Wednesday, February 27, 2013

"Great lady, I have news."

This entry's title is a line from my novel, Virtue, which now exists in manuscript form. 

_________________

Here is an independent script analyst's synopsis of  Virtue.


A tycoon in charge of Starling Worldwide, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, puts his empire at risk when he falls for a controversial humanitarian and is transformed in the process.


Raised in wealth and privilege, successful executive GREG HAMMOND has followed in his father’s footsteps and rules the family empire, making money and his stockholders happy. Although his half-sister LYDIA and her son ANDRE want to topple Greg from the Starling throne, they can’t succeed as long as he holds patriarch Poppy’s approval.

Then Greg meets and falls for DARIA, who is as much of a warrior as he is only for a completely different agenda: she doesn’t want to profit from the world, she wants it to profit from her. Although he woos her enough to donate to her cause and spend a passionate weekend with her, she sees humanitarian DR.WREN as more her type.

 Falling in love with Daria strips off Greg’s blinders. As he really sees the world for the first time, he finds he can’t go back and goes out on a limb to take his company with him. Andre sees his new behavior as an opportunity to leverage for control of the company and plays dirty to get it. Greg and Andre’s duel comes to a head in a boardroom war that engages the public, puts their personal relationships at risk and has a worldwide impact.

____________________


One of the central plot elements in Virtue is the female lead's quest to influence the people living in an Ethiopian slum. She brings them an initiative designed to educate and to empower, particularly the women,  The story puts a glaring spotlight on a cultural tradition practiced widely in Africa. It's called female genital cutting or FGC. In this tradition, girl children between three years and eight years of age are subjected to having their labia and clitoris' cut off.  This is thought to assure they will remain chaste and sexually pure when they get older.  More than 130 million women in Africa have had this done to them.  In a country like Ethiopia, 75% of girl children have been subjected to or are at risk of being subjected to FGC.  Not only is it a heinously cruel personal violation, women subjected to FGC also have huge problems later with child birthing due to the loss of elasticity in their vaginal areas, making natural child birth a highly risky prospect.

FGC may be tradition, but it is indefensible and has no place in a modern world.   There are two global non-profit groups I admire that are focused on empowering women and ending the practice of FGC. They are Tostan,  based in Senegal and the Orchid Project based in London.   Please go to their websites and learn about FGC and then stand with them as they work to make a difference for the women and girl children of Africa.

Here is a link to Tostan...  www.tostan.org 


Here is a link to the Orchid Project...www.orchidproject.org




 

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Micro-Drones - Talk About Scary

So,  I've had ocassion to write about drones before.  I just became aware of a new 'micro' type of drone that are cheap to make and are designed to function in swarms.  They can be used to observe, find and identify, and, potentially, to destroy a human target.  

The military using these things is scary enough. The next step after that, given how cheap and how easy they will surely be to produce - the next step will be for these to be available on the open market.  Slight modifications will allow your average psychopath to use them to hurt or kill, with little risk of getting caught.  Settling scores with lethal precision will be a simple matter of modifying a drone you can buy for $25 and sending it on its way.

Here is a link to a video about this new, very scary kind of drone.  Here's the link... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2281403/U-S-Air-Force-developing-terrifying-swarms-tiny-unmanned-drones-hover-crawl-kill-targets.html


Monday, February 25, 2013

We The People Amendment


If you want a government that truly is 'of, by, and for the people', the first order of business is to dramatically reduce corporate influence in the making of public policy.  The best way to do that is to remove them as much as possible from the political process.

Move to Amend, a national grassroots movement,  is working to do just that with their proposal for a 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 


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Move to Amend's Proposed 28th Amendment to the Constitution

  


 

House Joint Resolution 29 introduced February 14, 2013

 
Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.

The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.

Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]

Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.

Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.

The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.


 

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Sloths in a Bucket

Did you know there was an orphanage for sloths? It's in Costa Rica.   Sloths are marvelously adapted to living in trees in tropical Latin America.  They move very slowly, eating mostly leaves.






Here is a link to a precious little video titled , Sloths in a Bucket...   http://vimeo.com/channels/slothtv/59234110





Here is a link to a group that focuses on protecting sloths.  www.slothville.com



Saturday, February 23, 2013

A Collective Response from Humanity



The UN has just decided to go after asteroids.  More correctly, potentially hazardous objects coming at us from space. Yes, it now seems, given the meteor that exploded over Russia the other day and the 'too close for comfort' passage of a number of large asteroids recently, that world leaders are sufficiently concerned to mount a serious effort to deal with this threat. 

This is not the first time a concerted global effort was focused on a global threat.  It happened when humanity worked together to moderate the threat from 'holes' in the atmosphere caused by ozone depletion.

I applaud this civilization scale focus on this exo-threat looming from space. It is a threat. But, let's put it in perspective. As threats to the planet go, there are a number of others that that are much closer at hand and more likely to happen than getting hit by a rock from space. In fact, some some of these planetary scale threats are already happening. I'm talking about climate change driven by our fossil energy dependence.  I'm talking about extreme human overexploitation of the planet's natural resources, including our oceans, forests, and fresh water supplies.

I'm glad we're coming together to deal with asteroids.  Why can't we give the same kind of thoughtful attention to the very real, human induced threats that are already impacting life on Earth. 

