Up Next: The 'NeoPombo' Democrats

This post is dedicated to my friend, Wes Rolley, webmaster of the "Pombo Watch" Web Site (see "MH Man Posts Pombo Watch on Website," Morgan-Hill Times, March 12, 2004).

I couldn't help thinking about Wes and the ordeal of being a Green activist in a polluted society, when I read these opening lines:

Published by the San Francisco Chronicle
Dems' Offshore Drilling Plan Comes With Catch
by Zachary Coile, Tuesday, September 9, 2008

(09-09) 04:00 PDT Washington - Just three years ago Richard Pombo, the cowboy boot-wearing Tracy Republican lawmaker, faced an outcry from Democrats for pushing a bill to lift the 27-year-old ban on drilling off the East and West coasts and let states choose whether to allow oil rigs off their shores.

In a sign of how much the energy debate has shifted in an era of nearly $4-a-gallon gasoline, virtually the same proposal that Pombo floated will be introduced on the House floor this month - by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Nancy Pelosi and the NeoPombo Democrats think they are being "clever" by giving the Republicans something they want now, namely, opening the door to offshore drilling, so they can get something back that the "liberals" supposedly want, repealing tax subsidies for oil companies and requiring electric utilities to get 15% of their energy from renewables by 2020.



Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, says he'll allow a vote on an energy plan that would allow drilling off the coast of four states - Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia - while also revoking tax breaks for oil companies and offering new incentives for wind and solar, biofuels, coal-to-liquid fuels and nuclear energy.

Notice the inclusion of "clean" coal and nuclear with the other "nice" stuff.

The whole thing is a parliamentary charade anyway because Congress is set to adjourn in less than a month and Our Dear Leader, President Bush, has vowed to veto any bill that raises taxes on the poor, little, trillionaire oil companies.

If, indeed, the GOP gets what it wants -- and end to the ban to offshore drilling -- is anyone here naive enough to bet that the Bush-Cheney-McCain-Palin clique would ever follow through on their half of the bargain? Anyway, by the time to the year 2020, this "compromise" will be long forgotten, we will, of course, be in another "crisis," and everybody will be saying we environmental "extremists" should quit being so "rigid" and let the NeoPombos negotiate a "compromise" with what will then be the "Nuke, Baby, Nuke!" crowd.

Friedman on ET (Environmental Technology)

Thomas Friedman does more than write columns for the NY Times. He also writes books and then does a very good job of promoting them all over the media. His latest book is Hot, Flat and Crowded and he has been promoting it with vigor: Sunday on Meet the Press, this morning on GMA, and also on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Click read more to read Lorna Salzman's very articulate commentary after listening to Friedman on Fresh Air.


Commentary on Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat and Crowded, and the upcoming election:
by Lorna Salzman.

Today Terry Gross interviewed one of my least favorite journalists on her show: Thomas Friedman, someone that most of us do not regard as an environmental friend. But Friedman spoke with fervor and guts, and emphatically put his finger on the utter failure of American energy policy, due to Bush, the Republicans, the oil companies, and on the absence of incentives for reducing energy consumption or increasing renewable energy.

What he didn't do, however, was to include the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Barack Obama, in his stern lecture.

He criticized Sarah Palin, the Repubs' VP candidate, for denying global warming even as parts of her state melt away. He criticized Republican senators in Ohio and New Hampshire for opposing renewable energy tax credits even though their states harbor two leading renewable energy companies, who, as a result of the loss of tax credits, are moving operations abroad. He criticized the fact that utilities make money from a rate structure that encourages selling more energy rather than less. He bemoaned the fact that there is no tax on carbon, with revenues being rebated to the public through abolition of the payroll tax. And so on.

What he didn't do, however, was rake Obama and the Dems over the coals on the energy issue. This is an amazing oversight, given that everyone agrees that the economy and jobs are going to be the key issues in the election. Obama has hedged and fudged on domestic oil drilling, supports "clean coal" and "safe" nuclear power, but has yet to connect these and the things Friedman raised to his campaign or the election.

Once again, the Democrats are running a campaign out of fear, not principle, not science, not equity, not justice. Like their refusal to come all out for a single payer universal health plan overseen by the government and funded through the income tax, they are dropping the the energy ball, even though the energy issue offers them by far and without a doubt a HUGE opportunity to present the public with a serious and comprehensive economic plan to restore jobs and renovate American industry, transportation and infrastructure.

Why are the Democrats self-destructing again? The answer is quite simple. When your opponent is as cravenly hypocritical and inept and wrongheaded as McCain is, there is no point in playing your strong card when you can win with your weak one. Once again the Dems are taking liberals and their party faithful for granted by saying: you guys have nowhere else to go so stop your whining, you know you will vote for us no matter what. This is cynicism and contempt writ large.

So we must ask: where have the liberals been? What have they been doing? Well, we know many of them have been protesting the war. Many of them are defending Roe vs. Wade. Many are pushing gay rights. Many are protesting racism and poverty.

Duh. They have been doing this for years. When was the last time a liberal Democrat walked into her congressman's office, slammed a fist on the table, and said: I want single payer universal health care, I want it now, and I DONT want anything else. When was the last time she walked into that office and slammed a fist down and said: I want a tax on carbon and gasoline, and I want the money from that to replace the payroll tax. I want it NOW and I dont want anything less.

The big question, however, is this: when was the last time a Democrat, or a liberal group or PAC, said to that congressman: if you don't do this, I won't vote for you. And when was the last time a Democrat withheld her vote because her congressman didn't listen to her? Didn't vote for him at all? Or voted for Ralph Nader? When was the last time that a liberal lobby marched into the capitol demanding an energy bill that did all the things that Friedman says we need?...carbon taxes, an end to fossil fuel subsidies, renewable energy tax credits, mandatory energy efficiency standards and measures?

When was the last time that anyone, any GROUP or movement, put energy and environment first? When they finally understood that these issues are the most important and urgent issues of the day? That we have a global ecological crisis that results directly from economic (and population) growth and overconsumption?
When was the last time that anyone but an environmentalist said out loud:
Economic growth must end. What are the chances that the Democrats will say or do anything about these things?

What should liberals do? Here's what they should do. They should make it clear to the Democratic Party and to their Democratic congressmen that THEY WILL NEVER VOTE FOR THEM AGAIN, or for Obama, unless he and the party get off their butts and get serious, and unless the party stops taking them for granted. They should lay it on the line: we don't care if our vote helps McCain win, because the Democrat/Obama energy policy not only isn't much better than McCain's, but even if it is marginally better, it is completely inadequate and, worst of all, dishonest and misleading.

Unless enrolled Democrats and liberals and their pressure groups speak out loud and clear and say that their vote is up for grabs, Obama not only won't win but he won't DESERVE to win.

Don't let the Democrats hoodwink and blackmail you again. Tell the Dems:
defecate or get off the pot.

Lorna Salzman

Fidelity to Fact

I don't want to step on Alex's important post, but also want to make a real point about politics and the media. So, read what Alex wrote, and then click read more below to join me on the jump.


Following the presidential conventions, I knew that Bill Moyer's Journal would feature a conversation between Moyers and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. I tuned in to Moyer's Journal on PBS last night and was not disappointed. It was a particularly pointed conversation because both McCain and Palin had taken shots at the Liberal Media. Of course, Liberal Media Bias has always been part of the Rush Limbaugh rant and this time it became almost a chant in St. Paul.

What Jamieson did was to indicate that there is nothing sexist about the media questioning the readiness of any of the candidates.

Is it fair to ask about the experience of any candidate for vice president? Of course. Any candidate for president? Of course. And it isn't sexist or racist to raise that question.

However, she had little patience for those who, in the haste to break a story, get it wrong.

Now you have a moment in which journalism has deceived its audience because in the rush to make this point about possible hypocrisy, a major commentator (Soledad Obrien) on a major network (CNN) has asserted as fact something which doesn't hold up. It took the FactCheck.org researcher that I called on my staff about four hours to get back to the primary research documents.

In fact, the story that Soledad used had been circulating on the internet for a while before she, or her producer, grabbed it.

Moyer's raised the question that all of us should be asking, what are we to do when we can't trust the media. Jamieson had analyzed this in terms of the 2004 election.

