Isn't there a law?

When you get to be a member of Congress, you now have dispensation to say anything you want with no regard for it's factual content, and then use tax payer money to publish it for all to see.

Case in point: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) get a lot of free press with his fact deficient rants against the idea of climate change actually taking place. However, since the Republicans do not control the Senate Committees, he can not to everything as he pleases. However, that does not stop him from trying, as the minority party also gets a chance to put a "minority opinion" statement on the committee's web site. Since Inhofe is the ranking member of the Environments and Public Works Committee, he controls what gets posted.

The most idiotic is the statement at the infamous paper of lobbyist Marc Marano entitled "More Than 700 (Previously 650) International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims". This has been debunked again and again. Many of those who were named, have been shocked to see their position so grossly misrepresented. Still, Inhofe puts it out there for all to see and you, my fellow tax payers, are paying for it… in more ways than one.

I wish that there was a way to get at a Senator who intentionally uses tax payers money to spread a convenient lie. Aren't Republicans supposed to be for reigning in wasteful spending. Well, they ought to start here, unless they are all foot soldiers in the Republican War on Science.

Hell,I lived in Inhofe's Tulsa and he wasn't even a good mayor.

So what, you ask? Well what should the Green Party do to specifically address the fact that The War on Science has turned into a War on our Children. We gotta care more than it appears.

What are we doing to our children

I grew up in rural Illinois... at least through attending the 8th grade. Then we left Illinois for Flagstaff, AZ because I was developing asthma and N. Arizona's dry climate was supposed to good for me. I hope that this gives me a greater sympathy for the children who now have to endure the same illness.

I recently posted about the toxic city designation for Bakersfield and Fresno. That same designation could have been applied to a number of other areas in the San Joaquin Valley had the list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas not been limited.

This all makes me wonder exactly what the Republican members of the House of Representatives are doing with their attacks on the EPA and it's efforts to clean up America's air. Joe Romm had a re-post (from NRDC Switchboard) today at Climate Progress entitled Fred Upton's bizarre ware on 24 million children with asthma.

Just about every major health group in the United States is now telling Chairman Upton that he is putting the welfare of millions of Americans at risk who suffer from asthma (that’s 24 million people right there – including seven million children!) and other respiratory diseases.

I started to pay attention to Chris Mooney after he wrote The Republican War on Science back in 2005. Mooney continues to blog about the intersection of science and policy. It seems that the war is not over and that Upton considers our children to be just collateral damage.

California has it's own Upton's. Their names might be Darrell Issa or Buck McKeon. For a party that still talks of "family values" it appears that these Republicans are only talking about voting adults.

CA Power Shifts

In a recent post that asks Greens to get down and dirty, I made the point that the communities of the Central Valley had a set of problems that were not getting solved by the Parties that Be and which cry out for Green Solutions. While this was picked up and re-published elsewhere, including on the GPCA facebook page, the reactions were predictable At best, there was a suggestion that we need to take advantage of our largest groups of Greens and build out from there. I had been arguing that we need respond to the greatest need.

This week, we got a first glance at the 2010 census data. The quick story is that CA will begin to look a bit more red. While coastal areas had little growth in the past 10 years, the Central Valley has grown rapidly.

According to a recent listing of state wide vote statistics, the only county where we had over 10K Greens was Los Angeles with 21,091. The other large counties were Alameda, San Francisco, San Diego, Orange, Sonoma, Sacramento, Santa Clara with all having over 4000 registered Greens. Of that group, only San Diego County grew by as much as 10% in the past decade. Our largest county, Los Angeles, only grew by 2%.

In contrast, the inland counties grew much faster: Kern, Tulare, Merced and San Joaquin Counties all had over 20% growth while the larger Fresno County grew by 16%. Most of these areas are conservative enough that it takes skilled gerrymandering to generate a Democratic Congressman there. In Southern California, it was just as striking, with Imperial County growing by 23% and Riverside County by a whopping 42%.

Inevitably, political power is going to shift in this state as soon as the Redistricting Commission finishes it's task. There is no doubt that California Republican Party Chair Ron Nehring is feeling good. Green, with no representation on the Commission, need to be very focused in our effort because no one is going to help us out of the goodness of their hearts.

