this time last year. This statement does not apply to the very top end of the market which has significantly risen in price over the last 12 months. In fact we saw a new record of almost $32.4 million paid for a new home just completed in Paradise Valley’s Mummy Mountain Estates. Unusually, this was a spec home and it sold for more than $2,000 per sq. ft. The market over $5 million is not seeing the same conditions as the regular market.

In August I found myself in Bozeman and Missoula. Only a couple weeks after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.

Coming on the heels of my conversations about nihilism, I met people who were finding purpose and meaning in the everyday, repetitive and often frustrating activities which accumulate to real success over time.

On the same day that Donald Trump brought his circus to the town of Bozeman, I interviewed Alecia Jongeward in a park down the street from the pop-up market of absurd campaign nicknacks. Just a mile separated us, but we might as well have been living in different time lines.

Alecia is a former teacher who guided students at her high school over many years as they took on increasingly challenging projects. They started with recycling in school, then created their own state-wide climate summit, raised over $100,000 to install solar panels on their school and most recently secured an EPA grant for all-electric school buses.

It was an amazing juxtaposition. In one corner was an old showman trying to convince Americans that the future is bleak in order to coalesce power; a one-trick pony in the center ring trying desperately to keep the show alive by weaving stories of better days and imaginary enemies hidden among our friends and neighbors.

In the other corner were students, pushing their teacher to let them move faster with all of their plans to make their future better than our dystopian present. They see existing in balance on our planet as the the most important and meaningful future to work toward. To them, renewable energy represents clean air, jobs, energy independence, innovation and hope. This is not an academic argument for them. They flatly reject the (easily proven) false claims from the circus ringmaster that clean energy and sustainable practices are bad for our country.

In some ways, their resolute drive ignores the circus master. They know with every action they take that his time in this world is short. And while the damage he has done will drain us for a generation, we can survive and we can find a thousand better ways to live in balance with the very environment that sustains our existence.

In Missoula, I met much older people who were fighting just as hard against astounding odds. The volunteers with 350 Montana probably averaged in their 60s. They certainly know that they will not see the fruits of their labor. They are the truly selfless.

They could have chosen the nihilistic route. They could have found some active retirement community somewhere, martini in hand, to watch the world slip in to further despair. They could have said, “I’m only going to help my family.” They could have allowed the ringmaster to convince them that they should blame whatever boogyman he served up for them that day.

But they chose to help all of our families.

Alecia’s students described their motivation as enraged optimism. For me, trying to exorcise nihilism from my life, enraged optimism provides new fuel for the fight.

It’s tough to talk about this particular topic.

I don’t want it to sound as if I don’t take responsibility for allowing nihilism to infect my life. Because I do. Although it might come across that way in the video I shot from Yellowstone.

This starts back when Trump was first elected in 2016. When we first saw that he was employing the same tried and true techniques of similar authoritarian figures: sewing mistrust in the media in order to get people to throw their hands up and only believe him, rejecting objective scientific truth, embracing conspiracy theories to confuse issues and dividing the country in to “us and them”.

Around that time I also saw just how destructive many of the “Bernie Bros” were, as they seemed to enjoy making political discourse angrier and less compassionate. This was a candidate I supported, but I saw over the campaign year how some of his followers turned toward litmus test politics as a means to gain power, having little experience and little understanding of how much that approach only served to fracture a party that dearly needed to be unified.

Some of the infection of nihilism, to be sure, had its roots going back two decades as I fought seemingly fruitlessly to express to people how we needed to live more in balance with our environment. Whether that meant addressing climate change, finding healthier agricultural practices, reducing over-fishing or conserving precious water in the desert, I saw time and time again that the public vacillated between expressing concern but also rejecting any meaningful efforts to do anything about it.

It seemed that people were unwilling or unable to restrain their rabid desire to consume and expand outward, damning all evidence from the environment around which shows us that populations that don’t live in balance soon collapse.

As we moved in to the latter half of the 2010s, the often-ignored predictions of environmentalists from decades prior became more real: water depletions in the desert, heat islands, mountains of plastic waste, carbon emissions and increasingly larger and larger vehicles, each carrying only one passenger on a degrading long commute, were depleting air quality.

I looked around at my fellow Democratic legislators. Some of whom were happy to pound their desks sanctimoniously about the need to protect the environment. But then they would toddle off at the end of their days to their gas guzzling trucks, with pristine, never used truck liners; oblivious to their own contributions to the problem.

I have no objection to trucks, by the way. But the majority of people who have them use them less than 1% of the time to haul anything, let to make a living with their use.

