A few weeks ago I walked into my local supermarket to see that a 10 oz. bar of cheese was “on sale” for $5.39. I did a double take–maybe they meant two bars of cheese for $5.39. Generally, the sale on that brand of cheese is 2 for $4.00 or 2 for $5.00, but sure enough this was somehow supposed to be a sale. I’ve been complaining about this since last year–the cost of food is soaring. Last year, I could generally get out of the supermarket paying around $65-85.00 for two people, now I’m paying $90.00 or more. The higher prices seem to apply across the board–fresh produce, canned foods, flour/rice, and most dramatically dairy. Of course, I’m fortunate to be able to suck it up and pay the higher prices, but many lower income folks in this country and other wealthy countries are struggling, and in poorer countries, people are taking to the streets in protest because they are unable to feed their families.

A quick search of Google news indicates that we really are in a world wide food crisis. I’m not so sure that there is an actually shortage of food, but the crisis appears to be the cost. Some of the countries where people are struggling with soaring food prices, include–Afghanistan, Haiti, South Africa, Namibia, New Zealand, Ivory Coast, and numerous others. The situation is getting so serious that the United Nations (and the World Bank) weighed in last week :

The head of the UN World Food Programme has warned that the rise in basic food costs could continue until 2010.

Josette Sheeran blamed soaring energy and grain prices, the effects of climate change and demand for biofuels.

Ms Sheeran has already warned that the WFP is considering plans to ration food aid due to a shortage of funds.

Some food prices rose 40% last year, and the WFP fears the world’s poorest will buy less food, less nutritious food or be forced to rely on aid.

Speaking after briefing the European Parliament, Ms Sheeran said the agency needed an extra $375m (244m euros; £187m) for food projects this year and $125m (81m euros; £93m) to transport it.

She said she saw no quick solution to high food and fuel costs.

“The assessment is that we are facing high food prices at least for the next couple of years,” she said.

Ms Sheeran said global food reserves were at their lowest level in 30 years - with enough to cover the need for emergency deliveries for 53 days, compared with 169 days in 2007.

Several factors have been cited as causes for the food price crisis including: rising fuel cost, the shift towards biofuels (e.g. ethanol), population growth, the growth of capitalist economies, and weather patterns. The greatest criticism in the range of articles I read has been reserved for government subsidies for bio-fuels, specifically ethanol. Many feel that the shift to ethanol and bio-fuels is environmentally harmful, but now we can add soaring food prices and hunger to the list of arguments against bio-fuels1.

1. If you want more information of about the food crisis, these graphs from the BBC website have useful information about the food price crisis. The only additional point I would add is that (see the chart of trade balances) while some countries like the US will benefit in the area of trade, I don’t think that the average American is benefiting from this. A few corporate farmers may be getting rich, but the vast majority of people are hurting. We’re not hurting anywhere near as much as poor people in poor countries. (back)

The Union express, the paper of the National Distribution Union, is one of the better union newspapers in New Zealand. But there was an appalling article about climate change in their latest issue (not available on-line but it’s February-April 2008 with a Bunnings protest on the front cover). I think it typifies what is ridiculous about much discussion about the environment.

The article is called Be The Change and is based on the website of the same name.

My main objection is to the section called Save Money and the Planet, which gave all sorts of advice about what union members could do. Much of the advice assumed that you own your own home, and have capital to make upgrades, with suggestions to install insulation, and consider solar water heating. Then there’s the advice to turn off your heated towel rail and your second fridge.*

I am angry to read this nonsense in a union magazine, which is going to some of the lowest paid workers in the country. While some of NDU workplaces, such as mills, are well paid enough that workers might own their own home and a heated towel rail, many are not.

I regularly turn off my hot water heater, not for energy efficiency reasons, because it’s the only way I can pay my electricity bill. The idea that workers need to be lectured at how to save electricity is ridiculous. Low paid people know from saving money. What they don’t have is capital, some people can’t afford to buy a $6 light bulb now to save $20 over the course of the year.

There was nothing about landlords and government’s responsibility to provide better quality housing, and what unions are doing about that (which is probably because the answer is ‘nothing’). There wasn’t even any information about the schemes that some councils are running which subsidise landlords to install heat-pumps and installation.

