Confessions of an Environmentalist

SUBHEAD: Environmentalists have happily jumped on the technological fix bandwagon--the solar farm, wind farm, energy crowd. By Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez on 8 January 2012 for Orion - (http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-01-09/whither-environmentalism) Image above: Tree on landscape. From Kingsworth's Orion article (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6599). In the latest issue of Orion Magazine, environmental activists Derrick Jensen and Paul Kingsnorth both express their frustrations with the current environmental movement.

Jensen takes movement organizers to task for their drift towards actions that are "fun and sexy." "The fact that so many people routinely call for environmentalism to be more fun and more sexy reveals not only the weakness of our movement but also the utter lack of seriousness with which even many activists approach the problems we face,” he says bitterly. “When it comes to stopping the murder of the planet, too many environmentalists act more like they're planning a party than building a movement.”

But let’s face it, there are a lot of people on this planet who find the issues addressed by environmentalism just too scary and depressing to deal with. The environmentalist party-planners are trying to reach these folks, who have been suckled from birth on cheery feel-good media, by presenting environmental action as fun and upbeat, rather than as doom-driven and angst-ridden. It's environmentalism on anti-depressants, and it fits a big swath of our population, who don't want to dwell on anything sad or upsetting, unless maybe it's a movie guaranteed to ultimately have a happy ending.

Paul Kingsnorth, whose long article in Orion, "Confessions of Recovering Environmentalist," will be the subject of an open conference phone call on January 18, is critical of the environmental movement not for being too party-oriented, but for being too "utilitarian."

Kingsnorth deplores environmentalists who have happily jumped on the technological fix bandwagon--the solar farm, wind farm, sustainable energy crowd. He sees these folks as engaged in finding new ways to continue our same old depredation of the environment--just more sustainably.

"Today’s environmentalism," he says, "is...an adjunct to hypercapitalism: the catalytic converter on the silver SUV of the global economy. It is an engineering challenge: a problem-solving device for people to whom the sight of a wild Pennine hilltop on a clear winter day brings not feelings of transcendence but thoughts about the wasted potential for renewable energy. It is about saving civilization from the results of its own actions: a desperate attempt to prevent Gaia from hiccupping and wiping out our coffee shops and broadband connections."

Kingsnorth declares he wants nothing of this "soulless" form of environmentalism. "I can’t make my peace with people who cannibalize the land in the name of saving it. I can’t speak the language of science without a corresponding poetry. I can’t speak with a straight face about saving the planet when what I really mean is saving myself from what is coming."

Kingsnorth ends his article on a disturbing note, telling us he's turning his back on the environmental movement, and striking off on his own. "I am leaving. I am going to go out walking."

I presume he means that he's going to go and quietly reconnect with the land, an important activity for all of us who care about the natural world. But I can't advocate "going out walking" as a strategy for the urgent task of changing human relations with our planet.

Fortunately, Kingsnorth also has a more positive suggestion for us: to recast the environmental movement as "ecocentric” as opposed to its current androcentric fixation.

"The “environment”—that distancing word, that empty concept—does not exist,” Kingsnorth declares. “It is the air, the waters, the creatures we make homeless or lifeless in flocks and legions, and it is us too. We are it; we are in it and of it, we make it and live it, we are fruit and soil and tree, and the things done to the roots and the leaves come back to us."

This is a message that every environmentalist, whatever we call ourselves, needs to hear and reaffirm. We are part of the web of life on this planet, and every tree that falls, every bird that is poisoned, every tree frog that goes extinct, is a leaf on the great tree of life that includes us humans too. Kill all the leaves, and the great tree will die.

We’re all looking for ways to promote a sustainable ecosystem on earth, not just for humans but for all the myriad life forms who share our planet today. I believe there’s room in the movement for everyone who cares, whether their bent is for deadly serious de-industrialization, “fun and sexy” protests, technological innovation, or even, yes, going out walking.

The most important thing is that we wake up, collectively, to the reality of what our species has been doing to the real 99%, the flora and fauna of this planet, and the fact that climate change is upon us, with potentially disastrous consequences for the 100% of us.

What shall we do about it? Don't stand there asking what to do! Look around, roll up your sleeves and get busy! Offer your talents to the task. If you can write, start writing and share your thoughts with ever wider circles of readers. If you can farm, start an organic CSA. If you are an engineer, you should be focusing on renewable energy. If you are a chemical engineer, you should be calling out the Monsantos and the Dows, even if it costs you your job.

We all need to be working on overcoming our media addictions and our socially reinforced tendencies to pull the covers over our heads. We need to be engaging, Occupy-style, with our political system, and sending a clear message that business as usual is no longer acceptable.

There is so much to do, and so little time. Let's get out there, each bearing our own gifts and energies, and turn this Earthship around.

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Taking a Hike 1/6/12 Ea O Ka Aina: Imagination by Derrick Jensen 9/29/11 Ea O Ka Aina: Time to Stop Pretending 4/27/11 .

American War

SUBHEAD: It would seem that the USA's perpetual war is about to expand again. This time aimed at Iran and American citizens.  

By Juan Wilson on 10 January 2012 for Island Breath - 
  (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2012/01/american-war.html)
   
Image above: Secretary of State cHillary Clinton in black leather installing silencer on automatic pistol. From (http://www.whiterabbitcult.com/hillary-clinton-vows-to-%E2%80%98banish-sexual-violence%E2%80%99/).

Below is a sharp Ron Paul TV ad that asks us to imagine America as the victim of a foreign occupation, much like the ones the US military has been involved in for the last decade on the Middle East. It proposes that the Chinese have military bases in Texas and makes the point that American citizens would surely attempt to force them out, as would "terrorists" in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Ron Paul, the congressman from Texas, is the only presidential candidate of the Republican or Democratic party running against our foreign military bases and Middle East military adventures to secure foreign oil. I'm with him on that. In fact his position on drugs and other personal freedoms match mine.

Where we part ways boils down to my feeling the need for regulation to protect the environment and a government role in programs for the needy.

But I could overlook a lot to vote for someone with Paul's position on freedom and war.


The video that was above is no longer shared. Click on link to see: Ron Paul TV ad asking us to imagine Chinese overseas military bases in Texas. From (http://youtu.be/SMHBEAeNa-c).

The question Ron Paul's TV ad did not address is the possibility that USA's next war (with Iran) will probably include a front in American itself. It won't be Chinese troops fighting against renegade American terrorists, it will be the US military. Last week Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Bill that includes the possible indefinite detention of US citizen's by the military if they are determined to be "belligerent". The bill states in Subtitle D - Detainee Matters - Section 1031;

"Affirmation of authority of the armed forces to detain covered persons pursuant to the authorization for use of military force... including any person who has committed a belligerent act..."

So much for the US Constitution. So much for Obama. Below a video by Aaron Hawkins from his website Waiting for the Storm. He has been ahead of the curve on our path to war with Iran (WWIII) and is pointing to trouble coming up fast. Be wary.


The video that was above is no longer shared. Click on link to see: WWIII - US and Israel deploy troops for Iran War, China tells Navy to prepare for combat. From (http://www.waitingforthestorm.com/wwiii-us-and-israel-deploy-troops-for-iran-war-china-tells-navy-to-prepare-for-combat-scgnews). 

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: War with Iran 1/10/12
Ea O Ka Aina: US pushes Iran to war 1/4/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Iran warns of $250 a barrel oil 12/4/11

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Gasaholic Cure

SUBHEAD: For global gasaholics, the ending of national fuel subsidies are the first step to a cure. By Editorial staff on 10 January 2012 for Bloomberg News - (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/for-global-gasaholics-ending-subsidies-is-the-first-step-to-a-cure-view.html) Image above: 32 gallon tank Hummer. From (http://phytophactor.fieldofscience.com/2011/04/cost-of-gasoline-petrol.html).

Fuel subsidies are the crack cocaine of global economic development: easy to get hooked on, hard to give up. And as every addict knows, there are good and bad ways to try to kick the habit.