Here is a link to the story about the UN's asteroid warning system initiative. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9888866/Asteroid-early-warning-system-taking-shape-at-UN.html




Friday, February 22, 2013

Dolphins Know Each Other by Name

Animal communication is something that runs far deeper than most people care to think about.  Scientists have known for sometime that sperm whales and dolphins have distinct whistles that equate to their individual identity.  They have names.  Further confirmation comes with the just announced finding that dolphins use these whistle 'names' to call to each other in the wild.





 A large share of the human population on Earth has an affection for cetaceans; the mammalian family that includes whales, purposes, and dolphins. They are exceptionally intelligent creatures. Despite being viewed favorably by most people, these animals that name themselves are subjected to constant assault on their marine habitat. Overexploitation of the ocean's living and mineral resources by humans puts all cetaceans species at grave risk.  We need to show more respect for all the species with whom we share our earth.    No doubt, that's what we would want and expect if the tables were turned and we were dolphins and they were us.

Here is a story that reports on this latest finding...   http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/20/172538036/researchers-find-that-dolphins-call-each-other-by-name?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter



Friday, February 15, 2013

National Intervention


The following is the mission statement of a political action group focused on the core changes the world, and particularly the U.S., desperately needs.

_______________

The Statement

The National Intervention Statement

We understand that corporations are not people, but those who do their bidding are people.

We understand that these people are largely addicted to power.

We understand that the power to which they are addicted has been used, then abused, and has become an addiction too overwhelming for those addicted to likely stop or help themselves from their destructive actions while under the influence.

We understand that power in a capitalist society comes largely from wealth, and that all wealth is generated by our labor and our consumption.

We understand that those afflicted with this addiction to corporate power have an opportunity to “kick the habit” but that most addicts cannot simply stop, even when they feel out of control, even when they hate themselves for their slavery to their master addiction.

We understand that those addicted to power have shown remarkable evidence that they are too blinded by the pursuit of the next fix to quit “cold turkey,” and that the destruction caused by their addiction may have us hitting rock-bottom before they do.

We understand that in the life of any sufferer of addiction, all of those in the addict’s life are part of a system that supports the addiction until they choose to change that unhealthy dynamic in their relationship to the sufferer.

We understand that it is almost guaranteed that an Intervention will be required by those whose labor and consumption provides the substance of wealth that fuels this addiction.

We understand that there is an addiction cycle at the root of the corruption, that we, in part, enable the violence against us, our communities and our planet as the disease worsens in the addict, as we continue to submit to the Gross Domestic Violence.

We understand that when we continue to participate in our relationship to an addict who refuses to rehabilitate, we continue to provide the substance of wealth in the system of addiction.

We understand that this only perpetuates and deepens a toxic cycle of codependence and social, personal, interpersonal, spiritual, psychological, ecological and structural violence.

We understand and accept that those in power may choose to end their addiction with a constitutional amendment that ends corporate personhood, establishes that money is not speech, and makes all political campaigns only publicly funded, but that those addicted will likely fight ferociously against the process that takes away their substance.

We affirm that our next real step after offering those addicted to power the chance to check themselves out of power and into recovery is a National Intervention until corporate interests are once again aligned with the interests of the natural people and their natural habitat.



Here is a link to the National Intervention website   http://nationalintervention.org/



Thursday, February 14, 2013

Europe Leads on Climate Change

As I have already reported in an earlier posting in this blog, Europe has signaled its intention to set the example on climate change. They took another step forward this week when they committed all the nations of Europe to direct no less than 20% of  the union's budget to initiatives designed to push back against climate change.

I clipped the following article from the internet's Environment News Service.  The text color and highlighting got screwed up when I was trying to match the transferred text to the text I wrote myself.  I tried to fix the problem, just made it worse, so I left it as is. The information is important enough that I decided to keep the entry, warts and all.

_______________________

BRUSSELS, Belgium, February 8, 2013 (ENS) – European heads of state and government have agreed to commit at least 20 percent of the entire European Union budget over the next seven years to climate-related spending.

All-night negotiations in Brussels produced agreement among EU leaders on budget proposals for the rest of the decade, from 2014-
2020.

Barroso, Van Rompuy


European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, left, and European Counci President Herman Van Rompuy meet reporters, February 8, 2013 (Photo courtesy EC)
 
 
“Climate action objectives will represent at least 20% of EU spending in the period 2014-2020 and therefore be reflected in the appropriate instruments to ensure that they contribute to strengthen energy security, building a low-carbon, resource efficient and climate resilient economy that will enhance Europe’s competitiveness and create more and greener jobs,” the final agreement states.
Leaders backed the first budget cuts in EU history, spearheaded by the UK Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Cameron’s plan to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership strengthened the country’s negotiating stance.
The seven-year budget was agreed at 960 billion euros ($1.28 trillion). By comparison, the budget for the years 2007-2013 was 975.777 billion euros.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said, “Sustainability is a very important policy and indeed it’s a commitment that we are keeping across policies. In this  regard, the greening of agricultural policy deserves to be mentioned, as for instance our commitment to climate protection.”

“Today is an incredibly important day for Europe and for the fight against climate change,” said Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard of Denmark. “This is a major step forward for our efforts to handle the climate crisis.”

The 20 percent climate appropriation was first suggested by the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch of government.
“Rather than being parked in a corner of the EU budget, climate action will now be integrated into all main spending areas – cohesion, innovation, infrastructure, agriculture,” Hedegaard said.


