Jim Smith is a local realtor who has a column that often offers solid practical advice about the real estate market and conditions. He is published in our local Denver Post, I am told, and several other places. Recently he offered a short column that is reprinted in full at the very end of this post. It is called Can Your House Keep You Safe During a Power Outage?
If you travel to that link, you will notice that he has drawn only one comment, that from me. That’s the nature of Substack, I think. A few people who are more savvy than Jim and I know how to poke through, and even make their living publishing there. I have a Substack location and have republished some of what I’ve written here, but comments and reads are rare. To make it into a go requires promotion, and I just don’t know how to do that. I just like to write.
I read Jim’s piece with interest, and after it sank in, I realized that Jim, God bless him, is in a State of Fear. He is convinced the the future is grim, that things are bad and getting worse. He’s been taken in by a sophisticated and powerful propaganda campaign. I mean no disrespect here, nor do I doubt the power of the man’s intellect. Smart people are all around us, and are as easily misled as ordinary ones. The media is our environment, and it controls our reality.
Years ago, and some of you might remember this, there was a monument constructed in Georgia called the Guidestones, which is pictured above. It appeared in 1980 thanks to anonymous dollars, and was destroyed in 2022, again, anonymously. Let that sink in. It is a creepy religious thing, and in that fashion, offered its own ten commandments:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.
That opening commandment, and remember this was carved in stone, says “Maintain.” 500,000,000? That either means something or nothing, that we know or don’t know the real population of the planet. None of us have minds capable of comprehending numbers beyond, perhaps, a thousand.
The rest of those commandments are not so insightful, merely virtuous, praising nature, manners, and wisdom in the same manner that Jehovah was praised in the Bible. It is all worthy of a chant, as in “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing, in Perfect Harmony” . The last two lines, repeated, are a poetic impulse, as the act of repetition signals a deeper message, that nature is our God, and we must bend our knees in worship.
Nature is, like the God of the Old Testament, a cruel master. Michael Crichton, the author of so many popular works, saw this. He spoke before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 2003. He said,
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
It was a long talk, and I wish I could have been there. He goes on to describe nature as it really is:
There is no Eden. There never was.
What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?
And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process.
In my later years I’ve had many opportunities to fly over our country, and looking out the window see that there is very little land that has not been changed by humans. Once I was able to fly over Lakes Mead and Powell, and was in awe at our massive impact on that part of the country. There is talk now that a drought brought those reservoirs to new low levels, and of course, the quacking ducks all blame “Climate Change!” There’s an ongoing period of low moisture in that area, like always, with only brief relief as we are now getting due to El Niño, which, note the translation, means “Christ Child”.
Oddly, there is no talk of the real reason why those reservoirs are so low … 40 million people depend on that water. The City of Las Vegas, seeing its future threated by diminished capacity, spend over a billion dollars to make a “Third Straw”, a siphon under the reservoir that allows the residents there first crack at the dwindling waters.
As I flew over the country, I once saw all of this change brought about by humans as destructive. Age has wizened me some, as it is not that, not destruction, but survival. We are here because of nature, but have survived because we have conquered nature to a large degree, modified it, and made our environment livable. The Climate Change movement is eroding the foundations of our lives, and as the Guidestone Commandments say, are doing do with the best of intentions. They want the Church of Nature to once again rule our lives. Or however many lives nature allows, many fewer that are currently strolling about. They do hold us in contempt. They want a nicer planet for them, the masters of humankind, to live on, not us.
God Save Us, said Mrs. Davis.
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Can Your House Keep You Safe During a Power Outage?
Researchers examined the “passive survivability” of homes, meaning their ability to maintain livable indoor temperatures without heating or air conditioning during extended outages. They found that a home’s design can make the difference between remaining habitable for days and becoming dangerously hot or cold within hours.
The study highlights the importance of features such as high levels of insulation, airtight construction, high-performance windows, and thermal mass, all of which slow the rate at which indoor temperatures rise or fall during extreme weather. Homes built or retrofitted with these features can provide a critical safety buffer when utility service is interrupted.
The findings have particular relevance for Colorado homeowners. While energy-efficient upgrades are often promoted for lowering utility bills and reducing carbon emissions, they also improve a home’s resilience during emergencies.
Better-insulated homes stay warmer longer during winter outages and cooler longer during summer heat waves.
The researchers argue that energy security should be viewed not only as access to electricity and fuel, but also as the ability of homes themselves to protect occupants during disruptions. As extreme weather events become more frequent, they suggest that thermal resilience should become an increasingly important consideration in home design, construction, and renovation.
In short, the most resilient homes are not just energy efficient. They are homes that can keep their occupants safe and comfortable even when the power goes out.
