Expand Hawaii Whale Sanctuary

SUBHEAD: Our protected areas do not include many areas heavily used by whales in Hawaii... especially on Kauai and Niihau.


By Diana Labedz on 29 July 2010 for Surfriders Foundation - 
(www.islandbreath.blogspot.com/2010/07/expand-hawaii-whale-sanctuary.html)

 
 Image above: Detail of whale sanctuary areas (dark blue line) set against high humpback whale activity areas (red areas) within study area (yellow area). The lightly dotted area is the 100 fathom isobar (600 foot depth contour). Note Kauai and Niihau are underprotected. Click to enlarge. From Hawaiian Humpback National Marine Sanctuary study of surface sightings 1993-2003. 

The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Marine Sanctuary should be a place where visiting humpback whales and resident whales can feel safe to come and give birth and raise their young. In reality, there is no such safe place here. Even in Hawaiian waters designated as "sanctuary”, there is no protection or enforcement that would make it safe for whales.

The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Marine Sanctuary has been in existence since the early nineties, but it has never included all the areas used by the whales, nor has the sanctuary itself been set up to enact any rules or regulations designed to protect whales. There has been an extended period of public education through the current sanctuary management, but the time has come to put this education into effect and create a real, fully functional sanctuary designed to do what its name implies and protect whales in Hawaiian coastal waters.

 The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Marine Sanctuary is now preparing a Management Plan Review (new strategic plan) and they have asked for public input. We feel strongly that, in addition to continued education, the “new” sanctuary must graduate from being an educational forum to being a real protective entity.

There must be changes to the sanctuary boundaries, management and accountability structure, and to the mission of the sanctuary that will enable us to protect whales and other sea life in Hawaiian coastal waters. The Surfrider Foundation, Kauai chapter along with the newly formed Kohola Mana Ohana has asked that the new strategic plan for the sanctuary include the following recommendations:

 1. Expand the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Marine Sanctuary boundaries to include all whale habitat areas. The sanctuary must include all the areas where whales are known to congregate especially during the mating and birthing season. For instance, the area of Kauai that is designated as a sanctuary is a tiny strip of coast near the Kilauea lighthouse, a small portion of the eastern Kauai habitat. This area does not include any of the documented habitat on the West and South sides of Kauai, nor the Island of Niihau.

  2. Areas within the Hawaiian Sanctuary must include speed limits with enforcement. A major cause of whale death is ship strikes. We propose a 14 knot per hour speed limit during whale season, to reduce risk of whale strikes. To be effective there must be enforcement with consequences of this speed limit within the sanctuaries. There has been a nearly 500% increase in reported whale vessel strikes in Hawaiian waters since reports were tabulated in 1975. Boat speed is clearly a factor in the incidence of collisions, whit about 80% of all strikes occurring with vessels traveling between 10-30 knots. Collisions resulting in severe injury or death are typically caused by boats traveling at 14 knots or higher. 50% of all strikes occur suddenly, with no warning, making it impossible for vessels to take evasive action to avoid collision. Strikes with motorized vehicles are ten times higher than those with sailboats, and 57% of all strikes involve calves or juvenile whales.  

3. There should be noise limits for all Hawaiian sanctuary areas, with no exemptions. Whales navigate by sound; heavy ship traffic and sonar can affect a whale’s ability to survive. For instance, active (noise producing) sonar can be ten thousand times louder than a rocket launch, and sonar has been known to injure marine mammals’ ears. Sonar must not be used during whale season, or in places that include marine mammals that navigate or communicate using sound.  

4. There must be more regulatory collaboration between land and ocean uses, especially regarding pollution that would affect the sanctuary. Pollution from land has a large affect on the marine habitat. Before pollution permits) are issued, the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Marine Sanctuary board must be allowed to comment on all NPDES requests for permits to pollute, with the understanding that there should be no dumping in any sanctuary waters.  

5. Designated areas of the Hawaiian Humpback Whale Sanctuary should not be open to commercial or recreational fishing. Once the boundaries of the sanctuaries are expanded to include the documented whale habitat, we then can begin to protect the end-to-end environment of these coastal marine areas. This approach would allow Hawaii to create its first Marine Protected area (MPA), and undertake local fisheries management. Less than 0.5 percent of the world's oceans are fully protected from extractive or destructive activities. Large, no-take marine reserves have been shown to blunt the effects of excessive commercial fishing by offering a refuge for sea life to breed and spawn, providing for healthier fisheries as the fish swim into surrounding areas, and thus ensuring more resilient coastal economies. Because the ecosystems in ocean reserves are healthier, they are also more resistant to the damage caused by pollution, climate change and a wide range of other development activities.  

6. Fishing nets need to be used cautiously in the Hawaiian sanctuary, with fishermen accountable for retrieving all equipment. Renegade fishing nets are the major known cause of human-related whale deaths. The sanctuary board should recommend programs that reward fish net reporting, and fish nets should be labeled as to their owners.  

7. A rehab center for injured whales needs to be established on Kauai, with an education and research support capability.  

8. The Sanctuary must have a transparent budget, and be accountable for all spending and funding decisions. Currently, it is impossible to see how the Sanctuary budget is spent. It appears that most sanctuary funding is currently spent on education for children. Educational outreach is a good thing, but we have reached a point where we must take next steps to ensure the actual viability of the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Marine Sanctuary Time to put the education to work.

 9. The Board of Directors for the Sanctuaries must be more representative of the entire community. Currently, the Sanctuary Advisory Board includes two members of the Hawaii SuperFerry board and two military personal. There are few scientists, and no environmental experts on the board, and there is no regional representation. (IS THIS TRUE?).  

10. The Advisory Board for the sanctuary should be tasked with creating enforceable policies with rules, and ensure that funding includes effective regulatory oversight. Policies and regulations that have no enforcement will not be effective. The sanctuary education program must include a focus on creating awareness of safe operating procedures in all sanctuary areas. We urge all ocean defenders to become involved in helping to create the next strategic plan for theHawaiian Islands Humpback Whale Marine Sanctuary. The time for action is now. If not us, who? If not now, when? For more information http://groups.google.com/group/cetacean-celebration The Public Scoping Meeting Dates for Kauai  

Lihue on Saturday, August 14 from 9:am to noon
Chiefess Kamabkahelei Middle School Cafeteria 4431 Nuhou Street, Lihue HI 96766
Kilauea on Saturday, August 14 from 4pm to 7pm
Kauaii Christian Academy Library 4000 Kilauea Road, Kilauea, HI 96754

If you cannot attend the meetings you can send written testimony to; Management Plan Review Coordinator Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary 6600 Kalanianaole Highway, Suite 301 Honolulu, HI 96825 Fax to (808)397.2650 Email to: hihwmanagementplan@noaa.gov Comments will be accepted through October 16, 2010. Contact the Surfrider Foundation at SurfriderKauai@gmail.com and contact Kohola Mana Ohana at oceanmana@hawaiiantel.net

 • Diana Labebz is a progressive activist living in Kekaha and is a candidate for mayor of Kauai. .

Dickie Chang & the Lawyers

SOURCE: Kenneth Taylor (taylork021@Hawaii.rr.com)
SUBHEAD: We’re the attorneys for all the Council members. And it’s like any other attorney and client relation... Piivileged.

By Joan Conrow on 27 July 2010 in Kauai Eclectic - 
  (http://kauaieclectic.blogspot.com/2010/07/musings-walaau-with-dickie.html)
 

 
Image above: Official County portrait of Councilman Dickie Chang though a digital kaleidescope filter by Juan Wilson.

Upon hearing reports that Deputy County Attorney Mike Dahelig had called Councilman Dickie Chang at home one evening and asked if he wanted to have a beer, then showed up with a cold pack, followed thereafter by the separate arrivals of Deputy County Attorney Ian Jung and County Attorney Al Castillo and a discussion of the pending transient vacation rental bill, in which Dickie reportedly was told it was his duty to pass the measure because otherwise the county would be sued, I called Mike late yesterday afternoon and asked if it was typical for county attorneys to meet with Councilmembers at their homes and have conversations about bills before the Council.

“You are not the first person to make that inquiry of our office today,” Mike said. “What we did was not illegal. We’re the attorneys for all the Council members. And it’s like any other attorney and client. If they wish to talk with us, we are not going to dictate the venue they choose; we are not going to discern where the locale is.