Connie Hedegaard
European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard (Photo courtesy GUE/NGL)

And it underscores yet again the European leadership in the fight against this crucial challenge. If all other major economies were to make similar commitments, it would have a very significant impact,” she said.“The steer from Europe’s political leaders is unequivocal: they want to remain in front in the transition to a low carbon economy,” declared Hedegaard. “And they are fully committed to align our common spending with this political priority. This is good news from Europe!”

European leaders agreed to invest in interconnected transport, energy and digital networks, saying they are an important element in boosting Europe’s competitiveness in the medium and long term in a difficult economic context, marked by slow growth and tight public budgets.

Council President Herman Van Rompuy said in a news conference today that, while the budget must be leaner to reflect today’s financial realities, “the focus is clearly on triggering new investments and on developing transport, energy and ICT networks, including 30 billion euros for “connecting Europe.”

Such investments in infrastructure are instrumental in allowing the EU to meet its sustainable growth objectives outlined in the Europe 2020 Strategy and the EU’s “20-20-20″ objectives in the area of energy and climate policy, the leaders agreed.

“This budget will allow Europe to keep engaging on vital global issues, such as climate change, nuclear safety, and development aid,” said Van Rompuy.

Hedegaard said, “It is now up to all involved parties – including the European Parliament – to ensure that the overall ambition is duly reflected with clear targets and transparent measuring methods in all the relevant policies and programmes, not least the Common Agricultural Policy.”

The objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP, will be based on “sustainable growth” the leaders said. In addition to ensuring food production, the CAP will “deliver specific environmental public goods, improve the competitiveness of the agriculture and forestry sectors promote the diversification of economic activity and quality of life in rural areas…” the framework document states.

Tascan farm
A farm in Tuscany (Photo by Sebastien Buen)


The greening of the Common Agricultural Policy’s overall environmental performance will be “enhanced” through direct payments for certain agricultural practices that are beneficial for the climate and the environment that all farmers will have to follow, the leaders agreed.

A new 2.8 billion euro reserve to support farmers in case of major crises affecting agricultural production or distribution is included in the budget.

But Europe’s largest coalition of grassroots environmental organizations, the European Environmental Bureau, which represents more than 140 NGOs, condemned the outcome as “a disgrace.”

EEB Secretary General Jeremy Wates said, “This is the worst of both worlds: a smaller budget that is explicitly dedicated to keep pumping money into Europe’s most wasteful and harmful policies and projects, in particular the CAP.”

Expenditures for farm subsidies have gone up since the proposal in November, said Wates. “Even more shocking, as part of this deal, the funding for the CAP’s more progressive rural development component will be effectively starved through the possibility of a whopping 25 percent reverse modulation that allows Member States to put more funding back into the harmful direct payments,” said Wates.

“The final blow to a green CAP reform, however, was dealt through an agreement that Member States would be entirely free to decide how to interpret what is meant by a green CAP, opening the door to an unprecedented greenwashing operation,” Wates said.
“Heads of State and Government even went as far as to prescribe in detail how to render the most important greening measures – the allocation of Ecological Focus Areas at farm level – completely meaningless, by stipulating this should not ‘require farmers to take any land out of production,’” he said.

Wates warned, “Unless Heads of State and Government reject this deal we will be urging the European Parliament to do so.”


 

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Amazing Glass

A friend sent me the link to these two videos.   This is where the world is headed according to Corning Glass.  It's amazing; mind-blowing...

Here are the links  

Part One     http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38&vq=medium

Part Two    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkHpNnXLB0&feature=youtu.be




Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Nothing Like Nemo


An amazing snowstorm blanketed New England this past weekend. Called Nemo, it dumped up to forty inches of snow on Connecticut and thirty inches in Boston.


Boston after Nemo


I was born in New England and my earliest years were spent there. I loved winter and playing in the snow. It's great when you're a kid and your only concern is having fun.   I experienced some big snows, but nothing like Nemo.

As expected, there are climate deniers that claim Nemo is evidence that global warming is a hoax.  The opposite is true. Nemo was caused by a convergence of a Canadian cold front and a warmer system off the Atlantic that was loaded to the gills with moisture. When they came together, the result was Nemo with record snowfalls all over New England. The operative word here is 'warmer'. Even a tiny increase in temperature in the atmosphere over the ocean translates to substantively more moisture uptake in the weather system.

Climate change is not a hoax. The physics behind it are not complicated.  It's already bad and will continue to get worse.  Humans are responsible for climate change. Humanity must fix the problem. Now!

Here is a cool time lapse video of Nemo burying a street scene in Boston with snow.  http://vimeo.com/59328635

Monday, February 11, 2013

Another Asteroid Close Encounter

About a month ago - January 13th to be exact - I posted an entry about asteroids and PHOs (potentially hazardous objects).   I wasn't expecting to add another entry on the subject so soon.   However, I just learned of another close encounter - even closer than the one I reported on previously. 

This asteroid is called 2012 DA14. It's about fifty meters across. On Friday, February 15, 2013,  DA14 will miss planet Earth by about 15 minuites, passing within 17,500 miles.  In celestial terms, that is an exceedingly close shave.





Here is a video of science educator Bill Nye talking about asteroid DA14.
http://youtu.be/6Xo-TW_cOOQ


We The People Amendment



Today, in Washington, D.C., a bill to amend the Constitution is being introduced in Congress. It's focus is to eliminate corporate personhood and also to declare that 'money' is not speech.   In all the world, there is no legislative effort more important than this.  Every important issue we face, every challenge we must deal with is affected profoundly by the corrosive and corruptive influence of dirty money in the political process.