But my growing pessimism about humans and the growth of myopic Christian nationalism served as the rich soil for the seeds of nihilism that came next.

Looking back, I can’t find a good reason that I found myself in a relationship with a proud nihilist. I was most certainly afraid of being alone and probably felt that this person, who was pursuing me enthusiastically, was as good as it would ever get. While I believed I was strong enough to help this person evolve in to a more optimistic and productive contributor to society, I had no idea just how toxic nihilism is, or how it would eat away at my resolve.

I found myself thinking, even as I fought hard to defeat the malicious legislation being run in the Arizona Legislature, that none of our efforts mattered. And by that, I don’t mean in the sense that we should not take things so seriously. Rather that all of our political efforts are for naught. After all, I can still hear the infectious thoughts now, humans are incapable by design of controlling themselves, or that Americans are doomed to lose their democracy to authoritarians. All populations in the natural world, where humans exists, will expand until they collapse. All democracies eventually contort in to dictatorships, I too often thought.

I became miserable, despite my efforts. I escaped in to my weekends and took all the wrong steps to avoid the reality around me. As I progressed down the hole of nihilism, I disliked myself more and more. I was a failure and a fraud because I could not stand up strong and fight. I am, after all, from Arizona, the state of luminaries like Gabby Giffords and John McCain, who endured thousands of times more hardship than simple nagging nihilism.

And, it is not lost on me that giving in to nihilism is a very privileged act. So many people do not have the luxury to become paralyzed by pessimism. This fact also added to my deepening self-loathing.

This, I’ve come to believe, is probably why I lost my 2018 election. I stopped thinking creatively and enthusiastically, as I had back in the days when I spearheaded efforts to reform redistricting or when I managed a campaign (with an all-star cast of leaders) to defeat payday lenders in Arizona.

I endorsed a running mate more out of just “doing things they way they’ve always been done” rather than listening to my inner voice that had always sought fairness and progress.

After my loss, I was devastated. And unlike my loss in 2010, I did not get back on the horse. I checked out. I felt that I needed to re-assess everything. My relationship with the nihilist ended, not surprisingly because she was not honest about who she was, and I was bitter. Very bitter.

I resolve to find my way out of the pit I was in, but that did not mean that I new how to defeat the cancer of nihilism.

Over 2019 I got a Kundalini Yoga teaching certificate, despite being a healthy skeptic of all of that. I went to Burning Man. To be fair, I did it in the most “Ken Clark” way. I produced a 6-part video series on whether the event lived up to its principles.

I also rafted the Colorado River for the second time.

But the nihilism stuck with me and gnawed at me, though. I continued to escape reality through parties and ill-advised relationships. While I liked being a realtor and loved helping clients, I saw a market increasingly dominated by venture capitol firms buying up hundreds of thousands of homes, driving up prices, driving first time home buyers out of the market and adding to homelessness.

I turned a corner in 2020, oddly enough while the rest of the world crumbled under Covid and a tense election.

I found myself consulting for a whole list of groups working on various elements of the energy transition: electric vehicles, renewable energy, energy efficiency, coal transition and the energy/water nexus. These were all brilliant and dedicated people who on a daily basis fought and most often lost battles against fossil fuel-sponsored politicians and companies. Yet they came back to the fight every day.

Rather than hating myself for not being strong enough to rebound after 2018, in working with these people I came to see that I was part of a community that always had been and may always be fighting a fight that can only ever be won incrementally.

I came to realize that there are two things that most effectively fight noxious nihilism: community and scope.

When we work in a community of people, we can see progress. Even if that progress is slow and halting, if we have a community that we trust and admire, when we believe in the cause, we can keep pessimism at bay.

It may seem like such an obvious thing to some. I know some great activists and politicians to report that they regain their strength after every battle through their significant others, through their families. That was lacking for me. I loved my parents while they were alive, and extended family. But they are all conservative and we just didn’t have the type of relationship that allowed me to unwind and recharge.

And, of course, my romantic relationship at the time drained me at the end of the day, rather than nourished me. I can only blame myself for getting myself in to that, of course.

The other crucial part of fighting nihilism is scope. It took me longer to realize this. None of us, not even the most effective public servant can solve every problem alone. As I railed against people for failing to strive to live in balance with our environment, for supporting news organizations that were obviously lying to them about climate change, or for putting immediate wants over the needs of the next generations, I failed to see were we were advancing.

While it feels like we will not decarbonize in time to avoid the worst damage and human loss, for instance, perhaps my scope now is to fight just as hard to minimize it. After all, the price of renewables and batteries have been dropping like a rock, and the pace of innovation is inspiring.