I am still waiting for economic data to be available. Still, when you look at the need, and the growth, it seems clear to me that we need to be much more active in those portions of the state undergoing the greatest growth and having the greatest need. The greatest change should provide the greatest opportunity. Green growth will only happen with Greens from all over decide to make it happen. A farmer does not reap a crop sitting in front of the TV.

UN Independent Expert on Water and Sanitation Deserves Criticism

Recently, the UN Independent Expert on Water and Sanitation as a Human Right went on a fact-finding tour of the United States and released a press statement. “I call for legal action to change the status of unrecognized and terminated tribes to enable all American Indians to gain the respect, privileges, religious freedom, and land and water rights to which they are entitled,” she stressed, calling on the US to ensure that water and sanitation are available at a price people can afford. said UN independent expert Catarina de Albuquerque, who is mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to examine human rights obligations for access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

It is significant to see that the langauge of the California Green Party plank on Water Planning includes a declaration that the GPCA"Uphold the water and land rights established under the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo and the sovereign claims of Native American bands, tribes, rancherias, reservations, Mission Indians, and non-federally recognized bands and tribes." The Green Party of California supports the efforts of all Native Americans to their claims and rights to land and resources as paramount in all water rights issues. Further, it proposes to cut through the legal and administrative processes of the Interior Department by acknowledging the rights of those bands and tribes who have made claims as remnant tribes and bands.


That being said, the Independent expert deserves criticism for lacking a substantial input process upon which to base her conclusion. She had 8-9 people in Sacramento testify. Her press statement did not reflect the limited input provided and the input provided did not justify the issue of discrimination being the sole focal point, as she raised it in her press statement. Green, Martin Zehr, testified and submitted a 7 page review of the relation between regional water planning and water as a human right. Included in the written review, it was noted that Greens in Detroit have also been active in opposing water shutoffs due to economic distress and the impact of the depression in Detroit.

Also testifying were representatives of the Unitarian-Universalists. Debbie Davis of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water testified concerning the contamination of public water supplies in the Central Valley of California. The effort of the UN Independent expert pales in comparison with the recent publication of the Public Policy Institute of California of the study entitled: MANAGING CALIFORNIA'S WATER: FROM CONFLICT TO RECONCILIATION. I attended the release on the study in Sacramento on February 24th. It is a shame that these two events, that were held so close to each other in time and place, were not able to contribute to the efforts of the other.


Chief Gary Harrison, who organized the Alaska leg of the Peace and Dignity Journeys, was also there to testify. Chief Gary ran with me in 1996 in the Peace and Dignity Journey, a Native American cross-continental spiritual run . He testified and submitted a paper to the UN Independent Expert on Water and Sanitation.

Chickaloon Village presents its case against Coal Mining to United Nations Expert on the Human Right to Water

February 28, 2011
Monday

(SitNews) Chickaloon Native Village, a federally-recognized Athabascan Indian Tribal government in Alaska, filed a communication to the United Nations Independent Expert on the human right to water and sanitation in conjunction with her first official visit to the United States, which began today.
Chickaloon Village’s submission asserts that the new open-pit coal strip mine in its traditional territory proposed by the Usibelli Corporation would contaminate local drinking water sources as well as rivers, streams and groundwater that support salmon, moose and other animals and plants vital for subsistence, religious and cultural practices. The US Federal Government and the State of Alaska have, to date, not responded to Chickaloon’s firmly-stated opposition to the mine.
The visit to the United States by the Independent Expert, Mrs. Catarina de Albuquerque, a Portuguese human rights expert appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, includes stops in Washington DC, Boston Massachusetts and Northern California, where she will meet with the Winnemem Wintu and other Indigenous representatives. Her US visit will end on March 2, 2011.
During her visit she will meet with the US State Department and relevant Federal agencies as well organizations, communities and experts to receive information regarding the human right to water and sanitation and the federal and state policies and practices that affect this right. She is expected to make recommendations to the US government at the conclusion of her visit.
Quoting the news release from NAY’DINI’AA NA’ (Chicaloon Village) Traditional Council, the right to water for Chickaloon and other Indigenous Peoples is not limited to access to safe drinking water and sanitation. It is closely linked to a range of other rights including Self-determination, subsistence, health, land and resources, cultural and religious practice and free, prior and informed consent. International standards including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognize Indigenous Peoples’ right to determine their own priorities for development and to exercise free, prior and informed consent regarding activities which may affect their traditional lands and resources, including water.
Coal mining in and around Chickaloon in the early 1900’s had devastating impacts, including contaminating rivers and decimating traditional food sources such as moose and salmon said the NAY’DINI’AA NA’ Traditional Council. The tribes’ long years of effort to restore its culture, subsistence, language, health and ecosystems, including its waterways, will be severely undercut if not nullified by the proposed new mining.
Explaining the reasons behind Chickaloon’s filing, Traditional Chief Gary Harrison stated: “International standards like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognize our inherent sacred right to protect our water and keep it clean for the animals, fish and future generations of our Nation. Our right to water is the same as our right to life. We can’t sit back and allow our human right to water to be violated again”.
Chickaloon is a census-designated place (CDP) in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska, United States. It is part of the Anchorage, Alaska Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 213 at the 2000 census.

