You don’t realize how big wind turbines are until you see a human next to it 👀
I’m sure would put this to good use 🛹
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Stu Powell 
@EcoStu2050
I share about the intersection of innovation 
& sustainable development 
& local gov't 
Entrepreneur by day, wanna-be urban planner by night.
& sustainable development & local gov't
Entrepreneur by day, wanna-be urban planner by night.Stu Powell 🌎’s Tweets
I told her to not use AI too much, or she might magically become the Pope one day 😂
AI is discussed as a productivity hack for professionals, but this shows it's a hack for anyone & anything.
After already giving up 6 hrs, she's now relieved & happy to be finished ✅
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The cherry on top:
I prompted "Write an opening prayer for a teen confirmation class."
And again... within 15 seconds, she said this was a PERFECT prayer to use.
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I prompted "Write an essay about Session 1"
And within 15 seconds, it spits out the discussion talking points for Session 1 of the curriculum.
At that point, she was basically like OMG, WHAT IS THIS THING 🤯👀
She basically finished this week-long task during a 10-min tutorial
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I said "But wait, there's more..."
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At this point, she was like WTF I just spent 6 hours doing research and barely making progress...
...And this AI just wrote the entire curriculum in 15 seconds 🤯
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Great. I had two simple prompts...
"Write a 6-session curriculum for a confirmation class for Christian teens."
And then I was curious how it may change with:
"Rewrite this for Episcopal teens"
And she was like "WHOA, how did it do it that fast?!?!" 👀🤯
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This went on for a while, but here's where she went WOW to WHOA...
I transitioned by asking her "what are you working on a lot lately?"
She responded "I've been asked to create a 6-week confirmation class for teens in our Episcopal church... I just spent 6 HOURS on research."
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Next, we asked a more specialized question:
"What are the best treatments for Borderline Personality Disorder?"
Once again, she was surprised it was very similar to how she would've answered.
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15 secs later, out popped the answer.
She said that GPT's answer was very similar to her class, but she added:
"I never thought about including Forensic Psychology... interesting 🤔"
She was amazed at how accurate AND fast it was.
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Her entire career was teaching Psychology, so I figured I'd focus on a use case of education & Psychology as a tutorial.
My first prompt: "Write a 10-class curriculum for a psychology 101 class"
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Yes, I'm also tired of hearing about AI but...
I think the experience of showing my mom #ChatGPT notes the untapped potential of AI.
Here is how she went from curious 🤔 to mindblown 🤯 in 10 minutes:
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Once you get BigTech lobby $$$ to fight against Big Oil & Gas lobby $$$…
Things will get real interesting, real fast!
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$AMZN | Amazon To Enter Electricity Trading - Mint
livemint.com/industry/energ
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Next… muni’s need to have this epiphany too 💡
Idling cars, short distances, fluctuating gas prices, frequent maintenance.
The financial case for EVs in local govt is the same situation.
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Emissions down, profits up.
"Hertz discovered that electric vehicles are between 50-60% cheaper to maintain than gasoline-powered cars"
thecooldown.com/green-business
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yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com
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Hello @GretaThunberg
I have 33 cars.
My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo.
My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s.
This is just the start.
Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.
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Every winter, fresh snow reveals how much we’ve over-designed our streets & roads for cars, making them faster & more dangerous, & how much space we could reclaim for people & public life. We call them #sneckdowns. GIF via #sneckdown
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The biggest innovations live on the same benefit↔️destruction spectrum.
☣️Nuclear can power or destroy a nation.
🧬Genetic engineering can create drought-resistant plants or biological weapons.
💬Social media brings us together or tears us apart.
Any good reads on this?
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Homes are made out of sustainability materials AND it’s basically a “community block” meets “sharing economy” in the water
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I love being the “climate guy” locally b/c people will just sent me cool stuff.
Case in point: there are now beautiful floating houses in Amsterdam (no, not repurposed boats) 🏠🌊
As flooding & sea level rise worsens, humans are innovating & adapting
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Urban biking fans:
What are the top resources for best practices of street lanes? (e.g. bike vs. travel vs. parking vs. buffer zone)
NCDOT is paving local roads, & I think their staff has zero training on how bike lanes work based on the most recent painting symbols.