The problem is that one can't trust anymore from some of these sources that there's going to be a fidelity to fact in the presence of contest. One of the things that we showed in 2004, from the National Annenberg Election Survey, was that those who are reliant on Rush Limbaugh and on Fox News accepted the Republican view of the facts.

Those reliant on NPR and CNN were more likely to accept the Democratic view of the contested facts. Now sometimes there's legitimate contest. Sometimes, however, what you essentially had was spin and distortion on each side. Those who are relying on newspapers and traditional forms of news were still more likely to hold a non-contested view of those facts.

The further we get away from any sense that elections have anything to do with the contest of ideas. the more I sense that we are vulnerable to a fascist pupulism and that scares the hell out of me especially as newspapers seem to be losing readership daily.

Baldwin Hills Oil: 'Drill, Baby, Drill' -- Through the Heart of Obama Country

"Drill, baby, drill!" - was a popular cheer at the 2008 Republican National Convention. It's a parody of "Burn, baby, burn," the infamous cry during the 1965 Watts rebellion in Los Angeles. Ironically, it was former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, one of the Republican Party's very few prominent black politicians, leading the cheer for the riot of the privileged:

"So, do you want to put your country first? Then let's reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil and promote oil and gas production at home. In other words: Drill, baby, drill! And drill now!"

Baldwin Hills in Los Angeles, View Park, Windsor Hills, and Ladera Heights, are some of the most prominent middle-class African-American neighborhoods in the United States. Blacks are more than 70% of Baldwin Hills' population. After Blacks began moving there in the 1960s, it was nicknamed the "Golden Ghetto" and the "Black Beverly Hills." It has been home to celebrities like Ray Charles, Nancy Wilson, Tina Turner and the late Los Angeles Mayor, Tom Bradley. Black Entertainment Television (BET) used the setting for the "Baldwin Hills" television show.

The Fight Over the Baldwin Hills Oil Field
(Visit: www.baldwinhillsoil.org)



The two-square-mile Baldwin Hills Oil Field is the last large-scale undeveloped open space in South and West Los Angeles. The Oil Field has operated since 1924. Over time, it naturally becomes harder to extract oil for old wells until at some point they become unprofitable. In recent years the field had almost played out. As the oil companies have left, a large area has been designated the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. For years, the old field and the surrounding nice residential neighborhoods coexisted. But this is the era when everything you ever thought you could rely on from American business - job security, health care, pensions, or even honest accounting - is old fashioned.

Plains Exploration and Production Company (PXP) based in (where else?) Houston, Texas wants to drill up to 1,000 new wells over the next 20 years. Next week there will be what is expected to be a contentious public hearing:

Los Angeles County Planning Commission
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Hall of Administration,
Room 381B
500 West Temple Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

PXP has been packing hearings with their employees while public comment has been severely limited. It time for the entire California Green Movement to get involved in this fight.




Environmental Impact Report

The Baldwin Hills area has included oil and gas production since the 1920s, when the area was largely underdeveloped. Today, the oil field operates in the middle of a densely-populated urban area. The Oil Field has operated since 1924 without community oversight or an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to assess its impact on community health and safety.

In 2006, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors placed a temporary restriction on drilling new oil wells or deepening existing wells. That restriction expired on June 28, 2008 just as a Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) was released by the County. The oil field operator, Plains Exploration and Production Company (PXP), proposes to expand the drilling. The 60-day public comment period for the Draft EIR was set to expire on August 19. Representatives from community groups such as the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance (GBHA), Mujeres de la Tierra , Culver Crest Neighborhood Association, and others have all petitioned for additional time to review the 800-plus pages of the Draft EIR.

Community Standards District

A Community Standards District (CSD) is a site specific zoning ordinance setting standards and regulations on oil drilling and production. It sets forth the conditions under which drilling can occur, while providing a mechanism to increase public oversight, monitoring, enforcement and accountability.

The Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance recommendations include:

• Eliminate potential health risks and environmental impacts associated with the oil field operation through consolidation


• Provide enforceable environmental and health protections including monitoring sanctions and penalties


• Provide for the clean up and eventual transition of the land to parkland consistent with the Baldwin Hills Park Master Plan


• Support residential living, open space, recreation, schools, critical habitats and improve the current aesthetics of the oil field


• Establish oversight from a multi-sector advisory committee including residents.

More on Baldwin Hills and African-Americans in L.A.
From The City Project Web Site

Professor Josh Sides describes the unique role of the Baldwin Hills in the history of African Americans in Los Angeles and across the nation:


By the late 1950s and early 1960s, blacks had pushed west and south of West Adams into Leimert Park and the exclusive area of Baldwin Hills, which quickly became the heart of affluent black Los Angeles, a position it still holds today. A five-square-mile area of unincorporated hillside west of Leimert Park/ Crenshaw and south of West Adams, Baldwin Hills boasted large homes and expansive views. Largely undeveloped until the 1940s, hundreds of houses and apartment complexes were built there in the 1950s. As they had in Compton, blacks moved into new and large homes, with an average of four to six bedrooms per household. African Americans in Baldwin Hills were generally much better educated than their South Central counterparts, a fact that translated into greater job opportunities in the post-boom economy.

Accordingly, just over 71 percent of all employed African Americans in Baldwin Hills were white-collar workers. . .

In addition to superior housing, residents of Baldwin Hills and the nearby Leimert Park and Crenshaw areas also enjoyed many more conveniences as consumers. While many Watts and Willowbrook residents were forced to buy groceries at overpriced liquor stores, Baldwin Hills residents had other options. The Crenshaw Shopping Center, opened in 1947, as one of the first planned suburban malls in the United States, was the most popular shopping area for local residents. And, during the 1960s, the Baldwin Hills Center and the Ladera Center also opened, offering residents even greater selection and convenience. . .

Perhaps the greatest advantage to residing in Baldwin Hills was the superior quality of the area's public schools. In 1971, the Los Angeles Department of City Planning described Baldwin Hills public schools as the "the best schools of any city area inhabited primarily by black people" and on par with those in West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley." In addition to boasting low dropout rates and small class sizes relative to public schools in Watts and South Central, public schools in Baldwin Hills were also more racially integrated. . .

Environmental Hazards

There is a delicate balance between the interests of the oil company to harvest local oil wells and maintaining the environment for people living in surrounding communities.

A couple enjoys trail in a state park in the Baldwin Hills just a few steps away from a PXP oil pump. Photo from Los Angeles WAVE, September 4, 2008.

The by-products of oil production include: Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene, and Xylene, collectively know as BTEX. Getting the crude oil from the ground in old wells requires water into the ground to force the crude oil to the surface. This creates an empty space or movement of a fault line. Also, extracting oil causes gases to rise to the surface through fault lines.

"Backyard bonanza or environmental time bomb?"
by Gregg Reese, Our Weekly, July 3 - July 6, 2008

Mark Salkin became involved in this issue as the president of the Culver City Crest Home Owners Association two and a half years ago, when the Plains Exploration & Production Company (PXP), which currently owns the Baldwin Hills extraction field, struck a methane deposit in the process of drilling for oil. The subsequent link made several residents sick (with out any fatalities), and the county became involved with allegations that PXP was not observing environmental safety guidelines.
Salkin told Our Weekly that he was given a personal tour of the oil facility by PXP Vice President Steve Rusch a few years ago, and observed numerous sites in production or in an exploratory mode. . .

derricks in the area are out in the open for all to see, with little or no cosmetic enhancement. All this is in sharp contrast to pumps located in Beverly Hills (where image is paramount), say critics. One notable well sits right next to Beverly Hills High encased in a ten story structure that has been artfully decorated as well as sound proofed to mask the gyrations of the contraption inside. Derricks in other parts of the southland from Long Beach to West L.A. have been tastefully obscured via shrubbery or other methods of camouflage. . .

Why Baldwin Hills? Why Now? -- Sending a Message Ain't Nothing Gonna Change

Last year, Bill Boyarsky reported on Truthdig.com that this area was not only a rich source of votes and support for Sen. Barack Obama, but also a source of significant campaign donations.


"Listening to America's Black Middle Class"
By Bill Boyarsky, Truthdig, October 11, 2007.

I got interested in the middle-class contributions while digging into the Obama campaign.

A couple of longtime black politicians told me that the size of Obama contributions from their community was big. "I've never seen so many African-Americans with a lot of money," one of them said. "I didn't know there was that much wealth."

