It seems to me that the capital of our planet is the total of its resources maintained by the energy received from our sun. A balance is kept among these resources by the laws of nature. If an imbalance, for example, overpopulation occurs, it is culled by nature. Over time, a balance is maintained in all species of plants and animals (including the human animal) in this manner. And, since the pictures from the moon show our planet in a vast sea of emptiness—it is obvious that its resources are finite.
Whether by intuition or conscious design, some earlier societies, the Native American Indian for example, lived in renewable harmony with nature. Our present-day society, on the other hand, is living on mined resources. We are not in balance and without major changes to our systems, we can never be. If we, on a planet wide basis, do not cure our imbalances and get in renewable step with our worlds’ resources, nature will do it for us—and I am sure we won’t enjoy her methods. The laws of nature and physics do not compromise, they are what they are and our wants and desires will not be considered.
I have written before that unrestrained capitalism only works because of an expansion of itself. How often have you heard the refrain—”to create jobs and get out of this recession we must expand (or grow) the economy”.
Speculation in an economy is expansion on the cuff: If it is introduced and balanced out in the near term, you have expanded the economy. If it causes a retraction, you have created a recession or, if severe and prolonged, a depression.
The bursting of the debt bubble built up by the manic speculation in the 1920’s brought The Great Depression because, as people attempted to reduce their debt there was less spending in the general day-to-day economy and therefore, jobs were lost and unemployment rose.
Neoclassical economists of that day said, to increase employment you need to cut money wages. But that, of course, would just make it harder for an, in debt, worker to pay off their debt and increase the time before they could begin to consume more in the day-to-day economy. And, if their wages were cut to zero (unemployed), how could they do either.
Sadly, the conservatives of today espouse the same failed policy—cut programs and pay off the debt. (I wonder how many of the ones saying this are unemployed—conservatives in congress we know are not. And the Tea Party puppets who are having their strings pulled—do they want their government benefits cut, their Social Security and Medicare perhaps).
The Neoclassical method does not work, history has shown that. What does work is the Keynesian Model, inflationary government spending (either by borrowing or printing) to create aggregate demand in the economy and thereby create jobs—it ended the Great Depression and it would have ended the current deep recession if the conservatives had allowed enough spending—but, of course, they didn’t. I have written about this in a previous E-pamphlet: “Empirical Evidence for Keynesian Model”.
Now comes the big caveat: as I said above, unrestrained capitalism only works if it can expand.
Is there room for more expansion?—maybe, in an economic sense, if the developed nations keep taking more and more of the world’s resources unto themselves. But, this, business-as-usual path, the path that the conservatives insist on taking, will only bring on the dire consequences of runaway global warming and in the end we will all perish.
The other path, the one I hope we travel down, is the one where we phase out, very quickly, the use of fossil fuels (unless and until we are able to capture and sequester the pollutants in them) and switch to all nonpolluting renewable sources.
I realize that a world running on renewable sources may not support the existing population, if and when we get there, but if our species and millions of others are to survive, there doesn’t seem to be another choice—nature will do the culling.
There is a ray of hope though, if humanity is able to pull this off, it will be by stringent government regulations, ones that will change the way unregulated capitalism now operates. And, instead of the few having such a large claim on the world’s resources, more will be made available to others and nature will have less culling to do.
Young people! please get actively involved in all elections, you are the ones who will suffer the most if there is not massive change in the way we treat our environment.
Support only progressive Democrats, they are the ones who try to make the changes in regulations that are needed if the United States is to do its part in saving the planet from dire global warming consequences.
And join 350.org in their worldwide effort to save our planet.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Young People Beware
Young people beware of becoming or accepting the rhetoric of global warming deniers. I’m guessing that when a climate scientist such as Dr. Heidi Cullen says that most of the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere today comes from natural sources, as she does in her book: The Weather of the Future, you would accept it at face value.
Why then—if you are a denier of global warming—can you not accept her further conclusion that most of the additional CO2 that’s been placed in the atmosphere over the last 250 years (years since the beginning of the industrial revolution) comes from us (human beings); especially since you are not asked to accept it at face value but are given scientific evidence to support that conclusion.
Even if you are not trained in the sciences—I will say that you would probably agree that science is testable knowledge used to explain and make predictions about the real world.
For example, it explains the greenhouse effect—that property of a planetary atmosphere that causes a planet’s surface temperature to be higher than it would be without that atmosphere.
Any gas that absorbs sunlight causes greenhouse effect—on earth the important ones are water vapor, CO2, and methane, of these CO2 is the most long lasting.
Dr. Cullen explains how empirical evidence from mass spectrometer measurements show that most of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution has the chemical fingerprint of coal, oil, natural gas, and deforestation because these are the only sources that produce CO2 depleted in carbon13 and carbon14 isotopes.
The planet is getting hotter: arctic ice is melting, glaciers are melting, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting and the only major climate forcing change over the last 10,000 years is the addition of CO2 (from approximately 280ppm in 1750 to 390ppm today) all in just 250 years—a blink of the eye in geological terms. Humans caused this and humans are the only ones who can lessen the dire effects of too much global warming.
You young people must get actively involved; you are the ones who will suffer most. I am seventy-three years old and probably will have died by the time the real bad effects of global warming are here. It is my generation and generations before me who are at fault, but mostly my generation because we have the needed scientific information that shows what has to be done to avert a catastrophe.
As a group, however, we won’t act on this information for any number of reasons—the two main ones are greed and self interests. The backbone of this self interest, unbridled capitalism based on fossil fuel use, is severally flawed; it is set up to benefit the minority of the rich and powerful. It only works at all because of an expansion of itself, and there is no more room for expansion; global warming consequences will see to that.
So, you young people must force change on us by voting. You must vote for progressive legislators, ones who will set up government regulations that will deal with global warming. This will require regulation of our capitalistic system to insure a very large middle class, a very small, if any, upper class, and no very poor class—so different from our present system that it might require a new name.
This means you should not vote for Republicans—their very definition, that of being conservative, calls for little or no change—and there must be massive change if young people are to have a planet they can survive on. And you should not vote for any conservative Democrats for the same reason. Also, any Independent candidates, you might want to vote for, should prove they are for progressive change—but then, of course, they are not really Independents, so they should probably get off of the fence they have been sitting on and become progressive Democrats.
I believe the, somewhat natural, rebellion toward authority by young people should be encouraged in this instance. Don’t be influenced by conservative dogma, they want to leave things as they are, to keep the riches they acquired by depriving others—they are not your friends and never have been.
Did the founders of our country mean, in the Declaration of Independence, that all humans are created equal? They didn’t say that. They said all men, didn’t even mention women. They certainly didn’t mean black slaves; they weren’t even counted as a full whole person. They really only meant propertied men, not poor unpropertied men. And it has remained mostly that way ever since, the rich and powerful giving only enough to the next lower class to keep them from becoming too rebellious.