There is so much that is broken about our economy, our culture, our system of governance.  A large share of the dysfunction can be traced to ethically vacuous, corporate lobbyists, heavily armed with influence money.   

Wall Street controls and corrupts the nation's financial landscape with it's money. Big oil controls the energy agenda and blocks any meaningful action on climate change. The timber industry shapes the rules on forests. Big Pharma and the health insurance industry get their way with fat campaign contributions to their elected minions in the house and senate.  

Where public policy is involved, legalized bribery is what we have in America. He who has the money makes the rules. Until that is no longer true, nothing will really change. No matter your particular issue, genuine corrective action will not come until we get rid of the two morally bankrupt legal constructs that allow corporations and the rich to make the rules.

Corporations are not people, but the law treats them as such. Money is not speech, but the courts say it is.  As long as this is true, there is little hope for meaningful action on the critical issues we face as a society.

There are a number of efforts underway to deal with corporate personhood and money as speech. What is required is a constitutional amendment.  The group, Move to Amend, is focused like a laser on delivering just that - a constitutional amendment that will abolish corporate personhood and money as speech.  Today, February 11th is a big day. It's the launch of a first effort to push through an amendment. It won't be easy. In fact, it will be very challenging to pull off.  We all need to get on board with this and stay with it for the long haul. Eliminating the improper influence of corporations and the rich must become  a goal every American citizen embraces with enthusiasm and resolve.

Here is a link to the webpage for the 'We The People' Amendment. https://movetoamend.org/wethepeopleamendment



Sunday, February 10, 2013

One Billion Rising

On Thursday, February 14th, women and men around the world will make their voices heard. One Billion Rising, an initiative launched by the global non-profit V-Day will celebrate women and call for an end to violence against women and girls everywhere.  This effort, led by Eve Ensler, founder of  V-Day, will showcase people on every continent demanding full rights and equality for women.




My wife and I enthusiastically support V-Day and One Billion Rising.   Full equality for women and an end to misogynistic behavior toward them is an absolute requirement for evolving a human society that is fair and sustainable over the long term.  On Valentine's Day, February 14th,  we will stand firmly with the one billion souls around the world who are rising.

Here is a link to the One Billion Rising website...http://onebillionrising.org/

Here is a link to a brief video about the event...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gl2AO-7Vlzk







Friday, February 8, 2013

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words





A train in India.  This is inevitable when the numbers of people outstrip the system's ability to provide.





Thursday, February 7, 2013

The New Abnormal


The attached video link is hilarious and also very much to the point. Colbert is a national treasure, right along with his friend and mentor, Jon Stuart.


Stephen Colbert


Here is the link to Stephen Colbert on climate change.  http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/423268/january-28-2013/the-word---the-new-abnormal




Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Whale Wars - Update

 A couple of stories that just popped up on the net suggest that the Japanese Whaling industry is on life support.  One report indicates that the Japanese people have lost their appetite for eating whale meat.  Allegedly, there are warehouses in Japan with frozen whale meat stacked to the rafters, unsold. 

The ongoing campaign by the Sea Shepard Society to interdict the Japanese whaling fleet in the Antarctic ocean has dramatically reduced the number of whales slaughtered. In fact, the current killing season has been a wash for the Japanese. Not one whale killed, due to the constant harassment of the Sea Shepard Society's presence.

The killing of whales was banned by the International Whaling Commission in 1986. The Japanese have continued a limited whale hunt, shamelessly claiming that the killing they are doing is 'research'.  That is bullshit and the whole world knows it.

The hundred plus volunteers that staff the Sea Shepard Society's vessels come from all over the world. They courageously put their own lives at risk in confrontations with Japanese whalers in the severe conditions of the Antarctic ocean in order to stop the whale slaughter.

The Japanese government has tried to shut down Sea Shepard's efforts in the courts. They have tried to make Paul Watson, the Sea Shepard leader, an international criminal. So far, nothing the Japanese have done to save their whaling industry has worked. The government of Japan is now subsidizing their whalers at a cost of something like $130 million a year.   There is no way for them to win this fight. The moral high ground is held by those defending the whales.   

 Here is a link to the Sea Shepard Society website  http://www.seashepherd.org/

Further update. Here is a link to a video posted by teh Sea Shepard team in February, 2013  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Ep45gKJbQ&feature=player_embedded



Tar Sand Oil - The True Cost

I grabbed this article from Scientific American Online.  When we go to the gas station and pump our tanks full, we give little or no thought to where the stuff comes from or the damage we are doing by using it.


How Much Will Tar Sands Oil Add to Global Warming?

To constrain climate change, such unconventional oil use needs to be stopped, according to scientists

 James Hansen has been publicly speaking about climate change since 1988. The NASA climatologist testified to Congress that year and he's been testifying ever since to crowds large and small, most recently to a small gathering of religious leaders outside the White House last week. The grandfatherly scientist has the long face of a man used to seeing bad news in the numbers and speaks with the thick, even cadence of the northern Midwest, where he grew up, a trait that also helps ensure that his sometimes convoluted science gets across.

This cautious man has also been arrested multiple times.

His acts of civil disobedience started in 2009, and he was first arrested in 2011 for protesting the development of Canada's tar sands and, especially, the Keystone XL pipeline proposal that would serve to open the spigot for such oil even wider. "To avoid passing tipping points, such as initiation of the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, we need to limit the climate forcing severely. It's still possible to do that, if we phase down carbon emissions rapidly, but that means moving expeditiously to clean energies of the future," he explains. "Moving to tar sands, one of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet, is a step in exactly the opposite direction, indicating either that governments don't understand the situation or that they just don't give a damn."

