Shepherding a solution to weaken wildfires
Plus, would you like an oil change with that EV?
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Why sheep are the best wildfire barriers, baa none
I grew up with sheep. Well, they were in the fields around our house in Kent, England, emitting soft baas and looking cute, especially the lambs. They were a rare breed called Jacob that had a pleasing mixture of white, gray, black and brown wool as well as double horns. In fact they were so cute that my mother became a vegetarian.
Why did we have them? Well, they kept the fields looking neat and my mother liked to spin and knit their wool and my father (and I) liked a lamb chop or two. And apart from lambing, shearing and a yearly dip to get rid of pests, they were quiet and practically maintenance-free (unlike those darn chickens).
The neatness of the fields was amazing. They would nibble at the grass evenly and right up to the edges. In addition, their poop, which divided into small pieces when it hit the ground, was a perfect fertilizer for the grass. In fact, before the invention of the lawn mower, owners of country estates kept sheep for exactly the same reasons, and they can sometimes be seen in paintings of the period.
And it is that neatness — and the hardiness these animals have — that is leading to more examination as to how sheep, as well as goats, could help in preventing wildfires.
There is, for instance, Brittany “Cole” Bush, a Californian who has founded Shepherdess Land & Livestock, a company based at a ranch in the Ojai Valley that uses grazing animals to reduce the risk of undergrowth blazes that can turn into bigger conflagrations.
And business is good, with Bush telling The Guardian that there’s been a growing demand for her services. She and her team have put their hundreds-strong herds to work chewing down parched plants for landowners, government agencies, housing developments and detention centers all across the West, with the animals being particularly useful in reaching rough areas untouchable by machines.
She’s also spreading the word to other would-be shepherds and goat herders by holding bootcamps for people for across the U.S.
And now this former shepherd is also spreading the word.
Elon likes men (and women) in uniform
So you’re a fashionista. And you work on the assembly line at Tesla’s TSLA 0.00%↑ flagship factory in Fremont, Calif. And, hey, that tie-dye shirt you just saw looks mighty appealing and is sure to wow your co-workers.
But, no, you can’t wear it. Instead, you must don one of the black shirts imprinted with the Tesla logo handed out by the company. And that policy, which has been in place since 2017 amid organizing effort by the United Auto Workers union (UAW), also applies to pro-union t-shirts — also verboten.
Which led to the rule being the center of a court case just decided by the New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which on Tuesday said that the company shirt policy, known as “Team Wear,” is OK because union stickers are allowed, a ruling that reversed an edict from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
“We agree with Tesla,” the appeals court judges wrote in the verdict. “The [National Labor Relations Act] does not give the NLRB the authority to make all company uniforms presumptively unlawful. We grant Tesla’s petition for review, deny the NLRB’s application for enforcement, and vacate the Board’s decision.”
The ruling reversed a 2022 edict by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which had said that any attempt to ban union insignia, including pro-UAW clothing, was unlawful unless an employer could show “special circumstances” such as safety concerns.
Additionally, the Fifth Circuit noted that Tesla said its approved uniforms would encourage “visual management,” easily letting team leads identify and distinguish various employees, including those in general assembly.
The court also said that Tesla’s uniform policy was advancing a legitimate employer interest, adding that it didn’t hinder union communications, nor did it affect time spent away from the job. In addition, the court echoed Tesla’s claim that the NLRB’s initial ruling was “irrational,” saying that this particular case doesn’t go against the workers’ right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
Intriguingly, the company had said the uniform policy was necessary to ensure that vehicles were not damaged during assembly, alleging that the union shirts caused “mutilations” to vehicles.
Guess those union T-shirts came with some spikes attached.
At your local dealership, EV idiocy
If you’ve ever been to a car dealership, you know it can be a frustrating and/or infuriating experience. There’s often the game-playing of the reps keeping you waiting while they “check in with the manager” as well as shenanigans surrounding financing. And then there the unexpected fees that seem to inevitably appear as you get close to signing on the dotted line.
It’s been going on pretty much unchanged almost since Henry Ford’s fossil-fueled autos (and those of other manufacturers) first rolled off the assembly line and car dealerships started to sprout up in U.S. towns and cities.
But now there’s an added ingredient: electric vehicles. And, it appears, many dealerships are not embracing the biggest gamechanger in almost a century.
For instance, in a survey, the Sierra Club found 66% of dealerships did not have an EV or plug-in hybrid available for sale, while 45% of those dealers said they wouldn’t offer an EV even if they could.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports on the experiences of several would-be EV buyers, one of whom said the process was “cringeworthy,” with the dealers seeming to know little about the EVs they were selling. “I felt like I knew more than they did,” said James Richards, the CEO of a water heating company in Davis, Calif., who spent days test-driving EVs at Volkswagen (VWAGY), Tesla TSLA 0.00%↑, General Motors GM 0.00%↑ and Ford F 0.00%↑. He ended up buying a Tesla Model Y. Tesla salespeople “strike you as EV geeks,” Richards told the paper. “All the other dealerships: Ford, VW, the GM people — they didn’t seem like specialists.”
At another dealer, a customer, Maya Batres, bought an EV only to be offered a plan for oil changes. “I knew we didn’t need that,” Batres said, laughing.
The cluelessness is adding to a burgeoning problem: slowing EV sales, with electric cars sitting double the time on dealerships’ lots than gas-powered cars, a situation that has led Ford and GM to slow plans for electric vehicle expansion.
It’s all enough to make you want to kick a few tires. In frustration.
(A native of England, veteran journalist Matthew Diebel has worked at NBC News, Time, USA Today and News Corp., among other organizations. Having spent much of his childhood next to one of the world's fastest bodies of water, he is particularly interested in tidal energy.)
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