They have, so far, been able to do this by controlling communication with the voting public. At one time even controlling the voting, e.g., women couldn’t vote, unpropertied men couldn’t vote, blacks couldn’t vote, and there were polling rules that denied some others the vote.
The rich and powerful still control much of the communication through well paid “talking-heads” on T.V. and radio and legislators in government though well paid lobbyists in Congress.
But, young people, you still have a chance, the courts have solved the legal issues of voting—the only, but really important, impediment there is apathy; you must get to the voting booth every election.
And the other problem, that of controlling communication, the internet is still open; the rich haven’t been able to control that yet, but they will keep trying—they already use it themselves very effectively.
The scientific evidence says that these global warming consequences will come about if we continue to use fossil fuels as usual. At some point it will become evident to all that the conservative deniers were dead wrong and they will be pariah but by then it will be too late for all of us. There will be too much warming inertia in the climate change pipeline, it will be humanly impossible to stop.
So, beware young people—my generation and those before have inherited a climate-stable planet to live on but unless you act now and repeatedly at every election, you will only inherit a hell on earth.
Why then—if you are a denier of global warming—can you not accept her further conclusion that most of the additional CO2 that’s been placed in the atmosphere over the last 250 years (years since the beginning of the industrial revolution) comes from us (human beings); especially since you are not asked to accept it at face value but are given scientific evidence to support that conclusion.
Even if you are not trained in the sciences—I will say that you would probably agree that science is testable knowledge used to explain and make predictions about the real world.
For example, it explains the greenhouse effect—that property of a planetary atmosphere that causes a planet’s surface temperature to be higher than it would be without that atmosphere.
Any gas that absorbs sunlight causes greenhouse effect—on earth the important ones are water vapor, CO2, and methane, of these CO2 is the most long lasting.
Dr. Cullen explains how empirical evidence from mass spectrometer measurements show that most of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution has the chemical fingerprint of coal, oil, natural gas, and deforestation because these are the only sources that produce CO2 depleted in carbon13 and carbon14 isotopes.
The planet is getting hotter: arctic ice is melting, glaciers are melting, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting and the only major climate forcing change over the last 10,000 years is the addition of CO2 (from approximately 280ppm in 1750 to 390ppm today) all in just 250 years—a blink of the eye in geological terms. Humans caused this and humans are the only ones who can lessen the dire effects of too much global warming.
You young people must get actively involved; you are the ones who will suffer most. I am seventy-three years old and probably will have died by the time the real bad effects of global warming are here. It is my generation and generations before me who are at fault, but mostly my generation because we have the needed scientific information that shows what has to be done to avert a catastrophe.
As a group, however, we won’t act on this information for any number of reasons—the two main ones are greed and self interests. The backbone of this self interest, unbridled capitalism based on fossil fuel use, is severally flawed; it is set up to benefit the minority of the rich and powerful. It only works at all because of an expansion of itself, and there is no more room for expansion; global warming consequences will see to that.
So, you young people must force change on us by voting. You must vote for progressive legislators, ones who will set up government regulations that will deal with global warming. This will require regulation of our capitalistic system to insure a very large middle class, a very small, if any, upper class, and no very poor class—so different from our present system that it might require a new name.
This means you should not vote for Republicans—their very definition, that of being conservative, calls for little or no change—and there must be massive change if young people are to have a planet they can survive on. And you should not vote for any conservative Democrats for the same reason. Also, any Independent candidates, you might want to vote for, should prove they are for progressive change—but then, of course, they are not really Independents, so they should probably get off of the fence they have been sitting on and become progressive Democrats.
I believe the, somewhat natural, rebellion toward authority by young people should be encouraged in this instance. Don’t be influenced by conservative dogma, they want to leave things as they are, to keep the riches they acquired by depriving others—they are not your friends and never have been.
Did the founders of our country mean, in the Declaration of Independence, that all humans are created equal? They didn’t say that. They said all men, didn’t even mention women. They certainly didn’t mean black slaves; they weren’t even counted as a full whole person. They really only meant propertied men, not poor unpropertied men. And it has remained mostly that way ever since, the rich and powerful giving only enough to the next lower class to keep them from becoming too rebellious.
They have, so far, been able to do this by controlling communication with the voting public. At one time even controlling the voting, e.g., women couldn’t vote, unpropertied men couldn’t vote, blacks couldn’t vote, and there were polling rules that denied some others the vote.
The rich and powerful still control much of the communication through well paid “talking-heads” on T.V. and radio and legislators in government though well paid lobbyists in Congress.
But, young people, you still have a chance, the courts have solved the legal issues of voting—the only, but really important, impediment there is apathy; you must get to the voting booth every election.
And the other problem, that of controlling communication, the internet is still open; the rich haven’t been able to control that yet, but they will keep trying—they already use it themselves very effectively.
The scientific evidence says that these global warming consequences will come about if we continue to use fossil fuels as usual. At some point it will become evident to all that the conservative deniers were dead wrong and they will be pariah but by then it will be too late for all of us. There will be too much warming inertia in the climate change pipeline, it will be humanly impossible to stop.
So, beware young people—my generation and those before have inherited a climate-stable planet to live on but unless you act now and repeatedly at every election, you will only inherit a hell on earth.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Empirical Evidence for Keynesian Model
In the United States of America (U.S.A.), if I ask you, is the military a part of the Federal Government, would you answer yes or no
In the U.S.A., if you are a large manufacturer of widgets, do you hire people to help you make the widgets?
If the U.S. military buys widgets from you, is that government spending?
Does this spending create jobs for widget makers?
It is obvious that the answer, to all of the above, is yes.
World War Two forced the government spending that ended The Great Depression. To me, this is empirical evidence that proves, the Keynesian Idea, that aggregate demand determines economic activity. And, because just before the spending on WWII, The Great Depression was still ongoing, disproves the neoclassical idea that free markets will automatically provide full employment, if wage demands are flexible—meaning a cut in money wages.
It is more than just unfortunate that the government spending on WWII was used to buy things that kill people. It doesn’t have to be you know, it could be used to buy and make things that improve people’s lives: new railroads, highways, bridges, clean water utilities, and a very long list of other useful things.
Just as the Roosevelt Administration couldn’t get congress to allow enough spending without the external forcing provided by WWII; so is President Obama hindered from getting enough spending to stimulate our economy out of the 2007 great recession.
Given all the benefits that would arrive with an end to the current recession, why is the large stimulus spending that would end it so adamantly opposed by many of our representatives (those elected in my state and district, however, don’t represent my views) in congress?
My thoughts and answers to the inquiry in the above paragraph are many and varied—some based on plain ignorance of the concepts and history of the subject, some based on dogged adherence to certain ideals, some based on racism, some based on misplaced loyalties, but most based on pure greed.