The phenomenon is occurring in prosperous black areas across the country. A few months ago, USA Today surveyed political giving in nearly 600 ZIP codes that included a substantial number of African-American households with incomes above the black national median household income of $31,000 a year. Obama received about 70 percent of the contributions.

I looked at an area I know, View Park and Windsor Hills in Los Angeles. This is not the bleak black and Latino L.A. so beloved by filmmakers, television stations and newspapers which immerse themselves almost exclusively in black crime and other tragedies. Big, luxurious homes adorn this hillside several miles northwest of the poor neighborhoods in the South Los Angeles flatlands. View Park and Windsor Hills are 88 percent black, with a median household income of $73,118, the U.S. Census reported, more than the Los Angeles County household total of $51,447. Almost 70 percent of the people living there are families.

. . .

What is as interesting as the horse race is the nature of the Obama contributors. Among them in Los Angeles' View Park and Windsor Hills are a producer, a chief executive officer of a business consulting company, a nationwide bank senior vice president, lawyers and a restaurant owner.

California state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is campaigning for Obama, said the Illinois senator's message resonates strongly with such people. "His vision of hope and morality and basic centrist politics is grounded in a moral sensibility that is hard to argue with," Ridley-Thomas said.

Today State Sen. Ridley-Thomas and City Councilman Bernard Parks are competing for an open seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Ridley-Thomas backed Obama early when most of California's prominent Black Democrats were backing Sen. Hillary Clinton. Blogger Ari L. Noonan wryly noted that Councilman Parks
"lives within sniffing distance of the Baldwin Hills oil field." Parks has been embarrassed by the disclosure that he accepted a campaign contribution from PXP in his last campaign for mayor.

After African-Americans began moving into Baldwin Hills in the 1960s, it was nicknamed the "Golden Ghetto" and the "Black Beverly Hills." It has been home to celebrities like Ray Charles, Nancy Wilson, Tina Turner and the late Los Angeles Mayor, Tom Bradley. Black Entertainment Television (BET) used the setting for the "Baldwin Hills" television show.

In the California State Assembly, this area is represented by Karen Bass, another big Obama supporter and the first African-American woman to serve as speaker of a state assembly in the history of the United States.

Two points.

First, this is exactly the sort of community all the Democratic and Republican hacks pretend to love whenever they rant and foam about the supposedly "forgotten" hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding, American middle class. Second, this specific community is second only to the Hyde Park section of Chicago as the heart of Barack Obama Country.

Corporate America is sending a message that for all the talk about "change! change! change!" from the one corporate party with two names, ain't nothing gonna change and it will be business as usual on January 20th.

From "Burn, Baby, Burn" in 2001 to "Drill, Baby, Drill" in 2008.


In 2001, California was plunged into an unprecedented energy crisis: rolling blackouts, soaring power bills, a panicked state government. Turned out the Golden State was being systematically ripped-off. Documents and audiotapes proved Houston-based Enron Corporation asked power companies to take plants offline - in order to make more money. In one taped phone call, an Enron employee celebrated the fact that a massive forest fire had shut down a transmission line:

ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: Yeah.
ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: Now, the magical word of the day is "Burn, baby, burn."
ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: What's happening?
ENRON EMPLOYEE 2: There's a fire under the core line. This will delay us from 45 to 2,100.
ENRON EMPLOYEE 1: Really. Burn, baby, burn!

When Michael Steele cried "Drill, Baby, Drill!" to the GOP faithful, maybe he wasn't thinking about Watts in 1965. Maybe he was thinking about Enron's battle cry in 2001.

Less than a decade later, thanks to the terrifying spike in oil prices, the energy greedheads and carbon pushers are trying to stampede Californians into accepting offshore oil drilling and new drilling in old wells even though all the experts agree this will have no impact on the global marketplace for oil. As I write this, the "Drill, Baby, Drill" crowd is pushing hard for offshore drilling in Santa Barbara, Long Beach, Monterey Bay, and even off Point Reyes (see www.environmentcalifornia.org).

And always, always, they try to divide us and rule us by playing off class, religious, and "racial" differences.

Will you let them get away with it?

Community Organizer

A potter friend of mine put the following quip on a pottery related e-list today. I think it is a good example of just how badly some twist words to mean what they want them to.

Jesus was a community organizer.
Pontius Pilate was a Governor.

Now Lee Love used to be a Green so I guess I can quote him here.

Liberal Media part of Vast Right-wing Conspiracy

When Sarah Palin took the podium to accept the VP nomination, she did not remind me in the least of Hillary Clinton. In that, I am joined by many women. Still, when she opened up on the liberal media, she did begin to sound a bit like the Senator from NY. Only Hillary found the media to be part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." I guess we get it both ways. Still, I need to explain why getting both major parties pissed off in not necessarily a sign of good journalism.


As an avid consumer of journalism, or that which passes for it these days, I most frequently find that no one is asking the questions I would like to see answered. For example, here is what I would like to ask Ms. Palin... or, in fact all Presidential or Vice-Presidential Candidates:

• Do you really believe that the world is getting warmer, as many scientists claim?
  
• Assuming that they say "yes" then: Do you believe that it is caused, or made worse, by our acts as citizens?
• Again, assuming a "yes" answer: How do you explain your current energy policy given what you just said about global warming?
• Is, as some, including the US Military, claim that Global Warming is a Global Security Issue, what are you doing to keep the US safe from it's effects.
  

None of these candidates have a good answer. Not one of the mainstream media journalists would be willing to ask. How about it, Lehrer, Browkaw, Schieffer? Are you up to this or are you afraid that your network will lose ad revenue if you get too tough?

What I, as a voter, want to hear, are the answers to the real concerns that I have and I want the follow up to expose the inconsistencies when they are obvious. Nothing would be more obvious than the ones that are so evident in the candidates (all of them) public positions on global warming and energy.

I will not hold my breath. We will not get to hear real ideas unless Barr and McKinney are invited as well. Talk of experience: Both were in Congress longer than Obama.

What really happened at the RNC.

I really love David Roberts summary of what went on so far that the RNC. You can read the whole thing at Gristmill, or just this summary.

To be fair, the speeches by Giuliani and Palin were masterful examples of the art form. Giuliani knows how to use mockery and contempt like few other speakers, and Palin clearly relished playing the "pit bull with make-up." They got in some great lines and put the crowd in a frenzy. I bet if you polled Republicans right now more of them would support Palin than McCain.

But do they think this is going to win it for them in a year of economic downturn and Democratic ascendancy? More tax cuts and foreign policy belligerence? More oil company populism? The base rallying strategy, again? I'm not sure what else they've got in their quiver, but some part of me thought they'd try something new. Seems not. It's going to be a long, ugly 60 days.

Clean Coal is a Dirty Lie

Sarah Palin was put forward as the Republican expert on Energy. She did show a lot of energy in her speech, quick to the attack, pausing only for effect on the zingers she shot. However, when it came to the subject of energy policy, she showed a remarkable lack of knowledge when putting forward the suggestion that America should work for Clean Coal.


Let me give a good example of what clean coal really means. It begins with the removal of a mountain top and the filling of valleys to expose the coal. This is not the old time strip mining, unless that practice were on steroids. There are more photos here.

Let me remind you that the Green Party affiliate, the Mountain Party of West Virginia, is a leader in the fight against such ravages to the environment. Still, that is only the beginning.

There was a major Federal program under the administration of George "W" Bush that was intended to develop a new technology for coal fired power plants. It was called the NextGen program. There is an industry council formed by leading coal producers that is leading the way in convincing everyone that this is a real possibility sometime out in the distant future. Now, they are talking about 2015.

Of course, they have not stopped to consider that the continued expansion of conventional coal fired plants... even the continued operation of existing plants... will quite possibly push the current global warming past a tipping point. That, my friends, is a risk that the Republicans... and the Democrats... want you to take.

What none of them tell you is that the US Dept. of Energy scrapped the FutureGen clean coal project in 2008.

The DOE last year signed an agreement with the FutureGen Alliance, a coalition of coal and oil companies, to spend about $950 million on a demonstration coal-fired power plant that injects carbon dioxide emissions underground. Last December, a site for the FutureGen project in Matoon, Ill., was announced by the Alliance.