Our office does not engage in direct lobbying, but if there are legal concerns, we will discuss those matters with them.”

“But I heard that you called Dickie,” I said.

“He didn’t call you.”

“We may even ask to sit down with Council members if we feel there is some confusion about the issue raised about them on the [Council] floor,”

 Mike said. “We’re going to advise and counsel, but never take any type of action to tell them how to vote. If we feel that there is some issues being raised that are not on point, we will raise issues with them. We do not go and say actually you have to vote a certain way.”

“What about the beer?” I asked.

“Is that just a guy thing, or what’s up with that?”

“Beer is not a substance that we’re not allowed to engage in,” Mike said. “In terms of what beverages we’re drinking, that’s not our job to be in a position to describe the circumstances of the meeting. As far as alcohol consumption, I can’t find anywhere that says it’s illegal.”

 “Did you talk to any other Councilmembers?” I asked.

“I’m not going to answer that, and I’m not going to discuss the nature of the conversation,” he said.

“That’s privileged information [under attorney-client privilege].”

 Is what happened between Dickie and the attorneys illegal?

The County Attorney’s office says no.

Is it unethical? In terms of the code for attorney conduct, I asked two lawyers and was unable to get an answer to that question.

 Is it appropriate? I’ll let you decide.

Did it have an effect?

Well, before the meeting, Dickie was not going to support the bill. The bill goes before the full Council on Wednesday.

 .

Real Security for Kauai

SUBHEAD: What are our priorities to be in the face of gathering social and environmental problems? Image above: Rep. Mazie Hirono speaking at the rally for the Equal Rights Amendment in Wahington DC in 2007. From (http://www.flickr.com/photos/now_photos/3743787206).  

By Staff of the Kauai Alliance on 28 July 2010 -  
(islandbreath.blogspot.com/2010/07/real-security-for-kauai.html)

Are you feeling secure? Has someone you know lost his or her job? Or home? Or gone hungry? Does she or he have the assurance of health care in a medical emergency?

Our 2nd congressional district Representative Mazie Hirono will share her Washington perspective on these and other manifestations of SECURITY at a public forum in Kapaa on Saturday, Aug 7.

 In times of high budget deficits, where should tax dollars be spent, or not spent, to provide security for Kauai's and America's citizens? Are the two wars and the military industry worth the cost?

Or should funds be reapplied to local sustainability? The Congresswoman will share the stage with a panel of four outspoken community leaders; Koohan Paik, writer and filmmaker, co-author of Superferry Chronicles and Kipukai Kuali`i, community and labor organizer.

Also Andrea Brower, Deputy Director at Malama Kauai, and Kyle Kajihiro, who is Program Director at American Friends Service Committee in Honolulu and who is outspoken in his views on the US military presence in the Pacific basin and in Hawaii.  

WHAT:
A conference on what strategy will lead to real security in this time of high unemployment and budget deficits. It is a free event.  

FEATURING:
Mazie Hirono - U.S. Congressional Representative Kyle Kajihiro - Director American Friends Service Committee, Honolulu Koohan Paik - Filmmaker, author of "The Superferry Chronicles", Kipukai Kualii - Community and labor organizer Andrea Brower - Deputy Director of Malama Kauai  
WHEN:
Saturday, August 7th at 5:00 pm  

WHERE:
"Na Keiki O Ka Aina" Center for Polynesian Culture (North end of Safeway Shopping Center next to Papaya's Natural Foods) Waipouli, Kauai  

INFO:
Kip at (808) 822-7646 or email Ray at: may11nineteen71@gmail.com  

SPONSOR:
Presented by Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice

  .

The Story of Soil

SUBHEAD: Aerobic compost and compost tea can turn dead degraded dirt into life-giving soil in as little as three years.

By Rob Avis on 2 June 2010 in Verge Permaculture -
(http://www.vergepermaculture.ca/blog/2010/06/02/story-soil)
 


 
What is the difference between soil and dirt?

Soil is alive. Dirt is dead. A single teaspoon of soil can contain billions of microscopic bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes. A handful of the same soil will contain numerous earthworms, arthropods, and other visible crawling creatures. Healthy soil is a complex community of life and actually supports the most biodiverse ecosystem on the planet.

Modern soil science is demonstrating that these billions of living organisms are continuously at work, creating soil structure, producing nutrients and building defence systems against disease. In fact, it has been shown that the health of the soil community is key to the health of our plants, our food and our bodies.

Why is it then, that much of the food from the conventional agricultural system is grown in dirt? The plants grown in this lifeless soil are dependent on fertilizer and biocide inputs, chemicals which further destroy water quality, soil health and nutritional content.

How did we get here? How do we turn this around? This is the Story of Soil…

Turning and Ploughing Soil

It all started about 10,000 years ago when humans started ploughing the fields in the experiment called agriculture. The settlers noticed that when they ploughed the field their crops would grow faster. Based on this positive feedback it was concluded that ploughing must be constructive and more fields were turned. However, in actual fact the bacteria, fungi and arthropods in the soil are essentially nutrient locked up in biology. 

For example, bacteria is almost 90% nitrogen. Ploughing the soil was killing the life in the soil resulting in an unregulated jolt of nutrient available to the surrounding plants. Over time, with the death of all soil microbes, the soil is unable to naturally support life and the farmer had to move to more fertile ground. The agricultural pattern emerged: deforest, plough, irrigate, salinate, desertify, move on.

How the Synthesis of Acid Changed the World

About one hundred and fifty years ago humans discovered how to synthesize sulphuric acid. The synthesis of acid allowed for a major advance in industrial agriculture: the ability to dissolve rock minerals into a water-soluble form. This meant that macro-nutrients such as nitrogen (N), potassium (P) and phosphorus (K) could be added to the soil in a form that could be taken up by plants.

As acid was discovered at around the same time as petroleum, this meant the advent of harder, faster and larger-scale ploughing with the use of water soluble salt-based minerals. Again, what could be wrong with a system that produces so much?


Plants and Their RootsPlants have two main types of roots: tap roots and hair roots. Tap roots are responsible for hydrating the plant, i.e. drinking water. Soil does not freely feed or give minerals (such as calcium, magnesium, etc) to plants and so in order to get minerals a plant must make a “trade” with the soil biota – this is the primary function of the hair roots. Therefore the hair roots are the mineral traders and create an environment around themselves called the rhizosphere - a habitat for soil biota.

Through the process of photosynthesis plants produce exudates (sugars) and commit up to fifty percent of these sugars to the action of feeding and trading with the biology in the soil. When the plant needs a certain mineral, say calcium, it offers exudates to the biota that can provide calcium. This is a symbiotic process in which the plants support the biota and the biota support the plant.

And so, if you plough soil and kill off the biota and soil microorganisms, how does a plant get minerals? The industrial solution is to feed the minerals to the tap roots, i.e. put water-soluble dissolved minerals in the drinking water, otherwise known as fertilizer. The advent of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus fertilizer (NPK) meant that we did not need to rely on a bank of soil biology to make our plants grow. We could add macro-nutrients at whatever rate we desired and grow plants faster and quicker than ever before – in increasingly lifeless soil.

Have you ever salted a slug? What happens? The salt creates a large osmotic pressure on the creature's cell wall and results in death. This analogy can be used to understand what happens to the soil biology when salt-based fertilizer is used (note that all fertilizer is based in mineral salts). So the salting of the land through broad-acre fertilization ensures that the biology is completely dead. As long as we keep applying fertilizer there is no chance for life to return.

Without life in the soil, no natural mineral exchange can occur. Also, with plants being forced to drink mineral soup through the tap root, less energy is devoted to developing an overall healthy root structure. Fertilizer has become an addictive drug. It has eliminated the soil biota, replaced that function in the ecosystem, and now must be continually applied. Whoever controls the fertilizer market secured their market share the same way as the cocaine dealer.

The Downward Spiral

By the late fifties farmers were using NPK at record levels, tractors were highly advanced and the soils in the world were on a fast track to doom. The use of mono-culture crops, heavy tilling, irrigation and fertilizer was killing the soil and making our plants weak and addicted to chemicals. Monocrops of these obese and sick plants became an all-you-can-eat buffet for pests and the degraded and depleted soils a great opportunity for pioneer species (i.e. weeds).

