$SO AGM

I was kind of lucky in that Southern Company’s AGM was today. Southern is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the U.S. and a high priority for us during AGM season. The good nuns of New Jersey placed a resolution on Southern’s ballot requesting that the company develop a transition plan for complying with the 2-degree Celsius goal of the Paris Agreement (UUs, Church of England, and Catholics all very good on climate). In other words, how will Southern wean itself off coal to rapidly reduce emissions and ramp up a distribution system fed by renewables.

The resolution got 46% in favour, not a win but stiff resistance to Southern’s aggressive lobbying against the resolution.

I blogged and tweeted my heart out today, which helped with the missing of the dog that was meant to be lying beside me all day. Tonight I went to TenX9, a storytelling evening (similar to The Moth in the US). One of the readers had told a story last year about having his cat put down. I asked him to send it to me, which he did. He very eloquently described the pain, anguish, guilt, anger, sorrow of going through that process.

I didn’t enjoy TenX9 as much as I usually do. Partly because there wasn’t a group there from my church, so I sat alone and nothing makes you feel more alone than being in a room full of people who are in chatty, friendly groups. My favourite story was by one Robert O’Leary of Cork who told of taking Barry’s Tea, a popular Irish brand, with him when he went to China to study Mandarin. He says Barry’s settles his stomach and his first challenge was to learn how to say in a shop: “Do you have Barry’s Tea”? I love the idea of wanting an Irish brand of tea in China. His story was also interesting because of how each Chinese word can mean something different based on the pitch. While he was kicked out of his choir for being tone deaf--meaning in China he might say “donkey" instead of “mother", for instance--he got the hang of Mandarin because the inflections are a bit like the Cork lilt. So he was able to order tea, not hammer.
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