It was deemed to be too expensive for the payback.

DOE is turning to Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) as a solution to the problem of the buildup of Greenhouse Gasses, the prime cause of global warming. While some things work, others are still very, very expensive and, we don't have the time if we are going to stop the warming of this planet.

When Sarah Palin puts on her Peabody Energy hat and talks about clean coal, you know that it may lead to votes but it is ultimately only a lot more hot air that we can't afford to have around.

Obama McCain Energy Smackdown

Sheril Kirshenbaum is both a scientist and a writer with political savvy. She is an active blogger at ScienceBlogs.com, writing both on the Intersection (with Chris Mooney) and on the energy blog, NextGen, an energy blog effort funded by Shell.


In today's posts (both places) Kirshembaum writes about the McCain / Obama Energy Policies. While Obama responded to a questionnaire, McCain has failed to do so. I am not surprised.

I think you all should read the pieces, but I will take the comments that I left at NextGen and paste them here.

I don't get it. McCain says that he wants to address global warming, sets a target that is not going to really do the job, and then comes out with a list of policies that guarantees the fact that we will never achieve the target.

And not one calls him on it?

The Republicans complain about liberal bias in the press and then the press lest him get away with this. Complain about liberal bias, arrest Amy Goodman, and you can get away with saying anything as long as you sound sincere.

I am waiting for a journalist with a real understanding of the science to drill down though the muck and make both of these candidates explain the inconsistencies in their public statements.

The key point that I am getting at is that you can make lowering gas prices and feeding America's energy addiction as your main emphasis, but you will do so at the price of making global warming worse. In the long run, that is one dumb decision.

We don't know how to control nuclear waste. We have no policies at all about controlling nuclear contamination of mining, transportation and storage of uranum before it is used. But, both of these candidates would give even more of our tax dollars to the nuclear industry and McCain does not want to "interfere with the market" by subsidizing renewable systems like solar or wind. This is not the action of anyone who should board a straight talk express.

The same goes for policies regarding coal. Lots of people involved in coal mining and they all vote. Nope, we will not stop burning coal as long as their is a politicians who would rather be elected than stop slow down global warming. I hate the idea of quoting John Stossel but "Give me a break."

Obamanomics or Green Opportunity

I would like to connect three fairly recent reports that, in my opinion, define a wonderful opportunity for the Green Party to be the real truth tellers, if we really care enough to do that. If rural America sees little difference between the two major parties, if McCain is leading us to a hotter hell on earth by design and Obama is too tied to big corporate Agriculture to really care, then it is left to Cynthia and the Greens to show rural America that a better tomorrow is possible.


The opportunity is there because most of Rural America sees little difference between the two major parties. This comes from a poll authorized by the Center for Rural Affairs (CFRA), Lyons, NE and was reported in their July 2008 Newsletter.

Neither party has demonstrated real commitment to ensuring that rural people – who contribute so much to the nation’s prosperity – share in it. Neither party seems to understand that America will never be as strong as it can be until all of America has the opportunity to share in building wealth, assets, and prosperity.

This is why states like Colorado are now considered Swing States and maybe rue the decision they made in 2004 to reject proportional representation in the electoral college.

The real problem with both parties is that they have defined agriculture as Big Ag, Corporate Farming and are suckered into bad decisions by the lucrative cash contributions from the likes of Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, ConAgra or Cargill. The Center of Rural Affairs concluded:

...to date in this election and every election for the last generation, neither party has demonstrated that it will fight for ordinary rural people. The party that finally does can capture the rural margin it needs to win this election and many elections to come.

With that perspective, we have to turn to Obamanomics. David Leonheardt opined in the NY Times Magazine that this is a melding of the policies of Robert Rubin and Robert Reich, two Clinton administration cabinet members. That may be true on Wall Street, but if you are on Main Street in Lyons, NE these is a different tale. Obamanomics is all about supporting the same big ag policies as did the Bush administrations (both of them) and the Clinton's in between. Nicole Colson calls him the Senator from Ethanol-Land.


The problem for all the rest of us (who don't own stock on Cargill, ADM or ConAgra) is that these policies distort that markets for everything else: the bread we eat cost more as farmers switch from wheat to corn; eggs cost more as the price of feed has gone up radically. I used to pay $6.50 for a 50 lb bag of hen scratch that was mostly corn. Now, it is $10.95 and there is very little corn in the mix. You get the picture. It is the same for almost everything we eat and drink where the labels include "high fructose corn syrup." (aside... maybe we will all lose a little weight if the stop adding that stuff to soft drinks.).

Corn producers and their marketers would love to connect corn and cheaper gas prices in the voters minds. It is good for their business, if bad for the economy as a whole. According to Colson's particle...

In April, ADM announced that its quarterly profits had risen 42 percent, largely thanks to biofuels. Unsurprisingly, ADM CEO Pat Woertz told investors, "Biofuels are a real solution to a real problem. To retreat from biofuels is wrong."

You get the picture. What is good for ADM is good for America.

The first problem with all this corn based ethanol is that it does not solve our number one environmental problem. It may be even more polluting that burning petroleum products for transportation. The second problem is that these big corporations will get bigger and more profitable while rural America continues to lose family farms and small towns wither and die in the heat of government subsidized markets.

The answers for all of these connected problems is right in the Green Party Platform, even the one from 2004. We don't need corn base ethanol. We don't need factory farms. We do need strong local, regional sources of food that does not have to be shipped half way round the world just so you can enjoy fresh peaches in January. Maybe, we need a little self restraint in our demands, but that is also a Green idea.

Green everywhere should be taking our story to the boondocks. We just might find people who understand what we are talking about and, if we stay on this message, we just might become the party that will fight for ordinary rural people. It is clear that no one else is doing that.

Carbon Cycle

The Carbon Cycle is not some new exotic mountain bike. Still, like a mountain bike in rough terrain, we are headed for a wild ride if we don't know what we are doing... and there is plenty of evidence that we don't.


Eric Roston's new book, The Carbon Age, gives a chilling story of why the carbon cycle is at the center of everything. His carefully chosen subtitle is How Life's core element has become civilization's greatest threat. I would recommend this book to everyone who is not convinced of the danger's of greenhouse gas accelerated global warming and who has an open mind.

If you can be convinced, this book will do it in such detail that you wonder what the professional deniers, especially politicians like Sen. James Inhofe (D. OK) or Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R. CA) are going. They pass themselves off as intelligent, educated people and so must really have decided that they don't really want to know anything about science and the future.

While I am disappointed in the role that politicians are playing, as they run their messages through focus groups looking for the words that will get themselves elected, as they talk about global warming and build their candidacies on policies that can only make matters worse, I am even more disappointed in the 4th Estate, a press that allows them to get away with it.

Here one good example of what I am talking about:

August 13, 2008. KGO-TV (ABC in San Francisco) based their story on a poll that examined the impact that the price of gas is having on Bay Area families. While that is news-worthy, they have obviously not gone beyond soliciting responses to this very particular question.

Responsible journalism would also give consideration to the well established fact that there is a connection between gasoline usage (as well as other combustion source) and the changes we are seeing in climate, changes that are lightning quick in terms of geological time. But that was not the story.

However, if you read the comments made by those responding to the poll you might see why the Democrats are in such a quandary over energy policy. I need only quote one.

It's time to tell the 'environmentalists' to SHUT UP and use our natural resources. As long as we're dependent on foreign oil we're going to have this problem. We have the oil; let's use it. Also- car manufacturers should make cars more efficient.

The public is obviously not getting the real message. This commenter seems to believe that the US have enough oil to solve the gasoline problem, (We don't.) or that setting up a program to drill offshore or in the Arctic will pay immediate benefits. (It won't.) Some, maybe those who would bother to read Roston's book, understand just how precarious our situation is, but only those who already understand would be likely to read The Carbon Age.

I want to see our media start connecting the dots... transportation to global warming to the question of gasoline prices and drilling for more oil. Maybe, we need our newspapers to start asserting themselves with a dose of truth. Tell it like it is, not like the public wants it to be.

I wonder how the survey results would have changed had they asked this question. If you knew that increasing the supply of petroleum now would cost America $3 Trillion to mitigate the effects of global warming that it will cause, would that change your position? Of course, with Exxon-Mobil sponsoring convention coverage we should not expect aggressive television journalism or the truth from politicians.