Food prices rise to new height.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the cost of food increased in February for the eighth consecutive month and reached an all time high. You heard a bit of this in the news coverage of the grassroots protests in Tunisia and Egypt. While not even the major cause of the unrest, frustration over the cost of food played a part.

I read a comment today at Climate Progress that had posted it's take on this fact. Someone said “In the U.S., where we spend less than 20% of household income on food, at least at first, this will have little impact on us. However, over time it will become more and more of an issue.

I had to disagree. It is already becoming an issue. Most residents of this suburbanite enclave might be somewhat immune to the rising costs, limiting their reactions to a bit of grumbling while loading up at Safeway or Nob Hill. That would not be the case were you dependent on a Food Bank for your next meal. They are being forced to purchase a larger portion of their supplies and these are costing more every month.

It is useful to understand the causes of this unprecedented rise in prices. I find three of them to be key: extreme weather events, the cost of fossil fuels and US Energy / Agriculture policy.

We have seen enough of the extreme weather events in the news that some have begun to write about catastrophe fatigue. Most importantly, the extreme heat in Russia last year severely damaged their wheat crop. Russia has stopped exporting wheat. That might not be so bad had we not had two more extreme events that affect world wide wheat prices. There is a long lasting drought in the Shandong province of China, their major wheat production area. This will reduce the 2011 crops and maybe eve 2012 depending on how long the drought lasts... remember that we are just coming out of a three year drought. Among the other wheat exporters, Australia is very limited due to droughts in the Southwest and floods in Queensland.

Without opening up the discussion of whether or not climate change is human caused, this increase in extreme weather events is to be expected given the undeniable fact that our weather is warming.

Most of world-wide agriculture is very dependent on factory scale application of fertilizers, chiefly nitrogen that is derived from natural gas. That is only one link. Another is the fact that less and less of our food supply is grown locally, requiring significant fuel use just to transport it from the field to the table. It is no longer like the days when I was a student when we ate whatever was available locally and a mandarin orange was a Christmas stocking treat. The next time you go shopping, look at the country of origin on the item and think about the cost of getting that into your shopping cart.

It is a privilege to be able to eat peaches in February and kiwi in July. We just need to acknowledge that there is a cost for that privilege and that cost will continue to rise. We are using more fossil fuel energy every year and finding less new energy reserves. That can not be good for reducing costs.

Finally, I listed US Energy and Ag policies as one of the causes. At present, over 10% of the world-wide corn production is consumed to produce ethanol for fuel. In the US, this is over 30%. This is good the for big corporate agribusiness which is getting massive governmental subsidies while it over uses inputs of natural gas derived nitrogen. It is not good for you and I, but we can't do anything about it. The politics is such that corn state senators will block any effort to change either the ethanol requirement or the subsidies for corn.

Come to think of it, our CA Senators favor subsidies for Ag's commodity crops themselves, just cotton and rice rather than corn.

