everything about energy production
I agree it's one piece of a much larger puzzle towards global sustainability. But for me, that's still a very abstract concept and my actions are a less than a drop in the bucket in that regard.
However, being my own power plant, owning my own power... "Seizing the means of production", if you will, is incredibly concrete. And selfish.
If I were selling PV to rednecks, I don't even think I'd mention climate change.
That is one thing I don't get about the pushback on EVs. You can absolutely make your own electricity, you can't make your own gasoline or diesel. Yes, biodiesel is a thing and you can brew your own alcohol but that requires energy, time, and more or less single purpose equipment. Solar and an EV are more or less a single step and completely passive. You can even make the solar partially mobile if you wanted.
Nah, just about anything except climate change. Economical, less blackouts, better resilience and sticking it to the man (as in the incompetent power companies) I'd imagine would be the go-to arguments...
Having a good memory and getting older.
I don't think there was a specific event for me. I just kind of grew up with it.
I like camping and festivals, and it was fun to get a small solar panel to charge my phone etc. about a decade ago. My parents were in to gardening, and used a lot of water butts to store water at our house. My other half and I watched a lot of Doomsday Prepper episodes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Preppers) during Covid lockdowns, and while some of them were a bit crazy, others had really good ideas. It felt like a sensible idea to try and be a bit more self-sufficient.
It will all take a long time to pay for itself, but I am learning about DC circuits and it feels good to have a backup for everything, even though we live in a city and are grid-connected to water, electricity and gas.