There are many small decisions being made every day and the tyranny of those decisions will be devastating.

Near the end of The Carbon Age, Roston asks us to imagine a not so distant future.

...forty years from now some of those Americans living a lower quality of life may wonder about the generation that knew they had it all and set decline in motion, unfazed. Ours will be a generation of narcissism. Each of us is competitive with Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, frittering away time on bread and circuses. Each of us is Tsar Nicholas II, whose attention to traumatic personal circumstances -- am ill son -- distracted him form his empire, crumbling toward what would become the Soviet dictatorship. The climate debates stands at an analogous point. There is still hope that industrialized nations can transfer civilization on to an energy system that will not scorch the earth.

While all eyes are on the Olympics...

Georgia and Russia decided to start a war that they thought no one would notice.

The California State Legislature can't come up with a budget and it hardly makes the news. Michael Phelps is much more important. Then, when was the last time our legislature passed a budget on time.

While attention is diverted elsewhere, politicians know that they can do whatever they want and the results are not pleasant. To see the list, click read more below.


To begin with, SB 1806, Lois Wolk's proposal to protect the California Delta and it's fisheries, died in the State Senate by an 18 - 2- vote. According to a release from Dan Bacher (Ed. The FishSniffer) the failure was devastating.

The bill would have required fish rescue contingency plans in the event of future fishery disasters like the one that took place at Prospect Island in the northern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in November 2007. During last year's fish kill, thousands of striped bass, Sacramento blackfish, Sacramento splittail, black bass, bluegill, catfish, threadfin shad and other species perished after the Bureau of Reclamation drained the island during a levee repair operation.

There is much more on this at Water4Fish.org.

The Governor Ahnuld is rightfully keeping some focus on the lack of a State Budget. However, we need to watch this carefully. Real problems will arise when we begin to unravel the compromises that were reached in order to get on approved. Since Republican votes are needed, it would not be unlikely that those Republicans from the Central Valley will only vote for one if they get the new dams that they want, along with the Peripheral Canal that the Governor wants.

My problem is that we don't need new dams and the peripheral canal is the right solution to the wrong problem. If we allow the problem to be defined solely in terms of protecting our future water needs, then the battle is over, the Salmon fisheries are dead and the only thing that smells worse than a dead salmon is a back room deal in Sacramento.

Restore the Delta has a new action alert out today that lists the reasons we should reject the peripheral canal and the water bond that seems to be destined for our next election.

1. The peripheral canal will not solve the crisis in the Delta or make more water for California.
2. There are bond funds left from previous to begin doing the work needed to protect Delta levees.
3. The Department of Water Resources, while working on projects on behalf of the State Water Contractors, fails to answer for the people of the Delta "How much fresh water is required for the health of the Delta estuary?"
4. The peripheral canal will not restore fish populations.
5. Theperipheral canal will destroy the $ 2 billion Delta agricultural economy.
6. This water bond will not help to protect the lives and property of the 400,000 people living in the Delta.
7. We want a water bond that would support aggressive water conservation measures, regional ground water clean up and desalinization projects, ground water banking in historic floods plains, regional reservoirs to support ground water banking, water recycling, and projects making use of storm water runoff. Employing new technologies, rather than clinging to outdated methods, will give us more water to work with in California for people and fish.

What can this out of power Green Party do to prevent this? We can start by calling Arnold, Sen. Diane Feinstein and your own state legislators.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger State Capitol Building Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: 916-445-2841

Senator Diane Feinstein:

• San Francisco One Post Street, Suite 2450 San Francisco, CA 94104 Phone: (415) 393-0707 Fax: (415) 393-0710

• Los Angeles 11111 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 915 Los Angeles, CA 90025 Phone: (310) 914-7300 Fax: (310) 914-7318

• San Diego 750 B Street, Suite 1030 San Diego, CA 92101 Phone: (619) 231-9712 Fax: (619) 231-1108

What do the Danes and the Chinese have in common?

If all you are doing is following the Olympics, you might think it is only badminton or table tennis. However, the real answer is wind. In my previous post, I cited the NY Times editorial call for a sane energy policy. I also mentioned an OpEd by Thomas Friedman. It deserves a separate reference.

Friedman is always looking at the world as though you can tell the future by watching the way international commerce work. I don't want to debated that. However, in his OpEd Sunday, he compares the very practical Danish energy policy with that of the US. There are two very clear points of difference.

First, they view high gasoline prices as a good thing...

“I have observed that in all other countries, including in America, people are complaining about how prices of [gasoline] are going up,” Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told me. “The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil. We are going to introduce a new tax reform in the direction of even higher taxation on energy and the revenue generated on that will be used to cut taxes on personal income — so we will improve incentives to work and improve incentives to save energy and develop renewable energy."

The second is that America, lacking political leadership, is asleep at the switch while other countries are making substantial progress in solving our real problems, not teasing votes from commuters with promised that won't be fulfilled. Here is how Friedman cites one interviewee.

Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.
>
> Why should you care?
>
> “We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S.”

Friedman does not mince word about politicianss.

Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)

I guess I am not the only one who thinks the Republican magic formula is stupid.

Even the NY Times gets it.

There were two recent items in the NY Times Editorial pages regarding US energy policy. One was an editorial, the other a column by Thomas Friedman. I have cited Friedman before, not always in a complementary manner. However, this time they both have the correct ideas. It is too bad that our presumptive presidential candidates don't read that paper. Maybe they are both like George W. Bush in that regard.

Of course, I always have more to say.

A toxic combination of $4 gasoline, voter anxiety and presidential ambition is making it impossible for this country to have the grown-up conversation it needs about energy.

That is the manner in which the NY Times starts it's editorial. That is also the point I made in my previous post on the stupidity of the McCain / Obama campaigns.

The Times editorial concludes:

Here is the underlying reality: A nation that uses one-quarter of the world’s oil while possessing less than 3 percent of its reserves cannot drill its way to happiness at the pump, much less self-sufficiency. The only plausible strategy is to cut consumption while embarking on a serious program of alternative fuels and energy sources. This is a point the honest candidate should be making at every turn.

If there is to be an alternative, it will have to come from the honest politicians of the Green Party. I am excited that Rosa Clemente was quoted in a yet to be uploaded press release from the GP today.

Green candidates and leaders called Barack Obama's and John McCain's positions on energy policy, gas prices, and global warming a capitulation to corporate lobbies, and urged adoption of the Green Party's plan to reduce fossil fuel consumption, generate new jobs in conservation and new energy sources, and curb the advance of climate change.

We need to have all GP Candidates hammering at the energy issue and the patronizing political playacting of the major party campaign.

Everyone who reads this should be writing their local papers, supporting the Green position and pointing out the lack of respect that Obama and McCain have for voters, playing us for losers and that is what we will all be if either are elected.

Do You Follow your Budget?

One of the other writers at my home town newspaper, the Morgan Hill Times, fired a salvo at the legislature over the lack of a California State Budget. I don't always agree with Lisa Pampuch, but I do on this one. And it gave me a couple of ideas.


I would have loved to see a GP Press Release on this issue have been equally hard on the legislature as it was on Arnold. To begin with this problem has been in the making for a long time. The legislature is filled with bright people. They knew what was happening and chose to play politics rather than to take care of the people's business. Every action has been chosen in order to gain re-election (for you party if you are bing term limited out). Rather than seek any kind of compromise that will work, they choose to posture and preen and issue meaningless press releases that are aimed at getting votes, not at telling us the truth of the matter.

The second idea comes from the fact that Lisa suggested that we all take our had at trying to set up a budget for California. The basic information and a model is there to play with at the Next10 site.

We all say that the Green Party could do a better job. Well, lets prove it. Let's get our best minds to work on developing a proposed Green budget for California. Use the Next10 site. Then, defend it against any and all critics. If you think you have it down, let me know and I will give it a front page post and everyone can let you know what they think of it.

Any takers?

Campaign Stupidity

The Democratic Party has developed a terrible energy policy, and it is being pushed on the local level by Democratic Party office holders around the country. Just about the only thing that I have seen that is worse is the one being pushed by the Republicans, starting with Presidential Candidate John McCain.

