< Two guesses... / >

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From today's Boston Globe: The U.S. Joint Forces Command, in charge of forecasting how the world will look in 25 years and what kinds of wars will need to be fought over what sorts of conflicts, has issued its report.

The report says, "In many respects, scientific conclusions about the causes and potential effects of global warming are contradictory."

The scientific community responds, "What the hell are you talking about?"

MIT professor Kerry Emmanuel says, "I don't know where that statement came from, but it's pretty bizarre."

Hmm. What could possibly be the sources of blatant, harmful misinformation that ignores science in order to promote personal agendas and protect corporate interests?


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< What's good for the country world is good for GM / >

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Yes, that title appears to be backwards, if it alludes to the famous words allegedly spoken to Congress by a GM chairman in the mid-20th century: "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." But really, it's not backwards at all, first because the way he actually said it has been inaccurately repeated for decades, and second, because it makes perfect sense.

Today's email from Michael Moore confirms what I've been thinking for a long time: if the Detroit Three can't sell cars, they surely still know how to make other big machines and equipment that are actually good for the country, and for the world. Things like high-speed locomotives, rail and trolley cars, buses; rail tracks, overhead power lines, new rail traffic monitors and safe crossing barriers — all the stuff to move big machines, made for taking lots of people to a common destination on one tank of fuel.

You know, the kind of "mass" in mass transit that goes completely against rugged American isolationism and Don't Tread On Me ideology. The whole "my car, my commute, my exit" thing written about here. (And yes, the continuation to that installment is still in the works.)

The corporate infrastructure is all there already. Many of the factories are dormant, but they're still operational. They just need 21st century technology to make while seven billion people adjust their collective brains to an anti-consumption, pro-planet set of thoughts and practices, leaving the old set to rot and rust like the obsolete machines now disintegrating worldwide.


If even a good pro-union, Flint-raised, GM-fed leftist like Michael Moore can turn against the company that made — and unmade — his hometown, then surely the moderate, middle-ground wise men on Capitol Hill can do the same. Here's the highlight of Moore's message:

What a long, sad fall from grace we witnessed on November 19th when the three blind mice [Detroit CEOs] had their knuckles slapped and then were sent back home to write an essay called, "Why You Should Give Me Billions of Dollars of Free Cash." They were also asked if they would work for a dollar a year....

Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet.

So what to do? Members of Congress, here's what I propose:

1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big Three are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion.... (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is....)

....This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession. In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs....

These idiots don't deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet. What's good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots.

Maybe not put the country in charge, Mike — your faith in government is too closely connected to joy in our electing an intelligent man of conscience after eight years of unspeakable ineptitude and corruption. But remember, eight years from now, or maybe even four, someone else will move in. And even now, the Crawford Cowboy is pushing all kinds of fuck-the-environment rules through that will cement his legacy as Apophis the Destroyer. So, it's a bad idea to equate good leadership with good government.

But demand mass transit equipment in exchange for money to stay afloat? Absolutely. Those are just borrowing terms, legally-binding conditions to be met; if not met, then it's foreclosure and eviction time, sayonara CEOs and wiedersehen Detroit.

Even the evil scorpion from Texas once said, "You're either with us, or against us." Time for the Detroit Three to realize that it's not the quality of their products, or the prices, or the styles or brands or any other related superficial elements that matter. It's that people worldwide know, with extreme certainty, that gasoline prices will be skyrocketing again as soon as the current low demand = high supplies = low prices equation is replaced by a low demand + low supplies = high prices anyway reality. Supplies can't stay high forever; Detroit got nailed when a lot more people realized this than had been willing to acknowledge it before the jump from $1.50 to $4.75 a gallon.

But so has Japan been nailed by the same realization, and Korea, and Germany, and Italy, and Britain. It's not the kind of car that's getting buyers hung up, or the availability of credit. It's the fact that cars are no longer an efficient or sustainable means of transportation. The first important crack has been made in 20th century ideology. Many more will follow.

Meanwhile, Detroit CEOs will have to adjust to a new reality, that what they make has to be what we truly need, and not just what their ad agencies are paid to tell us we want. It's all very simple, if they just come to realize that even the mightiest steel machine will always give way to the tiniest green seed.

< That Weather Channel guy pipes up again / >

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.A story at Politico, written by Erika Lovley and titled "Scientists Urge Caution on Global Warming," requires the kind of close analysis that's done with a hammer and chisel — so that the huge holes beneath it can become more visible.

Summary: According to Lovley, a nonspecific number of "climate change skeptics" in Washington D.C. have begun to notice "a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings" to make carbon limits in the U.S. a "shaky" move.

But on closer read, the nonspecific number of skeptics is quite specific: "both senators from Oklahoma, Republicans Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe," along with "Marc Morano, communications director for the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee."

Which would be, by my count, three people.

Erika Lovley

And what about the "growing accumulation of...science and other findings" — how many scientists are we talking about there? "Weather Channel co-founder Joseph D’Aleo and other scientists" and "Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Michaels."

Which would be, by my count, two people.

(Forget the "other scientists" part, just like "other findings" earlier; that's just sloppy, lazy writing. Identify it, or delete it.)