That just leaves us the task of convincing lawmakers to do the right that. Well, that’s my wheel house. I can pick up an oar and row with others in that boat.

So, it may seem like an obvious thing to some that nobody can do it alone, or that you need community.

They are old tropes, right? But that is the very nature of an affliction such as nihilism. It is blinding.

So, here I sit in my van on this remote work van live adventure. I still struggle with nihilism, as any person with a chronic disease might. But it is not what it is.

I’m on this adventure with the specific goal of finding where I want to plug in again. Not if.

Where can I find the community and scope that will keep me nourished and keep me fighting.

It may be in Arizona. It may not. I’m still thinking of the factors that will define that next step.

Where is your community and what is your scope?

The end of this week will mark almost one month on the road of my remote work van life tour. It stops me in my tracks to remember how I was counting down the days, impatiently in 110 degree heat, to leave Phoenix, frustrated by how behind schedule Tommy Camper Vans was. But here I am, almost 30 sleeps and 3,000 miles later.

Life, even when you are anticipating a big event, speeds on faster every year.

To review, my mission has been to reflect on whether it may be time to leave Arizona, or at least Phoenix.

I have no conclusions yet. But I’ve had some amazing conversations that have given me time to reflect on coincidence, on privilege and on nihilism.

On Coincidence

Two days in to the trip, in Durango, I had a most amazing experience, which gave me the feeling that the universe was talking to me. See this video about that.

I spent the first two days of the week struggling to get a good Internet signal so I could be on my work calls, Ellie got diarrhea, I had to find a veterinarian, I was trying to fix little things in the van and I was getting used to the new reality of living in this small space. I was deeply frustrated and despondent, despite knowing that this too would pass.

Yet, as if a message from a higher power, on my second evening in Durango I ran in to two comfortably familiar people that I know from the Phoenix political and sustainability communities. Not only did I see friendly faces, but they invited me to come visit their 22-acre property the next day, just outside of town. There I used the office they had built in the attic of their old barn to host my calls for the day, to catch up on work with full Internet signal and to just get a breath. I had a chance to visit with their sheep and llamas, to see the Animas River along their property and to give Ellie a break from the van.

This couple had moved to Durango part time a few years ago. Currently, they are renting out the larger home on the property to tourists and they are living in their Airstream while they build a smaller, downsized home for themselves. Meanwhile, their son and his partner built a tiny home on the property, and they are all working busily to create a shared vision for a place to live.

The husband had run for the Corporation Commission some years prior, and the wife used to own a business in Phoenix. I could not have asked for a better connection, not only at a time when I was in need of friendly faces, but also to fit so perfectly in to the theme of this entire series.

They both considered the same questions I had: Is it wise to stay in Phoenix? How can one contribute to one’s community without all of the hubbub of the political scene? Are they trading one set of climate change problems for another?

After we all finished our work for the day, we enjoyed salmon, a mixed green salad and dinner in front of the airstream, surrounded by the detritus of construction and the red-green mesas staring in to the setting sun across the Animas River from us.

I’m a naturally skeptical person, both of religion and vague spiritualism, both of which too often are about selling something.

Yet I’ve seldom in my life had such a strong feeling that I was meant to run in to these folks. They gave me a break, gave me insight and sent me off on my journey feeling renewed.

You couldn’t write a better script.

As I was in Durango, my video editor and I published an installment that I shot prior to leaving Phoenix. It was a reflection on my own privilege and where it came from. In making the video, I dug in to learn how the red-lining in Long Beach and Paramount California trickled down through three generations to give me the privilege I have, while depriving so many others of my age. You can see that video here.

Red-lining is not new. But I don’t know that many of us who have benefited generations later from it’s misguided and racist aims have taken the time to see how real it is; that it is not just an academic historical footnote. This project made it feel so much more real to me.

In the video, I scanned over red-lining maps from the Los Angeles area and found were my maternal and paternal grandparents bought homes in the 1950s. They became very real as I could see how the home purchased by both sets of grandparents gained value, which was passed down to my parents, and which was then compounded and passed down to me.

Less than a few miles from these homes were nearly identical neighborhoods where families could not get a loan to invest in a home, the wealth of which could then never be passed down to their children and grandchildren.

It is not lost on me that I am able to afford this little van live novelty because my parents, who both passed away unfairly young last year, left me the modest but meaningful wealth they accumulated, in part, because of these racist policies.

And, before we veer wildly off in to political tit-for-tats, I want to say that two things can be true at once. Yes, my grandparents and my parents made wise and frugal choices in order to leave me this humble nest egg. But also, they gained a boost that allowed their wealth to be compounded in ways that were crucially deprived other equally deserving non-white people.

