Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦

🌞 interests: energy poverty, home performance, heat pumps & good jobs | 🌜interests: friendship, belonging, dignity, meaning | not here any more

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

Our off-the-cuff chat might be a little rough around the edges, so lets unpack.

Summary: we'd decarbonize/electrify better/faster when white-collar policy makers/shapers work *with* blue-collar (HVAC) technicians, rather than design programs *for* them from afar. 1/

[Nate the House Whisperer @energysmartwv]

What culture is going to drive residential electrification?

Hint: it's not white collar culture. Communities of practice are one piece, which HVAC 2.0 does among other functions.

An impromptu discussion with @akantamn

https://t.co/j4CXtuLQLl

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

@JustAFamilyMan_ I grew up in 🇮🇳 idolizing the American dream - hard work and tenacity are rewarded with opportunity & accomplishment - regardless of the circumstances of your birth, and I've lived that dream as a grad student in the US and now as a Canadian.

My Masters thesis front page:

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

I was very lucky to be able to catch a bit of @Skills_Canada event in Winnipeg this year and lucky to have witnessed some Canada’s next generation of skilled tradespeople. Such a fantastic initiative to help young people find meaningful work.

https://t.co/k7Uh3rmZ6p

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

@antoniogm @tabletmag This is genuinely one of my favorite essays, I keep returning to it often.

Immensely quotable and gives voice to vague metaphysical discontentment many experience with modernity. Thank you for writing this.

[Nate the House Whisperer @energysmartwv]

HVAC contractors work in the nasty parts of homes. As did I as an insulation contractor.

The work needs to pay well or it won’t get done, or at least not done well.

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

@Jed_Trott @duncancampbell @cody_a_hill Dads have been steering their boys towards 'work smart, not hard' since at least 2000 BC (that we know of)

https://t.co/jryPfMbXZy

[Nate the House Whisperer @energysmartwv]

Want boots on the ground home electrification knowledge? And analysis of the challenge with hvac contractors?

Check out @akantamn and I’s Boundary Spanners podcast.

This is a wicked heavy lift!

https://t.co/YU59tc3HtC

#electrifyeverything #HVAC

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

In my own conception of the world, I would like to be more attentive to our rich inner orderings that drive, shape our character and destiny.

In particular, I'd like to account for it somehow in the policy research work I do. I am as yet unsure what that would look like /end

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

How to make room for - in thinking about energy policy - for the ordering of our inner lives?

Where to begin accounting for things like - your sense of honour and dignity that bind you to a certain way of being? 1/

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

However, we are all not merely fragmented automatons that can be nudged into certain 'preferred' policy pathways to maximize our private utility. 7/

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

I'm tired now but I'll have to think about all this a bit more and write it up somewhere else.

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

Takeaways from 2 months spent driving 15k kms across 🇺🇸/🇨🇦

1) Home is where you're missed

2) There's an epidemic of profound loneliness & a devastating decline of social relations, in communities of all kinds- from coal towns in WV to software suburbs of WA

3) Wither antidote?

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

Same patterns come up in nearly every conversation with all kinds of people. Concerns about

> Uprootedness from and disenchantment with places

> Erosion of shared spaces and corrosion of shared aspirations

> Hostile fragmentation of attention and affection

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

@Jed_Trott Maybe your plumber just needed a hug?

https://t.co/M1f6vphyvr

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

@StephenJWT Thanks man, very kind words and I appreciate it very much!

Great seeing you in person too!

[Abhi from Canada 🇨🇦 @akantamn]

@mandhana_abhi @Jed_Trott Yes-es on the right, no-s on the left