Consider Nigeria and Iran. In Nigeria, the government’s recent decision to remove fuel subsidies and more than double the price of gasoline (3AGSREG) has led to riots and now a nationwide strike. Two years ago in Iran, an initiative to cut subsidies and almost quadruple the price of gas (as well as boost the price of food and water) provoked little unrest, lowered oil consumption and bolstered the economy and the government.

The differences between the two efforts offer valuable lessons about the best ways to eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies - - a staggering global misallocation of resources that does little to help the poor, distorts markets and pumps more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.

In 2010, the value of all fossil-fuel subsidies, for both production and consumption, was roughly $500 billion. On the consumption side, 37 countries spent $409 billion underwriting their citizens’ fuel purchases, according to the International Energy Agency. Venezuelans, for example, enjoy the world’s cheapest gasoline: You can fill up a 32-gallon Hummer for about $3. In pre-reform Iran, the price of gasoline was 40 cents a gallon; in Nigeria, it was about $1.50.

Support Skews Development

There’s not much good to say about fuel-consumption subsidies. For starters, they encourage waste -- Venezuela has the dubious honor of having Latin America’s highest per-capita energy consumption. They also skew economic development because investment decisions are made on the basis of false market signals. And because consumption subsidies reward high-energy users, they help the middle class and the rich over the poor, who rely heavily on dung or wood and aren’t connected to the power grid.

The IEA, an independent body formed after the oil shocks of the 1970s, estimates that only 8 percent of that $409 billion went to the bottom-income quintile. Moreover, such government funding sucks up money that could be used to help the poor in other ways: Venezuela devotes at least 6 percent of its gross domestic product to fuel subsidies, about double its education budget; in Indonesia that amount is around 4 percent; the $6 billion that Nigeria has been spending to keep fuel prices low is three times its health budget.

In addition to freeing up hundreds of billions of dollars for more productive uses, unwinding all consumption subsidies by 2020 would reduce demand for energy by 4.1 percent and carbon- dioxide emissions by 4.7 percent, according to the IEA.

Here’s where Iran comes in. Whatever the conduct of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government in other realms, its fuel-subsidy reforms in late 2010 make it something of a role model. Legislative debate began almost two years before the changes went into effect; officials, academics and community leaders led an extensive public-awareness campaign that included sending households mock bills showing the true cost of their electricity. More important, the reforms included a clear benefit to Iranians: direct cash payments to more than 80 percent of the population, paid out before the changes took effect. In the case of the poorest of the poor, the sums amounted to more than half their monthly cash income, which helped to insulate the program from political criticism.

The administration of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan took a different path. It released its proposal a mere two months before it was to go into effect. Cash payments are to be directed only to small subsets of the poor (mainly pregnant women). Others will receive menial jobs, with pay low enough to “ensure the self-selection of only the poor.” The government says the cost savings will be recycled to the poor through building roads, railways, and irrigation projects. That doesn’t seem likely in one of the world’s most corrupt countries. No wonder Nigerians have taken to the streets.

Spurring Wasteful Consumption

The problem is hardly limited to the developing world. In 2009, the Group of 20, whose members encompass big oil exporters and importers, pledged to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption.” One way to ensure that this goal is met -- and not largely at the expense of the poor -- would be for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to team up with the United Nations Development Program to compile best practices from Iran and other countries, as well as from the work being done by an alphabet soup of other groups (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the IEA, the World Bank and its regional cousins).

The OECD has already pulled together a 350-page inventory of more than 250 ways in which 24 of its member countries subsidize the production and consumption of gasoline, diesel and other fossil fuels. But this transparency exercise looks only at budgetary support and tax breaks; it has yet to tackle the harder-to-estimate subsidies provided through things like loan guarantees. In order to speed up the process, how about turning the database into a public wiki, enabling the hive mind to exert its collective powers?

One benefit of this approach would be to highlight the contradictions indulged in by even relatively green countries, such as Norway and New Zealand, which tax fuel consumption heavily while still supporting their fossil-fuel production industries. The G-20 has so far deferred defining “inefficient” subsidies and “wasteful consumption.” We put forth a candidate: the tens of billions of dollars a year in forgone fuel taxes associated with diesel for agriculture, fisheries and other “off-road” uses, mostly as a result of exempting them from excise levies. Farmers and fishing fleets would have more reason to be energy-efficient, and we would have cleaner air and water in the bargain.

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Green in Seattle

SUBHEAD: Seattle’s Bullitt Foundation building sustainable building with composting toilets and solar PV roof. By James S. Russell on 9 January 2012 for Bloomberg News - (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/seattle-s-bullitt-goes-green-with-toilets-cooling-hat-james-s-russell.html) Image above: Architectural rendering of Pike Street side of Bullitt Foundation headquarters being built in Seattle. From original article.

In Seattle, contractors have begun digging for an office building that will eventually wear what looks like a big cocked hat.

It’s a solar-panel array topping off the five-story home for the local Bullitt Foundation.

When it opens next winter, the Bullitt Center will also scrub its own water with the aid of composting toilets.

The new building reflects founder Dorothy Bullitt’s aspiration to turn the Pacific Northwest into a global model of environmental sustainability.

The foundation sources many of its components locally, and strives to eliminate toxins in building materials and ventilating air. Its self-imposed high standards have often been a challenge to the Miller Hull Partnership, the project’s Seattle architect.

These are all requirements of the Living Building Challenge, a program to improve health and minimize building energy use and waste.

Among other things, Miller Hull had to ask manufacturers to reformulate products and dig into the energy performance of desktop computers.

Then they had to figure out how to do all this affordably.

Airy Feel

On its small site, the Bullitt’s roof was the only place to put the solar panels needed to generate the building’s power.

Since Seattle’s ubiquitous clouds admit so little sunlight, Miller Hull partner Ron Rochon, working with PAE Consulting Engineers, had to keep squeezing energy out of the building design to match the panels’ output.

Geothermal wells will supply most of the heat. Offices will feel airy with high ceilings that allow much of the space to forgo electric lights in daytime. Windows will open to cool breezes during Seattle’s mild summers.

The team slashed the usual energy-wasting systems to such a degree that desktop computers dominated the building’s energy demand.

Even so, the building still used too much energy.

The architects and engineers identified slimmed servers and efficient laptops to reduce a standard computer’s consumption of 1,150 watts to just 250, about the same as two household bulbs.

They talked city officials into letting Bullitt expand the solar array by projecting the roof over the sidewalk, normally not permitted. That involved relocating power lines and persuading skeptical neighbors that the roof wasn’t too intrusive.

There were more hoops to jump through. The foundation hoped to harvest drinking water from the roof and avoid chlorinating it.

So far the Environmental Protection Agency has nixed that idea, though the designers are appealing its decision. To treat all the water used onsite, Rochon’s team found marine toilets that will deliver waste to a basement composting room. No one has ever done that, he said.

Well-meaning as they are, I do wonder if many of these measures are worth the effort. Solar -- for now anyway -- is a lost cause in such a dim climate, especially in a city largely driven by clean hydropower.

City Level

Water pollution needs to be tackled at a neighborhood or city scale, not within individual buildings.

Still, there’s a crazy-like-a-fox quality to the Bullitt effort. It has encouraged a German high-performance window-wall manufacturer to build a facility in nearby Everett. A waterproofing-compound manufacturer called Building Envelope Innovations has agreed to reformulate its product without phthalates, a class of chemical compounds that may harm reproductive health.

Seattle has established a 2030 District in and around its downtown to achieve carbon-neutrality by the year 2030.

With Congress hopelessly gridlocked about any energy legislation and Iran blustering as usual, Seattle and Bullitt are pointing the way to a possible future. For $30 million Bullitt won’t just get a handsome, healthy, zero-energy workplace, but one that incubates job growth.