I would expect a union magazine to be the one place you could find discussion of environmental issues that goes beyond individualistic moralising. That it didn’t, that all the Union Express had to say was the banal ‘be the change’ is a really bad sign. Recently discussion about climate change and carbon footprints have gone mainstream. Airlines and power companies want us to believe if we do our little bit then everything will be fine. Some environmentalists seem to see this as a victory, but it’s not, it’s distraction and co-option. Individuals can’t save the planet, anymore than they can end war. The way the world’s resources are used is not decided by consumers, but at by companies at the point of production. Action around climate change which ignores this isn’t so much rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic, but telling the passengers to lose weight so it’ll sink slower.

* It makes me want to write a whole series of climate change advice in a similar vein: “Turn off the heating system in your spa pool when you are going to be away for a few days. Consider an energy efficient air conditioning system for your second home.” etc.

The BBC reports new discoveries in the field of animal research:

The study found African elephants reacted with fear when they detected the scent of garments previously worn by men of the Maasai tribe.

Maasai men are known to demonstrate their virility by spearing elephants… The elephants also responded aggressively to red clothing, which is characteristic of traditional Maasai dress.

However, the elephants showed much milder reaction to clothing previously worn by the Kamba people, agriculturalists who pose little threat.

The psychologists said they had expected to find elephants might be able to distinguish among different human groups according to the level of risk they posed.

They said: “We were not disappointed. In fact, we think that this is the first time that it has been experimentally shown that any animal can categorise a single species of potential predator into subclasses based on such subtle cues.”

It’s interesting that the article is focusing on the Massai as hunters, as Westerners have long held up the Massai as the quintessential “noble savage.” I don’t think the article or the study are playing into that, but it catches my eye to see them being used in the role of “fearsome hunter.”

Another thing I found striking: the elephants will run from any red clothing, but they’ll run farther and faster from red clothing that also carries the odor of Massai men than they will from red clothing that has been worn by members of another African group.

How do the elephants get this knowledge? Is it all experiential, or do they pass it down as they do knowledge about things like where mineral deposits that they need to acquire vitamins are?

And I had no idea that different ethnic groups had detectably different smells. Diet, I assume? And other lifestyle factors. I didn’t realize the divides in lifestyle were still large enough to produce that effect, although it makes sense, particularly in the context of something like one group’s continued tradition of hunting elephants.

Can’t decide if I like or hate the backgrounds.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

I’ve written very briefly about climate change once before. It’s not an issue I follow much, because it often invokes an “ARGH we’re all doomed lets spend these last few days we have watching Buffy” response in me. But what has really frustrated me is how easily efforts to fight climate change have been co-opted by industry.

On Tuesday Checkpoint (a national NZ radio show) had an interview with someone from the trucking industry, about how the trucking industry thinks we should fight climate change. Now lets take a moment to point out that if we’re going to move cargo in the most efficient way possible, then trucking is pretty much out.¹ The only things worse than trucking is flying; rail and sea are much more efficient.

So if the trucking industry shrank considerably then that would help lower carbon emissions straight away. What did the trucking industry suggest?

1. The government should change the depreciation rates on trucks so that trucking companies can buy newer, more efficient, truck soon.

2. The government should invest in the road system, because if trucks are in traffic they’re wasting carbon.

3. Change the safety rules so that trucks can carry more cargo and be more efficient.

What do we notice about these rules. Well the first thing is that 1 & 2 would only save carbon emission if you were able to make truck and road building carbon neutral. I don’t know what sort of carbon emissions road building creates, but I do know that metal production creates a shit-load of carbon emission.

But as well as not being at all useful, all of these changes are things the industry were wanting anyway, and have just dressed up as helping reduce emissions (which they wouldn’t).

Note for comments, this is not supposed to be another generic thread on climate change. The topic is how (or whether) industry co-opts ideas of climate change

1. To what extent can we afford to move cargo at all? Is it another part of our lifestyle which will result in the sea rising and the penguins dying? I’m not even going to begin to answer those questions. But would recommend watching Innocence while you still can. (back)

From the Gannett News Service:

House Republican Leader John Boehner would have appointed Rep. Wayne Gilchrest to the bipartisan Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming — but only if the Maryland Republican would say humans are not causing climate change, Gilchrest said.