And now, watch closely as Lovley provides depth and detail to this deeply flawed Journalism 101 exercise:

Armed with statistics from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climate Data Center, D’Aleo reported in the 2009 Old Farmer’s Almanac that the U.S. annual mean temperature has fluctuated for decades and has only risen 0.21 degrees since 1930 — which he says is caused by fluctuating solar activity levels and ocean temperatures, not carbon emissions. Data from the same source shows that during five of the past seven decades, including this one, average U.S. temperatures have gone down. And the almanac predicted that the next year will see a period of cooling.

Let's not even discuss the part about D'Aleo publishing his findings in the Old Farmer's Almanac, rather than, say, a refereed and respected science journal employing strict peer reviews of blind submissions and verification of source studies. What's more important is the glaring presence of huge ideological blinders limiting both D'Aleo's and Lovley's views to one place on the planet: the United States. For them, and for far too many Americans, the U.S. is the planet. Beyond its shores, nothing.

It's kind of like The Truman Show or Pleasantville, where the prospect of the world being something more than just here has never occurred to anyone before.

Joseph D'Aleo

“We’re worried that people are too focused on carbon dioxide as the culprit,” D’Aleo continues in the Lovley piece. “Recent warming has stopped since 1998, and we want to stop draconian measures that will hurt already spiraling downward economics. We’re environmentalists and conservationists at heart, but we don’t think that carbon is responsible for hurricanes.”

Hmm... and where do hurricanes occur? Caribbean islands, Mexico, and.. oh, right, the United States! No matter what D'Aleo says or Lovley chooses to quote, the myopia is omnipresent.

It's really too bad about Mr. D'Aleo. He's got what appears to be an impressive resumé, and he could probably do a lot of good with those credentials and that experience. But if nothing else, he might at least disassociate himself from the Weather Channel, where his own argument is countered.

As for Ms. Lovley, it could just be that in her quest to appear objective (impossible, but still the ideological gold standard for journalism), she's going overboard by writing as generally as possible and not asking for, or including, specifics. This might change with time and experience.


Meanwhile, if these fine people could stop acting like draft horses with their snouts pointed at the road and blinders keeping them from getting spooked, and look beyond themselves, their ideologies, their country, their continent, their hemisphere, they might see that a lot of really bad shit is happening to a whole lot of people and animals and fish and plants and trees outside the United States — and all of it due to steadily rising overall temperatures.

As in, like, the cumulative mean, the kind that's used in science.
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< Green Apple (finally) / >

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A couple of years ago I sent a letter off to Apple, letting the company know that it was missing a huge opportunity to promote the environmental benefits of the iTunes Store and iPods. While arguments were (and are still) out there that the iPod was a toxic device going into landfills by the millions, Apple did have a free product recycling program for all of its products. Problem was (and is still) that Apple advertised the program by burying it in the small print of the documentation that came with new Pods and Macs. Rather than shouting the news at customers, the company conveyed details about the recycling program as a mere whisper.

My rebuttal to the "iPod Is Bad Garbage" claim was built on two basic premises: the existence of the product recycling program, and a basic comparison/contrast between digital AAC files and physical CDs, and between iPods and Walkmen or "boomboxes" or stereo recievers and CD players. In the first case, discs and jewel cases that had been made of plastic (oil) for decades were now conceptual pieces of code, and what had been bulky, multi-component, energy-sucking boxes for decades had been distilled to a single battery-powered device the size of a deck of cards.

Sure, there's a sound-quality difference between costly audiophile components and relatively inexpensive iPods, even with a Bose SoundDock to enhance things. And yes, it takes electricity to power the servers hosting the iTunes Store tracks, as well as the desktop and laptop computers at millions of homes that are buying those tracks. But in the photo above, the home system has seven separate components — each of them plugged in and most likely kept that way for instant-on. Recharging an iPod or a laptop, or even powering a basic desktop computer, will win the energy-saving trophy over the components easily.

Even with all of those benefits, the Apple site still buries the word, "Environment," in tiny print at the bottom of the home page:
But in other ways, the company is finally starting to realize what it has. Its new lineup of MacBooks star on their own page under the banner "The World's Greenest Family of Notebooks," and a much more visible link to "environment" on that page leads to the company's overall policies and commitment to green technology. And now, for the first time, Apple's running a TV ad that actually sells product specs — green ones — rather than just flash, cool, and image.



Of course, I'm not claiming that any of this change came from my solitary letter of 2007. But I do think that Apple received a lot more than just one letter, and more importantly, that it's been listening to what people were saying. Now if GM can be convinced that letting a 14-mpg pickup burn Flex Fuel and get 12 mpg on the corn isn't innovation, we'll be getting somewhere.
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< OMG, He's Really Real. / >

Back in August I said that leadership had finally arrived in the form of Al Gore's "ten-year challenge" to create technology to combat climate pollution.

But this trumps that, because it annihilates eight years worth of mumbled malevolent nothings out of the Crawford Cowboy. Listen to the words:



More details here.

I'm stunned. Eight years of wishing, hoping, praying for someone real to say something real... and now it's real.

Here's to a President-Elect who remains the same visionary when he's President.
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< Buy nothing, wreck everything... or not / >

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Got an email from Adbusters today promoting the 2008 edition of Buy Nothing Day — the culture jammers' response to Black Friday, November 28, day after Thanksgiving — the day of retail madness and HUGE SALES hell across the United States.

Buy Nothing Day Confronts the Economic Meltdown, the caption read in this part of the email. Was it possible that Adbusters, defender of everything contracapitalist, would ease up this year, knowing that every large retailer in the nation "needs" a successful Black Friday in order to stay... well, in the black and out of the red?