I’ll put my thoughts and answers in another E-pamphlet (blog); right now I want to finish my ideas on government stimulus spending.
The fact that free market neoclassical ideas were in place leading to The Great Depression and, conversely, that near unlimited government stimulus spending (called for by Keynesian economic theory) was forced by WWII events, shows, overtly, that stimulus spending, if large enough, will bring near full employment.
I have a caveat in all this: I say the above will happen in a capitalistic system if there is room for expansion—there was after WWII, at least as the distribution of things was at that time until now.
But now (2010), I think the limit for expansion has already been exceeded. And if the excess’s of the rich are taken back by the “have not’s” forced by unameliorated global warming consequences, chaos will be the order of the day and the whole system will collapse.
The laws of physics will bring this about if changes are not immediately made in our unlimited use of fossil fuels. Government regulations, very stringent ones (the bête noire of conservatives), are the only things that can force the needed changes.
This will, of course, kill the kind of capitalistic system we have always had (one ruled by the rich and powerful) and in its place, a more progressive, egalitarian one will have to arise—one with enough regulation to permit a very large middle class, one with a very small, if any, upper class, and no poor class.
Think it will happen? Personally, I have always been an optimist but my seventy three year walk down the hallways of life “bumping into the walls on both sides”, as Barbara Kingsolver has written, says no.
Oh! And as an aside, if the above changes to the use of fossil fuels are not made, my thoughts on why the congress is so adamantly opposed to stimulus spending that would end the current great recession are irrelevant. If we insist on using up all the fossil fuels in the ground, we will render our planet unlivable and cease to exist.
In the U.S.A., if you are a large manufacturer of widgets, do you hire people to help you make the widgets?
If the U.S. military buys widgets from you, is that government spending?
Does this spending create jobs for widget makers?
It is obvious that the answer, to all of the above, is yes.
World War Two forced the government spending that ended The Great Depression. To me, this is empirical evidence that proves, the Keynesian Idea, that aggregate demand determines economic activity. And, because just before the spending on WWII, The Great Depression was still ongoing, disproves the neoclassical idea that free markets will automatically provide full employment, if wage demands are flexible—meaning a cut in money wages.
It is more than just unfortunate that the government spending on WWII was used to buy things that kill people. It doesn’t have to be you know, it could be used to buy and make things that improve people’s lives: new railroads, highways, bridges, clean water utilities, and a very long list of other useful things.
Just as the Roosevelt Administration couldn’t get congress to allow enough spending without the external forcing provided by WWII; so is President Obama hindered from getting enough spending to stimulate our economy out of the 2007 great recession.
Given all the benefits that would arrive with an end to the current recession, why is the large stimulus spending that would end it so adamantly opposed by many of our representatives (those elected in my state and district, however, don’t represent my views) in congress?
My thoughts and answers to the inquiry in the above paragraph are many and varied—some based on plain ignorance of the concepts and history of the subject, some based on dogged adherence to certain ideals, some based on racism, some based on misplaced loyalties, but most based on pure greed.
I’ll put my thoughts and answers in another E-pamphlet (blog); right now I want to finish my ideas on government stimulus spending.
The fact that free market neoclassical ideas were in place leading to The Great Depression and, conversely, that near unlimited government stimulus spending (called for by Keynesian economic theory) was forced by WWII events, shows, overtly, that stimulus spending, if large enough, will bring near full employment.
I have a caveat in all this: I say the above will happen in a capitalistic system if there is room for expansion—there was after WWII, at least as the distribution of things was at that time until now.
But now (2010), I think the limit for expansion has already been exceeded. And if the excess’s of the rich are taken back by the “have not’s” forced by unameliorated global warming consequences, chaos will be the order of the day and the whole system will collapse.
The laws of physics will bring this about if changes are not immediately made in our unlimited use of fossil fuels. Government regulations, very stringent ones (the bête noire of conservatives), are the only things that can force the needed changes.
This will, of course, kill the kind of capitalistic system we have always had (one ruled by the rich and powerful) and in its place, a more progressive, egalitarian one will have to arise—one with enough regulation to permit a very large middle class, one with a very small, if any, upper class, and no poor class.
Think it will happen? Personally, I have always been an optimist but my seventy three year walk down the hallways of life “bumping into the walls on both sides”, as Barbara Kingsolver has written, says no.
Oh! And as an aside, if the above changes to the use of fossil fuels are not made, my thoughts on why the congress is so adamantly opposed to stimulus spending that would end the current great recession are irrelevant. If we insist on using up all the fossil fuels in the ground, we will render our planet unlivable and cease to exist.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Will our Inheritance be just The Wind?
While David Roberts, staff writer for Grist, is, at the end of his turbulent flow through the 2010 midterm pipeline, still a positive person at heart—he needed to be, in his own words,”…depressed as hell for a minute.”
In his September1, 2010 article “How bad are the next few years going to suck?” his depression is caused by the very real possibility that the Democrats may lose the House. They probably won’t lose the Senate but, of course, it has been such a “do so little body”, that it rivals the, ”do absolutely nothing Republican Party of No”.
Roberts sees, as many other environmentalists do, a return to the localization of our economies as our salvation: to start thinking in terms of making our local communities better and cleaner. I wholeheartedly agree, from the bottom up is where we’ll win out.
I am old enough to remember that, as a child, I could walk to the grocery store; there was one in every neighborhood. This could be again; what wasn’t produced locally could be delivered to our communities by nonpolluting generated electricity powering electric trains. The local deliveries could be made by battery powered vehicles, recharged with nonpolluting generated electricity. If your local store was a little far to walk to, you could drive there in your battery powered car.
This decentralization will be fought tooth and nail by most capitalists, and, I fear, most American voters will support them until it is too late to make the needed changes. If they were the only ones involved I would say, reap what you sow.
But, unless changes are made now, the rest of us will suffer the same fate: physics will eventually correct the unbalance for the earth but humankind and many other species will only inherit the wind.
In his September1, 2010 article “How bad are the next few years going to suck?” his depression is caused by the very real possibility that the Democrats may lose the House. They probably won’t lose the Senate but, of course, it has been such a “do so little body”, that it rivals the, ”do absolutely nothing Republican Party of No”.
Roberts sees, as many other environmentalists do, a return to the localization of our economies as our salvation: to start thinking in terms of making our local communities better and cleaner. I wholeheartedly agree, from the bottom up is where we’ll win out.
I am old enough to remember that, as a child, I could walk to the grocery store; there was one in every neighborhood. This could be again; what wasn’t produced locally could be delivered to our communities by nonpolluting generated electricity powering electric trains. The local deliveries could be made by battery powered vehicles, recharged with nonpolluting generated electricity. If your local store was a little far to walk to, you could drive there in your battery powered car.
This decentralization will be fought tooth and nail by most capitalists, and, I fear, most American voters will support them until it is too late to make the needed changes. If they were the only ones involved I would say, reap what you sow.