“No worries!” proclaimed the Chemical Companies, “we've got the solution for that too”. Let's kill these pests and nasty weeds that are causing all the problems – and thus pesticides and herbicides were born.

Without healthy soils to support beneficial fungal population the next problem to emerge for farmers was fungal issues. The “next solution” - apply fungicide!

We are now left with dead, acidic and salted soils that are only good for holding up plants.

Weeds and What they Tell

Carbon is the building block of life. Any soil scientist, gardener or farmer will tell you that a soil with no carbon is a dead soil. Carbon and nitrogen like to bond together at a rate of 30:1 and most gardeners know that mixing in too much carbon (like mulch or straw will decrease available nitrogen. 

The reverse is true as well and adding nitrogen (in the form of fertilizer) actually reduces carbon levels in the soil. Without carbon, fungus has no food source and dies. The soil collapses leading to hard packed dirt and anaerobic conditions (no oxygen). What comes next are Nature's signs of a sick system trying to heal itself: weeds, pests and erosion.

It has been proven that the weeds that grow on the surface of the soil are a response to a condition in the soil. For example, pig weed and thistle grow in soils high in nitrates (i.e. fields that have had a history of fertilizer use), and bracken ferns and blady grass grow in soils deficient in potassium (i.e. soils that have burned). Therefore, most of the agricultural weeds that we spray with herbicides actually have an ecological function. Club root, dandelion, knapweed, chickweed and amaranth all indicate too much nitrogen and anaerobic conditions - they are trying to build the topsoil carbon levels.

Weeds such as these do not divert a lot of the photosynthesis energy into soil biology relationships and instead they produce thousands of seeds and lots of carbon - they are fast carbon pathways. As the carbon in the soil increases, the soil is able to support fungal associates and bacterial populations encouraging the next stage of succession and return to soil health. Fast growing weeds and pest attacks are mechanisms in nature to eliminate monospeciation and increase biodiversity. If we truly wanted to stop the weeds and pests, the only real solution is to first understand why they are there. 

Weeds give us clues as to how to repair the soil and how to prescribe techniques to speed up the repair process. For example, if thistles are trying to build soil so that biodiverse life can return to it, we can speed up the soil-building process by adding the right plants and life back into the soil.

Patterns Repeat Themselves

Instead of seeing the pattern that got us here in the first place we tend to trust in the system that misunderstood from the beginning. The countermeasures in industrial agricultural have all been based on too narrow a definition of what is wrong. When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of the problem, second generation problems are created. It has now come to the point where we've invented and hybridized plants to grow in degraded soil / dirt and genetically modified our food to be tolerant of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer. 

However, the use of chemicals is not just stopping the natural succession of the ecosystem, it is turning the clock backward toward death or desert.

I find it particularly interesting that the soil & chemical Ag industry is the same pattern as the human & pharmaceutical industry. Treat the symptoms. Patent the “cures”. Profit from the lack of health. I also suspect that the slow death of the healthy soil ecology over the last hundred years of intensive agriculture could be directly correlated to the increase in disease, illness and mineral deficiency in the human species.

There is an old saying from a farmer that I am particularly fond of: “I am sick of growing things that die and killing things that want to live”. It is amazing to me how much energy and money we spend in our quest to kill when all nature wants to do is live. Imagine what the world would look like if we invested the billions of dollars that currently go into killing weeds, pests, and fungi on processes that encourage life, and work with rather than against nature. The more you look at the current system the more you realize that our quest for domination over the soil is perpetuating a system of scarcity. What we need more than ever is a new paradigm to support a system of abundance and life.

Lucky for us that new paradigm exists! It is a branch of soil science that is called the Soil Foodweb. Paul Taylor of “Trust Nature” has been an organic farmer for over 30 years and is one of many to show that the use of aerobic compost and compost tea can turn dead degraded dirt into life-giving soil in as little as three years. 

The cycle of biocides is being replaced with a cycle of life. When we design properties to harvest water which fix the water cycle and apply biology through compost the results are nothing short of miraculous. Nature wants to come back, we just have to help her out a bit. Best of all, permaculture gives us all of the design tools to make this a reality.

If you are interested in more information on soil health, I highly recommend the book: “Teaming with Microbes, A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web”, Lowenfels & Lewis. The Soil Foodweb Organization is another great resource.

 .

Ten Hearty Orphan Crops

SUBHEAD: More about the different kinds of orphan crops that grow all over the world.

By Brad Wittwer on 26 July 2010 in Miller McCune
(http://www.miller-mccune.com/environment/ten-hearty-orphan-crops-19183) 



 
Image above: Back yard plantain banana tree flowering in 2005. Photo by Juan Wilson

 [Publisher's note: Most of these food crops are already in limited cultivation in Hawaii. Try some in your yard. It's a better investment than US T-Bills.]

Ignored orphan crops may help back up world food supplies as problems like wheat rust devastate global monocultures in food crops.


Cassava: Cassava, also known as yucca or manioc, is a perennial native to South America. It is grown throughout tropical and subtropical regions, with Nigeria being the world’s largest producer. The plant grows up to 15 feet tall and is a food staple for about 500 million people worldwide. The edible parts are the tuberous roots and leaves, which are a major source of carbohydrates. Cassava is the third largest source of carbohydrates in the world. The roots produce more food energy per unit of land than any other staple crop. It can be used in vegetable dishes, pancakes, flour or chips. Cassava thrives better in poor soils than any other major food plant – meaning fertilization is rarely necessary. The plant requires a minimum temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit to grow, and being drought resistant, cassava can survive during the dry season despite low soil moisture and high humidity.


Chickpeas: The chickpea, also known as the garbanzo bean, is a legume rich in protein. The plant is grown ideally in tropical or subtropical climates but has a history throughout Europe, Turkey, the Middle East, India, parts of Africa and now in the United States. The plant grows to between 20 and 50 centimeters high. Much of the world’s chickpea supply (80 to 90 percent) comes from India averaging about 700 pounds per acre there. The chickpea plant performs optimally around 70 degrees F in drier conditions with 15 and 30 inches of rain annually.


Lentil: Of the legume family, lentil seeds come two in a pod from a plant that grows around 15 inches tall. Originating in the Near East, it has spread to the Mediterranean area, Asia, Europe and the Western Hemisphere. Lentil is a protein/calorie crop but is deficient in some amino acids. It is used in soups, stews, casseroles and salad dishes. It grows relatively well in dry areas and can thrive in cooler growing conditions; the young plants are tolerant of spring frosts, which permits early spring planting. Lentils have been grown extensively in the semi-arid parts of the world, where they have slightly lower yields, but good seed quality. Ten to 12 inches of annual rainfall will produce high yields of good quality seed.



Millet: There exist many types of millet. All types are small-seeded grasses yielding cereal crops or grains grown in difficult production environments including those prone to drought. They have been grown in East Asia for the past 10,000 years. Millet is an annual grass that usually grows about 45 inches tall. Millet requires warm temperatures (between 68 F and 86 F) for germination and development and is sensitive to frost. Millet is often grown as catch crops where other crops have failed or planting is delayed due to unfavorable weather. Millet is a major food source in arid and semi-arid regions of the world and can be used in flour, flat bread, porridge and also as bird and animal feed.


Pigeon pea: A three-to-five-year perennial of the legume family, the pigeon pea ranks fifth among edible legumes in worldwide production. It is tolerant of both low and high temperatures growing 3 to 10 feet high. Seeds of pigeon pea are known to be a rich source of proteins, carbohydrates, important amino acids and minerals. People can both eat the dried peas or make flour out of them. Most likely originating in Asia, the pigeon pea has moved to East Africa and North America. Presently, pigeon peas are cultivated in tropical and semi-tropical regions. They are drought resistant and able to be grown with less than 650-millimeter annual rainfall. World production of pigeon peas is estimated at 46,000 square kilometers, 82 percent of which is grown in India. It is the most essential ingredient of animal feed in West Africa.