“I said, ‘John, I can’t do that,’ ” Gilchrest, R-1st-Md., said in an interview. […]

Gilchrest didn’t make the committee. Neither did other Republican moderates or science-minded members, whose guidance centrist GOP members usually seek on the issue. […]

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a research scientist from Maryland, and Michigan’s Rep. Vern Ehlers, the first research physicist to serve in Congress, also made cases for a seat, but weren’t appointed, he said.

“Roy Blunt said he didn’t think there was enough evidence to suggest that humans are causing global warming,” Gilchrest said. “Right there, holy cow, there’s like 9,000 scientists to three on that one.”

According to Raw Story, all six Republican choices to sit on the panel are global warming denialists. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the ranking minority member of the committee, said in a statement: “Recent fluctuations in the Earth’s climates and temperatures have led to numerous sensational headlines describing an eminent doomsday scenario.”¹

Fortunately, the six Republican denialists will be outnumbered on the committee by nine Democrats who haven’t been actively selected for their anti-reality delusions, so maybe this committee could actually get something worthwhile done (although I have no illusions that anything the Dems propose will be enough). But still, it indicates a lot about the current corruption of the Republican party: it’s not just that they don’t select the best people for the job. They actually make being incompetent and stupid a requirement.

1. An “eminent” doomsday scenario? What is that, a doomsday scenario with an impeccable reputation compared to the other doomsday scenarios? The Representative needs office help who know the difference between “eminent” and “imminent.” Yeesh. (back)

A lot of blogging about Al Gore’s electricity, today. In a fairly typical example, Brian Doherty at Hit and Run writes:

…Gore’s whole deal is that civilization-saving absolutely and vitally requires an action on everyone’s part that he seems to refuse to do himself…

As I understand it, most of the changes that Gore calls for are more global than individual in nature. But in his own life, Gore attempts to lower his carbon usage — for instance, by driving a hybrid car, purchasing “green power,” and flying on commercial airlines when he can — and then buys carbon offsets to make up for the rest.

So that’s that Gore does himself. Now, what actions does Gore suggest everyone else take? Note the big lettering behind Gore in this screencap:

You can watch the full video here. Doherty’s accusation of hypocrisy appears unfounded; Gore isn’t asking more of the rest of us than he’s doing himself.

In addition to the Gristmill post I already linked to, which is excellent, Jim Henley and The Anonymous Liberal have good posts on this faux-controversy (or should I say FOX-controversy?). Curtsy to Robert Hayes, whose ad hom attack on Gore alerted me to this issue.

The Wellington inner-city bypass open yesterday. To non-Wellingtonians that won’t mean a lot. Those of us who live here it means a bit more than that. I learnt about the by-pass at age 8 when I went to a school outing to see the buildings that were going to be pulled down (it was a hippy school). My main objection has always been on historical grounds, and I’ll explore that in a litle more detail in another post, but I just want to talk briefly about the anti-bypass campaign and some of the issues around it.

The by-pass is part of a late 1970s motorway project where state highway 1 was brought into Wellington city (they dug up a cemetary to do it). There was some opposition to this road, and more opposition to the supposed by-pass that was going to be built next.

That road was delayed for thirty years. In this time there was on-going anti-bypass action, but it focused on two avenues - legal challenges and city council elections. Both strategies were ultimately useless.

Every three years we were told to vote for an anti bypass city council, and every three years this failed (the way the city council wards broke down it was always going to be difficult). T

The problem with these strategies is that there was no organising. There was an occasional public meeting and large march in September 2000, but the basic work of getting people who opposed the bypass together to take action, was not being done.

So come the end of 2004 the bypass started to be built and there was very little organised anti-bypass opposition, but quite a lot of anti-bypass feeling. A small group of people got together to try and do a direct action campaign to stop the bypass.

I want to make it clear that I was not someone who was prepared to step-up to oppose the by-pass (I just had a supporting role). So my reaction to those protests are not criticisms of the people involved (who were at least prepared to do work that I wasn’t), but just ideas that I have learned from watching this protest movement, and others (I plan to write a similar post on the problems of letting the media do our organising for us, about a couple of protest actions I was part of). I think by late 2004 it was probably too late to do the organising work necessary, and doubt things could have gone much differently at the time most of the anti-bypass protesters I know, got involved.

The strategy the 2004 anti-bypass group took, the strategy that I agree was most likely to succeed was to delay and disrupt the bypass and make it financially untenable for the sub-contractor. Most of the energy was put into people involved taking action, rather than getting new people involved (although there was some good organising going on throughout this time).