But, unless changes are made now, the rest of us will suffer the same fate: physics will eventually correct the unbalance for the earth but humankind and many other species will only inherit the wind.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Some reasons for Wendall Berry's "Sustainable agriculture and Healthy rural communities"
The idea of growth, that what we need is more of it, won’t work: the pie is not unlimited in size.
We have to get back to local and the reason is not an ideal, or economics, it’s physics! Local ultimately emits less CO2 into the atmosphere; on the retail side, we can walk to the market in many instances, or at the very least, drive fewer miles; on the supply side, the delivery trip from the local farm is also shorter. Sure beats shipping stuff half way around the world, especially for no other reason than to have a larger choice of things at the market.
When it is possible, raise food locally, deliver it locally, and buy it locally—sustainable agriculture.
The World Wide Web made globalization possible but economic globalization won’t work—at least as unregulated capitalism would have it. Same reason as always: unregulated capitalism only works (and then, only partially) when you can have unlimited growth and you can’t have unlimited growth for two reasons, and one of them is not negotiable at all.
The one that is partially negotiable is economics; the social science of deciding how to distribute limited resources, and therein lies the rub, the resources are limited, but so many people don’t seem to understand this.
That so many people don’t understand that the things we all need in our daily lives the world over is in limited supply, has been the backstop for capitalism since its beginning.
But the second reason, the one that will not compromise, is physics. If our carbon based industrial system is allowed to continue unabated, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to rise in an ever increasing manner until it will “cook” humans from the face of the earth, along with most other species. The planet will still be here, but we won’t.
Our legacy? From William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” :
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Please join 350.org as a way to fight back—if we act quickly and fully maybe it doesn’t have to be “…[all] sound and fury signifying nothing.”
We have to get back to local and the reason is not an ideal, or economics, it’s physics! Local ultimately emits less CO2 into the atmosphere; on the retail side, we can walk to the market in many instances, or at the very least, drive fewer miles; on the supply side, the delivery trip from the local farm is also shorter. Sure beats shipping stuff half way around the world, especially for no other reason than to have a larger choice of things at the market.
When it is possible, raise food locally, deliver it locally, and buy it locally—sustainable agriculture.
The World Wide Web made globalization possible but economic globalization won’t work—at least as unregulated capitalism would have it. Same reason as always: unregulated capitalism only works (and then, only partially) when you can have unlimited growth and you can’t have unlimited growth for two reasons, and one of them is not negotiable at all.
The one that is partially negotiable is economics; the social science of deciding how to distribute limited resources, and therein lies the rub, the resources are limited, but so many people don’t seem to understand this.
That so many people don’t understand that the things we all need in our daily lives the world over is in limited supply, has been the backstop for capitalism since its beginning.
But the second reason, the one that will not compromise, is physics. If our carbon based industrial system is allowed to continue unabated, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will continue to rise in an ever increasing manner until it will “cook” humans from the face of the earth, along with most other species. The planet will still be here, but we won’t.
Our legacy? From William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” :
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Please join 350.org as a way to fight back—if we act quickly and fully maybe it doesn’t have to be “…[all] sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Thursday, August 12, 2010
A Fee on Dirty Fuel
A Fee on Dirty Fuel
A simple flat fee on all carbon fuels, collected from all fossil fuel companies at the mine, wellhead, or port or entry, then this money should be returned directly to the American consumer to be used to help offset the rise in carbon fuel prices.
But, more importantly, it would encourage Americans to conserve and search out non carbon sources of energy, which will ultimately be the better bargain.
Go to 350.org to get involved in carbon abatement.
Noble Goal Not Repaid With Success
In an August 9, 2010 story about Huang Ming, chairman of Himin Solar Energy Group, a major solar panel manufacturer based in China, accepting a symbolic gift, to the people of China from Unity College, of a solar panel once installed on the roof of the White House, Ethan Andrews wrote: “In 1979 , President Jimmy Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the West Wing of the White House as a symbolic introduction of the administrations goal of getting 20 percent of the nations energy from renewable sources by the year 2000.” But, alas, this goal was not requited with success.
Why was this noble effort not paid back with tangible results? Wouldn’t it have been nice to have all those jobs in renewable energy manufacturing for us working middle class Americans from then to now? Think about it, good paying clean safe jobs for middle class people, millions of us, instead of a few rich greedy owners and non producing speculators in dirty fossil fuel energy industries, like oil and coal. These people take for themselves such a big slice of the economic pie, while polluting our world with their filthy byproducts until it will, eventually, become unlivable. Are they so obtuse that they can’t see that they will suffer the same fate.
This group, and if you will just dwell on it for a while, you will intuitively know who they are, they are the ones who oppose any real change, those against any real progress—you can never join them (there isn’t room for you), they are not your friends and never have been.
In our U.S. system we need to oppose their, bought and paid for, legislators in government. We need to put the pressure on our representatives, after all, they work for us, to enact an equitable tax on carbon, one that will be fully refunded to all energy consumers,
An organized effort to do just that can be found at 350.org, let’s all get together there.
Why was this noble effort not paid back with tangible results? Wouldn’t it have been nice to have all those jobs in renewable energy manufacturing for us working middle class Americans from then to now? Think about it, good paying clean safe jobs for middle class people, millions of us, instead of a few rich greedy owners and non producing speculators in dirty fossil fuel energy industries, like oil and coal. These people take for themselves such a big slice of the economic pie, while polluting our world with their filthy byproducts until it will, eventually, become unlivable. Are they so obtuse that they can’t see that they will suffer the same fate.
This group, and if you will just dwell on it for a while, you will intuitively know who they are, they are the ones who oppose any real change, those against any real progress—you can never join them (there isn’t room for you), they are not your friends and never have been.
In our U.S. system we need to oppose their, bought and paid for, legislators in government. We need to put the pressure on our representatives, after all, they work for us, to enact an equitable tax on carbon, one that will be fully refunded to all energy consumers,
An organized effort to do just that can be found at 350.org, let’s all get together there.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Latent Potential
To deny, even, that global warming exists as a possibility in the face of melting ice caps and mountain glaciers, is folly writ large.
Join with other concerned citizens of the world at 350.org and remember—This planet will not be a good place for any of us to live on unless we make it a good place for all of us to live on.
Join with other concerned citizens of the world at 350.org and remember—This planet will not be a good place for any of us to live on unless we make it a good place for all of us to live on.
Saga of the White House Solar Panels
William Cockerham, Courant staff writer, wrote an article dated August 29, 1991 telling the story of how 32 solar panels, that once heated water used in the White House kitchen, were purchased by Unity College in Maine.
Unity College was, at that time, said to be the only undergraduate school in the nation that specialized in environmental sciences and natural resource development.
Some of the panels were to be used to heat water for the cafeteria and the men’s shower room at the college.