It appears that neither policy was developed from an understanding of science, or of economics. Rather, using the best methods of Madison Avenue, they have taken focus group results and polls to determine what it takes to get elected. They must think that voters are stupid... and they may be right. Of course, I have more to say on the matter.

Bryan Caplan warned us about the Myth of the Rational Voter. It is subtitled Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies . According to Caplan, most voters do not truly understand the manner in which science, or economics works in the real world. As a result the policies that have the greatest immediate satisfaction will be chosen without regard for long term consequences.

When politicians use that in order to structure position and policies the result is frequently catastrophic. Basing energy policy on the need to lower gasoline prices is idiocy, but that is what both candidates appear to be doing.

For all practical purposes, the Earth on which we live is a closed material system. The rate at which we might pick up dust from the interstellar void is minuscule in relation to the rate at which civilization is using it. When the material in question is is carbon, linked with a few hydrogen and oxygen atoms, you are dealing with the very basis of life and had damned will better get it right if life as we know it is to survive.

I am just now reading The Carbon Age by Eric Roston. It is a very new book, I was the first to check it out from our public library, and is the first that I have seen to address the reasons why we need to be very, very careful. Roston subtitled this book with care: How Life's Core Element has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat.

Roston takes us through the reasons carbon has always been so essential to life and always has been. The entire history of the earth may be interpreted as a series of changes in the carbon cycle. Until recently, the important players were never mammals, but bacteria and algae, transforming the carbon cycle over billions of years to create the conditions under which life as we know it could prosper. We experiment with this mechanism at our own parallel. Unfortunately, we have been engaged in an uncontrolled experiment for the last two centuries.

The key to all energy is the sun, but Barack Obama is now telling us that we need to increase domestic production of petroleum in order to grow our economy. He gives a lot of talk about developing alternative energy source, but it never goes beyond talk. When it is necessary to put together a real plan, funded by our taxes, the results are predictably more oil, more coal and more global warming. It seem that the only change he is really trying to foster is Climate Change.

The Democrats would have us believe that we can lower gasoline prices by selling off a portion of America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The only strategy they have is to get elected. What is strategic about tapping the reserve now and replenishing it at a higher price later? What is strategic about depleting this reserve and the having a major hurricane take out substantial offshore capacity in the Gulf of Mexico or to lose the capacity of the Alaskan Pipeline? What would we do then, pray tell?

John Kerry tried this approach in 2004. The voters did not buy it then and they will see through it now. Still, that is about all that Pelosi and the House Democrats that think of, beginning with Mike Thompson (CA-1) and even including Jerry McNerney, (CA-14) who should know better. Thompson's July 14 press release states it clearly.

Allow for additional withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to increase domestic supply. The SPR is currently at 98% capacity, and reducing it slightly to 90% would immediately increase supply, reduce prices and still maintain a substantial amount of reserve;

The Republicans would do more. Their mantra seems to be drill here, drill now. Drill in Alaska and on the storm vulnerable outer continental shelf. Again, given that petroleum is a finite resource what is the rationality in using it up as fast as we can. That is showing real faith in our future abilities to develop alternatives when we need then since we won't be working on the soon.

Again, California has two stupid approaches to this evidenced by two Republican Congressmen. First, there in Wally Herger (CA-2) who was given a Lifetime Membership in the Obscure Caucus by Roll Call Magazine. That is for politicians who make themselves invisible in Washington. With Herger's understanding of Energy Policy that may be a good thing.

The other is Dana Rohrabacher. He became famous for his use of the term dinosaur flatulence in discussing global warming. His other take is one of distraction. With global warming being called a "security threat" by none other than the US Military, Rohrabacher is would have us invest our money in sci-fi efforts to save us all from a cosmic collision. Both are catastrophic event. The difference is that one is has a low probability if we don't act and the other is a certainty.

Green party presidential candidate Kent Mesplay had the right idea when he said that he wanted public officials who treat science with respect and who actually work to make us more secure rather than catering to their favorite businesses."

Even the US Department of Energy gets it right. I suggest reading a very recent public presentation by Dr. Patricia Dehmer, Deputy Director for Science Programs, Office of Science, DOE. It is in the form of a power point formatted program review for an advisory committee. Beginning at chart 10 is a short summary of all of the energy produced and used in the US, where it comes from and where it goes. Slide 18 outlines the requirements for improvements in Energy / Environment Solutions.

• Zero-Net-Emission Electricity Generation
• Fuel Switching (to renewables)
• CCS (carbon capture and sequestration)
• Electric Energy Storage
  
• Electricity Transmission and Distribution
• Fuel Switching (from oil)
• End-use Efficiency (incandescent bulb efficiency < 2%)
  
• Conservation

I would say that voters can understand this. I wonder about our potential future presidents. They give lip service to dealing with climate change while continuing the failed energy policies of Bush and Co. This is not change I can believe in.

Red, Blue and Green

Here are a couple of things that I find amazing. To begin with, the Democrats are allowing the Republicans to define the issues regarding energy. This is not just my opinion. Dave Roberts at Gristmill is starting to take this seriously. First, he commented that the Republican are bluffing on drilling. Then, he complained, like I have just done, that the Democrats are allowing the to get away with it. According to Roberts you should "never let your enemy choose the battlefield."

I could not agree more, and forwarded that to my Congressman, Democrat Jerry McNerney... known around here as McWind for his background working as a wind energy consultant. But that is just the beginning. I have more to say.


To begin with, the most well known oilman in the country is telling everyone that this is one problem that you can't drill your way out of. I am talking about T. Boone Pickens who is buying a lot of ad time and, in effect, telling us all that Republicans like Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) are just trolling for votes with their talk of offshore drilling. At least, Pickens recognizes the scope of the problem and says that he has a plan.

At least, Pickens provides the best evidence that McCain and the rest of the Republicans have concluded that the public is a bunch of fools and easily bamboozled. They went out, took a poll and found out that people hate the high gas prices. So, they offer a 19th Century solution for a 21st Century problem. This issue by itself tells me McCain has no bleeping idea about what this country needs to do.

On the other hand, we have Obama shilling for renewable, especially corn based ethanol. This is as bad as McCain in that he seems to know there is a problem and chooses to use the problem to buy votes rather than to actually do what we need.

My bigger question is that of where is the Green Party. We need to be out telling people the true story every chance we get, but I don't see it. We have absolutely the best opportunity to hammer home that the demagogues in our major parties are all tuned in to sound bites and image projections. If there were ever a situation that makes the perfect argument for 3rd parties, this is it. Yet, as the one party that does not have to put on an act to have Green in our name, we are silent.

Cynthia, what are you going to do about this? We don't need to hear about 911 any more. There are bigger problems. It may not be the issue on which you are the most comfortable but it is one big issue on everyone's minds and both Republican and Democrats are treating us like they think we are fools.

Carol Wolmann, Barry Hermanson, Carol Brouillet, Peter Meyers, Tom Lash; are you attacking your opponents over their lame energy pollicies? Why not?

Mike Thompson (CA-1) takes the Democratic Party line on Energy. From his latest release:

• Allow for additional withdrawals from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to increase domestic supply. The SPR is currently at 98% capacity, and reducing it slightly to 90% would immediately increase supply, reduce prices and still maintain a substantial amount of reserve;
• Work with Congress to take aim at speculators who are artificially increasing the cost of oil, and;
• Require oil companies to use existing oil and gas leases, which according to the Department of Interior covers nearly 70 million acres – roughly the size of Colorado – and are estimated to have billions of barrels of recoverable oil.

If you read Dave Roberts, you know that this is a dumb strategy but it is what their playbook says to do.

Jackie Spier (CA-12) has not been around long enough to have much to say, but at least she has an idea. Change the speed limit so that we burn less gas per mile. My experience driving 101 is that we don't enforce the speed limit now. How, pray tell, is this going do anything more than than allow her to tell her constituents that she is doing something.

Anna Eshoo is so oblivious to the problem that her Congressional Web Site talks about the Caliofornia Energy Crisis on 2000, 2001. Maybe, though, of the entire list of House Candidates with Green opponents, she is might do the least harm just because she is doing nothing.

Mike Honda (CA-15) is not even there yet. Here is his plan to make it easier to find and burn more oil. Again, he is solving the Republican's problem.

