Robert Hirschfeld

VIP shit

YouTube video by Prairie Rivers Network Illinois Solar for All - Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club

I even helped make videos for some of them: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWQJ...

E.P.A. Moves to Cancel $7 Billion in Grants for Solar Energy

Sometimes infrastructure spending doesn't seem to materialize—but I know a lot of people, as well as places like Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club, with rooftop solar thanks to Solar for All. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/c...

In the future, only Bill Gates, the Mormons, and China will own farmland. www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/...

Opinion | You Are Contaminated

Our rivers are drugged: fertilizer runoff feeds dead zones, streams test positive for meth, painkillers, and antibiotics.

Given the depressing state of our water, maybe it’s only fair we’re dosing it with antidepressants too. @dwallacewells.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...

Governor Pritzker signed the bill banning carbon sequestration in the Mahomet Aquifer, which provides drinking water to nearly 1,000,000 people in central Illinois.

Thank you, govpritzker.illinois.gov

Monarch butterflies’ mass die-off in 2024 caused by pesticide exposure – study New peer-reviewed research found an average of seven pesticides in each of 10 butterflies tested

“Testing of 10 of the insects revealed an average of seven pesticides in each, and at levels that researchers suspect were lethal”

+1,000,000,000 jobs added in the next report

Welcome to summer in the 21st century

"Canada needs to take its wildfire smoke back"

Hate to tell you this, but half or more of that smoke settled over the Plains and Midwest today is thanks to fires in the western/southwest United States of America.

The dead zone in the Gulf of American Farm Runoff is smaller this year, only 4400 square miles of lifeless water.

Congrats everyone!

This is America—Freedom means the public has to pay industry not to pollute or drain the commons. thehill.com/opinion/ener...

The future is hazy and smells of burning.

Goddammit

The dead zone in the Gulf of American Farm Runoff is smaller this year, only 4400 square miles of lifeless water.

Congrats everyone!

In a state like Illinois, where agriculture is a major driver of pollution, climate leadership cannot just be promotion of wind and solar power.

For whatever progress we've made on power generation, when it comes to farming and land use, we’re still waiting for someone to lead.

Room for improvement indeed.

Handing out bags of public money and asking farmers politely has not fixed the emissions, erosion, and pollution caused by our corn-and-soy system.

This landscape—dominated by biofuel-driven monocultures—is a major driver of climate emissions & water degradation.

EPA's Endangerment Repeal Could Undermine Ethanol and RFS Policy How should agriculture view EPA's decision to revoke its own authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions? If EPA declares there is no reason to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the implications f...

If EPA now says that greenhouse gases do not endanger public health, does that spell trouble for ethanol?

Please. Ethanol doesn’t need logic. It runs on subsidies, cropaganda, and a deep seated desire to poison water supplies. www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/...

American ag policy is total war on the land—including salting the earth with PFAS so nothing can grow uncontaminated again.

Poisoned wells, dead livestock, cancer?

Fuck you American citizen, you're what they call collateral damage. insideclimatenews.org/news/2807202...

Thread. I admire @govpritzker.illinois.gov, but @rfhirschfeld.bsky.social is right.

The limits of what voluntary conservation incentives — to a numerically small and mainly Republican constituency — could do to mitigate climate change were reached long ago. And biofuels offset any good they do.

It’s not serious to ask taxpayers to spend billions to address the pollution problem coming from agriculture.

It’s time to move beyond voluntary programs and require practices—and incentivize crops—that actually serve climate, water, and public health.

Good article by @alexiaunderwood.bsky.social

Room for improvement indeed.

Handing out bags of public money and asking farmers politely has not fixed the emissions, erosion, and pollution caused by our corn-and-soy system.

This landscape—dominated by biofuel-driven monocultures—is a major driver of climate emissions & water degradation.

Illinois’ Governor Has Led on Climate Policy. Here’s How Experts Assess His Work So Far - Inside Climate News JB Pritzker gets praise for a landmark climate bill. But plenty remains undone.

While Illinois has bold, transformative climate goals for the power sector, the brilliant and handsome expert quoted in this article says we’re failing—badly—to address agriculture, which covers 75% of the state's landscape. insideclimatenews.org/news/3007202...

New Yorker cartoon by Emily Bernstein from July 18, 2025 with a man driving an angry looking woman who is holding their phone. The caption says: “I had it route us around anything Robert Moses built so you won’t tell me about it.”

Did my kid do this one?

“We’re not paying farmers unless they get into a desperate situation,” he said, adding “If we’re doing good, government doesn’t come in and subsidize this. It only does when we could go broke.”

Amazing how rich farmers are always about to go broke.

Trump’s Tax Bill Expands Farm Subsidies. Not All Farmers Will Benefit.

$60 billion expansion of farm subsidies, mostly for big commodity growers

Farm Bureau calls it “desperately needed”

Of course—they support the consolidation this accelerates: payouts to absentee landlords living in cities, small farms squeezed out, rural America depopulating

I spoke to a reporter yesterday about this very thing.

Can’t wait to read.

The son’s story is very interesting. He built something truly magical. The grounds and gardens are out of a storybook.

You should visit Allerton Park

Eh, I'm sure those ground up recycled tires are safe enough.