Dr. George C. Szego, a chemical engineer and founder of a pioneering solar technology company, dealt with President Jimmy Carter to install the panels on the White House. Unlike his successor, Jimmy Carter was an advocate of solar energy.
The panels were removed and put in storage by the Reagan Administration. Bad show! But it does underscore the overwhelming support the conservatives gave the fossil fuel industries over the next 28 years; which added America’s lopsided share to the world’s CO2 concentration of 390ppm; well above the 350ppm that all the smart people say is the maximum tolerable; and a long way above the 278ppm that humans lived with for millennia.
In January of 2010, after reading the article by Cockerham in a trade journal, I contacted Prof. Mike Womersley at Unity College to ask how the panels had been put to use.
He kindly told me that, indeed, 16 panels had been installed on the cafeteria roof: they were no longer functioning but they had for a long while. Others were in storage; three of them at museums; the Smithsonian, the Carter Library Museum in Atlanta, and on a traveling exhibit with the Canadian Architects Association. He said they expected to give most of the remaining panels to museums eventually.
This brings the story full circle, at least for one of the panels, 350.org is planning a Solar Road Trip in about a month: transporting one of the Carter Solar Panels from Unity College in Maine back to the White House.
Look for their blog about it at 350.org.
Unity College was, at that time, said to be the only undergraduate school in the nation that specialized in environmental sciences and natural resource development.
Some of the panels were to be used to heat water for the cafeteria and the men’s shower room at the college.
Dr. George C. Szego, a chemical engineer and founder of a pioneering solar technology company, dealt with President Jimmy Carter to install the panels on the White House. Unlike his successor, Jimmy Carter was an advocate of solar energy.
The panels were removed and put in storage by the Reagan Administration. Bad show! But it does underscore the overwhelming support the conservatives gave the fossil fuel industries over the next 28 years; which added America’s lopsided share to the world’s CO2 concentration of 390ppm; well above the 350ppm that all the smart people say is the maximum tolerable; and a long way above the 278ppm that humans lived with for millennia.
In January of 2010, after reading the article by Cockerham in a trade journal, I contacted Prof. Mike Womersley at Unity College to ask how the panels had been put to use.
He kindly told me that, indeed, 16 panels had been installed on the cafeteria roof: they were no longer functioning but they had for a long while. Others were in storage; three of them at museums; the Smithsonian, the Carter Library Museum in Atlanta, and on a traveling exhibit with the Canadian Architects Association. He said they expected to give most of the remaining panels to museums eventually.
This brings the story full circle, at least for one of the panels, 350.org is planning a Solar Road Trip in about a month: transporting one of the Carter Solar Panels from Unity College in Maine back to the White House.
Look for their blog about it at 350.org.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
An Important Time Wasted
An Important Time Wasted
I’m sad that the twenty-eight years, with Reagan and the return of the conservatives, were not used to address the very serious problem of global warming.
I have written in a previous blog that “We certainly can’t afford to waste another twenty-eight years—in fact, it is very possible that we didn’t have the luxury of the last wasted period…”.
CO2 in the atmosphere was at 339ppm in 1980 and the government had programs in place to reduce our use of fossil fuels: in fact I was personally involved in some government funded solar heating projects in the late 70’s.
Rhetorically, I ask, where would the CO2 concentration be today if the short sighted voters had allowed the progressives to remain in charge—certainly not 390ppm and very possibly below 350ppm.
I’m sad that the twenty-eight years, with Reagan and the return of the conservatives, were not used to address the very serious problem of global warming.
I have written in a previous blog that “We certainly can’t afford to waste another twenty-eight years—in fact, it is very possible that we didn’t have the luxury of the last wasted period…”.
CO2 in the atmosphere was at 339ppm in 1980 and the government had programs in place to reduce our use of fossil fuels: in fact I was personally involved in some government funded solar heating projects in the late 70’s.
Rhetorically, I ask, where would the CO2 concentration be today if the short sighted voters had allowed the progressives to remain in charge—certainly not 390ppm and very possibly below 350ppm.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Global Warming's Robin Hood
“Take from the rich and give to the poor”
Global Warming’s Robin Hood:
Tax the rich carbon energy producers and give all the proceeds, equitably, to all the energy consumers.
If we don’t do this, these greedy corporations (created by humans, by the way) will destroy our world—theirs too but that, however, is little or no comfort
Global Warming’s Robin Hood:
Tax the rich carbon energy producers and give all the proceeds, equitably, to all the energy consumers.
If we don’t do this, these greedy corporations (created by humans, by the way) will destroy our world—theirs too but that, however, is little or no comfort
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Inlander: May the person who lives on the beach move in with you when his house is under water?
Do you believe in physics, the science that deals with the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy?
If you do, then you must agree that, on our earth, a liquid (such as water) flows freely, assumes the shape of its container, seeks its own level, and its elevation is everywhere the same.
And, if you do, then you must also agree that a substance that is not a liquid or a gas is a solid; a substance that has length, breadth, and thickness (such as water ice).
In the absence of enough heat energy the substance, water, will accumulate as a solid (water ice) and in this state it will not easily flow.
But what happens if you add enough heat energy, more than our earth has seen for ten thousand years: you cannot deny; since we have, above, assumed that you believe in physics; that this water ice will become liquid water and eventually flow down to the sea and raise its level everywhere the same.
Now since you do believe in physics, you must also believe in the greenhouse effect: the excessive accumulation of heat and water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere caused by increased presents of pollutants which retain more solar radiation. You must also agree that carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of these pollutants; since the effect of its going from 278 parts per million, where it was for ten thousand years, to 390 parts per million, where it is today, is causing the earth’s temperature to rise. And this temperature rise is causing the arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland’s ice caps to melt along with hundreds of glaciers—this phenomenon is visible to the naked eye: its denial cannot be, rationally, supported.
Even if you insist that the increase in CO2 is being caused naturally, does it not make sense for humans to not add to it.
A tax on carbon emissions is the only truncheon stout enough to inflict the painful change needed.
If you do, then you must agree that, on our earth, a liquid (such as water) flows freely, assumes the shape of its container, seeks its own level, and its elevation is everywhere the same.
And, if you do, then you must also agree that a substance that is not a liquid or a gas is a solid; a substance that has length, breadth, and thickness (such as water ice).
In the absence of enough heat energy the substance, water, will accumulate as a solid (water ice) and in this state it will not easily flow.
But what happens if you add enough heat energy, more than our earth has seen for ten thousand years: you cannot deny; since we have, above, assumed that you believe in physics; that this water ice will become liquid water and eventually flow down to the sea and raise its level everywhere the same.
Now since you do believe in physics, you must also believe in the greenhouse effect: the excessive accumulation of heat and water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere caused by increased presents of pollutants which retain more solar radiation. You must also agree that carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of these pollutants; since the effect of its going from 278 parts per million, where it was for ten thousand years, to 390 parts per million, where it is today, is causing the earth’s temperature to rise. And this temperature rise is causing the arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland’s ice caps to melt along with hundreds of glaciers—this phenomenon is visible to the naked eye: its denial cannot be, rationally, supported.