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War with Iran

SUBHEAD: Obama is prepared to use US military force to stop Iran achieving nuclear weapons. [Editor's note: As stated in the article below "The latest round of punishing sanctions target oil sales, which fund a majority of Iran’s government revenues." This in itself, is an act of war against Iran. America is now about to escalate the confrontation.] By Indira Lakshmanan on 10 January 2012 for Bloomberg News - (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-10/obama-prepared-to-use-force-to-stop-nuclear-iran-former-adviser-ross-says.html) Image above: President Obama poses with bellicose posturing. From original article.

No one should doubt that President Barack Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if sanctions and diplomacy fail, the president’s former special assistant on Iran said.

Obama has “made it very clear” that he regards a nuclear- armed Iran as so great a threat to international security that “the Iranians should never think that there’s a reluctance to use the force” to stop them, Dennis Ross, who served two years on Obama’s National Security Council and a year as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, said in an interview yesterday.

“There are consequences if you act militarily, and there’s big consequences if you don’t act,” said Ross, who in a two- hour interview at the Bloomberg Washington office laid out a detailed argument against those who say Obama would sooner “contain” a nuclear-armed Iran than strike militarily.

The administration considers the risks of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action, said Ross, who last month rejoined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group.

His comments came the day after Obama’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials said that developing a nuclear weapon would cross a red line, precipitating a U.S. strike.

“They need to know that if they take that step, they’re going to get stopped,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Jan. 8 on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” On the same program, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he has been responsible for planning and positioning assets to be ready if ordered to take military action.

Challenging Iran’s Claim

Iran, the world’s third largest oil exporter, insists its nuclear program is for civilian energy and medical purposes only. The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report last Nov. 8 detailing nuclear activities it said had no other use than for military purposes, bolstering the U.S. case that Iran is seeking the capability to produce nuclear weapons even if it hasn’t yet made a decision to do so.

While some Iran analysts have suggested an alternative to military strikes would be to “contain” a nuclear Iran, much as the U.S. managed to live with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, Ross said the analogy doesn’t translate to the situation in the Mideast. Countries in the region, he said, lack equivalent Cold War-era “ground-rules,” lines of communication, and a protected second-strike nuclear capability, which deterred a surprise attack during U.S.-Soviet tensions.

A nuclear-armed Iran would set off an atomic arms race among neighbors, pose a risk of proliferation to other states or terrorist groups, and increase the chances of a nuclear strike resulting from miscalculation, he said.

Potential for Miscalculation

“You don’t have any communication between the Israelis and the Iranians. You have all sorts of local triggers for conflict. Having countries act on a hair trigger -- where they can’t afford to be second to strike, the potential for a miscalculation or a nuclear war through inadvertence is simply too high,” he said.

Ross acknowledged that a military strike would have serious consequences as well, including Iranian retaliation, either directly or through terrorist proxies around the world, a possible effort to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and a spike in oil prices.

Understanding those risks, “nobody uses military force lightly,” he said, and “nobody commits to using military force one minute before they have to.”

Oil rose as much as 1.8 percent to $103.09 a barrel in New York today amid growing concern the dispute between Iran and western governments may lead to a disruption in Middle East crude exports.

U.S. Credibility

Ross underscored that U.S. willingness to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons affects decision-making in other countries that fear Iran, including Israel and Gulf states. If the White House abandoned a pledge to stop Iran made by Obama and President George W. Bush before him, the U.S. would lose all credibility, he said.

“I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the Israelis would act if they came to the conclusion that basically the world was prepared to live with Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said. “They certainly have the capability by themselves to set back the Iranian nuclear program.”

Ross stressed he believes there is still time for diplomacy to work, as the financial pain of sanctions may yet persuade Iran to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.

“Force is not inevitable,” he said. “Diplomacy is still the desired means. Pressure is an element of the means.”

Oil Embargo

Coordinated efforts to tighten penalties, including the European Union’s preliminary agreement on an oil embargo, new U.S. sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, and pressure on Japan and South Korea to reduce their imports of Iranian oil, may finally persuade Iran’s leaders to give up the program rather than suffer a shutdown of their economy, Ross said.

The latest measures are the first “really affecting the core of their revenue, which is their sale of oil,” Ross said. Historically, “when they’re really pressured, they look for ways out.”

The leaders of Islamic Republic of Iran only accepted a cease-fire with Iraq, halted the assassination of Iranian dissidents in Europe, and abandoned the enrichment of uranium in 2003 when “it wasn’t worth the cost” anymore, Ross noted.

The latest round of punishing sanctions target oil sales, which fund a majority of Iran’s government revenues, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Iran is “feeling pain in a much more dramatic way” than ever, Ross said.

Iranian ‘Bluster’

He dismissed threats by certain Iranian officials to retaliate against oil sanctions by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil transits, as “bluster” aimed to send a message at home and abroad, as Iranian leaders vie for power in a struggle that Ross said is as intense as any since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The IAEA yesterday confirmed that Iran has begun enriching uranium to as much as 20 percent U-235 at the underground Fordow underground site near the holy city of Qom, as Iranian leaders had pledged to do last year. The site is monitored by IAEA inspectors to detect any attempt to enrich uranium to the 90 percent level necessary for a nuclear bomb.

“There really is no justification for it,” Ross said of the latest enrichment activities. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of doubt that they are embarked on a program that can produce, at a certain point, weapons.”

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Alaska seals and walruses dying

SUBHEAD: Baffled scientists test for radiation after seals and walruses found dead in Alaska.  

By Bonnie Hulkower on 8 January 2012 for Treehugger -  
(http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/seal-walruses-dead-alaska-mysterious-sores-hair-loss-scientists-baffled.html)

  Image above: Seal affected by sores and hair loss from mysterious illness. From (https://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/scientists-still-unsure-whats-causing-arctic-alaska-ringed-seals-die).
 
Since mid-July, more than 60 dead and 75 diseased seals have been found with skin lesions and hair loss in the Arctic and Bering Strait regions of Alaska. In addition, scientists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported several diseased and dead walruses in their fall survey this year, and the walruses were also found with skin sores and patchy hair loss.

Scientific studies have indicated that a virus is not responsible for the disease impacting these animals, but scientists have been unable to isolate a single cause. Tissue samples from the affected animals have been screened for a variety of pathogens, but all of the results so far have been negative.
NOAA declared mysterious seal deaths "an unusual mortality event" The seal deaths have been declared "an unusual mortality event" by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , a status that provides additional resources to investigate the cause. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering making a similar declaration for the Pacific walrus.

Seal tissue samples will be tested Tissue samples will be examined for various factors including signs of immune system diseases, fungi, toxins, contaminants related to sea ice change, and radiation. Some of the seals and walruses have undersized lymph nodes, possibly a sign of weakened immune systems. The results of these tests will not be available for several weeks.

Concerns that the seal deaths may be linked to Fukushima radiation Local communities have been concerned that the marine mammals deaths may be due to a causal relationship linked to the Fukushima nuclear plant's damage.

Scientists at the Institute of Marine Sciences at UAF believe it's unlikely that Fukushima was the cause of the seals' deaths, given that levels of detected radiation are relatively low around Alaska. Water tests have not shown evidence of elevated radiation in U.S. Pacific waters since the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan. If there is a link to Fukushima, the researchers will find it, as they will be testing for radionuclide Cs-134 and Cs-137.

Disease hasn't spread to polar bears or humans, may have spread to other arctic seals It is not known whether the disease can be transmitted to humans or other animals. Polar bears, which prey on ringed seals, have not shown symptoms of the disease. Humans have also not shown symptoms of the disease. Similar symptoms have been reported in ringed seals in Russia and Canada. It is not yet determined if the causes are related. However, the timing and overall location of the disease suggests the possibility of transmission between the Alaskan and Russian populations, or at least a shared exposure to an environmental cause.

The public are encouraged to report sightings of diseased or dead animals. NOAA’s Alaska regional fisheries website has more in-depth information about this disease outbreak in ringed seals and walruses.


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Saving Koloa Camp

SUBHEAD: John Kruse, who was raised in Koloa, toils to save plantation rental houses for kapuna.  