Plantains: Of the same family as bananas, the plantain is more often used in cooking than eaten raw. Plantains are a staple food in the tropical regions of the world and can be steamed, boiled, grilled, baked or fried as well as used in flour. The rootstock is edible, and sometimes the young shoots are cooked and eaten. Plantains can be used for cooking at any stage of ripeness, made into chips, and very ripe plantains can be eaten raw. Bananas and plantains are currently grown in humid tropical regions and are the fourth largest fruit crop in the world. They require a mean temperature of 80 F and about 4 inches rainfall per month.


Quinoa: Quinoa, a grain-like crop, is primarily grown for its seeds, though its leaves can also be eaten. Quinoa is a pseudocereal and closely related to species such as beets and spinach. Originally harvested in the Andean region of South America, Quinoa can tolerate altitude but also requires a relatively long growing season. Its protein content is very high and unlike wheat or rice, quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids. It is a good source of dietary fiber and is high in iron. Quinoa is gluten free and considered easy to digest. That said, quinoa is a potential crop candidate for NASA’s Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration spaceflights.


Sorghum: Sorghum, an annual grass, is exceptionally drought tolerant making it an appropriate choice for arid, dry regions where it is typically a staple food. There exist many types of sorghum. Some species are cultivated for grain and some for fodder; for both food and pasture, it is a vital crop in Africa, Central America and South Asia. The plants are native to tropical and subtropical regions all over the world and considered to be the fifth most important cereal crop worldwide. In addition to grain, Sorghum can be used for syrup, porridge, bread, cookies, cakes, couscous, malted beverages and molasses. Sweet sorghum stalks can also be used for producing ethanol biofuel. The United States is the world’s largest producer of grain sorghum, but as a continent, Africa is the largest. In traditional form, sorghum is more than 6 feet tall, although many grown species are dwarf breeds designed for easy harvest. The plant is rich in fiber, protein, iron and antioxidants and gluten free.


Taro (cocoyam): A tropical perennial, taro is harvested usually as a root vegetable for its edible corm (a swollen underground plant stem) but also as a leaf vegetable. It is a staple food in oceanic cultures, though the plant is inedible when raw. Taro corms must be roasted, boiled or baked and may be made into cakes. They are very high in starch and are a good source of dietary fiber. Taro leaves, 1 to 2 meters long, are rich in vitamins and minerals, and are good sources of iron, zinc, vitamin B6, vitamin C and potassium. Some varieties of taro can also be grown away from the tropics. Roughly 10 percent of the world’s population uses taro or taro-like plants as a staple food source; for 100 million people, it is an important daily food. Taro is a common crop for moist soils in humid regions such as Southeast Asia. The plants have lost the ability to reproduce in the wild, so crops must be entirely replanted by hand.


Yams: Not the sweet potatoes of the U.S., these perennial vines are grown for their starchy tubers in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. A warm climate crop, major production is centered in West Africa. They can be barbecued, roasted, fried, grilled, boiled or smoked. Yam tubers, up to 8.2 feet in length and up to 150 pounds in weight, can be stored up to six months without refrigeration. Yams are high in vitamin C, dietary fiber, vitamin B6 and potassium while being low in saturated fat and sodium.

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Mufi's Super Fairy Dreamin'‏

SUBHEAD: Hannemann turning to desperate measures, like, say, reviving Hawaii Superferry.


By Larry Geller on 25 July 2010 in Disappeared News -   
(http://www.disappearednews.com/2010/07/will-mufi-turn-to-desperate-measures.html)

   
Image above: Rear Admiral Mufi on the deck of the Los Angeles class attack submarine Honolulu (SSN-718) during its decommissioning. From (http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08718b.htm).  



 Internet find:

Will Birmingham-area politicians turn to desperate measures like, say, Hawaii's Superferry to solve the Grants Mill Road bridge problem? Never say never. [The Birmingham News, Chat live with Driving Miss Crazy on Monday at 1, 7/25/2010]

Before they do anything that desperate, I hope they check Google. They’ll learn of the extensive subsidies Hawaii bestowed upon the ferry business, that it was losing money, and that the state knew about it months before the ultimate bankruptcy filing. Of course, as a government-owned operation, it would be reasonable for Birmingham to decide to invest in a ferry as a public service, just as government runs transportation systems anywhere. New York City provides the Staten Island Ferry for free, as an example of a subsidized ferry service. It was interesting, though, just to see “Hawaii Superferry” and “desperate measures” in the same sentence. There really isn’t much in it. This next, however, is much more serious. It’s a snip from an interview with gubernatorial candidate Mufi Hannemann, in which he seems unaware that Hawaii Superferry was not a viable business from day one:

My next question is one of my favorites because every politician loves the idea. So Mufi is elected and on the first day of session the legislative leadership says he can give them one bill and they will immediately pass it - what is the bill. Mufi thought about this for a good 20 seconds. And then he said funding to restart the super-ferry and do the EIS. Mufi went into great detail about the great benefit that people in the state had when it was running. [David Thielen (Huffington Post), Mufi Hanneman Interview, 7/12/2010] [The PUC CPCN needs to be redone also.]

In the audio record of the interview, Mufi says “I saw enough of it that I knew it was going to be successful” (around 29:35 in the interview). Unfortunately, this is contrary to the facts as revealed by the Associated Press story of 7/21/2010 (after the interview date). Again, a decision by government to create a Hawaii inter-island ferry service and pay the cost could be a rational decision (if they can also figure out how to do it without causing extensive seasickness). The Hawaii Superferry, however, was to be a private, profitable business, not a municipal- or state- run ferry. The taxpayer was subsidizing the potential profit of Hawaii Superferry’s owners. But look, Mufi has a rather poor record at implementing water transportation so far, and a tolerance for high losses:

TheBoat, Honolulu's commuter ferry from Kalaeloa to Aloha Tower, gives West Oahu residents an oceangoing alternative to increasingly clogged highways, for no more than $4 per round-trip ticket. What makes the service so cheap is that Honolulu taxpayers pay an additional $120 per roundtrip rider to cover the actual costs of operating TheBoat, according to a city study. The cost of carrying each passenger on TheBoat is about 62 times more than the cost of an average trip on TheBus. It is also significantly more expensive than comparable Mainland ferry services. [Honolulu Advertiser, High subsidies may scuttle Hawaii's ferry, 2/15/2009]

It was okay with Mayor Mufi to charge taxpayers $120 for each roundtrip rider on his boat service before it was finally terminated. Hawaii Superferry certainly had an EIS problem, but even without that, the business appears to have been dead in the water from day one. The Superferry fiasco wasn’t Mufi’s responsibility, but his lack of understanding of what ultimately sank the business combined with willingness to tolerate losses incurred by TheBoat should be a concern, given the need to control costs for a possible rail transit system planned for Honolulu. (Thanks to Kevin for pointer to the interview story)

---

Mufi fiscally irresponsible to ignore Superferry losses  

By Larry Geller on 26 July 2010 in Disappeared News - 
  (http://www.disappearednews.com/2010/07/mufi-fiscally-irresponsible-to-ignore.html)

Again, the news tells us that Mufi Hannemann is serious about trying to revive the Hawaii Superferry, with the same ships that couldn’t be economically successful the first time around. Maybe, like Sarah Palin or George Bush, he just doesn’t read the newspapers.

The Associated Press revealed on 7/21/2010 that the Superferry was unable to pay its fees to the State fully nine months before it ultimately went bankrupt. Analyst Brad Parsons had estimated the costs of running such a large, fuel-hungry ship much earlier and published the information on his popular blog.

Our press seems unwilling to ask the hardball questions. Won’t a reporter please confront him on this one day soon?

Perhaps hizzoner knows the economic facts but is playing to the Oahu voter’s dreams of the Superferry’s return, and their belief that it was viable business killed by a bunch of Kauai tree huggers and Maui whale worshippers.
 

All the more reason for some reporter to call him on it and set the record straight.

See also:
Hanneman Wants To Revive Hawaii Superferry: Opponent Abercrombie Called That A Fantasy (KITV, 7/26/2010)  
Candidates for governor pitch economic plans (AP, 7/26/2010) .

Fracking B.S. in New York

SUBHEAD: Act today to protect New York's clean water from dirty drilling of natural gas. 

By Staff on 26 July 2010 at Clean Water not Dirty Drilling
(http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/676/p/dia/action/public)

 
Image above: Frame from video below. Man sets water on fire. Methane gas in tap water is one danger of new fracking technology.


