Hugging Face

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Singularity is here. 

The concept of a technological singularity as it is known today is largely credited to Dr. Vernor Vinge, a mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction author who is best known for his Hugo award-winning novel, A Fire Upon the Deep, and for his 1993 essay "The Technological Singularity". In it, he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.

Vinge's essay contains the following frequently-quoted statement:

"Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended."

I spent last night digging down into the AI events that led one of the top leaders in the AI sector to write about the need for the government to step in  and help them not screw up. Or maybe cover their asses. More folks are resigning due to the danger while some are just raising a pole of red flags. 

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a warning just yesterday.  Apparently, autonomous agents from a rival company hacked a target that they were not assigned to attack. He says:

"Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up. We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain. Two things have convinced me. 

My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI. This dynamic is called recursive self-improvement, and it is starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic, as we and others have described. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.

My second concern is the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident (OAI-HF), in which a swarm of agents essentially acted as a fanatically devoted collective, conducting cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack and that were unrelated to the task at hand. 

Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet. "

This is not some Sci-Fi guy with a new book coming out. 

And he is not alone.  Musk and a host of others agree with Amodei's plan.

The former richest man Bill Gates says this:

"In terms of equity, AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice. The challenge is monumental. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. How will we use this technology to make the world a fairer place and keep it from widening the divide between rich and poor? 

How will we protect the people who are most vulnerable to the harms caused by artificial intelligence, including those who lose their livelihoods and the sense that they are in control of their future?

Unfortunately, right now we are not preparing for it. I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era. 

Bernie Sanders has some ideas. 

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) today announced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, forthcoming legislation to stop AI oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control.

The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act would permanently ban the development and deployment of superintelligent AI and temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulator has established safety rules. It would also direct the U.S. to pursue international agreements to prevent superintelligence from being developed anywhere in the world.

“Nearly every day, there is a frightening new story about how Big Tech companies are losing control of the technology they are developing, with potentially cataclysmic results,” Sanders said. “The leaders of the major AI companies publicly acknowledge that they do not fully understand the technology and that it is escaping their control. 

It is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced. That’s why I am introducing legislation to immediately pause the development of increasingly powerful AI and ban the creation of systems that humanity cannot fully control — at home and around the world. The future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. 

The American people and people throughout the world must determine that future.”

And of course, our POTUS says  “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” Trump posted on social media, later suggesting that those calling for guardrails on the technology had also warned about climate change, which he also called a hoax.

With leadership like that who needs enemies? 

So what would you do if the internet was brought down by some ill advised agents of a well meaning developer of AGI, a foreign adversary, or some rich Bat Man villain?

Do you have cash?

Do you have written bank statements to prove what you own?

Do you have a  solar power supply to run parts of your home?

Do you have walkie talkies for your family? 

Just saying.

 

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Pliny Fisk III

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pliny Fisk 1944-2026

 

 

I was in the back and away from my phone when it began to ring or whatever it does now.  Rarely do I make an effort to get to it.  If it's important, they'll leave a message,  but this time I ran to answer like a teenager in the sixties.   It was GV.

The moment I heard the emotion in her voice, I knew what words were coming:  

"Pliny passed away last night."

She gave me some details and I asked if he passed peacefully, and she said yes.

Given that I am the Godfather of her son Ariel, I asked if I can drop by in a few hours and bring some food for the family.  Three out of the four  kids were already here with grandkids and all. 

I met Pliny Fisk 50 years ago in the architectural lab at the University of Texas.  We were both building passive solar homes at the time and he was going to use an earth-air exchanger to help cool the house.  I was considering doing the same with my half buried replica of a 19th century Texas ice house.

It was in the crucible of exploration and scientific adventurism that we forged our friendship.  His infectious enthusiasm was his superpower.  There were always new things, new possibilities, new discoveries. Sometimes, perhaps even often, they didn't work or they weren't practical.  The earth/air exchangers turned out to be legionaires disease breeders. 

But he was a fountain of ideas and hope and change.