But I think it’s always problematic to only look about how you can win, without also looking at how you can make yourself stronger in the process. As it happened the group involved weren’t big enough to pull this strategy off. Most of the time we’re not strong enough to win right away. People who focus on the importance of winning each campaign¹ also appear to be most likely to burn-out, as they don’t win, and feel they’ve got nothing. We must see the fight for a better world as a marathon and not a sprint. Each protest movement must try and make active organised opposition to the society we live in just that little bit stronger.

The protests against the M11 in Britain show that organising against roading can be done, and even though those protests weren’t immediately successful they have had an impact on road-building in Britain (I have dial-up so I can’t guarantee the quality of this video - but if it’s the one I’m thinking of it’s well worth watching to see the level organising that is both possible, and necessary to make a difference).

1. A word I hate when referring to activism, it usually implies that a small group of people have got together in a room and decided how they can win a particular issue. Rather than focusing on organising, and allowing that no matter how smart a small group of people are they can’t predict what’ll happen when people get organised. (back)

An interesting, short (12 pages) .pdf paper , from a liberal think tank, argues that there would be significant environmental benefits if Americans lowered our work hours to match that of the wealthy European countries. From the paper’s conclusion:

If Americans chose to take advantage of their high level of productivity by shortening the workweek or taking longer vacations rather than producing more, there would follow a number of benefits.

Specifically, if the U.S. followed the EU-15 in terms of work hours, then:

• Employed workers would find themselves with seven additional weeks of time off.
• The United States would consume some 20 percent less energy.
• If a 20 percent energy savings had been directly translated into lower carbon emissions, then the U.S. would have emitted 3 percent less carbon dioxide in 2002 than it did in 1990.9 This level of emissions is only 4 percent above the negotiated target of the Kyoto Protocol.

On the flip side, there is political pressure within European countries to adopt a more American labor model. If Europeans did in fact give up their shorter workweeks and longer vacations, they would consume some additional 25 percent more energy. Translated into carbon emissions, this would have enormous consequences….

Shorter hours and fewer emmissions sounds like a good deal to me. No one is suggesting that shorter work hours are a stand-alone solution to the need to reduce negative impacts on the environment, but it could be part of a larger package of approaches.

Curtsy to MaxSpeak.

Ezra Klein asks, “What single piece of legislation would you most like to see enacted?”

Ezra’s answer:

I’ll go with Employee Free Choice Act, a bill restoring the right to organize, which is current de facto absent from the polity. It institutes card check, provides new avenues for mediation, and heavily stiffens penalties for illegal unionbusting. As I think all progressive legislation flows from a vibrant union movement, such a bill looks like the first step towards a restoration of progressive governance from which my other policy priorities could be achieved.

Bradford Plumer agrees with Ezra, and expands the argument a bit.

I’m tempted to agree with Brad and Ezra, because Ezra’s right — without a vital union movement, it’s hard to see how any progressive movement can be sustained in the US. I’d also be tempted to advocate a complete overhaul of the US’s electoral system — starting with the elimination of first-past-the-post elections, but also campaign finance — but I’m not sure that can properly be called a “single piece of legislation,” because it would probably require at least two Constitutional amendments.

However, if I had to choose one and only one, I think that I’d instead endorse directing billions of dollars a year towards non-carbon-based energy - meaning wind power, solar power, and nuclear power. It is plausible that we’re very near a point of no return on global warming - we may have only fifteen years to reverse course. There is no single issue that’s more urgent. And I’m not sure that unions — which, understandably, might not be interested in stopping global warming if it means the loss of some current manufacturing jobs¹ — are always going to be in the right place on this issue.

So that’s me. You?

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

1. I think that in the long run, investments in sustainable technology will create jobs. But unions are more concerned with existing jobs than with potential future jobs. (back)

• “Pimp my gimp.” Recent Doonesbury strips showing B.D.’s efforts to decorate his prosthetic leg are the latest in good crip giggles.

• Sage of Persephone’s Box has an announcement about blog color choices and the her ability to read what is offered. While we’re on the topic, I can’t remember who posted on it recently, but the CAPTCHA function for spam-proofing comments at many sites is troublesome for many of the sight-impaired. I’ve turned mine off and so far the spam on my little site is only about 2 per day.