1. speeding the development of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) by requiring the Secretary of Interior to offer at least one lease sale annually in the NPR-A.
2. reinstating a ban on the foreign export of Alaskan oil.
3. incorporating the ‘Use It or Lose It’ legislation, which simply requires oil producers to drill on the leases they already have or relinquish them so that another company can produce the oil there.
4. calling on the President to use the powers of his office to facilitate the completion of oil pipelines into the NPR-A and to facilitate the construction of a Alaska natural gas pipeline to the continental United States to move the product to market.
   

Now, for Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) who we know is hopeless. Again, he has a plan to burn more oil more quickly than anyone else.

...the American Energy Act. The bill – a product made possible by energy policies proposed by Members throughout the House Republican Conference – will increase the supply of American-made energy, improve conservation and efficiency, and promote new and expanding energy technologies to help lower the price at the pump and reduce America’s increasingly costly and dangerous dependence on foreign sources of energy.

Not a single one of these Congress Critters, all with Green Party opponents, makes a modicum of sense. Since our candidates are not making this a major issue, let's do it for them.

We need to have letters goign to the editor of every newspaper in each of these districts, especially the local community weeklies. We have a much greater chance of being printed that way.

T. Boone Pickens tells the truth. This is not a problem that you can drill your way out of. Neither his problem (money spent on foreign oil) nor the greater problem of global warming can wait for a solution. Time to give 'em all a little Hell.

And to all of you who are worried about that spoiler issue, here is the perfect example of why we need to have more than two parties. At least, Greens are going to tell you the truth.

Failure of political leadership

I anyone wants to fully understand the failure of political leadership in Washington over the past 30 years, you have only to watch President Jimmy Carter's address to the nation on Energy.

If the problem that Washington is trying to solve is the high price of gasoline, then we will continue to experience the consequences of continued failure. Think of that as you listen to the rhetoric of our presidential candidates.

Yet another canal

As I noted in the previous two posts, the Public Policy Institute of California has just released a new report that is being used by everyone who has a mega-project idea for the solution to California's Water Problems. Today, it was the subject of the first hour of discussion on Forum (KQED's call in talk show). Panel consisted of:

• Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director for Restore the Delta
• Ellen Hanak, associate director and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California
• Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
• Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute

It was a very informative hour. The biases were easy to see. I was glad that Peter Gleick made the point that the environmental view is a weak player in the game of allocating water. The PPIC Report calls for the abandonment of many acres of prime farm land.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla did a good job of pointing out the economic issues that had not been considered in the report.

I would urge everyone to listen to the report later in the day or tomorrow. It is not yet available online, but will be.

PPIC Report on the Delta - Words Fail Me.

When words fail me, I should get professional help. In the case, the professional help is from Dan Bacher, Editor of Fishsniffer. I quote an early copy on the jump as the Fishsniffer does not have it up on the web site yet.


Stephen Bechtel Jr. Funds Peripheral Canal Report!

by Dan Bacher

The people and foundations who fund "scientific" reports and studies often reveal what is the real agenda behind the publishing of any document.

A new Public Policy Institute (PPIC) report recommending the construction of a peripheral canal on the California Delta, "Comparing Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta," was released yesterday with wild acclamation by the Governor and the state's water contractors, since it "scientifically" justifies the destruction of the West Coast's largest estuary by building a canal.

Little noticed in the media reports was where the funding came from. According to the PPIC's press release: "The new report, Comparing Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, builds on the findings of a 2007 PPIC study by the same team, which concluded that the need for a new Delta strategy is urgent. The new report was funded in part by Stephen D. Bechtel Jr. and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation."

Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. (born 1925) is, with his son Riley, co-owner of the Bechtel Corporation. He is the son of Stephen David Bechtel, Sr. and grandson of Warren A. Bechtel who founded the Bechtel Corporation, the world's largest engineering firm.

Bechtel Corporation, one of the world's largest engineering and construction firms that is instrumental in the "reconstruction" of Iraq, is a leading advocate throughout the world of the privatization of water systems. It was Bechtel that sued the country of Bolivia for canceling a contract there sponsored by the World Bank.

A CorpWatch report, "Profiting from Destruction," provides case studies from Bechtel's history of operating in the water, nuclear, energy and public works sectors. These case studies reveal a legacy of unsustainable and destructive practices that have reaped permanent human, environmental and community devastation around the globe. Letters from "Bechtel affected communities" included in the report provide first-hand descriptions of these impacts, from Bolivia to Native American lands in Nevada. The report reveals a 100-year history spent capitalizing on the most brutal technologies, reaping immense profits and ignoring the social and environmental costs. For more information, go to http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6975

Another CorpWatch report, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6670, details "Bechtel's Water Wars" in Bolivia. Fortunately, the people of Cochabama rebelled against Bechtel's scheme to privatize their water system and won.

The role of Stephen Bechtel, Jr. in funding the PPIC report must be exposed. Are the scientists who authored this report aware of Bechtel's record of devastation across the globe? And will Bechtel profit from the destruction of the California Delta fish, farms and people if a peripheral canal is built? These are both questions that must be asked!

Central Valley chinook salmon and Delta fish populations are in a state of collapse, largely due to massive increases in water exports from the Delta in recent years. A broad coalition of recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, Delta farmers, Indian Tribes and environmentalists is opposed to the peripheral canal because it would result in the diversion of more water from the Delta and further exacerbate the current fishery collapses.

The PPIC report amounts to being an "elaborate sales brochure" for the peripheral canal, quipped Bill Jennings, executive director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. I completely agree, especially when you consider who is funding the report!

PPIC Report on the delta appear biased.

I had planned to write a post today about the real need to protect biodiversity. However events changed my plans. You are already seeing the spin machine going to work to sell the peripheral canal concept. The most recent action is the release of a new report by the Public Policy Institute of California, a supposedly non-partisan (but not necessarily non-biased) think tank that does what someone will pay them to do.


This PPIC report, especially with the current drought in question, is getting a lot of play on the television news. Most of it comes without any commentary from those with opposing view, of which there are many.

Restore the Delta had published their own position just prior to the PPIC report's publication. It was an update commenting on the work that had been going on in Sacrament. However, things changed rapidly. Almost as soon as the PPIC report was available, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla issued a rejoinder that has yet to receive proper media attention.
I cite this press release in it's entirety as it is not yet up on their web site.

Press Release from Restore the Delta

Stockton, California
July 17th, 2008

Restore the Delta
PO Box 691088
Stockton, CA 95269
RestoretheDelta.org

Contact: Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
Phone: 209-479-2053

BAD ASSUMPTIONS LEAD TO FAULTY ANSWERS FOR THE DELTA: RESTORE THE DELTA QUESTIONS PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE REPORT CALLING FOR A PERIPHERAL CANAL


Stockton, California -- Restore the Delta, a Delta-based coalition including Delta farmers, environmentalists, everyday citizens, fishermen, business leaders, the faith community, and recreation enthusiasts, is calling into questions many of the findings in the Public Policy Institute's Navigating the Delta, a report calling for a peripheral canal.

First, longtime Delta advocate, Tom Zukerman, notes that the report's conclusion that Delta islands with highways were worth saving, while others are not worth maintaining, is an unrealistic conclusion. "How can one maintain any semblance of land form, so as to protect highway structures, with an ocean essentially in the middle of a few islands? For that matter, without the semblance of land forms in the Delta, how would water and gas lines, the railroad, and shipping channels remain protected?"

Central Delta Water Agency's Dante Nomellini further explains that the inter-relationship between Delta islands extends to seepage, wind-wave generation, and fishery and wildlife habitat. "One cannot simply flood islands without adversely affecting the ecosystem and infrastructure on the surrounding islands," says Nomellini.

Second, Restore the Delta Board Press President Bill Loyko questions how constructing a peripheral canal could possibly solve water needs throughout the state. "A peripheral canal, first and foremost will not make more water. The present problem with California's water system is that it is short 5 million acre-feet of water annually to meet current state needs. Rerouting water will not solve that problem." Loyko also asserts that the report's call for building a peripheral without limits in size is merely the means by which to take away the Delta's last major fresh water source, and thereby would worsen Delta water quality.

Third, Restore the Delta's Campaign Director, Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, adds that the report's analysis of water quality is also faulty. "Their analysis assumes that water flowing into and out of the Delta remains unchanged when the point of diversion is changed. But everyone who lives, works, and recreates in the Delta knows that with less fresh water flowing through the Delta, more salt water will intrude into local waterways."