Even if you insist that the increase in CO2 is being caused naturally, does it not make sense for humans to not add to it.
A tax on carbon emissions is the only truncheon stout enough to inflict the painful change needed.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Equitable not Equal
The free market hasn’t done it on its own and that is not likely to change. And even if an imposed regulation could legally be put in place to obtain the needed equity, the loud howls of socialism would echo though out the land.
The best way would be to get rid of all the loopholes in the progressive income tax, (these loopholes were negotiated into the tax code by the well off by the way—certainly not by the poor), this would be the equitable way to do it: why shouldn’t the tax rate progress to a higher level on those who can well afford to pay a larger share than the poor, they are still vastly better off than those in a lower income bracket, I’ll guess that none would willingly trade places with a poor person.
Closing some of these loopholes would, to their benefit, make the rate on lower income people less.
But can’t you just picture the "Tea Party" protesters after being told by their puppeteers that their taxes would be raised (when actually they would go down); picture them in the streets with their T-shirts and their placards of hate—and the rich secretly smiling.
And just a few more words
The above is given almost mockingly tongue-in-cheek and perhaps a bit sarcastically because it is so unlikely that these types of changes to the tax code will happen—the wealthy have so much power to influence legislators with their money and army of paid lobbyists.
But in our system of government, it could be done.
It would take a true grass roots movement to accomplish it. A place where the people who are truly frightened by what they feel is happening to our country can gather in spirit and in communication, on the internet—and then in body at the voting booth.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Solar Energy and Capitalism: Somewhat of a mismatch
Why was widespread use of the sun as an alternate energy source not supported by the government beginning with Reagan and continuing for the next twenty-eight years?
Because the very ubiquitousness of the sun is a detriment to its widespread use in an unregulated supply based capitalistic system: it cannot easily be concentrated in the hands of a few for large profits.
What is a capitalistic system? To me it is one where the means to produce the things that people need and want in their daily lives is in the hands of the capitalists.
Who are the capitalists? In our free enterprise system they are the people who own the means (factories and the machines in them) to produce the things that we need and want.
What is money capital? In our capitalistic system it is a claim on the goods we all need and want in our daily lives.
Is that supply of goods, the things we all need and want, infinite? NO IT IS NOT! That the pie is unlimited is the lie that the rich would have us believe; often, I think, without knowing the truth themselves. They have learned how to amass money (the claim on the things we all need and want) without realizing and, in most cases I believe, without caring that the pie is not unlimited in size.
The pictures from the moon show the finiteness, the utter aloneness of our planet. It is only our ninety-three million mile juxtaposition with the life giving sun that our little blue world supports us all. For our world to continue we must somehow win out over that most vile of human traits—greed: left unchecked, it could destroy our world as we know it.
I do not advocate a noncapitalistic system; indeed, none of the so called utopian systems could possibly work in the presents of greed. On the other hand, I disagree with the premise that regulation in a capitalistic system would kill it. On the contrary, it is only with fair regulation that it can work for a larger group of a population: witness the large prosperous middle class present from after World War II well into the decade of the 70’s.
What was in place before Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration? Unregulated, unbridled free market capitalism.
What did the country get from it? The Great Depression with its high unemployment and so much human misery.
What did F.D.R’s “New Deal” bring? It brought common sense regulation, some helpful social programs, hope, and government spending that ended The Great Depression. To those conservatives who gleefully say it was the second world war that ended the depression—was that not government spending, albeit, on tanks and guns.
What did the country get with Reagan and after with the return of the conservatives? Deregulation; and as wealth shifted to the rich, the shrinking of what was once a prosperous middle class; the abandonment of support for alternative energy systems in favor of big oil; two wars; and more deregulation in banking leading to the deepest and longest recession since The Great Depression.
But no, I do not think that a capitalistic system is unworkable; without some regulation, however, you get people in high positions amassing money capital (which is, remember, a claim on things that people need to survive) far beyond what they could need or have a use for. Can you tell me why any person, man or woman, should have a claim—remembering now that the pie is only so large—on another human beings share, many times on the order of a thousand to one?
Yes, capitalism can work as an economic system but to remain fair it should include President Lincoln’s dictum: that government should do for people what they cannot do for themselves—this in the form of common sense even handed regulations.
It would be very hard to convince me that a person would not strive to have a job that produced a very good living just because there was a regulated limit on the slice of the economic pie that he or she was entitled to.
It would be great if the business community could regulate itself but with the ever present flaw of greed in the mix, it seems impossible.
To my chagrin, It is probably not possible to wrest power from the wealthy to the point where government could impose meaningful regulations: this would require making lobbying illegal—not likely. But indeed, if we cannot somehow put a limit on greed’s claim, humankind’s legacy may well be as Shakespeare’s Macbeth described it: “… a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Yet, I prefer the optimistic possibility that there are many more nongreedy people than greedy ones. I am quite sure that even most conservatives are not basically greedy: just misinformed—believing the false notion that the economic pie is unlimited.
My definition of greed, as I use it here, is not the natural desire and striving for basic needs and security; that is, after all, the tenacity of life itself. No, what I am referring to here is a selfish desire beyond reason for more and more for its own sake.
Still, I do hold out hope that life is not as empty as Shakespeare’s Macbeth describes it. It is at the same time tenuous and tenacious. To save our home, this little blue world we survive on, we need to use wisely and in a balanced way our gift of the sun’s energy.
Because the very ubiquitousness of the sun is a detriment to its widespread use in an unregulated supply based capitalistic system: it cannot easily be concentrated in the hands of a few for large profits.
What is a capitalistic system? To me it is one where the means to produce the things that people need and want in their daily lives is in the hands of the capitalists.
Who are the capitalists? In our free enterprise system they are the people who own the means (factories and the machines in them) to produce the things that we need and want.
What is money capital? In our capitalistic system it is a claim on the goods we all need and want in our daily lives.
Is that supply of goods, the things we all need and want, infinite? NO IT IS NOT! That the pie is unlimited is the lie that the rich would have us believe; often, I think, without knowing the truth themselves. They have learned how to amass money (the claim on the things we all need and want) without realizing and, in most cases I believe, without caring that the pie is not unlimited in size.
The pictures from the moon show the finiteness, the utter aloneness of our planet. It is only our ninety-three million mile juxtaposition with the life giving sun that our little blue world supports us all. For our world to continue we must somehow win out over that most vile of human traits—greed: left unchecked, it could destroy our world as we know it.