By Lee Cataluna on 8 January 2012 for the Star Advertiser - 
  (http://www.staradvertiser.com/s?action=login&f=y&id=136899108)


Image above: One of the rental homes in Koloa that Grove Farms plans to tear down. From (http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/koloa-camp-residents-to-be-evicted/article_5979483c-26ea-11e1-8d4f-0019bb2963f4.html#2).

The houses aren't much to look at. Most are at least 90 years old, held together by peeling paint, rusty nails and the magic that keeps old houses going when there are people inside who love every creaking board. To some eyes, those old homes stand for all that is good about small town life.

Residents of the eight plantation homes in Koloa Camp on Kauai were given 120-day eviction notices in November. The landowner, Grove Farm, plans to knock down the houses to make room for a new subdivision with 50 prefabricated modular homes made in China. This story of old-timers fighting to stay in their humble homes is a classic Hawaii tale, but this one has an unusual character taking a lead role. Kepa Kruse, 29, has become a spokesman for the camp residents, many of whom are elderly and not given to protest signs and public meetings. Kruse set up the website savekoloacamp.com and has asked pointed questions on behalf of the old folks at community events and in the media.

"Maybe I've emerged as a voice, but it's only out of respect for the elders here. They shouldn't have this done to them," Kruse said. Kruse grew up in the camp. His father, John Kruse, a crew member of early Hokule'a voyages, has lived there for decades. When Kepa Kruse entered Kamehameha Schools in the seventh grade, the little wooden house on the end of the unpaved road was where he returned for holidays and summer breaks from the dorms. When he later left UH-Manoa to pursue a career in Hollywood, Koloa camp became a spiritual home base for him. The rain on the metal roof, the doors with the skeleton keys that were never locked -- Kruse could handle the city craziness if he thought of the quiet, starry nights back home.

 A photogenic and well-spoken surfer, Kruse won roles in the television series "North Shore" and "Off the Map" and most recently was in the Danny Glover film "Age of Dragons" and the independent film "Knots." His album "Coconut Wireless" won a Hoku award in 2011. As a protester and activist, he has taken an unusually diplomatic position on the Koloa Camp issue. "I'm not just throwing stones. I'm more for coming up with innovative solutions. One thing we want people to know is we're not against the project.

The project itself is a good idea. Just not here. Energy-efficient, a sense of community ... we want what they want. I'd love to make this community better." Rent for the camp houses is about $700 a month. Though the residents have been offered first chance at purchasing one of the affordable units in the new development -- to be called Waihohonu -- Kruse worries that none of the families could cover mortgages, which he figures would be close to $1,700 a month. "How is a 70-year-old going to qualify for a 30-year mortgage?" he asks.

Residents of Koloa Camp have been meeting every week to discuss the situation. The next meeting with representatives of Grove Farm is scheduled for Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. at the Koloa Community Center. Kruse has postponed his return to Hollywood so he can see this situation through. "Maybe there's a way for the community to work together so that everybody gets what they want," Kruse said. "Every year they have the Koloa Plantation Days celebration and there's crowds of people spending money. And here, this old plantation camp, one of the last, they're destroying the very thing they're celebrating."

See also:
Island Breath: Save Koloa Monkeypod Trees 1/11/08
Island Breath: Stacy Wrong's personal touch 3/12/08
 .

This Ripe Moment

SUBHEAD: A few months from now neither major party will have a credible candidate or a plausible platform of ideas.  

By James Kunstler on 9 Janaury 2012 for Kunstler.com - 
  (http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/01/this-ripe-moment.html)

 
Image above: A clown car drives through American small town. From (http://themoderatevoice.com/134085/hawk-in-a-clown-car-field).

The narcolepsy of the long Yuletide draws to a close and the world reawakens to its self-spun web of mutually reinforcing fiascos. Just before the holiday, a sense of futility darkened the European banking landscape as cascading sovereign default looked more and more inevitable. It was halted by a bazooka-caliber currency swap Ponzi that allowed the European Central Bank to pretend it had a $700-billion bag of sugar-plums to hand out to more than 200 banks there. That gambit will only keep up the appearance of normality for a couple of months, until the late winter bond rollover provokes a new crisis stage.

Likewise, in the USA, some pressure-cooked December employment statistics gave the false impression of a brightening jobs picture, but no major news network dared to glance behind the curtain at the short-term holiday hires, the uncounted long-term jobless, the ones who don't show up at the government offices anymore, the ones who stopped getting checks, the legions of the hopeless. A nation that can't call 'bullshit' on its own lies deserves all the suffering that might rain down upon it, and that's exactly where we are heading as things economic morph into things political.

How quaint the current Republican jousting tournament will seem in a few months when real violence rides in on the zephyrs of springtime. Each new primary is like the unloading of a Ringling Brothers clown car. There is an inverse relationship between the seriousness of these times and the laughable personalities vying for a place in history. Are they running for high office or auditioning for the role of Parson Weems in a new Lifetime Network TV mini-series? Are you charmed by their absurd casual clothing?

Comforted by their know-nothing jabber about the "game-changer" of shale oil and their sincere doubts about the climate change "story?" Is it morally satisfying to know that one or another of these candidates won't drink a beer? (They'd make good Ayatollahs.) In what sort of Creationist parthenogenetic incubator are such pietistic idiots hatched? What these sanctimonious pricks don't realize they are doing is destroying the very legitimacy of the idea that we're capable of governing ourselves per se.

This is the long-term direction of life in North America, by the way - a breakup into small autonomous governing units. It's just that the current cast of characters brings an aura of low comedy to the process. By the time they're through with Washington, the credibility of Federalism will sound like a knock-knock joke.

As for the other side, the "folks" now occupying the White House and its folkster-in-chief, Mr. Obama - the time has come to abandon them. Their failure is complete with the new national security act that allows for suspension of due process of law. The cheek of Mr. Obama in offering a "signing statement" to the effect that his administration would not enforce the law! - as he signed it! For one thing, Obama tacitly invited his own impeachment by declaring he had no intention of enforcing federal law, since enforcement is the chief duty of his office. If John Boehner were not himself such a fraud, he would have started a motion for impeachment before sundown that day.

Occupy Wall Street will seem like a mere harvest dance when we look back from the uproars later in 2012. Both organized parties have managed to banish the rule of law in America. Both parties need to be driven into the wilderness of history and the rule of law has to be rescued from the oblivion they sent it to. What group of clear-thinking adults can get behind that simple project? What voices will resolve out of the phenomenal noise of gadget America, with its deafening tweets, incessant advertising, instant messaging, idiotic robo-calling, and ever-present flat-screen assault on the senses?

I discern the distant sound of rebellion, a spirit that won't be appeased by bytes of Disney-babble from the pandering snouts of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul or Obama. They are interested only in keeping a set of suicidal rackets going. All the yammer about "freedom" and "liberty" is hollow when the rule of law is AWOL. This ripe time is the natural moment for a true opposition to rise.

A few months from now neither major party will have a credible candidate or a plausible platform of ideas. This will be painfully obvious. What angels and demons will rush into that awful vacuum?

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Sink or Swim

SUBHEAD: To escape rising sea level the president of Madives suggests moving his entire island nation to Australia. By Btian Merchant on 6 January 2012 for TreeHugger - (http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/sea-levels-rise-maldives-president-may-move-his-entire-island-nation-australia.html) Image above: The Maldives capital of Male in the Indian Ocean. From original article.

The first week of the new year has seen temperatures that are in some parts of the nation nearly 40 degrees higher than average. Which is crazy.

Brad Johnson has a good roundup of the different record-breaking high temperatures across the nation over Think Progress Green: "Fueled by billions of tons of greenhouse pollution, a surge of record warmth has flooded the United States, shattering records from southern California to North Dakota. 'Temperatures have reached up to 40 degrees above early January averages in North Dakota,' the Weather Channel reports."

That's insane. A 40 degrees difference is a couple season's worth of temperature change! It's the difference between winter and summer in many places. And it's not just a handful of anomalies, either. I spent the last week in Southern California, where record highs are hitting the books as well – and I can tell you, working outdoors on a balcony, in a t-shirt, on January 5th, was strange indeed. One day earlier in the week, it was in the 80s when I called my girlfriend in New York, where temps were apparently hitting 10˚F.