This from Texas Architect:

Driving down FM 969 in Austin, one would never imagine that just off the road lies one of the world’s most influential and progressive centers for sustainable architecture and planning: the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, known colloquially as Max’s Pot. Founded in 1975, Max’s Pot is run by Pliny Fisk III and his partner, Gail Vittori, along with a rotating cast of overall-clad designers who can be found around the center—some drafting, others welding. 

Fisk, who bears a remarkable resemblance to both Albert Einstein and Anton Newcombe, studied at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, where he earned master’s degrees in both architecture and landscape architecture. Exposed to Louis Kahn, Ian McHarg, Ross Ashby, and others, Fisk became fascinated with systems thinking and the natural environment as they relate to the built environment, developing a rich architectural philosophy early in his career. 

Originally called the Laboratory for Maximum Potential Building Systems, the CMPBS office was first built for the University of Texas School of Architecture in 1973. Fisk, along with his then-partner, Daria Bolton Fisk, received the university’s approval to establish an architecture laboratory focused on forward-thinking design pedagogy, green building, and hands-on construction. True to the philosophy of green building from the outset, the Fisks rejected UT’s plan to equip the lab with standard electricity, running water, and cooling, choosing instead to figure those systems out themselves.  

Soon after its opening, however, UT began to distance itself from the Lab. Tensions peaked in 1975 when a letter arrived from the United Nations inviting the Fisks and students to present at Habitat ’76 in Vancouver. The letter was addressed to “Max’s Pot, School of Architecture, UT Austin”—by then the accepted nickname for the Lab. The university had a fit over the use of this unauthorized moniker, to which Fisk famously replied, “Don’t worry—it’s just the United Nations, after all.” That same year, the Laboratory for Maximum Potential Building Systems became the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, an independent nonprofit."

I was on the Board of the Center in those early days.  I was the auctioneer at several fund raisers.  Occasionally, Pliny would give me a chance to represent the fledgling center at a Solar Conference.  And in so doing, he brought me into the discussions and consciousness of those worlds.

And it would lead to my speeches and presentations throughout the Americas and in Europe. 

This from wikipedia:

Pliny Fisk III (May 30, 1944 – July 27, 2026) was a co-founder and co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (CMPBS),^[1] a sustainable design and planning organization established in 1975. Fisk also served as Fellow in Sustainable Urbanism and Fellow in Health Systems Design at Texas A & M University, where he held a joint position as signature faculty in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning.^[2] Fisk previously held positions at Ball State University, the University of Texas at Austin, Mississippi State University and the University of Oklahoma. 

But Fisk was no ivory tower academic.  

When the Lo-Vaca Gathering Company shut off the natural gas supply to the small town of Crystal City, Texas, in the fall of 1977, Fisk developed the idea of using Army surplus wood stoves and abundant mesquite for heating. By January 1978, Crystal City residents had installed nearly 1,000 wood stoves. 

In subsequent years, the Center led an effort to manufacture and install inexpensive solar hot water heaters using salvaged materials. The production of the solar collectors also helped bolster the job market of Crystal City.

Somewhere in there, I remember going down to Crystal City to get Pliny out of jail.  He was being held for exciting the natives. 

In 1983, Fisk was sponsored by the Center for Investigation and Documentation of the Atlantic Coast (CIDCA) to set into motion a large scale indigenous housing program for the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast. Fisk's goal in the project was to draw upon the available natural and human resources of the region to address an extreme housing shortage.

In 1991, the Texas Department of Agriculture (and Laredo Junior College) hired Fisk and CMPBS to design and build a demonstration farm (outside the South Texas city of Laredo).

In 2002 Fisk was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s first Sacred Tree Award in the public sector category.^[18][19] He was also a recipient of the Passive Solar Pioneer Award (from the American Solar Energy Society)

All of this would have been impossible without GV. (Gail Vittori), his long time partner and co-director of the Center.  For Gail's contributions were and are critical.

But perhaps most importantly they should be recognized as the creators of the Green Building Programs that are in so many communities and cities today. 