I do not advocate a noncapitalistic system; indeed, none of the so called utopian systems could possibly work in the presents of greed. On the other hand, I disagree with the premise that regulation in a capitalistic system would kill it. On the contrary, it is only with fair regulation that it can work for a larger group of a population: witness the large prosperous middle class present from after World War II well into the decade of the 70’s.
What was in place before Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration? Unregulated, unbridled free market capitalism.
What did the country get from it? The Great Depression with its high unemployment and so much human misery.
What did F.D.R’s “New Deal” bring? It brought common sense regulation, some helpful social programs, hope, and government spending that ended The Great Depression. To those conservatives who gleefully say it was the second world war that ended the depression—was that not government spending, albeit, on tanks and guns.
What did the country get with Reagan and after with the return of the conservatives? Deregulation; and as wealth shifted to the rich, the shrinking of what was once a prosperous middle class; the abandonment of support for alternative energy systems in favor of big oil; two wars; and more deregulation in banking leading to the deepest and longest recession since The Great Depression.
But no, I do not think that a capitalistic system is unworkable; without some regulation, however, you get people in high positions amassing money capital (which is, remember, a claim on things that people need to survive) far beyond what they could need or have a use for. Can you tell me why any person, man or woman, should have a claim—remembering now that the pie is only so large—on another human beings share, many times on the order of a thousand to one?
Yes, capitalism can work as an economic system but to remain fair it should include President Lincoln’s dictum: that government should do for people what they cannot do for themselves—this in the form of common sense even handed regulations.
It would be very hard to convince me that a person would not strive to have a job that produced a very good living just because there was a regulated limit on the slice of the economic pie that he or she was entitled to.
It would be great if the business community could regulate itself but with the ever present flaw of greed in the mix, it seems impossible.
To my chagrin, It is probably not possible to wrest power from the wealthy to the point where government could impose meaningful regulations: this would require making lobbying illegal—not likely. But indeed, if we cannot somehow put a limit on greed’s claim, humankind’s legacy may well be as Shakespeare’s Macbeth described it: “… a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Yet, I prefer the optimistic possibility that there are many more nongreedy people than greedy ones. I am quite sure that even most conservatives are not basically greedy: just misinformed—believing the false notion that the economic pie is unlimited.
My definition of greed, as I use it here, is not the natural desire and striving for basic needs and security; that is, after all, the tenacity of life itself. No, what I am referring to here is a selfish desire beyond reason for more and more for its own sake.
Still, I do hold out hope that life is not as empty as Shakespeare’s Macbeth describes it. It is at the same time tenuous and tenacious. To save our home, this little blue world we survive on, we need to use wisely and in a balanced way our gift of the sun’s energy.
Monday, June 7, 2010
NPPD and Cap and Trade
In the spring of 2010, an electric power company in Nebraska, Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) mailed a brochure to its customers, in it, addressing some questions and answers on possible cap and trade legislation.
They ask the question, what is an emission? and then answer it by saying: It could be a chemical like a pesticide; a metal like mercury; or a gas like sulfur dioxide. Let me just add a very important emission they conveniently left out, one that will loom large later in this discussion: radioactive waste.
NPPD saying that the cap and trade program on acid rain was successful because there were various technologies already available to them to reduce pollutants but arguing that the technologies needed to capture and/or sequester carbon dioxide and store it are neither proven nor available for commercial use, is just a stall.
They give notice that the implementation of either the House or Senate proposals on cap and trade is expected to cost the nation billions of dollars. Of course it is, rhetorically I ask, what did you expect? the very latest we could have done something that possibly embodied less severe consequences was way back twenty-eight years ago when the conservatives came to power.
Back then, P. Richard Rittelmann said: “…controls have allowed the prices of energy to reflect only cost and not the value of diminishing resources.” “… [put in place then] alternate energy opportunities could quite conceivably have followed an evolutionary development process rather than the revolutionary process to which the nation must [now] commit itself.”
Indeed, it would have been, at the very least, revolutionary then (30 years ago), now, by the time the global warming deniers are finally forced to give in, it will truly be onerous: the problem is, we will all have to suffer the same fate as the conservatives who caused it.
Ronald Reagan was fond of saying: government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
I’m sorry Mr. Reagan but that is not true. To your memory, your puppeteer handlers, and your conservative followers, you were the problem, and still are.
NPPD estimates it may cost their customers between $120 million and $ 350 million annually to reach the carbon levels set in the proposed cap and trade legislation. Here again, they claim that coal produces the lowest cost electricity but, of course, they are only counting the cost to them of the delivered coal. With this argument, they hope to win their customer’s support for their opposition to cap and trade legislation.
For the rest of us, however, the entire world family, it is the external costs of coal that must be paid: pollution, global warming, indirect health costs, lives lost in mining—these and others are not included in the price that utilities pay for a trainload of coal, see; (one of the Best-Kept secrets about Coal…) It’s Not the Cheapest Energy by Hendrik van den Berg in Nebraskans For Peace, Nebraska Report May/June 2010 Volume 38, Number 3; for a good explanation of the real cost of coal.
I commend NPPD for its support of renewable energy sources. They have set a goal to produce 10 percent of their energy by renewable resources by 2020.I wish they would, at least, triple this goal to 30 percent. I also support their programs that promote conservation of energy use.
NPPD, however, also advocates an increased use of nuclear power, which, they say, produces no emissions. I completely disagree with them on this, see above (the 2nd paragraph in this writing); radioactive waste is, most definitely, an emission problem—and one that, at the moment, there is no permanent solution for.
I say to NPPD, and all other utilities, abandon any new nuclear plans and, instead, put the money in other nonpolluting forms of renewables: solar and wind, for example.
They ask the question, what is an emission? and then answer it by saying: It could be a chemical like a pesticide; a metal like mercury; or a gas like sulfur dioxide. Let me just add a very important emission they conveniently left out, one that will loom large later in this discussion: radioactive waste.
NPPD saying that the cap and trade program on acid rain was successful because there were various technologies already available to them to reduce pollutants but arguing that the technologies needed to capture and/or sequester carbon dioxide and store it are neither proven nor available for commercial use, is just a stall.
They give notice that the implementation of either the House or Senate proposals on cap and trade is expected to cost the nation billions of dollars. Of course it is, rhetorically I ask, what did you expect? the very latest we could have done something that possibly embodied less severe consequences was way back twenty-eight years ago when the conservatives came to power.
Back then, P. Richard Rittelmann said: “…controls have allowed the prices of energy to reflect only cost and not the value of diminishing resources.” “… [put in place then] alternate energy opportunities could quite conceivably have followed an evolutionary development process rather than the revolutionary process to which the nation must [now] commit itself.”
Indeed, it would have been, at the very least, revolutionary then (30 years ago), now, by the time the global warming deniers are finally forced to give in, it will truly be onerous: the problem is, we will all have to suffer the same fate as the conservatives who caused it.
Ronald Reagan was fond of saying: government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
I’m sorry Mr. Reagan but that is not true. To your memory, your puppeteer handlers, and your conservative followers, you were the problem, and still are.
