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it's wednesday july 13th 20 2022. I'm Jackson Bird today. What can the slow and timid adoption of coal in the U.S. tell us about the transition to solar and wind power now? Plus, this newly discovered dinosaur shed some light on why T-Rexes had those tiny little arms.

And when cities welcome physical monuments to fictional pop culture characters, here's some cool

stuff for your ride home.

We desperately need broader rollouts of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

Yet they've lagged for decades.

Tax cuts have only gone so far.

Large-scale installations face constant pushback from communities who don't like the look of them or decision-makers who would rather the money to install them go somewhere else.

And on the household level, many homeowners don't want to pay the upfront cost, or are overwhelmed

by figuring out how it all works, or simply don't like how a bunch of solar panels lining their

rooftop looks. It might feel like the resistance to renewable energy sources is unique to our

time, a side effect of the

polarization of the basic science of the climate crisis, but as historians point out, most

major energy transitions have faced a similar pushback and an extended period of adoption.

Writing in the current issue of Smithsonian Magazine, Clive Thompson, aka the guy who created my favorite search engine, weird old bookfinder, link in the show notes,

outlines the U.S.'s reluctant adoption of coal in the 19th century. So in the 1800s, the main source of energy, warming homes, and cooking meals was wood. America at the time had tons of wood. But deforestation was a rapidly approaching specter on the horizon as cities grew and expanded. Even as early as 1744, Thompson shares that Benjamin Franklin fretted about wood that used to be available outside

every person's front door, now having to come from almost 100 miles away in some cases.

We were just using so much of it, partially because wood is not really an efficient way to heat

...