In fact, the report makes a highly inaccurate assumption that water quality would improve for farmers near the San Joaquin River. Barrigan-Parrilla says that the report's authors have not engaged in any conversations with local Delta experts, South Delta farmers - some of whom have lived on the land for ninety years.

Barrigan-Parrilla also adds that such changes in water quality to the Delta will result in economic chaos for the region. "Neither the PPIC Report authors nor officials with the State have done a full-scale economic analysis of how a change in water quality with the operation of a peripheral canal would impact farming, recreation, or fisheries. It is estimated that Delta farming alone contributes $2 billion per year to our local economy, and recreation like boating and fishing another $750 million. If the Delta is made into a salty inland sea the economic impacts will be devastating to those living in the surrounding five counties of the Delta."

Last, Restore the Delta Board Member, Betsy Reifsnider, notes problems with the report's conclusions regarding governance for the Delta and how these conclusions mirror problems with the Delta Vision Strategic Draft Plan. Reifsnider explains, "The PPIC Report concludes that consensus regarding Delta management cannot be reached. While that statement may be true on the surface, it unfortunately is a polite way of saying that local Delta experts should be left out of governance decisions." Reifsnider also adds that the Delta Vision process is calling for a governance council for the Delta comprised solely of governor appointees. "Where do Delta locals have the opportunity to assist with governing the Delta?" asks Reifsnider. "After all, who knows the Delta best?"

All contributors are available for interviews.

About Restore the Delta

Restore the Delta is a grassroots campaign committed to making the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta fishable, swimmable, drinkable, and farmable to benefit all of California. Restore the Delta - a coalition of Delta residents, business leaders, civic organizations, community groups, faith-based communities, union locals, farmers, fishermen, and environmentalists - seeks to strengthen the health of the estuary and the well-being of Delta communities. Restore the Delta works to improve water quality so that fisheries and farming can thrive together again in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Website: http://www.restorethedelta.org

Restore the Delta
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
email: barbara@restorethedelta.org
phone: 209-479-2053

Barbara raises the substantive issues. We also have to look at the possible bias of the team that put this together. One of the "funders" of the study was Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Bechtel, along with his son Riley, is Co-Owner of Bechtel Corporation. The history of Bechtel Corporation in dealing with water is one of aggressive privatization, back room deals to support no-bid contracts (just like in Iraq). They even had the audacity to start charging farmers in Ecuador and Bolivia for the water that fell on the farm because that was water that Bechtel claimed was their's by contract and which was to be resold to cities. Bechtel sued the government of Bolivia when they voided the contract.

Bechtel lost the suit. But this illustrates that manner in which they would be expected to deal with the Delta. The PPIC report un-surprisingly came to the conclusion that a peripheral canal was required and who would be in a better position to build, own and operate such a facility?

Something smells like dead fish.

This is a time when I hope that Greens all over this state will lose no time in contacting their local media and demanding that they note the potential bias in the PPIC report and that they allow Restore the Delta to offer the counter arguments.

Come to think of it, I did write a post about biodiversity. If Bechtel and the PPIC "experts" carry the day, the delta will become a very different place and we will have all lost.

Cynthia McKinney is Nominated

Saturday, July 12th

Cynthia McKinney Accepts Green Party Nomination

Cynthia McKinney won the Green Party nomination for President of the United States at the Nominating Convention in Chicago in the 1st round of voting Saturday evening.

NEWS ADVISORY: THE GREEN PARTY OF CALIFORNIA

CHICAGO – The progressive left chose its new candidate for President Saturday when former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney – now a resident of California – was tabbed as Green Party's candidate for President at the Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention here. She won on the first ballot, garnering 313 of 532 votes cast.

"This was an amazing phenomenon. The nomination of Cynthia and her vice president running mate Rosa Clemente demonstrate the growing strength of the Green Party. Let there be no doubt now who speaks for the progressive left in this country," said David Cobb, the 2004 Green Party nominee for President, who resides in Eureka, CA.

"We are getting stronger with every election and with candidates of the caliber of Cynthia and Rosa, we have leadership from constituencies we have not had in the past," Cobb added. Clemente, a hip hop activist and journalist, accepted the vice-president nomination

There was, indeed, amazing energy and excitement in the nominating convention in Chicago Symphony Hall. We were witnessing history being made and everybody in the room knew it. 2008 has been an extraordinary election in these United States. Yes, it has been, though not necessarily as the story is told by the mainstream media (MSM). Both mainstream political parties have emphatically rejected the Bush-Clinton-Bush status quo. However, evidence is piling up in an avalanche that both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are unwilling and/or unable to turn their respective political camps from driving this nation (and the world) over a cliff. As the brilliant Green Party activist, Malik Rahim, noted in his keynote address, irregardless of how the votes fall in November, and no matter what they say about us in the clueless MSM, we have "already won" by helping to jump start the international Green Movement in the united States.

Excerpt from McKinney Acceptance Speech:

And when I got to Washington, I saw that public policy is really made in a room at a table. There were real seats at the table. Well, imagine what has happened to public policymaking now. There is a real room with a window and a door, and there’s two seats at the table. The window is for us to look through, while our representatives make policy for us, so we can see what they’re doing. At the table, one seat is for the Democrats, one seat is for the Republicans. Now, we don’t know who did it, but one of them put a lock on the door and slipped a key to the corporate lobbyists who can come and go at will and whisper what they want to Democrats and Republicans, and the result is that we the people, who pay for those seats and determine who sits in them, want one thing, but because the corporate lobbyists can come and go at will, our values get overridden and our representatives give us something else. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re against the war and occupation, but war and occupation still gets funding. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re against illegal spying on innocent people, yet end up with a telecom immunity bill being signed into law. That’s how we end up with everyone saying they’re in favor of universal access to healthcare and no one supporting what the physicians, nurses and healthcare really want, and that’s a single-payer healthcare system in this country.

The Movement is key because no president, least of all a president from the one-corporate-race-obsessed-war-party-with-two names can turn things around from the top down.

Go Green!

Great Candidates -- Mesplay, Johnson, and Swift

Friday, July 11th

Candidates Forum

There was a delicious irony to the garish, ostentatious "Red Lacquer" ballroom of Chicago's old Palmer House Hotel being the setting for the final Green Party presidential candidate forum. This hotel is a monument to the First Gilded Age of corrupt capitalist wheeling 'n dealing. Today, my Green Party is the leading edge progressive voice speaking in the Second Gilded Age.

(Left to right) Kent Mesplay of California, Jesse Johnson of West Virginia, Kat Swift of Texas

By Friday evening, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was already the presumptive nominee. Accordingly, as I watched the three "minor candidates" ably fielded tough questions, I could not help but feel a certain pride in the depth and talent within the Green Party.



Dr. Ken Mesplay, California's favorite son, was the strongest on the environmental issues which are, after, the bright green center of our philosophy. I spoke with delegates from all around the country and it seems everyone, everywhere was impressed by Kent's knowledge and commitment.

Jesse Johnson, a bona-fide mountain man from West Virginia, has a towering presence. He spoke about the devastating effects of mountaintop removal by the rapacious coal industry. One thing I learned was that the Appalachian Mountains are the watershed for the rivers that supply drinking water to many states in the Southeast. The clogging and destruction of these waterways is a factor in the drought currently plaguing the Southeast. Johnson says what we need is not "the audacity of hope," but rather, the "audacity of truth." Johnson puts the lie to the pernicious Democrat-Republican mythology that all "working class white people" are racist reactionaries who can only be moved by an appeal to their fears (by the way, this mythology may yet cost the clueless Democrats another presidential election).

Kat Swift, our braided, blonde sister from Texas, is a young, tough activist with a lot of charm. She is smart. But she is open-minded and not too proud to admit she doesn't know it all. At one point, during a response to a question about energy, she joked that her "expert" on energy policy was Dr. Kent Mesplay. One question from the floor was about the touchy question of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Kat gave one of the wisest answers. She said that conversations with people on both sides of that bloody divide has convinced her that, in order to make peace, we have to go around the "leaders" with vested interests in maintaining the conflict and that the United States, of course, cannot be a so-called broker for peace while arming one side. Since this also happens to be my personal opinion, I thought her answer was very wise.