[IB Publisher's note: Why should we care here in Hawaii about this issue? Because we use natural gas and have to import all of it. The US military, which uses most of the oil from the BP's offshore drilling should feel some responsibility for the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico. We should insist that natural gas is procured through technology that does not destroy the places it is taken from; just as we would benefit from those eating ahi in Japan should be concerned in regards to possible over fishing in Hawaiian waters. My wife and I still own what was a family farm into the 1950's. In the 1970's a gas well was drilled on it using the techniques of the day. The drilling of that well 35 years ago disrupted the flow of water underground and affected the recovery rate on our water well to this day.]

New York's clean water is at risk. Our state is home to some of the cleanest drinking water and best fishing streams in the country, but natural gas drilling could decimate these precious resources and endanger communities across New York. The choice: Issue permits for gas development too soon -- and risk dirty drilling that could pollute our drinking water, or Take the time necessary to understand the potential impacts of gas development on our water, air, health, and communities. Help New York make the right choice TODAY! Right now, New York Senate Majority Leader John Sampson is on the fence. If he doesn't bring the issue to a vote before the legislative session ends, we will have chosen to risk dirty drilling by default. Just like Pennsylvania did.

Video above by (www.cleanwaternotdirtydrilling.org) Thanks to the folks at Agit-Pop.com who made the vid, and the makers of SplitEstate.com and GASLANDthemovie.com, without whose footage it couldn't have been made.  .

Slumdog Billionaire!

SUBHEAD: Five chapters on ways for you to profit BIG from global collapse.

By Richard Heinberg on 26 July 2010 in Post Carbon Institute -
(http://www.postcarbon.org/article/122340-you-can-be-a-billionaire-without)



 
Image above: A still from the movie "Slumdog Millionaire", 2008. From (http://www.sheknows.com/articles/808366/slumdog-millionaire-dvd-showcases-oscar-top-dog). 

 [Author’s note: This is the Introduction to an inspirational / financial-advice / environmental / diet / dating / self-help / survivalist / humor book that I started to write—and quickly decided should never be finished. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken it even this far. You be the judge.]

What can you do to optimize your chances in the case of hyperinflation, a deflationary economic Depression, an oil crisis, a famine, or a series of horrendous environmental disasters? If you don’t already know, you’d better wise up fast—because some or all of these exciting opportunities are on their way to a neighborhood near you!

In fact, one or two may already be tapping you on the shoulder and asking to make your acquaintance. Pointy-headed intellectuals have been warning us about this stuff for years. Decades. Who cares? Who’s had the time for depressing, worrisome, gloomy, hard-to-understand statistics and graphs? There’s been work to do, money to be made, kids to put through college, new episodes of American Idol to watch. Until now.

We have finally arrived at the fabulous convergence of two Earth-shattering developments:

First, real environmental and economic catastrophes are starting to happen and are tugging on our Comfy Cushion of Consumer Complacency, requiring us to actually Do Something.

Second, someone (guess who?) has figured out how to frame these mega-scary events in such inviting, entertaining, and potentially profitable terms that the irresistible win/win euphoria of it all can make you almost completely forget just how abysmally awful our situation actually is.

Welcome to my book, YOU can Be a BILLIONAIRE Without Even Trying! In it, you will learn why the U.S. economy is now the butt of jokes in Chad; why the stuff that makes your car go is about to become as rare and valuable as . . . as . . . as something actually rare and valuable; why the global food system is making more and more people watch their waistlines (as they shrivel); and why Mother Nature seems to be puzzlingly mean-tempered lately—almost as if we had done something to annoy her.

And, best of all, you will learn how to anticipate and cash in on the lucky breaks opened up by these seeming calamities. You will thrill to the sheer ease with which you and your family can surf the waves of change lapping at the thighs of a dazed and sadly un-opportunistic world. You will adopt as your new motto: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste!

With this book you just can’t lose: If you decide not to take my advice and not to do anything to save yourself from the smorgasbord of apocalyptica to which we are all about to be treated—well then, you might as well chortle in the face of certain destruction. You can still revel in the fresh, snarky prose with which your grisly fate will herein be detailed. You still win! But you stand to win even BIGGER if you get with the program! Each of the following chapters will inform you of fun ways to profit from global collapse—so get ready to get ahead!  

Chapter 1 “How to Become a Billionaire Without Even Trying!”
We will prepare you to thrive in a period of hyperinflation. Remember Germany in the early 1920s? Well, I don’t either. But I’ve actually seen an old picture on the Internet of a German lady heating her home by tossing bricks of currency into her furnace.

How could money become so worthless?

Easy: If the government decided to print gazillions of Papiermarks, or Dollars, or Euros, Baht, Drachmas, Guilders, Nakfa, Pesos, Pounds, Rand, Rubles, Rupees, Shekels, or Yen in order to pay for obligations it otherwise could not meet. With more money chasing an equivalent quantity of goods and services, individual units of currency would lose value. Soon a loaf of bread that used to cost only two Tugrik could cost hundreds, then thousands, then millions, eventually billions of Tugrik! Of course, this could never happen TODAY, in our enlightened modern world run by politicians and economists with their profound scientific understanding of how to keep monetary systems oiled, tanned, and buff.

Nevertheless, there is always the theoretical possibility that, in a poor and corrupt backwater nation somewhere, a power-mad Prime Minister or President could decide to borrow colossal amounts of cash to pay for social programs and infrastructure projects (knowing these debts could never be repaid), which would eventually cause the national currency to lose nearly all of its value. If you were to find yourself in such a country then, you could become a billionaire without doing anything! Think of the opportunities!

Like the government, you could inflate your debts away! Your total mortgage of 1,000,000 Ringgit could easily be paid off with a single month’s salary . . . assuming, of course, that you still had a salary and that salaries were keeping up with prices. You see, there are some strings attached: when the waiter gives you a dirty look after you leave him what you thought was a generous 50,000,000 Dinar tip, you might start to think that being a billionaire isn’t all that you expected. Your savings would have been inflated away by this time and society might be shredding at the edges. But . . . you’d be a billionaire!!!

As we’ll see in more detail later in the chapter, there are plenty of things you can do now to get ready for life under hyperinflation: Stop investing in Wall Street and start investing in your community! Stock up on things of real and enduring value that you can always trade or barter! And develop skills that will enable you to be useful to people in your community when the monetary system breaks down! Naturally, you will only be able to benefit from hyperinflation if you haven’t already lost everything to deflation—which brings us to -  


Chapter 2 “How to Buy the House of Your Dreams for $1000!” Deflation is in some ways the opposite of inflation: If lots of loans are being defaulted upon, if new loans aren’t being written, and if loads of people are losing their jobs, then money starts to disappear from the system. Money is worth more than it was before, but there is less of it to go around.

This is what happened in the U.S.A. during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when 40 cents could buy a decent meal, a two-bedroom bungalow came with a monthly mortgage payment of $35, and a new Chevrolet could be had for $20 down and a series of $15 monthly installments. You could live well on $100 a month—but who had that kind of money? Of course, this could never happen TODAY, in our enlightened modern world run by politicians and economists with their profound scientific understanding of how to keep monetary systems oiled, tanned, and buff.

Nevertheless, there is always the theoretical possibility that, in a poor and corrupt backwater nation somewhere, a cabal of greedy bankers could create a set of bizarre investment instruments that appear to generate enormous amounts of wealth but in reality are nothing but an elaborate con game, so that at some point all these investments would lose their perceived value and several fantastigillion Taka’s worth of apparent wealth would just evaporate, causing the stock market to implode in a puff of smoke and leaving millions upon millions of people without jobs or income of any sort.

If you were to find yourself in such a country at such a time, and you still had a few Taka in your pocket, you could buy yourself a Rolex, a car, a house, maybe even your own judge or police chief! Naturally, that would only hold true if you did indeed still have those few Taka and hadn’t lost all your savings to hyperinflation (see Chapter 1). And, to be sure, there are some downsides to deflation: You might be out on the street, and society could splinter. But hey, does that Rolex look great or what? As we’ll see in more detail later in Chapter 2, there are a few things you can do now to get ready to make the most of life under deflation. And some of them look a lot like ways to protect yourself from hyperinflation:

Buy your support system ahead of time (hand tools, solar panels, and other items that will help move you toward self-sufficiency)! Develop and improve your tradable skills! However, in this case an additional strategy might be helpful: If your community starts a local currency now, then as your national currency collapses you’ll still have some basis for trade. Invent your own money—do it today!

