Paired updates: CO Privacy Act (started 7/1), and removing Indian mascots from schools seems to be winding down. More political grandstanding (this time about hydrogen!)
Update on the Colorado Privacy Act
One year from now, you should be able to opt out of targeted ads and (finally) have some meaningful control over your data.
Since it took effect a few days back, I thought a quick update on the Colorado Privacy Act would be in order.
The AG's website explainer is linked below with some details on the new policy and what it means for consumers and businesses.
I'll leave it to you to read up, but I can offer a couple tidbits (things I've been watching for):
1. I believe that starting now, companies that start collecting certain types of data will have to disclose what they collect, how it's used, etc. AND they'll have to start telling you how you can opt out. Resist the temptation to click "ACCEPT" and move on. Give it a quick read and look for an opt out.
2. Starting roughly a year from now (7/1/2024) there will be a universal opt out of data sharing. I'll update once I see that.
https://coag.gov/resources/colorado-privacy-act/
School mascots involving Indians and Indian imagery (an update) ...
As of now, if I understood the article below correctly, our state has come to a conclusion/equilibrium regarding the law requiring schools to remove their Indian mascots.
This whole time, my complaint with this process has been that it's been heavy-handed, unnecessarily burdensome for smaller schools (an unfunded mandate from the Front Range), and incredibly poorly managed.
I was again thinking over those gripes while I read the article. I saw the passage below and it got me thinking.
Quoting the article:
“'The positive thing that’s come out of this, though, is we’ve developed a good relationship with Apache and Jicarilla Apache tribes,' he [Sangre de Cristo schools Superintendent David Crews] said. 'It’s gotten bigger than just the mascot.'”
Imagine if, instead of a top-down edict from Denver telling people what their mascots should or shouldn't be (and burdening schools with huge costs), this had been the goal and the process from the beginning: that is, imagine if we sought understanding and mutual consent, one human to another, instead of intractable stubbornness about the way life used to be or sneering down your nose at someone you think is backward and racist.
I'm glad to see that most of the contention is over. I'm disappointed to think of the effort and money wasted in unnecessary conflict spurred by grandstanding politicians in Denver who could have done this in myriad, cheaper and easier ways.
https://coloradosun.com/2023/06/16/colorado-school-mascot-thunderbird-san-luis-valley/
And speaking of unnecessary grandstanding when it comes to policy, I present you the below.
In the post right prior to this one I bemoaned the kind of political virtue-signaling that leads to bad policy. I thought you might like to see an example of same that is currently in motion.
One direction that we are going in to try and curb greenhouse gas emissions is to try and replace natural gas (methane) with hydrogen.** Hydrogen could use a lot of the same infrastructure of methane and it has the benefit that it's clean, in the greenhouse gas sense. The combustion of hydrogen is free from carbon dioxide. Water is its byproduct.
The state of Colorado is pushing ahead on this technology (see the first link below or my earlier posts), but there's an important caveat. That caveat is shown in the choices made by our lawmakers and also in the second link below.
Hardcore environmental activists insist that the only way we should explore hydrogen as fuel is if the hydrogen has passed the purity test of being made by renewable means and not involving the use of fossil fuels or by those (eek!) dastardly fossil fuel companies.
They got the ear of our state lawmakers and apparently want to get the ear of the Feds too.
Just like in the previous post where our state lawmakers let philosophical purity trump any other considerations, we are heading down the same road with alternatives to fossil fuels. We're going to end up in the same boat too: we're going to cause ourselves much unnecessary difficulty and cost.
After all, why let pragmatic concerns like ...
--whether or not we have the infrastructure to generate hydrogen with renewables currently
--whether or not we cut out those that have experience with handling combustible gases from helping us transition
--letting the profit motive drive innovation instead of burdening taxpayers further
get in the way of the future the hardcore environmentalists envision for us all?
**I hope they're ready to make lots of it. The energy density from combustion of hydrogen (compared to methane--natural gas) is low. That is, to accomplish the same work or heating, you'll need a lot more hydrogen to do the job.
https://www.kunc.org/2023-06-06/colorado-pushes-ahead-in-green-hydrogen-a-new-technology-to-curb-global-warming
https://news.yahoo.com/mexico-environmental-coalition-urges-biden-033200966.html