He adds: "People who care should draw the line."

Hansen is not alone in caring. In addition to a groundswell of opposition to the 2,700-kilometer-long Keystone pipeline, 17 of his fellow climate scientists joined him in signing a letter urging Pres. Barack Obama to reject the project last week. Simply put, building the pipeline—and enabling more tar sands production—runs "counter to both national and planetary interests," the researchers wrote. "The year of review that you asked for on the project made it clear exactly how pressing the climate issue really is." Obama seemed to agree in his second inaugural address this week, noting "we will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations."

At the same time, the U.S. imports nearly nine million barrels of oil per day and burns nearly a billion metric tons of coal annually. China's coal burning is even larger and continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Partially as a result, global emissions of greenhouse gases continue to grow by leaps and bounds too—and China is one alternative customer eager for the oil from Canada's tar sands. Neither developed nor developing nations will break the fossil-fuel addiction overnight, and there are still more than a billion people who would benefit from more fossil-fuel burning to help lift them out of energy poverty. The question lurking behind the fight in North America over Keystone, the tar sands and climate change generally is: How much of the planet's remaining fossil fuels can we burn?

The trillion-tonne question
To begin to estimate how much fossil fuels can be burned, one has to begin with a guess about how sensitive the global climate really is to additional carbon dioxide. If you think the climate is vulnerable to even small changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases—as Hansen and others do—then we have already gone too far. Global concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached 394 parts per million, up from 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution and the highest levels seen in at least 800,000 years. Hansen's math suggests 350 ppm would be a safer level, given that with less than a degree Celsius of warming from present greenhouse gas concentrations, the world is already losing ice at an alarming rate, among other faster-than-expected climate changes.

International governments have determined that 450 ppm is a number more to their liking, which, it is argued, will keep the globe's average temperatures from warming more than 2 degrees C. Regardless, the world is presently on track to achieve concentrations well above that number. Scientists since chemist Svante Arrhenius of Sweden in 1896 have noted that reaching concentrations of roughly 560 ppm would likely result in a world with average temperatures roughly 3 degrees C warmer—and subsequent estimates continue to bear his laborious, hand-written calculations out. Of course, rolling back greenhouse gas concentrations to Hansen's preferred 350 ppm—or any other number for that matter—is a profoundly unnatural idea. Stasis is not often found in the natural world.

Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may not be the best metric for combating climate change anyway. "What matters is our total emission rate," notes climate modeler Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, another signee of the anti-Keystone letter. "From the perspective of the climate system, a CO2 molecule is a CO2 molecule and it doesn't matter if it came from coal versus natural gas."

Physicist Myles Allen of the University of Oxford in England and colleagues estimated that the world could afford to put one trillion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere by 2050 to have any chance of restraining global warming below 2 degrees C. To date, fossil fuel burning, deforestation and other actions have put nearly 570 billion metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere—and Allen estimates the trillionth metric ton of carbon will be emitted around the summer of 2041 at present rates. "Tons of carbon is fundamental," adds Hansen, who has argued that burning all available fossil fuels would result in global warming of more than 10 degrees C. "It does not matter much how fast you burn it."

Alberta's oil sands represent a significant tonnage of carbon. With today's technology there are roughly 170 billion barrels of oil to be recovered in the tar sands, and an additional 1.63 trillion barrels worth underground if every last bit of bitumen could be separated from sand. "The amount of CO2 locked up in Alberta tar sands is enormous," notes mechanical engineer John Abraham of the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota, another signer of the Keystone protest letter from scientists. "If we burn all the tar sand oil, the temperature rise, just from burning that tar sand, will be half of what we've already seen"—an estimated additional nearly 0.4 degree C from Alberta alone.

As it stands, the oil sands industry has greenhouse gas emissions greater than New Zealand and Kenya—combined. If all the bitumen in those sands could be burned, another 240 billion metric tons of carbon would be added to the atmosphere and, even if just the oil sands recoverable with today's technology get burned, 22 billion metric tons of carbon would reach the sky. And reserves usually expand over time as technology develops, otherwise the world would have run out of recoverable oil long ago.

The greenhouse gas emissions of mining and upgrading tar sands is roughly 79 kilograms per barrel of oil presently, whereas melting out the bitumen in place requires burning a lot of natural gas—boosting emissions to more than 116 kilograms per barrel, according to oil industry consultants IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates. All told, producing and processing tar sands oil results in roughly 14 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the average oil used in the U.S. And greenhouse gas emissions per barrel have stopped improving and started increasing slightly, thanks to increasing development of greenhouse gas–intensive melting-in-place projects. "Emissions have doubled since 1990 and will double again by 2020," says Jennifer Grant, director of oil sands research at environmental group Pembina Institute in Canada.

Just one mine expansion, Shell's Jackpine mine, currently under consideration for the Albian mega-mine site, would increase greenhouse gas emissions by 1.18 million metric tons per year. "If Keystone is approved then we're locking in a several more decades of dependence on fossil fuels," says climate modeler Daniel Harvey of the University of Toronto. "That means higher CO2 emissions, higher concentrations [in the atmosphere] and greater warming that our children and grandchildren have to deal with."

And then there's all the carbon that has to come out of the bitumen to turn it into a usable crude oil.