Luckily, no. The message continued: "As we run out of money, resources and wilderness, and the planet keeps heating up, maybe it’s time to confront the root cause of our global crisis: overconsumption by the most affluent one billion people of the world."

If ever there was an example of ideology pulling out every available device to "correct" "obviously" "wrong" thinking, it's going to show in the response to those few words in italics. Don't be foolish! Consumption is the engine of economic growth! Economic growth is the key to prosperity! Prosperity is the backbone of power! Those are the normalizing narratives that the concept of Buy Nothing Day has to bash its head against.

Want to test it out? Announce to the family, around the Thanksgiving feast table, that you're not going shopping the next day because consumption is out of control. Say that you don't care if half a dozen retail giants announce bankruptcy on Saturday; they should have prepared for a horrid economy when everyone saw the crash coming, roughly two years ago. Share with the group that being a good consumer is not your patriotic duty, and that shifting a huge debt load onto your credit card is not a logical or reasonable way to remedy a problem created by herds of swine in thousand-dollar suits making money from other people's losses.

Go ahead, you marxist, you. You socialist. Turn your back on your country, you loser, and put in with the godless commies from Canada (the home of Adbusters) who would like nothing better than for the American economy to totally tank so that they can take over.

Or maybe you're lucky enough to have a group over to dinner that agrees with your basic position — but damn, have you seen those sale papers? There's just no way to pass up that 70% reduction on [fill in product here]. After all, times are really hard, and people are eating SPAM and macaroni and cheese in record numbers, so it'd be plain stupid to pay top dollar for a Christmas gift on Saturday that can be got for 30% on Friday. It's just basic logic, you know?

Except it isn't. It's ideology.

An idea.

Just a thought, but one made of concrete and crushing down on your skull like a mountain. Resistance is possible, but feels futile. Feels logically flawed. Feels morally wrong. That is the power of ideology.

But it can shift — which, after all, is the whole focus of this blog.

Adbusters gets the last word: On November 28, why not confront your own consumption by going on a consumer fast for 24 hours? Like the millions of people who have done this fast before you, you may be rewarded with a life-changing epiphany.

More information and ideological challenge is available at the BND web site.

Good luck.

< You can't have it both ways.... / >

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In Season Two of NBC's hit show 30 Rock, when the real-life NBC kicked off its real-life "Green Is Universal" theme week of programming, the fictional NBC staff at 30 Rock(efeller Center) hired a cheesy actor to put on a green suit and play a character named Greenzo, who would spread the gospel of environmentalism and enlighten the masses about how badly the system's been screwed up. As played by David Schwimmer and according to that whole episode, environmentalists, personified by Greenzo, are overbearing, egomaniacal, lecturing wackos gone out of control.

And environmentalism is "a fad" to be cashed in on.

And NBC's "green" week is a total joke.

The convoluted message got even more confusing when real-life Al Gore made a guest appearance on the show, as himself, playing it straight for a minute of e-themed conversation with Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon, before cupping a hand to his ear, frowning, and saying, "A whale is in trouble. I have to go!"

Now it's "Green Is Universal" week at real-life NBC again. The Today Show staff's been once again sent to "the ends of the earth," with Meredith in Australia to experience drought, Matt in Belize to witness eco-tourism's destructiveness, Al in Iceland to see melting glaciers, and Ann in Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro while it still has snows. In the evening, Brian Williams will include e-themed stories in the newscast. And online, NBC's "green" web site is chock full of helpful "save the planet" tips from the stable of network celebs.

But is it serious, or is it a joke? Last year, NBC apparently wanted to play both sides. But now that it's making "green" week an annual event, the network will have to choose. The choice might start with Ann Curry in Africa, who had the opportunity to tell the Associated Press all about the compelling and alarming climate changes that brought her to climb a mountain in an attempt to get millions of viewers to wake up and act. But when asked, did Ann say any of this?

"To be honest with you, I'm not sure I'm going to make it to the top," she said. "But all the pain and suffering is worth it because of the incredible vistas all around me."

Um, okay, but what about the melting snowcap, Ann? What about the quickly-declining water supply for nearby villagers?

"I miss my family," said Curry, whose clothes were clammy and wet from a rainstorm Saturday. "And also warm showers. And I could really use a stiff drink."

If this is a celebrity's idea of helping to create environmental awareness, NBC would be better off hiring Greenzo.
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< Think before you bail... / >

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This blog has a love/hate relationship with the automobile, as the first several installments will show. Cars spew CO2, and car companies put civic responsibility on the last page of their mission statements, as footnotes buried in asterisks. But at the same time, when I heard ABC News announce that one in ten American jobs are auto-related, that old patriotism thing kicked in.

GM might deserve to die, especially for its capital crime of destroying the public transit infrastructure of towns and cities nationwide, but the country doesn't deserve to go into toxic shock after the burial. If Wall Street gets to have $700 billion of our tax dollars (of which I hear my family alone is responsible for about ten grand) to remedy the consequences of its unchecked greed and insane practices, then yes, Detroit should get some assistance for having done exactly the same things.

The car companies are slow, stupid, selfish, negligent, and ignorant, but still deserving. Because they are us.

It's complicated.