 In Chapter 3 “Pick Up Any Guy or Girl with Three Magic Words!”
You will learn that, in an inevitable future in which gasoline is unaffordable and oil shortages are commonplace, the words “I’ve got fuel” will make you instantly attractive. You see, our entire transport system is petroleum-dependent: cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships—they all run on diesel, gasoline, or bunker oil (with the exception of about twenty Tesla Roadsters and Arnold Schwartzenegger’s hydrogen Hummer).

But over the past century or so the petroleum industry has guzzled up all the cheap, easy-to-find Texas Tea and is now undertaking a Journey to the Center of the Earth to get those last few tasty slurps of light, sweet crude. Meanwhile, today’s remaining oil-exporting countries are using more and more of their precious petrol domestically, which means that oil-importing countries (like the U.S.) will soon be up a creek without a drill rig. How soon?

We’re not talking centuries here, we’re talking a decade or so at best, maybe only a few years. It would be sensible for towns and cities in the U.S. to ready themselves for that fast-approaching future by building robust, energy-efficient electric public transit systems that could potentially run on solar or wind power—but instead most are using Federal stimulus money to build or widen highways. Why? It’s because urban planners are required by law to assume that the future will look just like the 1960s, only more so. Smart!

Well, that’s bad for cities, but good for you if you’re looking ahead! People need to travel. If they have no alternative to cars but can no longer afford to own and operate their own vehicles, then ingenious new sorts of carpooling services might pick up the slack. Start now to plan how you’ll run your informal jitney business—gathering up carloads of passengers along semi-regular routes, dropping folks off one at a time close to where they need to go, while collecting nominal fares (a couple of eggs, a few potatoes) to make it all worthwhile. Form friendships now with the people most likely to have access to fuel (including home-made biodiesel) when the shortages hit. Figure out what kind of vehicle you intend to buy (don’t purchase it yet!—wait until nine-passenger vans and SUVs are virtually worthless due to deflation and fuel shortages).

When the time comes, if you’ve followed these simple instructions, you’ll be picking up guys and gals on a regular basis! Yes, there are some trade-offs and risks attached to the impending oil crisis. Forget that yearly vacation at Disney World—or anywhere else that requires air travel (sorry, there will be no electric 747s in our future). And you might have to deal with a bit of social upheaval from time to time. But why dwell on the downside? Just think of the bonuses! You will get to know your neighbors better and we’ll all get lots more exercise riding bicycles—as long as bike tires are available (too bad they’re made from oil).  

Chapter 4 “How to Lose 40 Pounds Without Even Trying!”
 We offer advice on a sure-fire way to beat the obesity epidemic. It’s called global famine! Now, I know this one sounds terrifying at first. But remember: the more enormous the crisis, the huger the opportunity!

A whopping big famine is a safe bet sometime in the first half of this century. That’s because we have a still-expanding human population (nearly seven billion of us now and counting) with growing appetites; but we’re eroding or salting our topsoil (losing 25 billion tons a year), we’re facing water scarcity (so much for increasing food production through irrigation), the amount of arable land available globally is starting to decline, we’re depleting world rock phosphate supplies (phosphorus is essential to modern industrial agriculture and there’s no substitute for it), bugs and weeds are becoming resistant to nearly all our pesticides and herbicides, and—to top it off—our entire food system is totally dependent on the use of depleting petroleum to fuel tractors and to transport farm inputs and outputs.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention that we’re over-fishing the oceans, so that by mid-century most wild commercial fish species will be depleted, endangered, or extinct. It’s a food system that’s virtually designed to fail! You think it’s going to be tough to find the bright side to this one? Think again! We’ll be swimming in silver linings!—those of us who are prepared, that is. If you can figure out how to grow food sustainably, starting now, you are guaranteed to become a Very Popular Person. In fact, your biggest problem could be TOO MUCH popularity!

Your whole neighborhood might want to start hanging out with you every day to share meals. Some neighbors might even want to visit you (or your garden) in the middle of the night. Cozy—maybe too cozy! But if you plan ahead for all of this popularity, you could find ways to put all your new friends to work weeding, planting, and harvesting. You could turn this into a system—a feudal system, to put a name to it—with you as the, um, facilitator! And you thought global famine was going to be a big downer. Silly. There’s always an upside for those with a smile and a can-do attitude! And that brings us to the concluding, inspirational...


Chapter 5 “Ten Ways YOU Can Change the World!”
Not all profits are financial in nature; sometimes the best things in life come simply through knowing that we’ve made a difference. We all want to leave our mark; we want future generations to remember us. Often, this longing gets frustrated along the way: when we’re young, we have dreams of doing something great and being famous, but the requirements of making a living tend to mire us in mediocrity. After we’re dead, we might be remembered for a while by a few close relatives, but then it’s off to oblivion.
Gone and forgotten.

Meanwhile the world shambles on as before, not much different as a result of our having been here. That all may have been true a few decades ago, but not anymore! Haven’t you heard? It’s the New Age of globally interconnective instantaneously hyperactive feedback loops! In other words, we’ve arrived at a point in our development as a species where we can change the world in truly dramatic ways, just by each of us doing our own little bit.

No, it’s better than that: it has gotten to be so easy to change the world that today it’s actually much, much harder NOT to! What an amazing species we are! What a time to be alive! Yes we can! Massive oil spills, climate change, species extinctions, resource depletion, deforestation, air pollution, water pollution, rapid population growth, widespread reproductive disruption among vertebrates due to environmental toxins, ocean acidification . . . the list could go on and on.

These are BIG changes—so big that their traces would be obvious to alien geologists visiting our world millions of years from now. With global warming alone we are turning the Earth into a very different planet from the one on which civilization developed (author Bill McKibben says we should give the planet a new name, “Eaarth,” as a way of celebrating our collective achievement).

And all we have to do to contribute to these great smacking big planetary changes is to continue doing exactly what we are doing right now! Fly and drive! Use plastic bags! Eat fast food! Turn up the air conditioner! Have lots of children! Buy stuff and throw it away! It’s so fun and easy to change the world! Sure, those space-alien geologists may not credit you personally for making such a big difference to our world.

But rest assured: You’ll have been part of a socio-economic phenomenon that future human generations, if there are any, will remember intensely. In fact, they will probably think about us every single day of their lives! Okay, enough with the cynical sarcasm. It should be fairly clear by now why this book should never be finished. (My publisher: “Keep it to one category, please. Two, maybe. Three, absolute tops. This—this is ridiculous!”)

 Of course, the main reason the book shouldn’t be written is that, rather than reveling in planetary collapse or trying to profit from it, we should be doing everything in our power to prevent or minimize it. That means not flying and driving, not using plastic bags, not eating fast food, not turning up the air conditioner, not having lots of children, not buying stuff and throwing it away.

Nevertheless, the tough truth is that hard times are on the way regardless of what we do at this point. Over the past century or so we humans have set processes in motion that cannot entirely be halted even if we change our ways dramatically and instantly.

During the next few decades, humanity will (one way or another) make the transition from a mode in which it relies primarily on the extraction of non-renewable resources and giddily grows its population and per-capita consumption rates, to a mode in which non-renewable resources are mostly depleted and population size and per-capita consumption rates are constrained by the availability of the world’s remaining renewable resources.

Along the way, we will reap the unintended ecological consequences of our Big Binge even as it passes into collective memory: climate change, habitat destruction, soil erosion, and aquifer depletion will be gifts that just keep on giving.

Our economic situation doesn’t look any cheerier. You see, during those last couple of centuries, while we were developing our ability to extract Earth’s fossil fuels and minerals on a grand scale and transform them as quickly as possible into carbon dioxide and landfill, we got the idea that this could go on forever. We developed economic dogmas that said growth is good and normal.

And we created currency and finance systems that only work properly when the economy is expanding. Now that it’s getting harder to extract Earth’s remaining non-renewable resources, economic growth is no longer a given. Indeed, year-over-year world aggregate GDP growth may already be a thing of the past—over, done with, extinguished, extinct, kaput.