Hidden carbon
In the U.S. State Department's review of the potential environmental impacts of the Keystone project, consultants EnSys Energy suggested that building the pipeline would not have "any significant impact" on greenhouse gas emissions, largely because Canada's tar sands would likely be developed anyway. But the Keystone pipeline represents the ability to carry away an additional 830,000 barrels per day—and the Albertan tar sands are already bumping up against constraints in the ability to move their product. That has led some to begin shipping the oil by train, truck and barge—further increasing the greenhouse gas emissions—and there is a proposal to build a new rail line, capable of carrying five million barrels of oil per year from Fort McMurray to Alaska's Valdez oil terminal.

Then there's the carbon hidden in the bitumen itself. Either near oil sands mines in the mini-refineries known as upgraders or farther south after the bitumen has reached Midwestern or Gulf Coast refineries, its long, tarry hydrocarbon chains are cracked into the shorter, lighter hydrocarbons used as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The residue of this process is a nearly pure black carbon known as petroleum (pet) coke that, if it builds up, has to be blasted loose, as if mining for coal in industrial equipment. The coke is, in fact, a kind of coal and is often burned in the dirtiest fossil fuel's stead. Canadian tar sands upgraders produce roughly 10 million metric tons of the stuff annually, whereas U.S. refineries pump out more than 61 million metric tons per year.

Pet coke is possibly the dirtiest fossil fuel available, emitting at least 30 percent more CO2 per ton than an equivalent amount of the lowest quality mined coals. According to multiple reports from independent analysts, the production (and eventual burning) of such petroleum coke is not included in industry estimates of tar sands greenhouse gas emissions because it is a co-product. Even without it, the Congressional Research Service estimates that tar sands oil results in at least 14 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than do more conventional crude oils.

Although tar sands may be among the least climate-friendly oil produced at present—edging out alternatives such as fracking for oil trapped in shale deposits in North Dakota and flaring the gas—the industry has made attempts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, unlike other oil-producing regions. For example, there are alternatives to cracking bitumen and making pet coke, albeit more expensive ones, such as adding hydrogen to the cracked bitumen, a process that leaves little carbon behind, employed by Shell, among others.

More recently, Shell has begun adding carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS) technology to capture the emissions from a few of its own upgraders, a project known as Quest. The program, when completed in 2015, will aim to capture and store one million metric tons of CO2 per year, or a little more than a third of the CO2 emissions of Shell's operation at that site. And tar sands producers do face a price on carbon—$15 per metric ton by Alberta provincial regulation—for any emissions above a goal of reducing by 12 percent the total amount of greenhouse gas emitted per total number of barrels produced.

The funds collected—some $312 million to date—are then used to invest in clean technology, but more than 75 percent of the projects are focused on reducing emissions from oil sands, unconventional oils and other fossil fuels. And to drive more companies to implement CCS in the oil sands would require a carbon price of $100 per metric ton or more. "We don't have a price on carbon in the province that is compelling companies to pursue CCS," Pembina's Grant argues.

In fact, Alberta's carbon price may be little more than political cover. "It gives us some ammunition when people attack us for our carbon footprint, if nothing else," former Alberta Energy Minister Ron Liepert told Scientific American in September 2011. Adds Beverly Yee, assistant deputy minister at Alberta's Environment and Sustainable Resource Development agency, more recently, "Greenhouse gases? We don't see that as a regional issue." From the individual driver in the U.S. to oil sands workers and on up to the highest echelons of government in North America, everyone dodges responsibility.

Price of carbon
A true price on carbon, one that incorporates all the damages that could be inflicted by catastrophic climate change, is exactly what Hansen believes is needed to ensure that more fossil fuels, like the tar sands, stay buried. In his preferred scheme, a price on carbon that slowly ratcheted up would be collected either where the fossil fuel comes out of the ground or enters a given country, such as at a port. But instead of that tax filling government coffers, the collected revenue should be rebated in full to all legal residents in equal amounts—an approach he calls fee and dividend. "Not one penny to reducing the national debt or off-setting some other tax," the government scientist argues. "Those are euphemisms for giving the money to government, allowing them to spend more."

Such a carbon tax would make fossil fuels more expensive than alternatives, whether renewable resources such as wind and sun or low-carbon nuclear power. As a result, these latter technologies might begin to displace things like coal-burning power plants or halt major investments in oil infrastructure like the Keystone XL pipeline.

As it stands, producing 1.8 million barrels per day of tar sands oil resulted in the emissions of some 47.1 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent in 2011, up nearly 2 percent from the year before and still growing, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. In the same year coal-fired power plants in the U.S. emitted more than two billion metric tons of CO2-equivalent. "If you think that using other petroleum sources is much better [than tar sands], then you're delusional," says chemical engineer Murray Gray, scientific director of the Center for Oil Sands Innovation at the University of Alberta.

In other words, tar sands are just a part of the fossil-fuel addiction—but still an important part. Projects either approved or under construction would expand tar sands production to over five million barrels per day by 2030. "Any expansion of an energy system that relies on the atmosphere to be its waste dump is bad news, whereas expansion of safe, affordable and environmentally acceptable energy technologies is good news," Carnegie's Caldeira says.