The Motley Fool says to hell with them, let 'em rust. Because they're just going to spend their bailout money and we'll get nothing for it. The Los Angeles Times takes a truly radical approach, saying that a bailout should only be given if it's got plenty of conditions — plainly stated in legally binding documents. But the Times goes even further, mentioning several arcane, archaic, and nearly obsolete concepts:

If 300 million Americans are going to borrow money to bail out an industry, then it seems only reasonable to insist that that industry take more socially responsible positions toward energy conservation, safety and the environment.

And Thomas Friedman, whose new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded tackles the issues of climate change, energy revolution, and economic transformation head-on, has weighed in on the automaker bailout issue as well. Since the New York Times requires an account (free, but still time consuming) before articles are accessible, here are highlights from Friedman's column:

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.

This included striking special deals with Congress that allowed the Detroit automakers to count the mileage of gas guzzlers as being less than they really were — provided they made some cars flex-fuel capable for ethanol. It included special offers of $1.99-a-gallon gasoline for a year to any customer who purchased a gas guzzler. And it included endless lobbying to block Congress from raising the miles-per-gallon requirements. The result was an industry that became brain dead.

Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].”

These are the guys taxpayers are being asked to bail out.

Let's frame that a little less passively and shine the responsibility light straight at the main characters: Those are the guys asking us to bail them out. These are the guys standing there with their palms up, singing "Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?" And we have every right to say Well, that totally depends on the strict and non-debatable conditions you're willing to accept.

Maybe the first of which should be a public acknowledgment that Bob Lutz is a total crock of [expletive].

The Wall Street bastards have already shown that a free handout will only be misused for more of the same corruption. The Feds can't be allowed to screw us the same way by letting the car guys do the same with theirs.
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< Meanwhile, November's been 70 degrees in Michigan / >

Google News:
• 487 articles about the Puppy-Elect of the United States.
• 4,149 articles about the "financial crisis" — aka the Greatest Armed Robbery of All Time.
• Zero articles about the climate crisis.

T.S. Eliot:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper [of a puppy or a corrupt CEO]....
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< Let us not speak ill of the dead / >

Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park and notorious global warming denier, has died of cancer at age 66. May he rest in peace, and may his denials fade into obscurity quickly. The dinosaur books were okay and the movies (at least the first two) were good, but the other stuff we really didn't need at a time where every day of "debate" is one day closer to disaster.

< Grin and Ignore It />

So yesterday we saw the final debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, an event in which, when asked what they planned to do to address "energy needs and climate control," both candidates chanted "independence from foreign oil" (yaaaaaaawn) and totally ignored the climate issue.

And today there's a little puff piece in the New York Times about Branson, Missouri, where white-haired retirees go by the busloads of thousands to take in wholesome country music shows. In that piece was this:

[The mayor's son is] now working at the family’s Country Jubilee Theater.... Fall is “empty-nester” season — oceans of gray hair. The audience roared when a hillbilly idiot said something dumb and was rebuked by his father: “Next thing, you’ll believe in global warming!” So go the culture wars in Branson. This is red-state central, dear to evangelicals....

Yes, wholesome country-music-listening, lapel-flag-wearing, pledge-reciting, Bible-toting America, where everyone puts in an honest day's retirement and ignores science and values the sanctity of life.

No wonder the young in America treat their elders with so much reverence and respect.
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Life at the end of the Empire

As the world's economic system implodes, there's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for everyone to say enough to the old ways, and to insist on a better way.

< "They'll get this energy thing figured out." />

It's amazing how the human eyelid can function just like a window shade to block out sunlight and lock in darkness.

At a scheduling meeting last week, the increasing number of online college courses came up. A senior faculty member, a really nice guy who began teaching when a gallon of the gold stuff was still going for 29 cents, said with disdain, "Pretty soon, this college will only be virtual."

I agreed that the time was coming, citing articles from both the Chronicle of Higher Education and the New York Times that had reported soaring demand for online courses as gasoline prices start to determine how often students can attend classes at physical campuses. (At some two-year colleges, enrollment in online courses is up over a hundred percent from the good old days when gas was only $2.99 a gallon.)

"If that's the case," the senior professor said, "then I want nothing to do with it."

Trying to help him see the rationale behind the changes, I cited predictions of $7 to $15 per-gallon prices for gas within a few years, but that's when the eyelids went active. First, there was a little smile: Oh, you're such a naïve and gullible little boy. Then the Pronouncement: "They'll get this energy thing figured out." Finally came the eyelids as window shades, signaling that the discussion was over and no more information was needed... or appreciated.

And then we made the course schedule like it was 1962.

< We won't hear this from a Palin/McCain administration.... / >

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McCain used to talk about these kinds of radical energy policies and investments. But then the Repuglicant Machine got to him. Now it's all about Pentecostal moose hunts and "Drill, baby, drill." If Obama isn't elected in November, Right Brain will be expatriating to New Zealand.

< If the entire ocean becomes a hurricane, will they notice? / >

Fay: The first tropical storm system in history to bash the same state four separate times.

Gustav: Knocks Haiti and Jamaica senseless, but the levees in New Orleans hold, and that's really all that counts.

Hanna: Currently battering the Bahamas and preparing to head up to the U.S., perhaps the Carolinas.

Ike: Forming 1,400 miles behind Hanna and heading for the Bahamas for a second round.

Hurricane to be named with a J: Freshly begun off the coast of Africa and following Ike.

That's five in a row — surely nothing to be alarmed about. The most pressing issue in the United States is still not climate change, but the precious life growing inside the tummy of Governor Sarah Palin's daughter, because all life is precious, unless it belongs to seven billion annoying people demanding that their children be allowed to experience it, too.