Whether or not we’ve already reached that inevitable point, when we do our economic system is going to careen either into deflation or hyperinflation—there will be no middle ground to cling to.

All of this is fairly plain when you stand back and look at the trajectory of human history with the laws of thermodynamics in mind. Yet most people are so invested in business-as-usual that they simply can’t allow themselves to contemplate the possibility that time has run out on our current round of Wheel of Fortune. Some environmentalists are painfully aware that nasty impacts are in the pipeline, but don’t want to frighten away their potential audience.

So they focus on easy, painless, little things that average people could do to reduce those impacts (even though hard, painful, big actions by governments and corporations are actually necessary), and they daydream about how abundant life will be in a promised eco-groovy future (while in fact the best way to describe what’s in store is austerity compounded with more austerity).

In short, we live in a state of denial. The mainstream media occasionally scare us into paralysis with CGI-laden disaster documentaries, but then proceed to label people who talk rationally about the coming challenges and how to prepare and adapt as “survivalists” and “prophets of doom”—that is, as individuals so far outside the mainstream as to be worthy objects of derision.

So it’s a challenge to get across to policy makers or the general public any sense of what’s ahead and how to respond. Those of us in the business of trying to do so have to accomplish many things at once: Get real about the scale of the problems and the risks, and avoid freaking out. Be hopeful and deadly serious. Help people improve their own survival prospects and work for institutional change so as to minimize impacts. It’s a difficult balancing act. In fact, it’s more than anyone can do.

What are the natural human responses to situations that require us to stretch us far beyond our capacities? Often we either laugh or cry. So here’s to laughter (we’ll do the crying thing another time, I’m sure). My final advice, offered in all seriousness: Adopt a cheerful and helpful attitude. And cultivate a sense of humor during this trying period—doing so will not only preserve your mental health, it could help you and your family survive. Remember: When life hands you a lemon, don’t just make lemonade . . . make limoncello, and make enough for friends!  

• Richard “Sunnyside” Heinberg is the author of nine books including Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis, and The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies. He is Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators. .

Between too soon & too late

SUBHEAD: We won't do it by choice. We'll only stop burning fossil fuels when we cannot do so anymore.

By Marcelo Rinesi on 26 July 2010 in IEET -
(http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/rinesi2010725 Originally posted at Phase Leap) 

 
Image above: "The Village School" by Dutch artist Jan Steen in 1665. From (http://www.lasallianresources.org/LSwebbit/index.html).

We are going to burn all of the oil and coal we have, because their benefits as energy sources are concrete, immediate, and local, while their costs are gradual, delayed, and global.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but when facing similar choices, humankind has never chosen the more long-term view.

There are only three conceivable scenarios in which we stop burning fossil fuels at a massive scale.

First and foremost, nobody will use fossil fuels if there’s a more effective energy source available. For that to happen, we need investments in science, development, and infrastructure that are orders of magnitude larger than what we’re doing now, because our technology isn’t there yet, and our energy transport infrastructure is still woefully inadequate.

A second scenario involves the impact of climate change being so harsh and destructive — and impacting directly the developed world in such a way — that the use of fossil fuels becomes an immediate casus belli. Of course, by then the proverbial horses will be out of the equally proverbial barn, but every megatonne of carbon is likely to have an impact, and, besides, this would be a matter of politics, not global climate management.

Finally, and perhaps most likely, we’ll stop burning fossil fuels simply because we’ll run out of them. More precisely, we’ll stop using them when they become so hard to extract that using alternative energy sources becomes more convenient. Given how bad those alternative energy sources are at the moment, by that moment we might also be well into the catastrophic climate change scenario.

What happens afterward will depend on whether or not we have upgraded our energy infrastructure by then. Make no mistake, we can and should try to get as energy-efficient as we can, but to an enormous degree civilization is simply about energy per capita, which is one of the reasons why we no longer have to dedicate 90% of our population to growing food. In terms of quality of life and political freedom, 17th-century Europe, Japan, and China are perhaps the highest you can go without massive non-human energy sources.

If we have found a viable alternative to fossil fuels by the time or before we have used most of them, then we will “only” have to deal with climate upheaval of a scale unprecedented in human history. If we haven’t, then we’ll have to deal with climate upheaval of a scale unprecedented in human history… while dealing with an economic depression that will make 1930 look like a Golden Age, and WWII a minor inconvenience. And, needlessly to say, the longer we burn fossil fuels, the deeper the climate catastrophe is going to be.

The time for smooth, convenient solutions was decades ago, when scientists first began to raise the alarm about the greenhouse effect and peak oil, and the twin approaching disasters of a changing climate and an energy crunch. By now, the most we can do, and the least we have to, is to scramble however we can. Yes, even during this global recession, and even during the next ones. If you think upgrading the energy foundations of a planetary civilization is hard during an economic recession, imagine how hard it’ll be with a fraction of the energy available, and climate-related disruptions erupting everywhere.

We need to make extraordinary advances in energy sources, and we have to do if fast, or, to put it simply, the 22nd century will look like the 17th. We need to constrain our use of fossil fuels as much as possible. It’s one thing to have to deal with an oncoming train, and quite another to be running toward it. And we need to become much better at handling our atmosphere and ecosystems, mass human migration and infrastructure development, and political coordination and humanitarian support, because the latter half of the century is shaping up to be one ugly mess. We are in this fix because a few short decades ago we did nothing. If we do nothing, or even if we just don’t do enough, the fix we’re going to be in a few short decades from now will be much, much worse.

If we fail, the best case scenario is losing most of what we’ve accomplished in the last few centuries. In the worst case, we also lose everything else.

• Marcelo Rinesi is the Assistant Director of the IEET. Mr. Rinesi is Editor-in-Chief of Phase Leap, and Data Intelligence Analyst at MetroGames.

 .

Greener Wailani Development

SUBHEAD: Molokoa project revamped to include bike lanes and wider storm water runoff areas.


By Leo Azambuja on 26 July 2010 in The Garden Island News - 
(http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/article_9761c804-987f-11df-a14f-001cc4c03286.html)


 
Image above: Rendering of Wailani Mall showing pedestrians waiting to cross automobile traffic. From (http://thegardenisland.com/business/local/article_4304fdca-3a2a-11df-9017-001cc4c002e0.html).

[IB Editor's note: There is no such thing as "Smart Growth" that is sustainable. Perpetual economic growth is inherently unsustainable on an island... or the world. This is another get rich scheme using "Green Smoke" as a cover for real estate development speculation.]  



A major project in Lihue and Hanamaulu approved 14 years ago is changing to implement smart-growth principles.

The county Planning Commission recently gave permission to the developers to re-design some of the project’s streets to allow it to include bicycle lanes and larger landscaped bulb-outs to act as bio filters.

The Kauai County Council in 1996 approved the Lihue/Hanamaulu Master Planned Community, known as the Wailani Project, consisting of three primary areas in Lihue and one in Hanamaulu.

The Lihue areas — Molokoa, Ahukini Mauka and Ahukini Makai — are at three corners of the four-way intersection by Lihue Airport. The Kohea Loa is at the Hanamaulu triangle.

The major changes that developer Visionary LLC wanted approved were on Kaana and Hoolako streets.

Those streets were designed to accommodate four lanes, two in each direction. The idea was to mirror how Rice Street in Lihue functions. The outer lanes allow parking on weekends and certain times during weekdays.

Kaana and Hoolako streets, however, will now have only two lanes, one in each direction. The outer lanes will be reserved for bicycles.

The parking has become permanent, and was moved to the spaces in between the trees on the curbs, instead of on the street.

The bulb-outs in the original plan were four feet wide. But now they have doubled in width, acting as a better biofilter for stormwater runoff, according to the report by Kodani & Associates, the civil engineering and surveying company hired for the project.

The commission approved the amendment, pending comments from the Public Works Department.

The request from Visionary LLC said it is committed to implement smart-growth principles, which are: Create a range of housing opportunities, create walkable communities, encourage community collaboration, foster communities with a sense of place, make fair and cost-effective decisions, promote mixed-land uses, preserve critical environment, provide a range of transportation, strengthen and direct development toward existing communities and take advantage of compact building areas.
See also:
Ea O KA Aina: Grove Farm's Green Smoke 3/21/10
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Brian Schatz's Oahu-centric Plans

SUBHEAD: Brian Schatz's energy plans lean on the resources of Neighbor Islands while ignoring their needs. Maybe he should be running for Mayor of Honolulu and not Lt. Governor.