Sure enough, records were broken in CA as well: "Southern California, decades-old records were snapped with 80- and even 90-degree weather, sending surfers to the beaches. Long Beach hit 88 degrees, UCLA hit 89 degrees, San Diego hit 83 degrees, and San Gabriel reached 91."

The Weather Channel describes the phenomenon thusly: "Welcome to the winter of 2011-2012 - so far it will be known as the winter without snow and the winter of little cold air.

We can, of course, expect to see more records like these broken again in coming years, as unrestrained greenhouse emissions worldwide continue to fuel the advance of climate change.

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2012 Winter Heat Wave

SUBHEAD: This year begins with record-breaking warm weather across much of America. By Brian Merchant on 6 January 2012 for TreeHugger - (http://www.treehugger.com/climate-change/2012-begins-record-breaking-warm-weather-across-nation.html) Image above: Girls in Mitchell, Minnesota, shoot hoops in record breaking 58º on January 4th, 2012. From (http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/event/article/id/60778/).

The first week of the new year has seen temperatures that are in some parts of the nation nearly 40 degrees higher than average. Which is crazy.

Brad Johnson has a good roundup of the different record-breaking high temperatures across the nation over Think Progress Green: "Fueled by billions of tons of greenhouse pollution, a surge of record warmth has flooded the United States, shattering records from southern California to North Dakota. 'Temperatures have reached up to 40 degrees above early January averages in North Dakota,' the Weather Channel reports."

That's insane. A 40 degrees difference is a couple season's worth of temperature change! It's the difference between winter and summer in many places. And it's not just a handful of anomalies, either. I spent the last week in Southern California, where record highs are hitting the books as well – and I can tell you, working outdoors on a balcony, in a t-shirt, on January 5th, was strange indeed. One day earlier in the week, it was in the 80s when I called my girlfriend in New York, where temps were apparently hitting 10˚F.

Sure enough, records were broken in CA as well: "Southern California, decades-old records were snapped with 80- and even 90-degree weather, sending surfers to the beaches. Long Beach hit 88 degrees, UCLA hit 89 degrees, San Diego hit 83 degrees, and San Gabriel reached 91."

The Weather Channel describes the phenomenon thusly: "Welcome to the winter of 2011-2012 - so far it will be known as the winter without snow and the winter of little cold air.

We can, of course, expect to see more records like these broken again in coming years, as unrestrained greenhouse emissions worldwide continue to fuel the advance of climate change.

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Death of an Institution

SUBHEAD: Despite desperate mergers and acquisitions, large centralized institutions are in danger of failure.

 By Ilargi on 8 January 2012 for the the Automatic Earth -  
(http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2012/01/january-7-2012-death-of-institution.html)

 
Image above: Illustration of M&E as sharks eating sharks. From (http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2007/we-live-in-financial-times/).

In a nice coincidence, while Nicole Foss (Stoneleigh) wrote about decentralization a few days ago in The Storm Surge of Decentralization, today Ashvin Pandurangi, independently from Nicole, also focuses on that theme, albeit from a completely different angle. Perhaps even from the 180 degree opposite angle: it's precisely because the 1% push so hard for centralization that it's crucial for the 99% to push back and decentralize.

And it's precisely because our economic models exist only by the grace of growth unchecked that we need to get out and take a step back, or that growth will surely eat us alive. It's exactly like Arthur Miller's Willy Loman says in 'Death of a Salesman';

"After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive".

That's what societies founded on perpetual growth and its inevitable companion, centralization, end up doing to 99% of their citizens: they degrade and pervert their dignity, their lives, and their value. In that sense, decentralization marks the beginning of a return to our true human potential, since it restores the values and dignity that make our lives worth living. Unfortunately, today most of the 99% will not recognize this, and if they did it would scare them senseless, so they help push the growth paradigm forward even as it's gnawing at their bones. Life as a cog in a machine is the only life they've ever known.

What else could there be? When you're told a hundred times a day that you live in the land of the free, what's not to believe? It's high time we begin to understand to what extent the interests of the politicians and bankers and CEOs that we allow to make our decisions for us (read: against us), differ from our own. But since our education systems and media have denied the very existence of any such difference all of our lives, this understanding will be very hard to come by for 99% of the 99%.

---

By Ashvin Pandurangi on 8 Janaury 2012 for Automatic Earth - 

  The word of the last few centuries is centralize. That's what "institutions" do, whether they are technically financial, political, educational, "corrective", religious or medical; private or public. Those labels are largely irrelevant when you want to understand the fundamental nature of an institution. They are simply structured hierarchies of distributed power that strive to grow larger and more influential with each passing day. Perhaps they are trying to influence the outcome of an election, the direction of foreign policy, the prices of a market, the focus of scientific research or the psychology of society's youth, but, rest assured, they are trying very hard to influence something.

Some institutions are much more influential than others, and typically these are the most self-serving. These institutions are also inherently self-limiting structures; fractal constructs that are self-similar and limiting at every scale, right up to that of our global economy and civilization. They never freely compete with each other to reach some generally productive equilibrium, but rather coerce their respective sectors to become more and more dependent on their functions over time. By exercising more power and influence in a given field, they crowd out both their own opportunities for further expansion and the opportunity of other institutions to enter the sector and grow.

The world's "too big to fail" financial institutions have clearly demonstrated how a few giant players can grow so large to threaten the collapse of the entire global economy when they can no longer grow. The current crises of capitalism also demonstrate a rapidly progressing, yet age old trend which reveals the strategy of almost all of society's "industries" and their respective institutions - boundless aggregation.

One of the major pieces of propaganda in today's financial world is that increasing mergers and acquisitions ("M&A") activity is a sign of growth and health in the economy. It is, in reality, a sign of desperation and a harbinger of decreased resilience (a.k.a. "impending doom"), and that becomes quite clear when we consider the type of M&A activity that has been occurring over the last few years.

Relatively large companies are suddenly finding themselves in a position of pure desperation, where they must either combine with other companies through some legal process or die. ... for more see original article linked above.

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Exiles on Main Street

SUBHEAD: Internet replaces Main Street - banks, pharmacies, post offices as well as camera, book and record stores.  

By Alan Greenblatt on 6 January 2012 for NPR - 
  (http://www.npr.org/2012/01/06/144789779/internet-exiles-stores-on-main-street)

 
Image above: John Timmons, owner of Ear X-tacy in Louisville closed his record shop after 26 years. From original article.
 
Open any children's book with a scene set downtown and you'll see a picture of basically the same row of shops. There's a bookstore, a pharmacy, a florist, a post office and a bank, and maybe a bakery where the kids can hope for a free cookie.

Nearly all those businesses are under threat from the Internet.

There's nothing new about this. Bookstores have been going under for a couple of decades now. But reports that former corporate giant Eastman Kodak will seek bankruptcy protection serve as a reminder that a multitude of products and just about every kind of transaction is now available digitally.

Kodak's fall was accompanied by news that 60-year-old camera stores and record stores open longer than 30 years were going out of business as well, all citing pressure from the Internet.

There's no doubt that the mix of shops and services that make up the spines of commercial strips and strip malls all across America will continue to change. The question now is what type of Main Street business will come under threat next.

"There are fewer and fewer services that a bank branch does, right up to getting the loans, that can't be done completely online," says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. "I'm surprised there haven't been more bank branch closures."

First Bookstores, Now Books
Over the years, I've picked up lots of bargains at stores going out of business because of Internet-based competition, such as Borders and Tower Records.

In the case of stores that sell CDs — and, increasingly, books — it's not just the business model of a physical store that's becoming obsolete, but the actual products themselves.

"People are not only buying books and CDs online, but what they're buying online is a digital file," Thompson says.

That's why I was shocked, when I moved to the St. Louis area a couple of years ago, to find myself living in a suburb that still had not one but two record stores.