< We Just Need Some Re-Training / >

With ridership at an all-time high, Amtrak has finally gotten the attention of Congress. And for the first time in decades, it's actually positive attention rather than the yearly "Let's shut this money pit down" discussion from a group of people who've never been on a train, much less had to live near the railroad tracks.

Some of the routes seeing increased use, like the City of New Orleans run from Chicago to the Big Easy, are legendary and even musical (Good morning, America, how are you? Don't you know me? I'm your native son....) Some, like the San Francisco to Sacramento and Boston to D.C. commuter lines, are so full that passengers stand in the accordion connectors between compartments. The trains could be even longer and fuller, except that Amtrak already has all 632 of its usable cars on the rails, and there are no more to add.

But while the U.S. government is finally coming to realize what the Am in Amtrak stands for, and is turning its attitude from hostility to support, imagine what kinds of shortage problems the railroad would be encountering if more Americans were to actually use a service that, according to the New York Times, would constitute the eighth largest domestic airline if it had wings.

Why don't we? A lot has to do with misconceptions that are grounded in fact.

For example, factual misconception #1: The train cars are dirty and noisy. True — sort of. The cars themselves are surprisingly quiet, well-insulated, and comfortable, given that most of them are at least thirty years old, and we're talking about steel riding on steel. And when you board a train that's been freshly prepped and gone over, it's clean, too. (The narrow stairway up to the car is a bit grimy, but remember that those steps are exposed to the elements at all times.)

It's not the passenger cars that are the problem; it's the passengers who are dirty and noisy. In a car of fifty seats, nearly everyone eats and drinks and reads on board, but maybe three people will bother to walk to the front of the car and put their wrappers and bottles and magazines into the clearly marked, conveniently placed trash bins. The rest of the trash is jammed into the netting on seatbacks or kicked under seats. Why not, the maintenance guys will pick it up later.

Problem is, Amtrak is already running a skeleton crew due to underfunding, so the "guys" are usually just one guy waiting at the final station, and if you're riding a ten-stop train and unboard after the third stop, your trash is waiting for the people who board after you leave. Guess what they'll think about the condition of the train? But Amtrak has nothing to do with it.

As for noise: three words — cell phones, children. When half the adults on board think they need to call home at every stop and report their location at maximum volume — while ignoring the fact that their grade-schoolers are spinning around in circles in the aisle or playing marco/polo from opposite ends of the compartment — then sure, it can be noisy as hell. But Amtrak isn't in charge of common courtesy, common sense, or basic parenting. It runs a train. Passengers run their mouths.

Factual misconception #2: The trains derail. Yes, once in a great while they do. But the number of derailments for trains overall, not just passenger trains, has been steadily decreasing over the past four years as rail use has gone up. Second, Amtrak owns only about three percent of the steel rail that it travels on. All the rest belongs to freight lines, and there isn't enough inspection of that track by the companies or by a Federal government that proudly records the day that the last spike was driven into the railbed connecting east coast to west, but that also abandoned train culture after the last of its soldiers whistle-stopped home after World War II.

Even in that state of neglect, rail travel is a safe bet: 710 trains have derailed so far in 2008, 14 of them Amtraks, with zero passengers killed. And 14 isn't the significant number it appears to be; there are 2,200 Amtrak trains per year whistling through my neighborhood alone. Multiply that times everywhere else and then do the long division.

Meanwhile, on the highway, roughly 39,500 people will die this year in car crashes. Makes the "all aboard" call sound more attractive, doesn't it?
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< Paris 1, Old Guy 0 / >

John McCain has dug into the slime bucket of Repuglicant campaign tactics and compared "celebrity" Barack Obama with Paris Hilton, but while he was busy planning his eighth consecutive missed Senate vote for approving a renewable energy policy, Paris has come back with an ad — and an energy plan — of her own:

< Leadership looks like this / >

Al Gore's 'Ten Year Challenge' Speech, July 17, 2008

I've never been a fan of the "If we can put a man on the moon" fallacy, given its typical usage in comparing apples with elephants. You know: "If we can put a man on the moon, we can find a way to provide housing for all of the world's homeless." Technology compared with an enormously complex problem made of social, political, economic, and psychological factors. A does not compare with B or C or D or E. So, the phrase has rung hollow whenever I've heard it, and I've always avoided it in my own writing and speaking.

But now comes exactly the opportunity for it to make sense. When the late John F. Kennedy called on scientists to create a space program and transport human beings to the moon, he had little to go on but faith in the science community to make it happen. They rose to the challenge. A great deal of the needed technology hadn't been discovered yet, but a "yes, we can" attitude and a charismatic leader provided the incentive.

The United States wasn't nearly as polarized politically, and there hadn't been eight years of punk "bring it on" sneering from the Oval Office to foster a culture of animosity between admirers of Rachel Carson and those of Curtis LeMay. Nor had the U.S. become a "sole superpower" and happy to let the world know it. Forty-plus years later, not only is there a lot of fence-mending needed between Washington and... everywhere else, but also between red states and blue, neocons and libs, treehuggers and scorched-earth adherents to wealth by any means necessary.