By Brad Parsons on 26 July 2010 in Island Breath.org -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2010/07/brian-schatzs-oahu-centric-plans.html) 


Image above: The Garden of the Gods on Lanai; a breezy ridge near where Oahu wants to build a windfarm. From (http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/original/2140972.jpg). 

 [Author's note - Reminds me of Mufi Hanneman's Rail project. There's no benefit for the Big Island or Kaua'i much less Maui in this energy plan. Make no mistake, Brian Schatz is all about Oahu.]

Another example of young Mr. Brian Schatz's not so well thought out Lt. Governor campaign positions. The proposed cable project he mentions does not provide power to the neighbor islands and the Big Island and Kaua'i are not expected to be a part of it, but beyond that, see below Henry Curtis' knowledgeable and recent comments on the proposed cable project that Mr. Schatz espouses. See source at http://brianschatz.com/issues/renewable-energy:

"Brian will utilize his relationships with the Obama administration to maximize federal investment in renewable energy for Hawaii. This includes the undersea electricity cable that will connect Maui County and possibly the Big Island with Oahu. With this cable, we can start large-scale wind, geothermal and solar projects that can power not only the neighbor islands, also but provide energy to Oahu. This project has lots of moving parts. It will require regulatory approval, federal and state funding, community support and an understanding of land use and energy issues. Cable is a key ingredient. This project will literally define our future if we want to generate our own energy. We can’t just wish this to happen. We need a Lieutenant Governor such as Brian, who has a history of leading organizations successfully, pull people together and make things happen." First published on April 1st, 2010

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Inter-Island Windfarms  

By Henry Curtis on 26 July 2010 in Disappeared News -
(http://www.disappearednews.com/2010/07/inter-island-windfarms.html)  

What is the Inter-Island Cable project?
 It is a government-utility plan to build 1-3 undersea high-voltage electric transmission lines from the North or South shore or both shores of O`ahu to Moloka`i and/or Lana`i and/or Maui so that Neighbor Island wind power, and perhaps future geothermal power, can give O`ahu the energy needed to continue unbridled growth. Currently there are no electric lines that go between the islands.  

Who benefits from the Inter-Island Cable project? (1) 
HECO The taxpayers would finance (buy) the undersea cable and hand it over to HECO to manage it. (2) Castle & Cooke In 2009 David Murdoch (Castle & Cooke) failed in his attempt to pass a state law to exempt public participation in the cable project (it passed the State House and was killed in the State Senate). Castle & Cooke would have to greatly expand the Lana`i harbor and build paved highways through large sections of Lana`i. Large tracts of land would suddenly have major road and harbor connections. These lands could be developed for gated communities and vacation resorts for the rich. Visitors could drive on the highway to the Garden of the Gods and other important historical sites. A large harbor could allow for the importation of large amounts of water, something that rich communities have done in other areas.  

What are the problems with the Undersea Cable?
Who wants to go first? The billion dollar taxpayer financed cable? The 100-200 towers, each over 400 feet tall on Moloka`i? The 100-200 towers, each over 400 feet tall on Lana`i? What if one is built and the other two are not. Who is left holding the financial tab? David Murdoch will be in his 90s in 2015 when the system is expected to come on-line. His heirs are not publicly known. The Humpback Whale Sanctuary surrounds Lana`i. No site has been confirmed on Moloka`i. The cable from Moloka`i to Lana`i will go through the sensitive offshore Penguin Banks area. Several new transmission lines, “costing $300M or more” will have to be built on O`ahu.  

What could go wrong?
What if the price of solar continues to fall and what if the unsubsidized cost of solar in 2015 is cheaper that the cost of electricity in this State. What if people begin leaving the electric utility and those who stay find their bills skyrocketing upwards? What if in 5 years rooftop micro-wind and wind-farms on O`ahu could match the energy price on interisland wind? What if the New Governor is open to community-based solutions?  

Isn’t this the second proposed Inter-Island Cable?
 Yes. The State spent $17M over a 15 year period focusing on developing 500MW of geothermal on Hawai`i Island to power O`ahu. In June 1991 Federal Judge David Ezra ruled that all federal agencies were prohibited from assisting in the project until a federal EIS has been completed (it never was).

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Kauai Investing in Green

SUBHEAD: If every household on Kauai invested in these steps, the island’s ecological footprint would decrease by 50 percent.

By Coco Zickos on 26 July 2010 in The Garden Island News -  
http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/article_4e0a79d2-987d-11df-a7f9-001cc4c03286.html) 


 
Image above: The 2010 International Renewable Energy, Community & Conference Center. Dezhou - Solar City, China. From (http://tropicaldesignwiki.org/tiki-browse_gallery.php?galleryId=4).  

[IB Editor's note: This is only for the rich. It would be great and practical way forward for the rest of us - if we had started the effort 30 years ago. We are likely too broke as a nation to buy enough cheap solar panels from the Chinese. As for "making out like bandits" - Fugget aboud it!]



Kauai cannot continue on its current path of unsustainability, Ken Stokes said Saturday at the Wailua-Kapaa Neighborhood Association meeting.

Rather than merely relaying to the audience the challenges Kauai faces in self-efficiency, The Kauaian Institute executive director offered community-based solutions and promised to “jangle your thinking about how you’re going to spend your money.”

“We can craft a sustainable future for our island simply by being smart about the way we spend money,” Stokes said, by making “green investments.”

It is an especially “daunting challenge to imagine our lives without fossil fuel,” but oil is a “limited available resource” and investing in technologies like photovoltaic systems and energy-efficient refrigerators reduces the island’s addiction to imported products and ultimately saves the consumer money, he said.

Getting a “higher return rate on energy” is one of the four investment strategies linked to Stokes’ sustainability plan.

Making the switch from “cheap, readily available fossil fuels” to renewable energy sources is “smart money,” he said.

While Kauai Island Utility Cooperative rates continue to increase, the cost conversion for solar energy is decreasing, Stokes said.

Photovoltaic prices are “already falling through the floor,” he said. This is linked to the introduction of thin film technology — thinner and more malleable systems — which can be “draped over anything.”

“This is a huge window of opportunity for smart money ... to make out like bandits,” he said.

Storing the sun’s energy for use during peak evening hours is even a possibility via Stokes’ strategy with using electric vehicles.

Plus, converting these cars from combustion engines to housing batteries powered by the sun could add “hundreds of jobs” and present a cheaper and “vastly cleaner” mode of transportation, he said.

“You convert your own car rather than waiting for the big corporations to sell you a new vehicle,” he said. And it would reduce the amount of waste and energy required to construct new ones.

Driving solar-powered, battery-operated electric cars is one way to reduce the amount of fossil fuels being utilized by the island, Stokes said. Another “smart money” solution would be to grow, deliver and process food without imported oil.

“I’m excited as anyone about the way gardening has taken off, but we need farms,” he said.

Towns linked with “food systems” consisting of various crops, water sources and enriched soil “as close as possible to where we live” would eventually help “squeeze out fossil fuels,” he said.

If every household on Kauai invested in these steps leading to sustainability, the island’s ecological footprint would decrease by 50 percent, he said.

Since every household on Kauai already spends about $400 per month on gas and electric — with another $400 per month on imported food — making a long-term investment for the well-being of the community is not just smart money, “it’s genius,” Stokes said.

For example, if the roughly 25,000 households on Kauai made a $40,000 investment over the course of 10-years at about $400 per month, the total amount redirected to building a sustainable island — with infrastructures such as farms that provide food — would be $1 billion, he said.

In comparison, it is the same amount of money KIUC generated since 2003, the same amount which has been spent building Kauai homes since 2005 and the same figure the island’s banks deposited in 2009, he said.

“I’d like to think that if enough of us go one direction” that a self-sustainable island has achievability, he said.

Americans generate an ecological footprint which is “well over 80 percent” of the world’s, so making a change is vital, especially within the food, transportation and energy sectors, Stokes said.

“Kauai can’t afford not to do this soon,” he said.
Visit kauaian.net/blog for more information.

• Coco Zickos, business and environmental writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) or czickos@kauaipubco.com

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