• Dan Filler at Concurring Opinions has some legal thoughts on “Mental Illness and the Death Penalty,” followed by interesting comments.

• The Independent has an article on toxic garbage from Western nations poisoning West Africa:

All down the West Africa coast, ships registered in America and Europe unload containers filled with old computers, slops, and used medical equipment. Scrap merchants, corrupt politicians and underpaid civil servants take charge of this rubbish and, for a few dollars, will dump them off coastlines and on landfill sites.

• Another article in the same edition tells of the daily struggles of African women and how sexism and ableism work together to make life hard:

An HIV-positive woman is nearly 10 times as likely to experience violence at the hands of her partner as a woman who does not have the disease. Domestic violence causes more deaths and disability among women aged 15 to 44 worldwide than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war. In at least 20 African countries, more than half the women have also suffered female genital mutilation.

• The founder of a Swiss clinic offering assisted suicide for the terminally ill wants to widen the scope of elligible people to those who are depressed.

He claimed that such a move would help to cut the suicide rate to about 20 per cent to 25 per cent of its current level. “You could avoid the huge majority and reduce costs to the health services,” he said.

Apparently, if someone commits your suicide for you, it isn’t legally suicide. (True, btw. This also means family can cash in on insurance policytaken out on the dead person.)

• Lingual Tremors presents the impressive 23rd Carnival of Feminists on the theme of women and health care.

• A visually-impaired Atlantic City man sues the city and the “senior-transportation service” (I’m not sure why they call it that and not just paratransit like everyone else) because the driver arriving to pick him up in July, 2004, refused to let his guide dog on the bus. She was afraid of dogs.

• A respiratory disease called “popcorn lung” plagues workers in American factories where a chemical in artificial butter flavor is used on microwave popcorn.

• Some interesting Finnish blogs I can’t find a good page translator for. Anyone?

• Lene Andersen at The Seated View thinks about self-image versus objectivity and the words — like “deformity” — that can cut.

• Time magazine’s feature story, “Who pays for special ed?” begs for some disability blogging by those with more expertise than me on the squeeze between parents of disabled children and school districts feeling a desperate budget crunch.

• Larry Scott writes about the Republican plan for “Buying-out Disabled Veterans” with a lump-sum disability compensation and all the questions that brings up about eligibility for medical care through the VA.

• “The Meaning of Deafness” discusses education for deaf students and the conflicting philosophies parents of young children must chose between.

• Rochelle Gregory at Points of Praxis looks at the documentary Autism Everyday,the purpose the film is meant to serve and the disability rights critique of it.

Crossposted at The Gimp Parade

This week i’m writing a letter that i don’t get to write very often - a thank you letter. As you may well be aware, on February 16, 2005 the Kyoto Protocol took effect in the 114 countries that ratified it. The US, as is well known, is not one of those countries. Many folks here in the US were pissed. After all, we have only 5% of the world’s population and yet we produce more than 25% of the world’s greenhouse gases.

One of the more notably pissed off citizens was Seattle’s Mayor Nickels. But rather than just hold a press conference to express his rage, he decided to organize. On March 30, 2005 Nickels and nine other mayors across the US, representing more than 3 million people, sent a letter to more than 400 US mayors asking them to take action to stop global climate change. On June 13, 2005 the Mayors Climate Protection Act was passed unanimously by the US Conference of Mayors. As of today, 279 mayors, representing 48.5 million people, have signed on to the agreement, including my own mayor, Mark Kruzan.

So today i’m taking the time to write a letter to the mayor thanking him for taking action to protect the planet that gives us life. If you would like to know if your mayor has signed the agreement, just enter your zipcode on stopglobalwarming.org. If your mayor has not signed the agreement, there is a button you can push that will send a pre-written email to them urging them to sign.

If you would like more information about global climate change, you can get started at OneWorld.net’s Climate Change 101. By the way, the most effective ways for you to take persynal action to stop global climate change are to drive less and bike more, eat locally grown foods, and go vegan. Stopglobalwarming.org has lots of other ways to help out (most are much easier, but not as effective). And if you want a very informative look at how your living choices effect the ecosystem, check out the Earth Day Footprint Quiz.