Al Gore surely isn't free of political enemies — a quick scan of the comments following these videos for WE, the WeCanSolveIt project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, shows plenty of outright hatred for the man. And of course, in an age where the ad hominem attack replaces the carefully considered argument, not a lot of thought goes into hating by those who despise him personally. But their arguments are empty, repetitious, and unsupported by moral grounding. "Ignore him," they say, but they don't explain the benefits of that (in)action. They only explain why he, the man, should be ignored.

Perhaps they are waiting for a different messiah. It would be interesting to see what kind of response the haters might have if Dick Cheney — or, better yet, Rush Limbaugh — suddenly had a "prepare to meet my maker" conversion and began preaching the gospel of conservation, not conservatism. Even more interesting would be their chorus if they one day realized that they have absolutely no stake in the oil, coal, and other Big Denier industries, all of which would gladly terminate their jobs, foreclose their homes, and destroy their families at the first sign of a two-cent dividend increase.

While the haters and deniers wait, Al Gore has issued a call for the science community to make something happen on a scale even greater than the moon landing. To complicate it, the government holding the purse strings needed to fund such a huge research and development project is a government completely uninterested in, and actively hostile to, that project.

But only for five more months. And in only three, we'll know who will be taking over when the cowboy gets kicked back to Texas. It's pretty clear that we'll see a radical change of direction even if the new leader is John McCain, who says of Gore's challenge: "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable.... I emphasize my respect for the former vice president's leadership on this issue and his continuous leadership." 

When Apollo 13 blew out an oxygen tank and the astronauts had to survive in the moon lander attached to the capsule, NASA engineers had roughly 24 hours to solve the classic dilemma: how to fit a square peg into a round hole. Carbon dioxide levels were increasing dangerously, and the square air filters from the command module were needed in the lunar lander — which had round holes. Plastic bags, cardboard, tape, and the collective determination to keep the astronauts alive were all the ingredients necessary to solve an age-old puzzle. CO2 levels decreased, breathing became easier, and lives were saved.

Apollo 13 is a perfect analogy to what Gore and the WE project are hoping to accomplish now. It's going to take a lot more than plastic bags and cardboard this time, since the former requires diminishing petroleum reserves and the latter destroys carbon sinks, but if WE can create a collective determination — not just in the U.S., but worldwide — then the year 2018 could have the world glued to its TV sets again to watch another switch being thrown: the last coal-powered plant switching off and a new, clean energy era switching on.

If we can put a man on the moon, we can make this happen, too.

....................The New WE Television Ad

< Visual Aid: "Oil Addiction" / >

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< Wrong Thought, Wrong Action / >

The September retail issue of Esquire will feature a battery-operated 'e-ink' animated/digitized cover flashing the words, "The 21st Century Begins Now." As the New York Times and Discovery Network's Treehugger blog have already noted, this means that 100,000 custom wafer-thin batteries will be headed for landfills as e-waste, and that the manufacturing and shipment of the digital cover involve a size-150 (tons) carbon footprint and "a 16% increase over the carbon footprint of a typical print publication."

Why? China, Mexico, and refrigerated delivery trucks, to start.

Clearly, this little cover is a big undertaking, and a pricey one. So who has driven in to underwrite the cost? None other than Ford Motor Company, which just announced an eight billion dollar loss for the second quarter 2008. Not to worry, though; Ford will "defray the outlandish expense with an advertisement on the inside of the cover showing the new Ford minivan/ sport utility vehicle, the Flex, moving across the page."

Well, great. The Flex, on dealer lots now, was first revealed to the public as the Fairlane Concept in 2005 — when oil was trading at $50 a barrel. The 2009 final version of that design rolls into showrooms with a fuel economy rating of only 16 mpg city, with oil having tripled in cost. In fairness, though, according to a team of Newsweek auto reviewers, the gas-guzzling Hummer H2 gets a meager 8 mpg city, making the Flex a clearly better investment with double the fuel savings and carbon output reduction. That is, if you happen to find anything less than 24 mpg acceptable for city errands. For its part, Ford finds it best to simply avoid the whole issue of usefulness and affordability. According to body designer J Mays, the new SUV "has the power to move people emotionally as well as physically" because it "has been created for people who know it's the journey – not the destination – that matters most."

Actually, it's life and health and survival in a sustainable future that matter most, but Ford has only begun its long and painful journey toward that realization.
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< Detroit vs... Everyone. / >

In a rare display of visible editorial anger, the Detroit News of July 21 has not only run the same opinion twice but has also left some glaringly bad editing out on display. And why? Because John McCain "is wrong again on auto industry rules" as he "flops on emissions standards."

At issue is McCain's affirmation that states — and the state of California in particular — have a right to define and enforce their own automobile emissions standards, independent of the Federal government and its destroy-everything Environmental "Protection" Agency. The phrasing of McCain's alleged approval, "I guess, at the end of the day, I support [it]," isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, and is couched in so much speculative filler that it can easily be revised or erased at any time, but this didn't stop the Detroit News' columnist Daniel Howes from attacking the "zealots in the California Assembly" and asking McCain's campaign staff, "[W]hy waste time here [in Michigan]?"

Who does Mr. Howes turn to for a supporting quote? A nameless "executive with [an] automaker," who wonders why Senator McCain is trying to lose votes in Michigan — a point with which Howes emphatically agrees. In contrast, he writes, Barack Obama is at least "showing a little Midwestern love for the autos," but this is the Detroit News — a voice of conservatism. So you have to look carefully in order to see that when Howes writes that "rhetorical support for automakers shouldn't be limited to those the intelligentsia deems politically correct," he's talking about the very same candidate: Barack Obama.