One of them, Webster Records, specializes in music that appeals to an older crowd, such as classical and Dixieland jazz. The store keeps short hours and there's rarely much foot traffic. It does much of its business selling to collectors by mail order.

But the store couldn't compete on price or wealth of offerings with the likes of Amazon. Webster Records announced Thursday it would shut its doors at the end of this month, after 58 years in business.

I Can Get It For You Wholesale
For Webster Records store manager Jim Lovins, this is not a new experience. For years, he sold stereo and home theater equipment at a store called Hi-Fi Fo-Fum.

That shop, which had been around for decades, closed its doors last year. It was impossible to compete with Internet retailers, Lovins says, because they don't have to shoulder costs such as commissions or heating and air-conditioning display areas.

People might not be able to check out the sound they'll get from speakers they're buying online. On the other hand, they're able to read dozens or hundreds of consumer reviews of each product and, if they don't have to pay for shipping or restocking fees, take little risk auditioning equipment at home.

Losing Expertise
Not just sales of goods but also plenty of services are migrating online. Some people still don't trust online banking and are nervous about the idea of depositing checks by taking pictures of them with their phones.

But their numbers are diminishing. And no business, it seems, has succeeded for long in pressing the case that the expertise or customer care it provides outweighs the convenience and cost savings of an equivalent Internet service.

Because of the paramount importance of health, pharmacies are hoping customers will continue to rely on the kind of face-to-face help a well-trained human being can offer about matters such as interactions between drugs.

"There's a variety of counseling components that a retail pharmacist provides," says Chrissy Kopple, spokeswoman for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. "There really isn't a replacement for that interaction on the Internet."

That may be true. But it's the same kind of argument that independent booksellers used to make about how well they knew books and their own customers' tastes.

All of the major retail pharmacists recognize the lure of the Internet themselves. Each now offers its own Web-based prescription-filling service, potentially undercutting its primary business — just as Kodak did by inventing, but failing to prosper from, digital photography.

Not Getting Rid Of Stuff
With the passage of a Maine law in 2009, every state now allows pharmacists to give flu shots. As yet, there's no app for that.

So it's possible that companies that provide services will withstand the Internet onslaught longer than stores that sell goods.

With more and more light media — books and music, photographs and movies and correspondence — going all-digital, however, there will inevitably be fewer storefronts devoted to such interests.
But if downtowns are emptying themselves of certain types of goods, does that mean we'll end up with less stuff at home?

Probably not. Digital is not next to cleanliness. I know plenty of people who sleep next to two phones, a tablet computer and a remote — or three — for the TV.

My friend Breeze Carlile is a professional organizer in Oakland, Calif., helping people get their houses in order, in part, by thinning their possessions. They may have e-readers but they continue to hold onto books, she says — and, often, the boxes they came in.

According to the Self Storage Association, nearly 10 percent of all U.S. households currently rent a storage unit — an increase of nearly two-thirds over the past 15 years.

"My clients have phones and digital cameras to take pictures, and they still print out the photos and never get them into albums," Breeze says. "Nope, people do not have less stuff."


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Nuclear power falls behind

SUBHEAD: Renewable energy now provides more electricity in USA than nuclear power plants. By Matthew McDermott on 6 January 2012 for TreeHugger - (http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/renewable-energy-now-provides-u-s-more-power-than-nuclear.html) Image above: View from downstream of Glen Canyon Dam. From original article.

The latest figures from the Energy Information Agency are out on US sources of energy through September 30th, 2011, with some impressive gains for renewable energy. Through the first nine months of the year renewables produced just under 12% of US energy—an increase of just over one percent from 2010—while nuclear power produced about 10.6%.

Renewable energy as a whole grew 14.4% in 2011 compared to the previous year. As of the end of September, hydropower produced 4.35% of US power, biomass 3.15%, biofuels 2.57%, wind power 1.45%. Geothermal and solar power both came in at under 1% (0.29% and 0.15% respectively).

The increase over nuclear is certainly noteworthy, and headline worthy, but more than anything it still shows how far we have to go in developing a society powered by non-polluting energy sources—as well as giving some important context when considering statements about the growth of renewable energy year-over-year made by industry trade associations. Yes, there's been some strong growth lately, and yes the solar power industry is doing far better than some pundits would have you believe, but wow, we've got a long road ahead.

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Taking a Hike

SUBHEAD: I don’t know where I’ll be when collapse is complete, and I don’t much care, because I’m afraid to move and afraid to stay.  

By Guy McPherson on 4 January 2012 for Nature Bats Last - 
  (http://guymcpherson.com/2012/01/taking-a-hike)

 
Image above: "Life After People" building collapse is witnessed by no one. From (http://www.destructoid.com/your-enslaved-primer-go-watch-life-after-people-184711.phtml).
 
I’ve long accepted the words of Hunter S. Thompson in The Proud Highway: “We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”

I appreciate Gonzo’s anthropocentric perspective on humanity, but he was late to the party of loneliness. Early American conservationist and philosopher Aldo Leopold pointed out in his final book (published in 1949, after Leopold’s untimely death), “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”

A world of wounds because an ecologist can see what we’re doing to the living planet. Alone because so few people give a damn. Awakening to life means awakening to all parts of life, including the realization and acceptance of our own mortality. But dying pales in comparison to the insults we are visiting on Earth.

Hovering in full view from my window is one minor example of the world’s wounds. It’s the story of how the (North American) West was lost. It begins when silver and gold are discovered in the area, at which point the mining company buys all the nearby water rights and the associated land (considerable water is needed to extract ore from rock). As with all states in the western U.S., the state constitution declares that water must be used in an agriculturally productive capacity. So the mining company, interested only in getting the water to the mine, leases the land to a cattle company.

Thus is the local river emptied into two irrigation ditches to grow feed for livestock. The water not consumed by pasture (and then cows) is captured a few miles downstream in an ugly reservoir designed specifically for the purpose. The the water is then pumped a couple thousand feet uphill and a few tens of miles horizontally, across a major mountain range to the site of the ore. In summary, the single most destructive force in the history of the West (livestock) is subsidized by a disinterested citizenry and the entirety of nature in the name of financial profit for the second-most destructive force in the history of the West (mining).

This arrangement is but a minor example of the system known as civilization, but it reveals the “gold mine” of two industries, cattle and mining: the owners get the gold and the rest of us get the shaft. With these industries, as with civilization, the goal is to transfer financial wealth from the poor to the wealthy. Destroying every aspect of the living planet is merely collateral damage, as there’s a lot of money in planetary destruction. By the way, the specific strategy in this local area is working as brilliantly as the general approach of civilization. We’ve never visited so much horror on the living planet, and we’ve never cared less about it.

If I seem morose, it’s because I’m growing tired of my tireless crusade. I suspect regular readers are, too. As much as I’ve tried to infuse humor and optimism into my writing, the news is no longer so damned funny or optimistic.

Although I’ve rarely looked to others for my own happiness, I’ve equally rarely looked to others for consolation or support. But it’s time for me to step away and trust others to take on the impossible tasks we face. I’m inviting others to take up the torch as I assume a role that is more witness than warrior.

I’m not dead yet, but I need to breathe. I’ve been trying to be everything possible to everybody, and it’s not working. Not for me, not for the people I know, and certainly not for the living planet. My optimism about our ability to save the living planet and thus habitat for humans on Earth is waning, and no wonder. Consider this article, which echoes my thoughts and writings from the last decade: “Abrupt climate change will feel like a comet impacting earth. We’re going to discover a different planet. Another earth. One we won’t like anymore. One not worth living on.” And, as usual, climate-change models underestimate the damage we’re doing. Or consider this list of the doom we brought to Earth in the last year alone, which illustrates how profoundly screwed we are and, simultaneously, how little the citizens of this country care what we’ve done and what we’re doing.

I invite others to step forward, particularly from generations other than mine. My generation has put our entire species behind the biggest 8-Ball in history. Even if future generations — few though they may be — fail catastrophically, they’ll still do a better job than we did. How could they not? After all, my generation has failed, and it continues to fail to a degree not previously dreamed possible in planetary history. We fucked the future without offering so much as a kiss.

