Mr Franklin's Folks

Preface: I originally wrote this a couple of decades ago, based upon my experiences working with a traveling energy show in the 1970s and 1980s and my own experiments with public displays of renewable energy at farmers’ markets (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2005/8/21/140257/-). I rewrote it for a new venture, Flourish Fiction which is trying to fill the need for “more hopeful stories to awaken imagination and help inspire the next generation of climate solutions.” It is also published there at https://flourishfiction.substack.com/p/mister-franklins-folks?s=r

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Mister Franklin's Folks began when a small group of people decided to bring a solar fountain to the local farmers market. A solar electric panel pumped water up from a tub into a little fountain that would splash and spray. The brighter the sunshine, the higher the water would go. Children loved to turn it on and off with their shadows, jumping into and out of the sunlight, making the water dance and themselves laugh. Older kids asked questions, and so did some of the adults. "What's it for? How does it work? Why are you doing this? So what?"

The exhibit was labeled "Solar Fountain/Wishing Well" and some coins lay at the bottom of the tub. Nearby, there was a table under the shade of an umbrella where one of Franklin's Folk sat with a collection of books, pamphlets, leaflets, cards, and stickers, along with a big can labeled “Donations.” The van parked behind them was full of working models and public experiments, product demos, and testing equipment. They shared guides with anyone who wanted them. For a small donation.

Each week, from Memorial Day to the week before Thanksgiving, throughout the farmers’ market season, they'd be there. Each week, they'd set up a little solar fountain and present a different example of solar ingenuity and practical power. When they said power to the people, they meant it.

They said, "A south-facing window is already a solar collector and we can show you how to use it. A south-facing porch is even better. It can become a sunspace or greenhouse and you can grow food all year long."

They provided designs and projects that began by caulking and sealing a window and ended with a complete one-room HVAC and electrical system for daily and/or emergency use.

"A few inches of solar panel, a hand or foot powered generator, and a set of rechargeable batteries is a perpetual source of personal electrical power. You can have power as long as the sun keeps shining and can turn the handle or push the pedal when it isn't. You can have power as long as the batteries hold a charge. And when the batteries die, recycle the old ones and buy some new. That is, unless we've changed to capacitors, flywheels, or fuel cells by then."

They had plans for many DIY solar projects and organized a bulk buying club so that people could save money on parts and supplies.

"Let your kids make their own battery power from sunlight and a little exercise. Power your electrical devices with a walk on the treadmill."

They called themselves Mister Franklin's Folks because, like Benjamin Franklin, they believed in ingenuity and thrift. They quoted from Poor Richard’s Almanac:
“A penny saved is two pence clear. A pin a-day is a groat a year. Save and have.”
“Every little makes a mickle.”
“A wise Man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully and leave contentedly.”
“Spare and have is better than spend and crave.”

They updated these home truths by putting them into an ecologically regenerative context. Each week they offered practical lessons in real thrift or "how to save money while saving the environment, the community, and the world."

Like Mr Franklin, they were experimenting with electricity but instead of kites and lightning, they were looking at the sun for energy independence and building the idea of a renewable economy use by use, appliance by appliance, socket by socket, room by room.

“What would Mister Franklin do these days?" they asked. "Benjamin Franklin was one of the early researchers into the Gulf Stream. How would he deal with global warming?”

These were some of the things that Mr. Franklin’s Folks did at their table at the farmer's market, week after week, all that year.

Planning for Extreme Heat: NY, Phoenix, California, and Beyond

Boston University organized a talk on how Phoenix, New York, and the State of California are planning for extreme heat the other day.

https://www.bu.edu/ioc/2022/03/02/bridging-the-research-policy-divide-lessons-from-cities-tackling-extreme-heat/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0UGVX8bs1I

As NOAA Weather Service reports, "More Americans die from heat every year than from all other extreme weather events combined."

Daphne Lundi, Deputy Director for Social Resiliency of NYC Mayor’s Office of Resiliency, spoke.  Hurricane Sandy was a wake-up call for the city and thus it has developed a long-term heat resiliency plan as part of their overall sustainability efforts. The city’s approach is "If we're in the 2080s and we're going to have triple the amount of extreme heat days, what are we doing now in terms of our buildings, in terms of our land use policy to get us to a better place decades from now."

NYC has been developing Cool Neighborhoods since 2017 including ideas like

Shading and tree canopies

White rooms or reflective surfaces like "cool roofs"

Cooling centers

Report available at https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/orr/pdf/Cool_Neighborhoods_NYC_Report.pdf [pdf alert]

They are constantly leading building preparedness and understanding of heat risk so that people know the tools available before a heat wave happens.

NYC also has building energy standards and the Office of Resiliency works on necessary legislation and regulation.  For instance, they are now looking at the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program [LIHEAP] in relation to cooling as well as heating, which is where the bulk of funding goes.

David Hondula, Chief Heat Officer, City of Phoenix; Associate Professor, Arizona State University is in the new Office for Heat Response and Mitigation, started in just the last six months.  Phoenix's first heat response plan passed recently but no long-term cooling plan yet even though they set records for heat associated deaths in the last few years, up 450% since 2014.  65% of "heat associated deaths were among unsheltered" in Phoenix.  An unsheltered person is 200-300% more likely to suffer a heat associated death than a sheltered person.

Karen Smith, Partner at Healthy Community Ventures; former Director, California Department of Public Health provided a larger perspective and addressed how academia can help the public health community gather data during heat emergencies;  advocated more research into prolonged exposure to heat as a health risk, below the threshold of heat emergency, especially for outdoor workers,  and on what actually works in saving lives among the general public.

In most heat events, Karen Smith said, "The major distinguisher of people who died versus people who didn't had nothing to do with their diseases, had nothing to do with whether they had air conditioners or fans, it was social isolation."

It's getting hotter.  We have to learn how to deal with it.

The Environmental Resilience Institute at University of Indiana has a case study of how Chicago, which had a devastating heat emergency in 1995, has worked to reduce the dangers of extreme heat as well as a comparison to what NYC and Minnesota are doing:  

https://eri.iu.edu/erit/case-studies/chicago-il-uses-green-infrastructure-reduce-extreme-heat.html

The American Planning Association has just published a report entitled Planning for Urban Heat Resilience, available as a free download at https://www.planning.org/publications/report/9245695/