We got a few quick letters this week to make up for my absence last week. First, brownfemipower brings us an email writing campaign from the United Farm Workers about the animal abuse at Threemile Canyon Farm. To make things interesting, supervisors at the dairy “farm” (i use that term lightly here) have been passing around a petition that denies that any animal abuse has taken place. Well, they have the right to petition, but what they don’t have the right to do is to threaten to fire any worker that doesn’t sign the petition. If you want some testimony from workers about the animal abuse and some of the legal background, you can check out the Humane Farming Association’s report [pdf].

Also on the worker front, but this time from Earthjustice, we have another email writing campaign. The EPA has proposed the phase-out of Azinphos Methyl and Phosmet over the next four years. Here’s what Earthjustice has to say about these two pesticides:

Five years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency found that two pesticides — azinphos methyl and phosmet — pose “unacceptable” poisoning risks to workers exposed to them when they work in orchards. These two pesticides are highly toxic neurotoxins, derived from nerve agents used during World War II, and attack the human nervous system. Exposure can cause nausea, dizziness, vomiting, seizures, paralysis, loss of mental function, and even death. Farmworker families and communities are exposed to organophosphates through “take-home” exposures on clothing, cars, and skin.

The EPA is now holding a comment period to hear from the public. They have already waited five years to even think about taking action to protect workers, don’t let them wait any longer.

And last but certainly not least, another campaign from the UFW. As we all know, its been a hot summer. A really hot summer. But most of us don’t have to spend the day bent over in the middle of a field without so much as a tree within walking distance. That’s the fate of many California farmworkers. And that’s why on June 15, the state issued the first permanent heat stress regulation in the country. The regulation states that companies must provide workers with shade, water, training for working safely in the heat, and the right to take paid breaks when feeling the effects of such high temperatures. This was a huge victory for farmworkers, but of course its not an easy one.

Carl Borden, a lawyer for the California Farm Bureau, told a newspaper, “That could pose compliance issues for employers in certain situations where you may have dozens [and] dozens of employees out there working (and asking for shade) and essentially it requires the erection of a number of shade canopies, for example…That can be somewhat daunting if we’re talking about a field situation.” Cry me a river, Mr. Borden. Is it really asking that much for agribusiness companies to take some of the billions of taxpayer subsidies they’ve received to buy a few tents? Its in their interest, too. At least six California farmworkers have died this summer because of the heat. And it doesn’t take a genius to know that a living farmworker can harvest more produce than a dead one. But the California Farm Bureau is not Mensa, its a bunch of lawyers and, well, bureaucrats, so they need you to send them an email to inform them that you are paying them to treat their workers fairly, not so they can buy themselves a second Hummer.

The proposal for a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain is back in the news, as the Department of Energy moves forward with plans, people turn their attention to nuclear power as an alternative to increasingly expensive oil, and a proposal to make Nevada the second contest of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary gains steam. I don’t have a strong view about the substantive merits of centralized versus dispersed storage of nuclear waste, or the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site on engineering grounds. What I do have an opinion on is whether the current approach to establishing a centralized repository at that site is a good one.

To some degree, the dispute over Yucca Mountain is a technical dispute over what the real level of risk is. But it also goes deeper, so that purely technical debate about milirems and geological stability will not resolve the issue. The deeper dispute arises from the fact that there are two ways of looking at what makes a risk acceptable, which I’ll call the “economic paradigm” and the “social paradigm.” Each paradigm can be treated as a descriptive theory (how actual people actually do think about risks) or as a normative theory (how people should think about risks).

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a pretty sorry excuse for a blogger, since I’m only just now getting around to commenting on a much-blogged article by Daniel Gilbert about climate change. Gilbert argues that people aren’t concerned about climate change, because people all have certain evolved cognitive biases.

The problem is that it’s not “people” who are unconcerned about climate change, because many people are concerned. Any psychologically worthwhile theory of risk perception must be able to recognize the diversity of views and account for both the skeptics and the alarmists.

Read the rest of this entry »

David Barash thinks that creating human-ape hybrids would be a great way to strike a blow for truth and reason. His main motivation is to disprove creationism — though how designing a new creature will prove evolution escapes me. More interesting to me was his secondary claim that such hybrids would also promote a stronger environmental ethic:

Read the rest of this entry »

I guess you have to give John Howard credit for being honest. The Aussie PM is excited about the prospect of Australia becoming an “energy superpower” by expanding its share of the fossil fuel market. Howard rejects not only the Kyoto Protocol but also any alternative (such as a carbon tax) other than end-of-the-pipe carbon cleanup technology. Burning fossil fuels comes first, because that’s what will make Australia rich. Protecting the environment can’t be allowed to interfere.

