Published

1 year ago

December 24, 2024

Alice Rush

This post is part of a series of blogs examining where 2024 Southeastern candidates for state and federal offices stand on key energy and climate issues.

Note: The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy does not support or oppose candidates or political parties. Links to reports, candidate websites and outside sources are provided as citizen education tools.

In this blog post, we examine the policies and positions of Gloria Johnson, the Democratic Party candidate running for election to represent Tennessee in the United States Senate. Also in this series, we profile Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn. Election Day is November 5, 2024.

Gloria Johnson was a special education teacher in Knoxville, Tennessee for 27 years before retiring in 2015. She ran for the District 13 seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives and won, serving as their representative for a total of three terms. After redistricting, Johnson ran in District 90 and has been their representative since 2022. Gloria Johnson gained national attention as one of the “Tennessee Three” in 2023 after she and two of her Democrat colleagues faced expulsion from the Tennessee House of Representatives for joining protesters in calling for better gun control from the House floor.

Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency

Rep. Johnson has spoken out against efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark federal law that is driving historic investment into clean energy.

Climate Change

After the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to limit the EPA’s options for using the Clean Air Act to curtail carbon emissions from existing power plants, Gloria Johnson reacted by saying “Hard to believe that power and greed will make people destroy this beautiful home of ours. There is much to do to right these wrongs-I believe that we will win.”

Electric Transportation

In 2021, Gloria Johnson celebrated the announcement of a 3,600-acre battery and vehicle manufacturing campus in West Tennessee by saying “It’s an amazing announcement. Let’s make sure this deal ends with Tennesseans producing the electric vehicles that win the marketplace with a good wage and good benefits.”

Energy Equity and Energy Burden

In 2020, Representative Johnson expressed her support for ACT on KUB, a campaign to bring more accountability, cost-savings, and transparency for customers of utility provider Knoxville Utilities Board through an amendment to the city charter.

High-Risk Energy

In 2013, Gloria Johnson co-sponsored the Scenic Vistas Protection Act which would have restricted permits given to companies to conduct mountaintop removal coal mining.

Voting Information

Election Day is November 5. Here are important dates and deadlines to consider, from the Tennessee Secretary of State:

Aug. 7, 2024: First day to make an absentee ballot request
Oct. 7, 2024: Voter registration deadline
Oct. 16, 2024: In-person early voting begins
Oct. 29, 2024: Absentee ballot request deadline
Oct. 31, 2024: In-person early voting ends
Nov. 5, 2024: General Election Day
Nov. 5, 2024: Absentee ballot return deadline

For more information about being a Tennessee voter, including registering, finding your polling place, and requesting an absentee ballot, visit proudvoter.org.

#CandidatesOnEnergy2024

The post Candidate Gloria Johnson on Climate & Energy appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Candidate Gloria Johnson on Climate & Energy

Renewable Energy

Homeschooling

Published

12 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Alice Rush

Decent and intelligent people respect the rights of parents to homeschool their children, but there are two reasons for concern: a) socialization, failure to expose children to their peers, so that they may make friends and come to understand the norms of society, and b) the quality of the education itself.

Almost all homeschooling in the United States is conducted on the basis of a radical rightwing viewpoint, normally a blend of evangelical Christianity and Trumpism.

Homeschooling

Renewable Energy

The Positive Effects We’ve Had on Others Are Profound, Whether We Know It or Not

Published

22 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

There’s a theory that most people underestimate the positive effects they’ve had on other people.

Yes, that’s the theme of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but it’s also the core of the 1995 film “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” in which a music teacher who deemed that his life had been a failure because he never completed writing a great symphony, is gently and beautifully corrected. Please see below.

The Positive Effects We’ve Had on Others Are Profound, Whether We Know It or Not

Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Concepts Can’t Violate the Laws of Physics

Published

1 day ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

In the early days of 2GreenEnergy, my people and I were vigorously engaged in finding solid ideas in cleantech that needed funding in order to move forward.

I vividly remember a conversation with a guy in Maryland who was trying to explain the (ostensible) breakthrough that he and his team had made in hydrokinetics. When I was having trouble visualizing what we was talking about, he asked me to “think of it as a river in a box.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You mean you take a box full of standing water, add energy to it get it moving, then extract that energy, leaving you with more energy that you added to it.”

“Exactly.”

I politely explained that the laws of physics, specifically the first and second laws of thermodynamics, make this impossible.

He wasn’t through, however, and insisted that, in his office, his people had constructed a “working model.”

Here’s where my tone descended into something less than 100% polite. I told him that he may think he has a working model, but he’s wrong; if he believes this, he’s ignorant; if he doesn’t, but is conducting this conversation anyway, he’s a fraud.

“But don’t you want to come see it?” he implored.

“No. Not only would not fly across the country to see whatever it is you claim to have built, I wouldn’t walk across the street to a “working model” of something that is theoretically impossible.”

—

I tell this story because the claim made at the upper left is essentially identical. You’re pumping water up out of a stream, and then claiming to extract more energy when the water flows back into the stream.

Of course, social media today is rife with complete crap like this. We’ve devolved to a point where defrauding money out of idiots is rapidly replacing baseball as our national pastime.