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I also think COVID has increased loneliness + decreased “getting to know your neighbor”
So I hope this type of “community action” can catch waves locally to fix that issue.
People want to be tied into the community, & this is THE perfect opportunity… to do good + socialize.
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These 6 ideas happened within a 3-hour window.
And there might’ve been more ideas in other groups that I didn’t hear.
So we not only picked up trash (this photo is only one area!), but we also socialized & came up with 6 ideas to better our community 💚
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IDEA 6: My friend is on the planning board, & he happened to bring up that affordable housing is becoming a hot topic.
I mentioned other cities around the country are dealing with the same growth pains, so we should work together to go find solutions & not reinvent the wheel.
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I told the Commissioner that I would look into case studies & federal/other funding.
See: he naturally figured out how to use me as a free *asset* b/c he knows I’m passionate about this space 😂
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So a city’s waste+expense (i.e taxpayer’s expense) is a company’s revenue 🤔
Could we not only cut a city *revenue*, but also flip it into *revenue*? 🤯
The Parks & Rec Director was there, and she’s like “Cary does this”, so the model exist already.
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IDEA 5: I was talking to my friend/city commissioner, and I’m now the go-to sustainability guy 😂
Long story short, he found the city pays $150k for “sludge removal” from the wastewater plant, and then a company treats it & sells it to farms.
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IDEA 4: Could we get the locally-owned print shop to sponsor/donate to put trail signs + “no litter” signs around the area?
Genius!
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IDEA 3: Could we get the locally-owned ACE Hardware store to donate/sponsor a picnic table for this fishing spot that already has a cement pad?
Genius!
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IDEA 2: With all the beer bottles, someone had the idea to tag and see if they would sponsor to some trail work 🍻
(Scope 3 emissions opportunity?!?!)
Genius!
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IDEA 1: There were no trash cans out there, so no doubt ppl would just throw empty beer cans out as they left. Someone recommended getting trash cans out there.
Duh, let’s fix this!
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With the litter pickup, we realized: 90% of trash were beer/drink bottles and cans.
People like to go out, enjoy nature (likely fish), and drink there.
Eventually, the magic started to happen:
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Yes, this was a “do good” event, yet was more of a social event for me and likely many others. Kids came too!
The best analogy is a weekend soccer team or golf group. Sure you’re there to get active, but it’s really about hanging out with people.
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This first event was a success, so he plans a second one.
This time it’s at Lake Devin… he decided to do it there, b/c he lived here for a few years before he realized it even existed on the edge of the city.
The task is to pick up trash, b/c it’s not attractive to visit.
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But he was doing the opposite.
He was trying to figure out how to use the community as an *asset* WITH the city.
The community has people who work in construction, landscaping, engineering, finance, etc.
Let’s let the community be an extension of the city.
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If this has never been done, you must be careful how to message it.
Electeds/staff can think “Oh, this person isn’t thinking we’re doing enough, or doesn’t know we are already staff/budget constrained.”
It’s working WITH the city, not against it.
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He showed the vision and somehow got renderings for it (still need to ask how he did it).
Basically, everyone loved the idea & was so amazed that we were coming together as a COMMUNITY (with a diverse crowd) to think about how to make the community better *together*
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A local friend wants to improve the community, with a particular vision of greenways + “pocket parks” throughout a rural city that doesn’t have any.
His first event (which I out of town) was a walk between our downtown sports field park ↔️ small land connecting to a K12 school
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I did my first litter pickup 🚮 this weekend, and it was surprisingly way more fun (& social) than I could have ever thought.
If you want to improve your community, here is how a small gathering turned into 6 new awesome community ideas/initiatives
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And yes, there are situations where you can roll roof replacements into a solar loan.
But the mindset is "ugh, roof replacement is an added cost that I don't want to deal with right now if I don't have to."
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One area where I think climate philanthropy can play a big role is surprising...
Roof replacements.
I've had many convos where a commercial/govt solar project saves energy costs, BUT they need to replace their roof in, say, 5-10 yrs.
Old roofs are holding back solar adoption.
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