I’ll continue to post now and then, notably when I’m particularly irritated or ecstatic, or when I’m scheduled to deliver a presentation. I’ll continue to speak to anybody who’ll listen and a lot of people who won’t, as long as a venue is available. And I’ll gladly entertain guest essays, especially from people younger or more hopeful than me. My days of writing frequently for this space are nearing an end, in part because I’ve little left to say on the central issues we face. What I have left to say comes from my heart, not my data-addled brain, as can be detected in my recent writing. I’ll still contribute a data-driven monthly column for Transition Voice (this month’s piece is here).

I’ve explained the moral imperative behind terminating the industrial economy through the lenses of human-population overshoot, climate chaos, environmental destruction, and collapse of the industrial economy. I’ve repeatedly explained that it’s possible and even desirable to live outside the absurdity of the main stream. I’ve demonstrated how to do so, with cooperation as a key ingredient. I’ve opened this space to myriad voices, including those with which I don’t agree. In short, my work here is nearing its end.

I’ve not decided where I’ll be in the coming weeks and months. But I’ve got books to read and hikes to take. I’ve got beautiful places to go and beautiful people to see, before the places are destroyed and the people are gone. And I’ve got a lot of mourning yet to do.

I don’t know where I’ll be when collapse is complete, and I don’t much care, because I’m afraid to move and I’m afraid to stay. Working with others, I’ve helped build an impressively durable set of living arrangements at the mud hut. We have six sources of water, we grow a huge amount of the food we eat, the house is off-grid and astonishing, and the human community is remarkable. So, like the civilized, industrialized human being I am, I’m afraid of change, fearful to cash in my chips. But I’m afraid to stay, too. The thought of continuing to stare, alone, at the world of wounds, causes the terror to rise in me. Afraid to let go of nature’s bounty, as if it’s mine to hold. Afraid what I’m missing by holding onto comfort.

Catch-22, anybody?

If you want to keep up with the news that escapes the mainstream media, I encourage a daily visit to Counter Currents, Rice Farmer, End of Empire News, Zero Hedge, and Business Insider (no, really). Each of these websites gives too little space to the living planet, and the latter two focus on finances to the virtual exclusion of relevant issues beyond collapse of the industrial economy. In other words, they reflect this insane culture to only a slightly less degree than more mainstream websites.

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Cargo Tricycles

SUBHEAD: Business on a trike. A man with a 12v blender makes cups of shaved ice with sweet corn or coconut.

 By Albert on 4 January 2012 for Club Orlov - 
  (http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2012/01/rise-of-tricycle-pushcarts.html)


Image above: A tricycle pushcart serving crepes in From original article.

"Even in backward mining communities, as late as the sixteenth century more than half the recorded days were holidays; while for Europe as a whole, the total number of holidays, including Sunday, came to 189, a number even greater than those enjoyed by Imperial Rome. Nothing more clearly indicates a surplus of food and human energy, if not material goods. Modern labor-saving devices have as yet done no better."

- Lewis Mumford, Myth of the Machine, 1967.

In rural México, the number of holidays competes with the number of workdays to see which will find more space on the calendar. Not that the people don’t work, mind you, just that they like to keep hours at any given task as brief as possible, to maintain perspective. As in most agricultural regions of the world, diversity and entrepreneurship is ingrained. When times are especially tight, this instinct goes into overdrive. I have been wintering in a small Mayan fishing village that is part of a natural reserve and like most villages in México it is laid out on a New England-style town grid. There were no ancient Roman master planners or 1950’s city engineers that surveyed these grids.

Nearly all were spontaneous extensions from a single spine road that sent off perpendicular ribs at regular intervals, and those sent off cross-lanes at approximately the same intervals—usually 6 or 8 homes on a side—that created the matrix. Grids like these, as the Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese and Romans understood, enhance the interactions amongst people and encourage a free flow of products, services and information. Living on one such street, all of them unpaved here, I have noticed a discernible uptick in the number and variety of pushcarts.

Here they are called tricyclos. In other places—Denmark or Holland, for instance—modern pushcarts are “cargo cycles.” They can take different forms but the most common is what is known in the bike world as tadpole or front-load trike—2 wheels in front and 1 wheel in the back.

These are ideal for food vendors or pedicabs which require frequent interactions with the scene on the street. A world leader in trike evolution is Christiania, the 800-member urban ecovillage in Copenhagen. Their company, began in 1976 as a small cottage industry to support the alternative community. Today Christianabikes is transnational in reach and constantly improving its designs. For long-hauls, it has low-slung cargo bikes. For vendors like those in Mexico, it has a simple tadpole design that can be customized to meet virtually any use.

What we see in Mexico are mostly Chinese-made clones of Christiania’s original design, or Mexican fabrications of the Chinese fabrications tacked together in local welding shops. Creations like these, which date back a century or more, should be acknowledged to be ‘open source’ by now. What struck me is that I cannot recall a time in the past decade that I have been observing these vendors when there were more of them. Call it a sign of the times, but every few hours another passes by the front of my house, shouting out what he or she is selling. In the morning its newspapers and fresh, hand-made tortillas.

Around lunchtime is it fresh garden vegetables, epizote, bread and other kinds of unprepared food. There might be a tricycle for fruits and juices, another for tomatoes, onions and peppers, another for potatoes, beans and rice. By late afternoons they may pass by with fresh sweetbreads, steaming hot tamales, or corn on the cob.

A man with his tricycle grinding stone offers to sharpen machetes, knives, scissors, shovels, or any other sharp objects. A man with a blender (12V but it could as easily be pedal-powered) makes cups of shaved ice with sweet corn or coconut. You can buy a tricycle brand-new, assembled, already painted in taxi colors of orange and white, and be ready to take a fare straight from hardware store to wherever they are going. The price of a new Chinese-built trike is 3200 pesos, about US$229.32 at today’s rates. The board that goes across the bars for a seat was salvaged from the trash at no cost, but perhaps some cushioned fabric is sewn over to help you through the potholes.

Typically a fare pays 20 pesos ($1.43) for up to a 10-block ride. I asked a tortilla vendor who plies a regular daily afternoon route how much he sells in an average day. “100 kilos” is what he said. His corn tortillas sell for a 3-peso mark-up over the tortilla factory (and there are three of them within a 5-block radius). So if he sells 100 kg, he makes 300 pesos per day, enough to pay for the tricycle in just under 11 days. Perhaps his wife has a masa roller and automated oven at home and he makes his own tortillas and the margin is even better.

 Stopping by the largest of the tortilla factories in town — a one-room addition to a family home, which now employs three women from outside the family to turn corn meal masa into machine-stamped tortillas — I inquired how many tortillas they make in a typical day. “Ocho o nueve,” she said, meaning eight or nine metric tons — 8000 to 9000 kilos — and remember, this is just one of three within a short distance, and many people prefer to make their own at home.

The entrepreneurial drive explores for available niches and fills them. Many of these factories supply restaurants and grocery stores. Retail home sales pass through bulk buyers at the tortilleria, like my local trike man, who do just fine with the small margin people are willing to pay for the convenience of not walking around the corner. I noticed that my man sometimes gets lucky and lands a really big sale, however. Maybe someone is throwing a big party (and this happens often) and needs 20 kg. Or a tendajón finds itself short on a holiday weekend and buys 50 kg. His route is pretty small, just a few blocks, but if his son could run his trike in the mornings, or a second trike in the afternoon when he is making his rounds, perhaps he could extend his family’s range and double their earnings.

Then again, as I’ve seen, he’s not interested in that, preferring to live quite adequately on 300 pesos per day ($21.50) in a town where the average unskilled worker makes even less than that. Or perhaps he has another job already and is just enlarging the family’s income by putting in a few extra hours while schmoozing with his neighbors. For me, I’d rather save 3 pesos and ride my bike a couple blocks to the tortilleria, but that’s mainly because, being a writer, I need excuses to force myself out of my chair. As times have become tougher for average people, I’ve also noticed more homes along my bike route opening their front rooms to make tendejóns or comidas economicas.