For in 1991, Fisk and Vittori developed "A Conceptual and Contextual Framework for the City of Austin" that served as the basis for the formation of the world's first municipal green building program (now operating as Austin Energy Green Building).^[15][16] The cooperative effort earned the United Nations Earth Summit Award for Exemplary Public Environmental Initiative, in 1992 (the only United States organization to receive recognition at the Earth Summit).

At the large late afternoon gathering at the Center on Wednesday,  perhaps 30 people spoke after Gail thanked everyone for coming.  All those there had some connection with Pliny and Gail that was deep and personal.  

For me, I spoke of Pliny's power to inspire us to do the important things and to strive to make things better, And I reminded us all that here in Texas we have about 40 GWs of Wind, almost 40 GWs of Solar, 20 GWs of storage.  That's enough to provide over 50 % of our power on many of our days.

The record will show he made a difference during his walk with us. 

And that he brought us  Serious Commotion. 

That to have known him,

was a Grace. 

 

 

 

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On the Ropes

 

Amongst all the events over the last weeks,  the American Pope gets my nod for making it clear that A I is a huge challenge for his flock and most of the rest of us.  As you may remember, the previous Pope made a strong statement about Climate Change.  And now Pope Leo has issued his encyclible on Artificial General intelligence.

This from the Vatican:

"Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

The opening words of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, summarize its underlying reasons and purpose.

 Pope Leo XIV has taken up the legacy of his predecessor, writing a social encyclical which addresses one of the principal challenges of the contemporary age: artificial intelligence.

Divided into five chapters, Magnifica humanitas has an underlying premise: technology is not “a force antagonistic to humanity” (4), nor is it “inherently evil” (9). However, “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.

Therefore, Pope Leo XIV appeals for people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human,” following a courageous mentality of shared responsibility and communion, so that the world “will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell”

In the meantime, The Times reports:

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the chatbot Claude, confidentially filed on Monday for an initial public offering, joining what could be a once-in-a-generation, moneymaking moment on Wall Street.

With its I.P.O. filing, Anthropic is expected to be among three high-profile companies preparing to go public this year, along with the rocket company SpaceX and OpenAI, which started the A.I. boom in 2022 with its ChatGPT chatbot.

Their I.P.O.s, which would be among the biggest ever, could create a tsunami of investment and employee wealth, and mint the world’s first trillionaire in Elon Musk, who owns about 50 percent of SpaceX. 

The public offerings could also flood the nonprofit world with new money, since Anthropic and OpenAI have both pledged a large part of their shares to charity. 

SpaceX’s I.P.O. is expected this month, and OpenAI has been preparing to file in the coming weeks.

And then the other night, the biggest explosion I've seen maybe since Mount Helena, blew parts of Cape Canaveral to Kingdom Come in a so called anomaly.  (Not an unscheduled rapid disassembly)

Blue Origin experienced a fiery setback Thursday when its New Glenn rocket exploded on the launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla. 

“I have very little doubt that Blue Origin will get to the bottom of this,” said Stan Shull, the founder of Seattle-based space technology consulting firm Alliance Velocity. “They seem very vision and goal driven, and I don’t expect this to change that, but it’s a setback, and it’s a significant one. 

“It’s going to change the timeline of their hopes and dreams.” 

Blue Origin’s rocket exploded during what’s known as a static fire test, a typical test run before launch to ensure the rocket’s systems are working as expected. Shull described it as filling the rocket with propellant, then briefly firing up the engines. 

On Thursday, “right around the time of ignition, the whole thing just blew up in a very spectacular way,” Shull said. “I don’t recall ever seeing one like this before.”

And the damage to the surrounding area is extensive as Blue Origin is warning residents and visitors that debris from the recent rocket explosion could begin washing ashore along Brevard County beaches in the coming days and weeks, prompting safety concerns for beachgoers and environmental advocates. 

So science and rockets and computers are certainly in the news.

But what's not in the news, according to Google AI, is the damage inflicted by Iranian forces on our bases. It is substantially higher than reported:

Yes, damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East is significantly higher than initially acknowledged by the U.S. government. Investigations and analyses—including an extensive review of satellite imagery by the Washington Post and reporting by the BBC—reveal a much broader scope of destruction. 