Had it been explained to them, I am certain that at least one of those sets of grandparents would have argued for the end of the practice.

And here I sat, driving away from the very expensive Durango, toward Gunnison and then Crested Butte. While the rural spaces between them still suffer their own economic disparities, it felt that these more populous tourist towns –filled with far too many empty homes of part-time residents, short term rentals or investment properties backed by hedge funds– were in their own way depriving a whole new generation of their ability to create and pass down wealth to their children and grandchildren.

The stories whispered from the forests lining the winding roads as thick as curtains as I past old mining towns like Silverton or Ouray Colorado told of similar disparities between the laws written for the haves and the burdens carried by the have nots.

We are in a never-ending struggle to balance the power for justice. As I drove this little van excursion, I was aware that there was certainly more I could have done in my life. As much as I thought I was dedicating my career to this, I certainly had blind spots.

But what would I be doing if I were to stop trying. What would any of us be doing?

Who thinks about the housing market in August?

Who thinks about even going outside?

We do, and so do the folks at the Cromford Report.

Here are some of the basics – the ARMLS numbers for August 1, 2024 compared with August 1, 2023 for all areas & types:

• Active Listings (excluding UCB & CCBS): 17,677 versus 11,241 last year – up 55% – but down 3.6% from 18,121 last month
• Active Listings (including UCB & CCBS): 20,320 versus 13,945 last year – up 46% – but down 3.8% compared with 21,116 last month
• Pending Listings: 4,441 versus 4,842 last year – down 8.3% – but up 0.8% from 4,407 last month
• Monthly Sales: 6,199 versus 5,915 last year – up 4.8% – but down 2.0% from 6,324 last month
• Monthly Average Sales Price per Sq. Ft.: $286.58 versus $281.97 last year – up 1.6% – but down 2.9% from $295.15 last month
• Monthly Median Sales Price: $440,000 versus $434,900 last year – up 1.2% – but down 2.2% from $450,000 last month

There is very little positive about these numbers as the Greater Phoenix housing market continues to suffer from weak demand and low volumes. However if you dig deeply you can find some excuses for mild optimism. The supply has fallen over the past month and although it remains significantly higher than last year, it is now on a downward trend, at least for the short term. We also see a very slight up-tick in pending listings from last month, though this positive sign is counterbalanced by a decline in listings under contract.

Though there are plenty of credit problems in other sectors (e.g. auto loans, credit cards), home loans are looking very healthy with delinquency stuck at low levels. This also means foreclosure volumes are very small and there is little sign of that changing in the near to medium term. You Tubers have been forecasting a new tsunami of foreclosures for over 5 years now and have managed to be 100% wrong. Those who would love to see more bank-owned homes enter the market are out of luck. There is also no sign of their luck changing in the near term.

Current pricing is only slightly ahead of this time last year, with the median sales price up only 1.2%. Most things have risen far more than 1.2% over the past 12 months, so homes are effectively cheaper in real terms than they were a year ago.

Mortgage rates have dropped hard over the last 3 days, with the average 30-year fixed rate down from 6.80% to 6.40%. They could drop further if the Federal Reserve do as expected and lower the base rate at their September meeting. Nothing is certain, but it would be a fair guess than demand would pick up significantly if rates get back around the 6% mark.

Overall, the market is balanced with a slow and gentle trend towards greater bargaining power for buyers. However, now that supply is falling, it would only take a small increase in demand to reverse that trend.

From the Desk of the Cromford Report’s famous Tina Tamboer.

“For Buyers: It’s feeling a bit like the movie “Groundhog Day” in the Greater Phoenix housing market as we relive the same scenario over and over. The Federal Reserve met this month and once again opted not to reduce the Federal Funds Rate, keeping it steady now for 12 months in a row. On the same day, the Consumer Price Index was released showing the annual inflation rate declined to 3.3%. The combination resulted in conventional mortgage rates dropping from an average of 7.16% to 6.98% in one day. This was expected, however the Federal Reserve board announced they anticipate one rate cut this year, possibly in September. That could mean a mortgage rate drop in late summer, if we dare hope.

While the drop is positive for buyers, rates are still too high to expect a major boost in demand at this stage. Sluggish demand combined with supply that’s 54% higher than last year is creating an environment for buyers that hasn’t been this accommodating in 10 years. Price negotiations are ramping up, but they look different depending on the price range.