A comida economica provides a home-cooked meal with table service, giving the buyer a plate of whatever the family is making that day. A tendejón is an informal home store. It might have home-grown pigs, chickens or eggs for sale, or garden produce. It shares the same root word, tener (to have), as the more formal store or mini-mart (tienda), but whether for legal reasons or just wanting to keep it more neighborly, a tendejón is an unpredictable collection of wares in someone’s living room, next to their Christmas tree and fluorescent blinking statute of the Virgin of Guadelupe. Between the tendejón and the tienda lie the more formal abarrotes, or package stores, which usually sell cold beer, insect repellent and junk food.

These are usually under a residence or in an adjoining building to the family’s principal dwelling. There are one or more abarrotes, tendejóns and tiendas on nearly every block. Tricyclos are a common sight in much of Yucatán Peninsula, as they are in Asia, Africa, South America and other parts of the two-thirds world. In the United States you mention a tricycle and people think of Monty Python or Laugh-In. In the global south they are multifunctional and ubiquitous. You see them as fishermen’s friends, beach-roving gear-buckets for surfers, portable crepe parlors, bellhop cabin service, and the poor man’s moving van.

 Low-tech Magazine, an on-line compendium, describes many novel uses for pedal power, from archival scans of Sears Catalog pages circa 1892 to a modern recumbent cargo quads. Corn grinding, water pumping and sewer-system cleaning are all potentially portable, pedal-powered services. These are niches that will likely be explored in the South far sooner than when people in North finally decide to come down off of their high horses and get a third wheel.

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Cargo Bikes Deliver Food

SUBHEAD: City Harvest tricycles delivers food and helps the hungry in New York City.


By Barbara Kessler on 12 September 2008 for Green Right Now -
  (http://www.greenrightnow.com/kabc/2008/09/12/cargo-bikes-deliver-food-for-city-harvest-and-help-the-hungry-in-nyc)
 

Image above: A City Harvest enclosed cargo trike in NYC. From original article.

It’s not just for hearty commuters and weekend racers anymore. With the energy pinch on, people are finding more uses for two- or three-wheeling, whether it’s puttering to school or the grocery. Even businesses are finding ways that bikes can solve problems.

Take City Harvest in New York City. The food rescue agency collects leftovers and unwanted produce from farmer’s markets, restaurants and groceries, and delivers it to various agencies and soup kitchens serving the poor and displaced. Since it opened as the first food rescue organization (in 1982), City Harvest has grown and grown, and today it operates 17 refrigerated trucks that collect food all over the city.

Make that 17 trucks sitting and idling in a whole lot of traffic, particularly the portion of the fleet that serves Midtown Manhattan, a free world mecca of idling and traffic congestion. Meanwhile, many of City Harvest’s donor vendors, who give their leftover sandwiches, donuts and salads at the end of the day would sometimes have to wait for those trucks to get to their store by closing time. It could be touch-and-go.

City Harvest, searching for a way to get to the food faster and more efficiently began eyeing bikes. They’re used to courier documents and small packages all over NYC. Maybe they could address the efficiency issue and also reduce their carbon footprint by increasing their foot power?

The group found a way when they contracted with Revolution Rickshaws, which fitted three three-wheel bikes with cargo compartments that could carry up to 500 pounds of food, said Jennifer McLean, vice president of operations for City Harvest.

Instead of big trucks slogging away, “the biker is able to jet over there and not get stuck in traffic,” Ms. McLean said. “It’s constant pedal and pick up and pedal and pick up.”

Of course, the group had to hire fit drivers for the new cargo bikes (they had to pass physicals), and the bike food pickups are restricted to more than 20 but less than 50 pounds. But once three bikes were on the road, City Harvest was able to reassign some trucks to routes in the boroughs, making that end of the operation more efficient as well.

So far everyone’s happy with the new arrangement, which has cut waiting times, gas costs, carbon emissions and traffic frustrations, Ms. McLean said. The newly hired bikers, all former bicycle couriers, have been muttering a bit about the adjustment to the three-wheel machines, she said, but they’re generally in a great mood at the end of the day because they get thumbs up all day long from those who see they’re on a mission.

Now if only the need for that mission weren’t so great. The group expects to distribute about 23 million pounds of food this year, turning it quickly to poverty agencies so that the leftovers are used within a day or two.

Spiraling food and fuel prices are putting higher demand on those serving the poor, and bringing new clients, some of whom are looking for their first ever free meal or a grocery bag of food.
“We’re seeing people emailing us,” Ms. McLean recounted, (they’re saying) ‘I have a college degree, I have a wife and kids, I need food’.”

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Three Wheeled Wonders
SUBHEAD: There are plenty of alternatives out there. Look at the evolution of the rickshaw.

By Juan Wilson on 27 June 2008 for Island Breath - 
(http://islandbreath.org/2008Year/09-access_transport/0809-28AlternativeAutos.html)

 
 Image above: A motor Tricycle rickshaw sedan by Qinai Motor Limited

Throughout India, China and much of Asia there has been a tradition of human powered vehicles generally called rickshaws, that evolved from foot power to pedal power.

 
Image above: A hand tinted photo of human poowed rickshaw from 1886. See Wikipedia for more.

 
 Image above: a modern variant of pedalled side-mounted bicycle on rickshaw frame.

In recent decades have employed piston power. The motorbike now has been attached to the rickshaw more and more sophisticated vehicles. There have been several niches of vehicle need served by this technology including the sedan (see above), the van, the pickup truck, etc.


 
Image above: A motor Tricycle pickup rickshaw by Qinai Motor Limited
 

The vehicles illustrated above are the product of an Indian manufacturer, Qinai Motors Limited, a company with less than 500 employees. Their vehicles are aerodynamic and designed to satisfy a more "western" aesthetic than some other manufacturers like Dee India Overseas.

Detailed Product Description Engine type: 1-cylinder, 4-stroke, water-cooled Displacement (ml) : 198. Transmission Way: Axle Transmission: 4 Forward and 1 Reverse Dimension (mm) : 2850*1350*1660 (9.3 long x 4.5 wide x 5.5 feet high) Bore*Stroke (mm) : 64*63 Roted Net Power [kw / (r / min) ]: 10. 3 / 8000 (14hp @ 8000rpm) Maximum Net Torque [Nm / (r / min) ]: 13 / 7000 Idle Speed (RPM) : 1500 Lubrication type: pressure spray Fuel tank capacity (L) : 12 (3 gallons) Fuel efficiency (L / 100km) : <3. 5 (> 67mpg) Start method: electric Ignition: CDI Clutch Method: pedal operation and Adjusting Braking distance / initial speed30km / h: <=6. 5m Minimun turning diameter (m) : 6.0 (20 ft) Brake. (F / R) : disk / drum Net Weight (KG) : 400 (880 lbs) Front Suspension: Hydraulic Spring Rear Suspension: Complete / Hydraulic Spring Ground cleance (mm) : 170 Tire: 5. 00-10 Wheel base (mm) : 1150 Axle Base9mm) : 1850 Maximum Load (KG) : 500 (6 persons) Max Speed: >60 kmh (37 mph) We are the company that specialized in selling motorcycles, scooter, three wheeler (motor tricycle, auto rickshaw) , E-bikes, ATV, and different type of trucks. What is more we have the electric vehicles now and they are really very popular. We have our own factory and it is the leading manufacture which enjoys high reputation in these fields.

Electric rickshaws are available too. Along with the golf-cart I suspect that small will be beautiful and standard on the American road sooner than most think. Some pedalled ecterically assisted rickshaws are being marketed towards westerners that look much like the rickshaws of the past. Welcome to the future.  
 Image above: electrically assisted rickshaw with solar panel by Bluebird Electric Rickshaw


Se also:
Ea O Ka Aina: The Chinese Wheelbarrow 1/4/12
.