Australia is well placed to be an innovator in clean energy, with its cloudless skies and wide-open spaces ready for solar and wind power. But those kind of innovations won’t make money right away for established mining companies, and Howard is clear on whose back he’s watching.

Howard repeatedly cites “pragmatism” as a reason to focus on older forms of energy. It’s a common rhetorical trick, portraying older energy technologies as known quantities while renewable energy is speculative and risky. The problem is, if we demand that our energy source be clean — which Howard gives lip service to — the plausibility of that claim goes out the window. Is it really “pragmatic” to aim for a massive engineering fix that will turn dirty energy technologies into clean ones, but not “pragmatic” to expand the use of already-existing technologies that are intrinsically clean?

Cross-posted at debitage

I used to live in the Southern Appalachian mountains. While there, i became aware of the struggles going on in coal country. It was while involved in these struggles that i learned of the true hystory of the term Redneck. Before, i had believed that the word was a derogatory term for farmworkers. Now, i know that it was the name of the coal miners who took over Blair Mountain in the Fall of 1921. One of the largest armed uprising in US hystory, some 10,000 coal miners confronted state and federal troops in an attempt to unionize the coal mines of West Virginia. The month-long battle was deemed the Red Neck Wars because of the red bandanas that the miners wore around their necks. One of the most notable of the battle’s union organizers was Mother Jones.

Although the miners lost the battle and more than 900 were indicted, they never lost their spirit for struggle and justice. To this day, the coal fields remain a tense ground for struggle between miners, the corporate executives, and coal company thugs (yup, they still got their own thugs).

One things that has changed, however, is the battle. While safety standards remain high on the list of priorities, a new era in coal mining has brought together union and environmental activist. The new foe, mountaintop removal (referred to as strip mining by the industry), threatens the region’s biosphere on a very large scale by cutting off the tops of mountains to access coal and filling nearby valleys with the rocks and soil removed. To see one of these projects up close is heart-wrenching.

As you can imagine, the soil is completely destroyed leaving the land unable to regenerate. So what do you put in nature’s place? Coal companies have a quick response to that one: the new flat ground is perfect for a Walmart or a new prison facility. And that is exactly how the industry is marketing these newely destroyed lands to local and state officials.

Unfortunately, that is also the future for the coal miners, as well. With mountaintop removal, a job that used to take over a hundred people can now be done with just three low-skilled workers. This has reeked havoc on union membership and the ability of the union to increase health and safety standards. Coal companies are also finding it easier to undermine unions by exploiting the undocumented immigrant workforce. Considering the fact that mountaintop removal has destroyed not only land but also homes, schools, roads and entire towns, the many former coal miners that are unable to find work as Walmart greeters or prison guards are sure to find themselves filling one of the privately-owned prison cells.

This week’s letter will not be written to the coal companies. As powerful as they are, we will be writing to a far more powerful influence in our nation: Oprah. This month’s issue of O Magazine featured a story, entitled “You fight for what you got, even if its only worth a dime,” of some of the incredible wimmin in Appalachia who are standing up against the devastation of mountaintop removal. I’ve had the privilege of meeting and working with several of these wimmin and that’s why i want to continue to support them even if i no longer live in the area.

The letter-writing campaign is being organized by EarthJustice. It is a positive campaign in that it is meant to thank the people at the magazine for including the report, but also to encourage Oprah to have some of these wimmin on her show so that millions of others can hear their stories of loss and struggle (one family’s three-year-old son was crushed to death in his sleep by a boulder that was knocked loose by a coal truck that was working illegally one night - the company was given a small fine for working illegally but was not implicated in the child’s death).

As brownfemipower stated months ago, Oprah can be a tool for radical change. She sees herself as such a tool. It is up to us to bring to her attention the struggles of working-class wimmin so that she may share their stories with the nation. Please take a moment and visit EarthJustice’s campaign page to see a sample letter. Then head over to Oprah’s website and submit your letter to the producers. It will take you five minutes for something that can change the lives of thousands and help protect the world’s oldest mountains. le