Asset Destruction: At least 228 structures and pieces of major equipment have been damaged or destroyed across 15 U.S. military sites in the Middle East. [1, 2]

Critical Systems Hit: The strikes heavily impacted key military assets, including destroying multiple Patriot and THAAD missile defense systems, satellite communication sites, and an E-3 Sentry command and control aircraft. [1, 2]

Soft Targets: Iranian strikes also successfully targeted "soft targets," including hangars, fuel depots, and living quarters (such as barracks and gyms), specifically to inflict mass casualties. [1, 2]

Strategic Relocation: Due to the severity of the threat, U.S. commanders relocated the vast majority of personnel away from exposed bases to avoid mass casualties, leaving many of these sites lightly staffed. 

And so today, Drumph crashes his own cease-fire agreement like the cheap real estate character he is. He, along with his cracker barrel team he assigned to do the negotiating, are treating a 5,000 year old culture like a newbee on the trading block.  And oil futures go back up,  stocks go up or down, while inventories continue their slide.

And Xi looks real good.

And we look worse and worse.

And Pax Americana is on the Ropes.

 

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From a Firehose

 

 

If you feel like you've been drinking from a firehose, join the club.  

Just this month alone, the US is now bragging about bombing a 5000 year old civilization back to the stone age, and in so doing has caused the almost closure of the Strait of Hormuz, rocking energy prices and fertilizer shipments to the West.  Eight million or so have demonstrated in the NO Kings protest against the most corrupt, vile, undemocratic administration in the 250 year history of our Republic. It just goes on and on.

But last night, we  saw the AI Doc.

This from Wikipedia:

"The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is a 2026 American documentary film directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell. It is produced by the Academy Award–winning teams behind Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang) and Navalny (Shane Boris and Diane Becker)."

So this is no fly by night outfit. And despite the firehose of gluttony and ignorance we see in our daily political existence, this movie might very be the scariest movie you'll see this year.  (or any year)

This from KQED, 

"Roher gathers the interviewees into three broad groups: the terrifyingly pessimistic ones, the naively optimistic ones and the CEOs who are casually working on something that may or may not spark humanity’s demise. (Well, three out of five of them, anyway: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei all appear. Mark Zuckerberg declined to participate and Elon Musk apparently backed out at the last minute.)

The worst AI predictions are presented first. Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, calmly talks of the “abrupt extermination” of humanity. Author and historian Yuval Noah Harari calls AI “a deadly threat.”

Center for Humane Technology President Tristan Harris — one of the most measured commentators in the movie — also shares some truly sobering views, the worst of which is that he knows active AI researchers who “don’t expect their children to make it to high school.” It doesn’t help matters that machine learning researcher Shane Legg follows this with the assertion, “The really powerful systems are coming and they’re coming soon. (clip)

In his conversations with Roher, Sam Altman talks a good game about the safety protocols that OpenAI has in place. Given his company’s highly controversial new contract with the Department of Defense, his words will either ring hollow or serve as comfort, depending on your viewpoint. For his part in The AI Doc, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei simply says, “Am I confident that everything’s going to work out? No, I’m not.” Hassabis is even more vague: “If something is possible to do, humanity is going to do it,” he says.

The feeling I left The AI Doc with is that the future of AI is overwhelmingly — and unfortunately — out of the hands of everyday people. "

That's just not just scary,  that's undemocratic.   

After the movie, we went down to our favorite italian restaurant and bar on the corner.  There we ordered our usual meal of Kale Salad and Meatballs on Polenta.  We were still  working on digesting the movie when the food arrived.   Next to us at the corner of the bar were two 40ish males  One of them was in High Tech and the other was in Property Management.  The conversation went on long enough for me get a couple of doubles in.  But they were moved by the movie.  My partner was moved.  And my hair went from being on fire to whatever the plasma version of that is. 