So, Obama shows Motown some love, and Motown is a hater in return?

Obama understands that Michigan will be a pivotal electoral vote in November, Howes writes in conclusion, but McCain doesn't. Asks the columnist: "How come?"

You can almost hear him moaning: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?

Then the big Editorial Guns pick up where the mere opinion columnist leaves off. "So far, McCain hasn't got much of anything right when it comes to the auto industry," writes the News itself on the editorial page. "Allowing states to set their own emission standards would default to California the job of regulating automobiles. That won't be good for Michigan or for American auto workers."

And there it is, right there. Terminal myopia, chronic self-concern, end-stage fuckyouism. The voice of Detroit's conservatives is unwilling to see anything like a wider picture, but if it took only a little peek it would see that California isn't just California — New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Jersey, Minnesota, Maine, and Rhode Island have all subscribed to the Schwarzenegger State's strict emissions guidelines. The News might also take a look at California's sheer enormity — cut it out of a map and lay it over any area in Europe or the Middle East. Do any of those countries have a right to determine their own clean air and fuel efficiency standards?

And does Detroit have the moral and ethical right to say "fuck off and die" to every human being not living in Michigan, U.S.A., or not working for a U.S.-based car-related manufacturer? The issue, after all, isn't automobile emissions. It's planetary survival.

As Lee Iacocca, father of the Ford Mustang and former CEO of Chrysler used to say: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." But don't just stand there and block the path. We've had enough of that during eight years of Bush/Cheney-enforced environmental paralysis.

Nearly 50 years ago, California said it wanted some of the emissions from a car's tailpipe to be recirculated and diluted. Detroit screamed foul — and then invented the PCV valve, a tiny, cheap part that did exactly what California wanted. Who benefitted? Every person on the planet.

The other litanies of Detroit's painful bellowing are well known: No seat belts! No air bags! No antilock brakes! No small cars! No fuel efficiency! And then, Detroit made them happen — well, the first three, anyway — and made a profit, too. So what the hell.

"The automakers need to be left alone for a while," the Detroit News pleads, not realizing the utter irony of those words as millions of customers abandon GM, Ford, and Chrysler and chuck brand loyalty out the window. "Until they get that, neither McCain nor Obama should not (sic) be considered a friend to Michigan's most vital industry."

As if Michigan's most vital industry has itself ever been a friend to anyone.
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< On Leadership (Again) / >

From the British Weekly Telegraph:

"The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: 'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter.'

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush... then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions."

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Two thousand nine hundred twenty days of potential wasted. And he thinks that God is on his side. When called to account for this life, will he see the Almighty punch the air, grin, and say "Goodbye to the world's biggest offender"?
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< Watching the "MediaWatch" Dogs / >

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<— This is a service of the Media Research Center, run by L. Brent Bozell III, founder of the Parents Television Council, which has its finger so firmly on the pulse of kid culture that it recently recommended that children watch a Boston Pops and Rascal Flatts performance on CBS.

Newsbusters is alarmed by "environmental alarmists" and by "liberals" and "elites" and "ultra-leftists." Upon the death of former Fox anchor and White House spokesman Tony Snow, Newsbusters gleefully pointed out that the Huffington Post had been forced to close comments because of "hateful," "disgusting," and "disgraceful" comments that didn't show appropriate respect for the dead.

That, of course, was not the story. The story was that the Huffington Post, leftist liberals all, had the wisdom, grace, dignity, and decency to shut down the comment area when some vulgar buffoons couldn't muster enough social decorum to remove their hats and honor their fallen enemy.

When comments reopened, the point had been well made, and the strongest "criticism" the late Mr. Snow received was this: "You had a tough job, Tony. You had to lie for your government. No judgment now that you're with the universe. RIP, my fellow human." But more representative of the thoughtful comments was this: "I am a liberal, and just as cancer does not discriminate, neither do I. I'm sorry for his family's loss. Even if I disagreed 200% with his politics, he was tragically taken from this world too soon."

Is it possible that there might be some selective media-watching by an organization allegedly formed to combat selectivity in media coverage?

In a June poll, Newsbusters asked, "Who Cares Most About Global Warming?" As fair, full, and impartial response choices, it offered:

a. Average person
b. Bureaucrats
c. Elites

The poll received more than four thousand votes, with option C the clear winner. And comments! There were references to "power mad leftists," "extremists," and "sickening hypocrites," and one poster added the clever suggestion to "Save a seal, club a liberal." (Did I hear the adjective "hateful" applied somewhere?)

Then, discussion turned to the History Channel's Ice Road Truckers, with informed comments like these:

- "They are driving HUGE loads right over the frozen Arctic Ocean. So much for the Polar ice cap shrinking."

- "It was amusing to watch the loaded big rigs driving the Arctic Ocean ice right past the frozen in place ships. Gives whole new meaning to scam doesn't it." (sic)

"Not something I would ever do but it does make for some fascinating viewing. Oh, and obviously the ice cap is holding up very well."

A few minor problems: First, the show makes clear that the trucks are primarily driving over frozen inland lakes, not the Arctic Ocean. Second, the History Channel's own official press release for the series debut clearly states: "Last year, because of the effects of global warming, the ice road was closed early, leaving hundreds of tons of supplies stuck at the dispatch station." Third, the same network's description of a new site section devoted to environmental crisis states: "For whatever reason it's happening, slowly, but very surely. Global warming is a reality. The ultimate consequences of transformations to our world climate are unclear, but if history is any indication, they could be devastating."