There's a lot of bad news these days then, from fracking shale for gas and oil in the U.S. to new coal mines in China. Oxford's Allen calculates that the world needs to begin reducing emissions by roughly 2.5 percent per year, starting now, in order to hit the trillion metric ton target by 2050. Instead emissions hit a new record this past year, increasing 3 percent to 34.7 billion metric tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Stopping even more bad news is why Hansen expects to be arrested again, whether at a protest against mountaintop removal mining for coal in West Virginia or a sit-in outside the White House to convince the Obama administration to say no to Keystone XL and any expansion of the tar sands industry. The Obama administration has already approved the southern half of the pipeline proposal—and if the northern link is approved, a decision expected after March of this year, environmental group Oil Change International estimates that tar sands refined on the Gulf Coast would produce 16.6 million metric tons of CO2 annually just from the petroleum coke, which would be enough to fuel five coal-fired power plants for a year. All told, the increased tar sands production as a result of opening Keystone would be equal to opening six new coal-fired power plants, according to Pembina Institute calculations.

Even as increased oil production in the U.S. diminishes the demand for tar sands-derived fuel domestically, if Keystone reaches the Gulf Coast, that oil will still be refined and exported. At the same time, Obama pledged to respond to climate change and argued for U.S. leadership in the transition to "sustainable energy sources" during his second inaugural address; approving Keystone might lead in the opposite direction.

For the tar sands "the climate forcing per unit energy is higher than most fossil fuels," argues Hansen, who believes he is fighting for the global climate his five grandchildren will endure—or enjoy. After all, none of his grandchildren have lived through a month with colder than average daily temperatures. There has not been one in the U.S. since February 1985, before even Hansen started testifying on global warming. As he says: "Going after tar sands—incredibly dirty, destroying the local environment for a very carbon-intensive fuel—is the sign of a terribly crazed addict."


Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Enough is Enough - Book Review

Yesterday I posted a piece with excerpts from a new book titled,  Enough is Enough.  The book makes the case that the economy we have must change. It requires constant growth to thrive, and that is no longer possible.




Anyway, I got a copy of this book Enough is Enough, and I just finished reading it. The facts seem irrefutable.

Humanity's ecological footprint is 50 percent larger than global ecosystems can accommodate. We can only continue consuming at our current rate by liquidating the planet's natural resources and overwhelming its waste absorption capacity.

Economists Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill, the book's authors,  say that humanity must learn to live within its means, and that requires a transition to what they call a 'steady-state' economy. What is a steady-state economy?
 
A steady state economy is an economy with ENOUGH as its goal. It prioritizes well-being over consumption

The four main features of a steady-state economy are:  sustainable scale; fair distribution of income and wealth; efficient allocation of limited resources; and a high quality of life for all citizens.

Dietz and O'Neill offer a well-considered set of ideas and policy steps that can lead to a world that provides Enough for all without breaking the biosphere.

Here's the rub.  We currently have a seriously dysfunctional economic system that exploits the many in favor of a very small number of rich and powerful plutocrats.  Right now, in the U.S., the richest one half of one percent have more wealth than the bottom forty percent of Americans combined. We have a political system that feeds on money.  He who has the money makes the rules and controls the institutions that shape society.  That's how it is. The current economy works very well for rich folks and the sycophants that serve them. The wealthy control industry, finance, the media, the military, and our system of governance, including the congress and the judiciary.  They have manipulated these institutions to serve their narrow, self-aggrandizing worldview.  These  'powers-that-be' are not interested in changing. The systems they have shaped suit them just fine.  They are in total denial about the consequences of the constant-growth economic paradigm that they aggressively pursue.

Enough is Enough is an important book.  The authors acknowledge that supplanting the current, constant growth order will be extremely difficult.  They say it will likely take a serious crisis to facilitate change. They say that educating the masses about the virtues of steady-state economics is critical. Until the grass roots understands that there is a socially and environmentally responsible alternative to business as usual, the only thing that is assured is continued human suffering and continued erosion of the biosphere.   The entrenched sociopaths that champion the current system know they are under assault, They employ every malodorous tool at their disposal to resist  any kind of meaningful change.  

Humans depend on the natural world for survival. An economy built on steady state principles is an economy that resonates with that dependence.  

Enough is Enough contributes mightily to the dialogue needed to create the powerful, broad based grass roots movement that must come in order to force rich and mighty self-interests to yield to a new, steady state economic order.

Rob Dietz is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy.  The link to their website is  http://steadystate.org/




Saturday, February 2, 2013

Enough is Enough

I just got this book and started to read it. The ideas it is built on resonate very strongly with me.The following excerpt from the book, Enough is Enough just appeared on the Alternet webpage. The premise this book is built on is a no brainer. There are too many of us and we are devastating the fabric of life on our planet.  We must learn to live within our Earth's ability to provide.  I will report further on this book after I have finished reading it. 


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How Our Growth-Hungry Economy Has Devastated the Planet -- And How We Can Change Course


The following is an excerpt from Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources [3] by Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill (Berrett-Koehler, 2013).

To appreciate why an economy based on enough is worth striving for, it is useful to examine the failings of an economy that forever chases more. It’s no secret that the dominant economic philosophy of modernity is more—more people and more production, more money and more consumption. Employees try to earn more income, business managers try to report more revenue on the balance sheet, and politicians try to ensure that the economy churns out more goods and services. On the surface, more seems like a good idea. For an employee, more money can mean financial security; for a business manager, more revenue can result in a promotion; and for a politician, more national income can generate votes in the next election. But if you dig beneath the surface, you begin to uncover the fatal flaws of more.

The main problem with pursuing never-ending growth stems from the fact that the economy is a subsystem of the biosphere. All of the inputs to the economy come from the environment, and all of the wastes produced by it return to the environment. As the economy expands, it consumes more materials and energy, and emits more wastes. But since we live on a finite planet, this process can’t go on forever. Like an inner tube inside a tire, the subsystem can only grow so large compared to the system that contains it.