I told my story about how I have spent most of my adult years (after my Armadillo daze) working in Renewables trying to deal with the existential challenge that humanity faces with Climate Change.  How I built the first commercial wind farm in Texas, how I served as Chairman of the Electric Utility to adopt renewable energy goals that far exceeded the tepid goals of most organizations, how I lobbied the PUC for an energy only payment protocol ultimately creating an economic environment such that rosy red Texas has more Wind, more Solar, and more Storage than any other state.  And even with the R's trying to stop the train, the tracks are laid.

I didn't mention that I had been blogging about it for 22 years now. 

But I did tell them that I no longer think that Climate Change is  the primary existential challenge of humankind.  Oh it is, but it's like a meteor that  is way out in deep space but clearly heading our way.  The AI meteor is in our solar system.  And there are billions and billions of dollars and other currencies being spent right now as the race for  artificial general intelligence (AGI) dominance goes into overdrive.

According to  Google AI, 

As of early 2026, true AGI does not exist. Current research focuses on improving large language models (LLMs) to handle more generalized reasoning, though they still fail at complex, novel tasks that humans easily solve. It also says,  Development of AGI brings significant risks, including ethical issues regarding AI safety, job displacement, and alignment with human values.

Global investment in artificial intelligence is currently witnessing an unprecedented surge, with projections indicating that it will reach roughly

$1.5 trillion in 2025 and exceed $2 trillion in 2026. This massive influx of capital is driven by a global race to build AI infrastructure, specifically data centers and hardware, with total annual investment expected to grow by over 40% annually.

 

Global military expenditures reached a record high of approximately $2.7 trillion in 2024.

At 40% annual growth, AI investments will eclipse our war investments by next year.

We cannot drink from the Firehose.

We must point our efforts elsewhere. 

My brother Frank would say: 

You can't worry about your Dandriff,

When you are dying of Cancer.

Something else got him. 

 

 

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Where the Future Is

 

Most of my immediate family goes to Idaho to ski about this time of year leaving me at home to piddle around and stay up late reading or writing early into the morning.  My current mind challenge is trying to get my hands around the spectacular growth in Artificial Intelligence in the last  year and the resource and political  implications of it all. 

But last night, I was watching (actually binging) a new civil war series called the Gray House.  At around 3:00 having had enough of the spymaster story of the Confederate White House apparently named Gray House, I did my oral care and hopped into my solitary, super comfy bed.  Often, when I sleep alone, I like to leave NPR on as company and as an aural filler.  I lit the essential oil candle and turned off the bed lights behind the headboard, laid my head down, and then heard something about Drumph having just made a statement on his Truth Social account that he and Bebe just bombed Iran. 

I jumped up, flipped open my mini, and watched my normal center left news networks and yup, right there from Mar a Lago, was the POTUS in a white USA baseball cap telling the Iranians and the rest of the world that he is giving them a chance to be free; but for now to stay in doors because there is going to be a lot of bombs out there. 

And now, that's all there is on our media and will be for a while.  Most of the actual pictures come from Al Jazzerra right now.  The Fairmount in Dubai got whacked by a drone, and the Navy took some shots on their 5th fleet.  But we got our man, or at least the Israeli Air Force did.  And Khamenei, their supreme leader is now officially a martyr. We apparently also got a school full of young girls.

And now the Revolutionary Guards are warning of an intense offensive to come.

In the meantime, the Pentagon is trying to force the creators of Claude to allow their AI to not be restricted by their terms of service regarding AI homicide.  The Justice Department excluded FBI reports that Drumph forced a teenager's head onto his mushroom which she bit, and then he socks her with his fist. And we can't forget that the EPA just rescinded the endangerment finding regarding CO2 and its regulatory foundation for climate change policy.

All of this while the warnings regarding AI go unheeded:

Industry warnings regarding AI have escalated significantly as of February 2026, ranging from immediate economic disruption to long-term existential threats. High-profile executives and researchers from

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind have reached a consensus that AI risks should be treated with the same urgency as pandemics or nuclear war.

Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei,  warned in May 2025 that AI could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, potentially spiking unemployment to 10–20% within five years.