On paper, price negotiations in the mid-range between $300,000-$500,000 look similar to last year, landing around 98.7% of asking price, down from 99.0%. This equates to a closing price about $5,200 lower on a $400,000 home compared to $4,000 lower last year. What’s not reported in the media is the rising percentage and cost of seller incentives to the buyer. In this price point, the majority of buyers are sensitive to their monthly cash flow more than the final sales price. Therefore, 55% of sales are closing with seller incentives to supplement buyers’ payments temporarily, compared to 49% last June. The median incentive to the buyer is currently $9,400, up $1,200 from last year’s median of $8,200. Combined, buyers are receiving approximately $14,600 (an extra $2,400) in both price negotiations and closing cost assistance, putting the true ratio of sale price to list price at approximately 96.4% for our $400,000 sale.

For Sellers: While the industry hopes for lower mortgage rates in the latter half of 2024, active sellers can only address where the market stands presently, which is a challenge. Supply has been rising all year long, but has slowed its roll over the past 3 weeks. Seasonally, supply fluctuations level out in the summer before picking up again around late September and early October. The increase in competition for sellers has resulted in 12 Greater Phoenix cities in less populated outer cities sinking into a balanced or buyer’s market over the course of 2 months, while 13 out of 17 seller’s market cities in the densely populated interior weakened.

Not-so-perfect listings, those that appear to have delayed maintenance issues, need excessive repairs, or simply don’t show well, have the most trouble in these environments. With so many other homes to choose from, these homes may not even get a showing in many area cities regardless of their attractive list prices.

Even perfect listings may suffer from dashed expectations in this market. While these homes that smell like a Spring breeze, well maintained with updated finishes, will sell in any market, seller expectations for time on market and price may not be met. As the market shifts abruptly from Spring to Summer, the median marketing time prior to contract has grown from a historical standard of 3 weeks to 4 weeks and more than half of existing listings will experience at least one price reduction within that time frame. Sellers haven’t seen a supply/demand ratio like this since about 2014-2015, so managing expectations and patience will be key to navigating a successful sale.”

Commentary written by Tina Tamboer, Senior Housing Analyst with The Cromford Report
©2024 Cromford Associates LLC and Tamboer Consulting LLC

Solar on your home, the co-op way. We need more solar + batteries on homes to stabilize the grid. But there are some solar installers that give the whole industry a bad name. I think every one of us has had some random company knock on our doors to sell us solar. Unless you are an electrician or engineer, it seems impossible to know if you can trust what they are selling. Well, there is an answer. Learn how to be a confident consumer with this event from Solar United Neighbors (SUN) on July 30. SUN not only educates you about what makes a good system and good investment, but they also pool the installation orders for many home owners at the same time in order to buy down the cost of your system. Sign up for their Solar 101 presentation to learn more.

Free resources to save money and go electric. One of the most frustrating things about this election is just how little the media has educated the public about the many ways Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (aka Clean Energy Plan) will help regular folks save money while combating pollution and climate change. But if you want to know exactly how you can save money, check out the Rewiring America website that can help both home owners and renters.

The Winner in the Terrible Idea Category Is. The MAGA-dominated Arizona Corporation Commission last month created a loophole that effectively shuts down any oversight of utility dirty methane power plants –one of the biggest contributors to air pollution in AZ. In short, and contrary to all climate science, APS, TEP and SRP are pushing to install over 4,000 gigawatts more dirty methane gas over the next five years. If that is not bad enough, this decision guts the Certificate of Environmental Compatibility process (read “pollution controls”). You can get a summary of the situation here and here.We need new leadership at the corporation commission this year. Learn about candidates Ylenia Aguilar, Jonathan Hill and Joshua Polacheck, all of whom understand that the little-understood Corporation Commission really is our climate commission.

In case you thought all Ken can talk about is clean energy. Here’s a nice summary of everything you need to know about the July 30th primary elections in the “great state” of Maricopa County, Arizona. The county’s “Be Ballot Ready” system is really helpful. And if you want clear answers to that crazy election denial uncle at your next family get together, see this page.

Strict Scrutiny. The very corrupt US Supreme Court, SCOTUS, has delivered more ill-considered and possibly nation-dismantling decisions in the last few weeks than 99% of people can keep track of. And that’s fair. It can be challenging to understand these arcane legal theories and the arguments. Its even more frustrating that “low information voters” seem to be in control of our future. I’ve found the Strict Scrutiny Podcast to be a breath of fresh air. The three female legal specialists who host the show are witty, comprehensive and they don’t talk down to the listener. You can see it on YouTube, as well. In particular, listen so the episode on the Snyder case, in which SCOTUS effectively made bribing of public officials a-okay under the law.