NPPD estimates it may cost their customers between $120 million and $ 350 million annually to reach the carbon levels set in the proposed cap and trade legislation. Here again, they claim that coal produces the lowest cost electricity but, of course, they are only counting the cost to them of the delivered coal. With this argument, they hope to win their customer’s support for their opposition to cap and trade legislation.
For the rest of us, however, the entire world family, it is the external costs of coal that must be paid: pollution, global warming, indirect health costs, lives lost in mining—these and others are not included in the price that utilities pay for a trainload of coal, see; (one of the Best-Kept secrets about Coal…) It’s Not the Cheapest Energy by Hendrik van den Berg in Nebraskans For Peace, Nebraska Report May/June 2010 Volume 38, Number 3; for a good explanation of the real cost of coal.
I commend NPPD for its support of renewable energy sources. They have set a goal to produce 10 percent of their energy by renewable resources by 2020.I wish they would, at least, triple this goal to 30 percent. I also support their programs that promote conservation of energy use.
NPPD, however, also advocates an increased use of nuclear power, which, they say, produces no emissions. I completely disagree with them on this, see above (the 2nd paragraph in this writing); radioactive waste is, most definitely, an emission problem—and one that, at the moment, there is no permanent solution for.
I say to NPPD, and all other utilities, abandon any new nuclear plans and, instead, put the money in other nonpolluting forms of renewables: solar and wind, for example.
Monday, May 31, 2010
"An Empathy Deficit"
Barack Obama writes in The Audacity of Hope, “It’s hard to imagine the CEO of a company giving himself a multimillion-dollar bonus while cutting health care coverage for his workers if he thought they were in some sense his equals. And it’s safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm’s way.”
He made these statements after he interjected, that “as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit.”
These words, written in 2006, underscore some actions he later took as president: his deliberation on the troop increase in Afghanistan, and his solemn visit to the plane bringing back war dead. These plainly show that he is possessed of this empathy—the mockery of these actions by some conservative right wing show hosts notwithstanding.
He made these statements after he interjected, that “as a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit.”
These words, written in 2006, underscore some actions he later took as president: his deliberation on the troop increase in Afghanistan, and his solemn visit to the plane bringing back war dead. These plainly show that he is possessed of this empathy—the mockery of these actions by some conservative right wing show hosts notwithstanding.
Friday, May 14, 2010
"The Infamous Generation"
P. Richard Rittelmann, a partner at Burt, Hill, and Associates, a firm of architects from the Pittsburgh area in the early 1970’s, said: “Long-standing government controls have allowed the prices of energy to reflect only cost and not the value of diminishing resources. If somehow energy had been permitted to seek its true market value, energy conservation would now be a way of life, and alternate energy opportunities could quite conceivably have followed an evolutionary development process rather than the revolutionary process to which the nation must commit itself.”
Remember, this argument was made in the early 70’s. And indeed, steps were taken at the time to find alternate energy sources, that is, until we foolhardy, impatient, short-sighted, Americans could not stand being told the truth—that we couldn’t have what we wanted and have it right now—so we elected those who told us what we wanted to hear. And the much needed search for alternate energy sources was put off for the next twenty-eight years.
We certainly can’t afford to waste another twenty-eight years—in fact, it is very possible that we didn’t have the luxury of the last wasted period—the unimaginable harm to our planet may already be unstoppable.
Some of us won’t be here to witness it, but our children, and their children will. Instead of the “Greatest Generation” as our folks were named—we can be called the infamous one, not a legacy of which to be proud.
.
Remember, this argument was made in the early 70’s. And indeed, steps were taken at the time to find alternate energy sources, that is, until we foolhardy, impatient, short-sighted, Americans could not stand being told the truth—that we couldn’t have what we wanted and have it right now—so we elected those who told us what we wanted to hear. And the much needed search for alternate energy sources was put off for the next twenty-eight years.
We certainly can’t afford to waste another twenty-eight years—in fact, it is very possible that we didn’t have the luxury of the last wasted period—the unimaginable harm to our planet may already be unstoppable.
Some of us won’t be here to witness it, but our children, and their children will. Instead of the “Greatest Generation” as our folks were named—we can be called the infamous one, not a legacy of which to be proud.
.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Take a Stand
In The Audacity of Hope Barack Obama makes the point that our country needs more basic research; investments in training more engineers, scientists, and innovators; and a critical investment in energy infrastructure to move us toward energy independence.
He admits that it will cost some real money but says, “…we can afford what needs to be done. What’s missing is not money, but a national sense of urgency.”
Rhetorically though, I ask, how do you get urgency in schooling, in technology, in energy—indeed, in any kind of progress from conservatism, when the very definition of a conservative is: A person who from prejudice or lack of foresight is opposed to true progress.
For those who claim to be a conservative and vote that way: I ask, again rhetorically, is that who you really are, how you really feel—if not, then you are not a conservative, so don’t vote that way.
And, to the so called Independents (fence sitters), are you really opposed to true progress, if so, get off the fence, commit yourself to your beliefs and become a conservative.
On the other hand, if you do feel that we, as a country, as a people, can make some positive changes leading to an abatement of the problems we face, then take a stand, get off the fence, don’t be an Independent, taking the easy way out, following whatever is popular at the moment; instead, take a position, be for and vote for true progress—become a liberal, it is not a dirty word, look it up in the dictionary, it means: generous, broadminded, tolerant, not narrow in your views and ideas, favoring progress and reforms.
He admits that it will cost some real money but says, “…we can afford what needs to be done. What’s missing is not money, but a national sense of urgency.”
Rhetorically though, I ask, how do you get urgency in schooling, in technology, in energy—indeed, in any kind of progress from conservatism, when the very definition of a conservative is: A person who from prejudice or lack of foresight is opposed to true progress.
For those who claim to be a conservative and vote that way: I ask, again rhetorically, is that who you really are, how you really feel—if not, then you are not a conservative, so don’t vote that way.
And, to the so called Independents (fence sitters), are you really opposed to true progress, if so, get off the fence, commit yourself to your beliefs and become a conservative.
On the other hand, if you do feel that we, as a country, as a people, can make some positive changes leading to an abatement of the problems we face, then take a stand, get off the fence, don’t be an Independent, taking the easy way out, following whatever is popular at the moment; instead, take a position, be for and vote for true progress—become a liberal, it is not a dirty word, look it up in the dictionary, it means: generous, broadminded, tolerant, not narrow in your views and ideas, favoring progress and reforms.
Friday, April 30, 2010
"you just might be a liberal"
and
If you believe that taking action now to lessen global warming with technology we do have is better than not taking any action at all until we have some technology we may never have is smart, “you just might be a liberal.”
and
If you think now is better than never for government to promote programs that create jobs in clean energy technologies, “you just might a liberal.”
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