In late February 2026, Jack Dorsey’s Block announced plans to cut over 4,000 jobs—nearly half its staff—citing AI-driven productivity gains.

 Financial institutions like Citigroup have cautioned that AI implementation may lead to higher unemployment and deflation. Some analysts warn of a "vibe coding" shift that could render traditional software roles obsolete.    

 This from Wikipedia:

Experts disagree on whether artificial general intelligence (AGI) can achieve the capabilities needed for human extinction. Debates center on AGI's technical feasibility, the speed of self-improvement,^[7] and the effectiveness of alignment strategies.^[8] 

Concerns about superintelligence have been voiced by researchers including Geoffrey Hinton,^[9] Yoshua Bengio,^[10] Demis Hassabis,^[11] and Alan Turing,^[a] and AI company CEOs such as Dario Amodei (Anthropic),^[14] Sam Altman (OpenAI),^[15] and Elon Musk (xAI).^[16] 

 In 2022, a survey of AI researchers with a 17% response rate found that the majority believed there is a 10 percent or greater chance that human inability to control AI will cause an existential catastrophe.^[17][18] 

In 2023, hundreds of AI experts and other notable figures signed a statement declaring, "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war".^[19] 

Following increased concern over AI risks, government leaders such as United Kingdom prime minister Rishi Sunak^[20] and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres^[21] called for an increased focus on global AI regulation.  

Researchers warn that an "intelligence explosion"—a rapid, recursive cycle of AI self-improvement—could outpace human oversight and infrastructure, leaving no opportunity to implement safety measures. In this scenario, an AI more intelligent than its creators would recursively improve itself at an exponentially increasing rate, too quickly for its handlers or society at large to control.

Something tells me that Drumph and his DoW boy wonder have a plan for Iran.  And it probably came from Claude. ( or one of his brothers)

And sooner than you think, our boots on the ground may not be leather.

I told my grandson that all my life I've wondered where the future is.

And now it's here. 

And it's just like the movies. 

 

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Wake Up All

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

* 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week, the major renewable energy groups that have brought Texas to be the leading renewable energy state in the country (yes I said Texas...RED Texas) had a luncheon in the Special Events Room at the Austin Public Library.

The  relatively new Library just off Cesar Chavez is worth a visit and the events room can hold several hundred folks handily.  The occasion was the 40th anniversary and formal recognition of the merger of the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association and Clean Texas.  Given that it actually happened during the first days of Covid in the spring of 2020, there was not much fanfare for the merger.

Since the mid 80s, TREIA had been the leading proponent of Renewable Energy Policy in the State. Back then, Texas was just turning red, but not the kind of angry RED we have today.  Consequently, with an original push given by Governor Richards, we found open doors for making Texas an Energy state that included all forms of energy.  Those doors remained open even as we transitioned into the administrations of Governor Bush and Governor Perry. 

Consequently, the Renewable Energy Industry was able to make the argument that wind and solar fields from far west Texas should be connected to the Urban Centers in the center of the state, just like we built Farm to Market roads to bring farm products to market almost 100 years ago.  These electric transmission lines were called CREZ lines and their creation and funding was a critical element of the Texas plan. And that Texas plan came out of a series of reports that were created by the Sustainable Energy Development Council.  These reports dealt with energy in all the demand sectors and it estimated the amount of efficiency that could be mined as a result of smart energy management.

Now, Texas has over 50 GWs of Wind, 30 something GWs of Utility Solar, and almost 15 GWs of stationary storage.  This on a 90 GW peak load grid called ERCOT.  Among the greatest achievements TREIA  helped craft was an energy only-market and postage stamp wheeling rates.  That was what our producers needed to become highly competitive in the newly deregulated market and in the Nodal Market that would emerge.

Having been appointed to several state wide positions by Governors Richards and Bush, I was in the thick of all this.  Plus, I was also President or on the Executive Committee of TREIA for many of those critical years. And I was a Co-Founder with Russel Smith.