The size of the economy is typically measured using gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is the total amount of money spent on all final goods and services produced within a country over the course of a year. Since one person’s spending is another person’s income, GDP is also the total income of everyone in the country. GDP functions as an indicator of the overall level of economic activity—of money changing hands. Economic growth, as reported in the media at least, refers to GDP growth, which is equivalent to an increase in the amount of money changing hands.

A helpful place to turn for a long-term perspective on GDP growth is the work of economic historian Angus Maddison. During his distinguished career, Maddison compiled a remarkable data series on population and GDP starting in the year 1 c.e. and running to 2008.

For most of human history, the size of the economy was small compared to the size of the biosphere. But over the last hundred years or so, this balance has changed remarkably owing to the increase in the number of people in the world and the growth in each person’s consumption of goods and services.

Between 1900 and 2008, world population increased from 1.5 billion to 6.8 billion people—more than a factor-of-four increase. At the same time, GDP per capita increased from $1,260 to $7,600—a factor-of-six increase. The result is that world GDP increased by an astounding factor of more than twenty-five over the last century, from about $2 trillion to $51 trillion (and this is after adjusting for inflation).

On its own, an increase in GDP would not be a problem, except that economic activity is tied very closely to energy and resource use. As GDP increases, the economy requires more energy and resources, and produces more wastes. While Maddison’s work provides a picture of the phenomenal growth of GDP, the work of ecological economists provides a picture of the growth in material and energy use that has accompanied it. As a result of GDP growth, humanity now uses eleven times as much energy, and eight times the weight of material resources every year as it did only a century ago. And most of this increase has occurred in the last fifty years.

The connection between GDP and the use of materials and energy raises a subtle but important point. When we discuss “economic growth” in this book, what we’re really concerned with is not GDP growth per se, but the increase in material and energy use that comes with GDP growth. Ultimately, the flow of materials and energy is what impacts ecosystems, not the exchange of dollars and cents (although the latter drives the process).

What is the environmental upshot of this growth? Plenty of evidence suggests that the global economy is now so large that it is undermining the natural systems on which it depends. This evidence presents itself as a wide range of global environmental problems: climate change, biodiversity loss, stratospheric ozone depletion, deforestation, soil degradation, collapsed fisheries—the list goes on.

In a landmark study published in 2009, Johan Rockström and his colleagues at the Stockholm Resilience Centre showed that the economy is placing an excessive burden on the biosphere. In reaching their conclusion, the researchers analyzed nine planetary processes that profoundly influence life on earth:

1. Climate change
2. Biodiversity loss
3. Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles
4. Stratospheric ozone depletion
5. Ocean acidification
6. Global freshwater use
7. Changes in land use
8. Atmospheric aerosol loading
9. Chemical pollution

Where sufficient data allowed, the authors of the study determined how far humanity could go in altering these processes and still avoid dangerous levels of disruption. They were able to define “safe operating boundaries” for the first seven processes in the list above. A safe operating boundary is a sort of safety threshold—stay below it, and humanity incurs a low risk of abrupt and hazardous environmental change; go beyond it, and humanity faces a high risk. For three of the planetary processes (climate change, biodiversity loss, and the nitrogen cycle), humanity is now exceeding the planet’s safe operating boundary, and by a large margin in some cases. The potential consequences are severe: the authors warn that transgressing one or more of the planetary boundaries could lead to catastrophic changes at the continental to planetary scale.



Figure 2.3. Humanity is exceeding the safe operating boundary for three planetary processes: climate change, biodiversity loss, and the nitrogen cycle. Biodiversity loss is so far beyond the safe operating boundary that there's not enough space to draw it on this chart. Note that the safe operating boundary is measured differently for each planetary process.

Other analyses, such as those conducted by the Global Footprint Network, corroborate the Rockström study. The ecological footprint is a measure of how much biologically productive land and water area a population requires to produce the resources it consumes and absorb the wastes it generates.

According to the latest data, humanity uses 50 percent more resources than the earth can regenerate over the course of the year. This situation is called “ecological overshoot,” and it’s akin to living in debt. We can only continue to consume at our current rate by liquidating the planet’s natural resources or overwhelming its waste absorption capacities. For example, we can cut forests faster than they can grow back and emit carbon dioxide faster than it can be absorbed by oceans and forests. Although we can behave in this way for a short time, ecological overshoot ultimately depletes the resources on which our economies and societies depend.

Indicators like the ecological footprint and scientific analyses like the planetary boundaries study suggest that the global economy has become too large for the encompassing biosphere. So long as this situation continues, we are risking environmental catastrophe. Even if we manage to avoid environmental collapse, the steady depletion of resources threatens to reduce the long-term carrying capacity of the planet, and with it the capability of future generations to flourish.

This unsettling state of affairs is causing some well-known advocates of economic growth to question their long-held views. Robert Solow, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1987 for his theories on economic growth, has said, “It is possible that the United States and Europe will find that, as the decades go by, either continued growth will be too destructive to the environment and they are too dependent on scarce natural resources, or that they would rather use increasing productivity in the form of leisure.” Economic journalist Thomas Friedman questions growth further. He asks, “What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall—when Mother Nature and the market both said: ‘No more.’”

Excerpted  from Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources [3]by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill © Robert Dietz and Daniel O’Neill 2013