Likewise, a few links further in, the environmental section explains that "[t]he Earth is heating up fast. Since the beginning of time, our planet has experienced warming and cooling cycles that happen naturally over thousands of years. What's remarkable about the current warming trend is the speed at which it's occurring. In the last 50 years, the average global temperature has risen at the fastest rate in recorded history, according to the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC)."

The NRDC? Well, that's a bunch of treehugging hippies. Just like those punks at the United Nations and their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Better we should ask the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), since they are Federal agencies sanctioned — and censored — by the take-no-action Bush administration. What's more, Newsbusters itself has been happy to cite NOAA-supplied information about a single aspect of climate behavior (hurricanes) that can be distorted to misrepresent the whole picture (global climate disruption).

As for the IPCC itself, Newsbusters will gladly depict that agency as a group of fraudulent, unscientific "alarmists," unlike NOAA, which helps to support the Newsbuster media-watching cause. But wait — what is this on the NOAA site? "Internationally, the IPCC, under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), is the most senior and authoritative body providing scientific advice to global policy makers."

Probably it's best that children not be allowed to observe Newsbusters or its parent organizations in action. The disgraceful selectivity and hypocrisy going on there don't serve as very good examples for young minds. Instead, children should be encouraged to do some reading:


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< On Leadership: the Tragedy of the Tao / >

21 men and one woman stand around a Zen garden. They call themselves the G8 leaders; perhaps they think that the garden setting will make them seem wise. But this is the wrong setting. They should be in a Tao garden instead.

The Tao asks: If a platoon of soldiers disappears into a forest, what has happened to them?

The Tao answers: Nothing. They are not there.

The G8 "leaders" ask: If global climate crisis demands our immediate leadership and unwavering resolve, what will happen to us?

The G8 "leaders" answer: Nothing. We are incapable of leading and have no resolve.

The G8 "leaders" exit their meeting calling for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, when they will all be dead. They do not specify what the baseline measurement for this reduction is. They make the reductions voluntary, not mandatory. They offer no guidance for how to make the reductions. They do not care if the living will all die with them.

The "leader" of the United States returns from the G8 meeting and orders his administration to freeze in a permanent state of inaction. The next president will take care of it.

The Tao asks: If a boulder falls into a stream and blocks the water's path, what happens?

The Tao answers: Nothing. Water moves around the rock. And eventually, the rock will be worn away by the water.

The G8 "leaders" think that they are the water, moving around the rock. But they are wrong. They are the rock.

And we must become the water now.

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< Right Thought, Wrong Illustration / >

A friend traveling in Europe sent this photo of a mini-billboard on the back of an airport bench:


"The Swedish airport is green," he writes. "All non-flight vehicles use biofuel." An example of right thought and right intention, but let's think for a minute: what kind of "biofuel" is the ad referring to, exactly? Overlooking the fact that this kind of ad could never run in the United States (too many people would start drinking from fuel pumps and bursting into flames, and their families would sue), and that there is a legal disclaimer in small print (click on the photo), how are we defining "clean" here? Minimalist advertising like this has all the potential in the world to be simple greenwashing, giving the illusion of intelligent and responsible ecology where none exists.

Clever ad? Sure. But we don't need clever. We need clear.

Facts, please, min god besätta.

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< Midwest Drowning / >

In an age when the Sciences are manipulated and ignored, the Arts and Humanities continue to be the first to take the hardest hits. This is the Museum of Art at the University of Iowa, where a dear friend directs a business communication program. Despite the best efforts of hundreds of volunteers desperately filling sandbags for days, the entire arts campus at U-Iowa has been drowned. (A blog detailing the UI damage is here.)

In my post below, I mention the weather in both Michigan and Iowa. This isn't the first time that Iowa has flooded—1929 and 1993 are both notable years for that, and I remember nearly being washed away during a camping stay near Cedar Rapids back in the early 1980s. But in the '29 and '93 floods, the rivers crested at 20 feet. This time, crest mark was at 32 feet.

I don't need to mention that Iowa is also watching its corn crop, and its ethanol dreams, disappear beneath the waves. I've mentioned the folly of pinning our energy hopes on something that depends on screwy weather enough times already (and will likely mention it a few more times before I'm through).

But "screwy" is too kind. The weather has turned psychotic and homicidal. Last August in southern Michigan, we had a series of black-sky afternoons, floods, tornadoes, and hurricane-force winds that freaked everyone out. Then fall arrived, and we were safe. A winter of record-setting snowfall followed. Now summer is back, and so are the storms—nearly every day, "dangerous systems" form and start hurling lightning bolts like Zeus on PCP, funnel clouds start swirling (most, so far, too high to cause damage), and tree branches become projectiles. The basement has become the most inviting and comforting part of the house.

Really, this is no way to live. Come on, Mr. Obama, you yourself filled sandbags over the weekend. You probably saw it as a political photo opportunity and PR move, but you were living the people's nightmare, however briefly. Let it move you; feel it. And then do something about it. A nation—and a world—filled with storm victims and terrified citizens cowering in their cellars isn't the kind of change you've been talking about so stirringly. But it is the kind of change we're all getting more of by the day.

We can handle strong, decisive leadership that recognizes when a rampaging elephant is trampling everyone in the circus tent.
Yes, we can.