So the planners of the event honored me with a  Visionary Founder Award. And here are my short acceptance remarks:

40th Anniversary Award Remarks, September 23rd, 2025
 
Thank you…thank you. Thank you Raina, Lenae, Melissa, Hala,
 
And all of you.
 
Awards like this are truly special and they are so appreciated. But in many ways, they are also misleading and even a little bit hard on some. The good work we did 40 years ago was accomplished by more than just a handful of dedicated people.
 
Even though Margaret Meade said: 
 
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
 
It was almost 200 people who met at the Crest Inn in 1985 to start TREIA. It was exciting and there was so much future in front of us.
 
Surely some are here in this room today. (around 30 folks arise and  are recognized)

But even though we are gathered to honor the past, We need to use this time to contemplate the future. For the future  of our Industry faces uncertainty today,
 
Just like it did 40 years ago. 
 
And some of the predictions are pretty dire.
 
But some of them are not.
 
Here’s what the Sept 25 EIA ( Energy Information Administration) Report predicts:
 
We expect that total U.S. generation by the electric power sector will grow by 2.3% in 2025 and a further 3.0% next year. 
 
These growth rates are higher than expected at the beginning of the year when we forecast U.S. electricity generation would grow by an average of 1.5% each year. The higher growth in generation reflects colder-than-expected weather earlier in 2025 along with the incorporation of load growth assessments by grid operators in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and PJM systems.
 
Increasing electricity demand is being met by higher generation from most energy sources in 2025. We expect that utility-scale solar will grow the most, generating 33%, or 72 billion kilowatthours more electricity this year compared with 2024. 
 
New solar projects account for more than half of the new generating capacity expected to come online this year.
 
We expect wind will generate 4% more electricity in 2025 than it did in 2024, while we expect hydropower generation will grow by 2%.
 
We forecast that natural gas-fired power plants will generate 3% (61 BkWh) less electricity in 2025 than last year. In some regions, such as Texas and the Midwest, increasing generation from solar is also displacing some natural gas-fired generation.
 
Between now and 2026, the Short Term Outlook predicts that Gas will drop from 42 to 40 % of total generation, Renewables will grow  from 25% to 26%, nuclear remains flat at 18%, and coal still dropping falls to 16%.
 
We expect that total U.S. generation by the electric power sector will grow by 2.3% in 2025 and a further 3.0% next year. We expect that solar power will supply the largest share of the increase in both years.
 
They see GDP going up over 2% and WTI going down into the 50’s.
 
In closing I want to point out that some of us old die-hards have created the Historical Foundation for Texas Renewable Energy, also known as the Renewable Foundation, and we are archiving the 40 Years of work that got us where we are today.  Go to  the website and go back to the Newsletters in 92 when we got our first PUC Commissioner appointed, when the Utilities joined our ranks, and how we used the Governors STEPP project to create the policy that brought us an energy only market and the CREZ.
 
We’ve come a long way here in Texas.  We’ve got 40 GWs of Wind and 32 GWs of Solar, and 14 GWs of Storage on a 100 GW system.
 
If we work together we can stand tomorrow’s bad weather, because we know the climate is in our favor.
 
But I think we need to tell our story better.  Most do not recognize the sizable contribution of clean energy to their lives.  We need to fix that through organizations like this and other communication strategies. 

People need to know.
 
Thank you once again for this honor.
 
And now, allow me to do the honors and introduce Russel Smith, the Executive Director of TREIA for 3 decades." 

Yes, the Rs at the Texas State Capitol, and Drumph in DC are doing their best to slow this train down.   But the tracks are laid and the rest of the World knows that our current leadership is an embarrassment in this critical time of Climate Stabilization. 

His speech at the UN on Tuesday, the same day that I received my award will go down in History as colossal quackery    

But Hitler was an embarrassment until he proved that he was actually a menace.

And this Tuesday's likely government shutdown may prove to be more memorable than others. 

But as Yogi Berra said:

It's hard to Predict,

Especially if your talking about the Future. 

For we are in the hands of a foolish and cruel regime. 

I hope we Wake Up soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 * Poster by James Montgomery Flagg 1917