So what are we to do? My wife and I grow as much of our own food as we can. We share with neighbors. We joined the California Rare Fruit Growers to learn more about what we should be doing. I registered Green as the big parties just don't get it yet. I have joined Transition California to help us all prepare for the days when the costs of fossil fuels and the price of food leads us down the same path followed by the Tunisians and Egyptians.

This is scheduled to appear in Green Talk column of Morgan Hill Times on Tues. Mar. 8, 2011.

Time for Greens to get Down and Dirty

Once again I am going back to a subject that has bewildered me since I began this blog, most recently here. I have just never figured out exactly why the Green Party of CA has not made more of an organizing effort in the Central Valley. My point has always been that this is where Greens have solutions to the very real problems the everyone is experiencing.

Today, I offer one more reason that we need to be working our buts off there. Forbes magazine has released (as of 2/28/2011) a study that lists the 10 most toxic cities in the United States. Anyone who has really experienced life in the Central Valley would not be surprised to learn that there are two CA cities in the top 5. Bakersfield and Fresno are listed as numbers 2 and 3 respectively. In both cities, poor air quality was a major factor.

Another study, released in 2006 from CSU-Fullerton put the cost of poor air quality in the San Joaquin Valley at $3 Billion. That was when the economy was good and there could have been some revenue to fix things. Now, the only fix might be to organize, because all solution are political and never more so the the current Republican attacks on the EPA.

This is what CSU-Fullerton study team found:

According to the study, the cost of air pollution averages $1,000 per person per year, and represents the following:

* 460 premature deaths among those age 30 and older
* 23,300 asthma attacks
* 188,000 days of school absences
* 3,230 cases of acute bronchitis in children
* 3,000 lost work days
* 325 new cases of chronic bronchitis
* 188,400 days of reduced activity in adults
* 260 hospital admissions
* More than 17,000 days of respiratory symptoms in children

Greens are always sensitive to ethnic issue, so we should not be surprised to learn that…

The report indicates that some communities, including those with high populations of Latinos/Hispanics and African-Americans, are harder hit than others, due to the varying concentrations of dirty air around the region.

This seems to define the mileau in which the vision of a new Green future would win many adherents, but sadly this has not been the case. Kern County, where Bakersfield is located, has only 0.2% of the registered voters. Fresno County is better, with around 0.4% but neither of these is really more than embarrassment to mention.

I believe that this is not due to the fact that our message is wrong, but rather that we have never even gotten our message out. If the current politics of the San Joaquin Valley is such that it allows two of it's most important cities to become so toxic, then it is time to change the politics.

Greens can not wait for some group of like minded public citizens to decide to form a local and then come to the GPCA for support. We need to be organizing the organizing. We need to look to the history of the unions for the model. They did not gain strength by workers rallying around to join them, but rather they sent out organizers to make sure things happened. Fresno needs to understand that we are there, we are not going away and we intend to change things. Bakersfield needs to understand that we will not allow, as some have reported, workers to lose their jobs by registering Green, but rather that registering Green in the only way to make sure that they get off the toxic cities list.

What I would like to happen is for the GPCA to set aside $5,000 for radio & TV campaign in those two markets and let them all know we are there as long as it is need. Then to follow that up with large scale registration drives in each city, even if we have to bus in volunteers. And, I think that the effort should be approved at the next General Assembly.

None of this will happen if we don't raise the money to make it happen. This week, I donated $150 by clicking on the Donate Button on the GPCA web site. They set a really low goal on $7000 by May 1 (plenary...). It will only take 42 more similar donations to make the $7K. Who will join me?

Twisted Priorities

(Cross posted from Calitics)

In a time when Lester Brown is writing about a World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse it seems that the political forces in California make for strange reading. Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose overall environmental polices were as destructive as any CA governor, made an impassioned speech this week on the need for strong action on climate change. It may be the only environmental issue that he got right.

At the same time, Representative Jim Costa was voting with the Republicans to continue subsides to the petroleum industry... subsidies that cost the US Taxpayers Billions a year. It is yet one more piece of evidence that cutting the federal budget is not really a goal, but rather a question of whose ox is going to be gored. In this case, Republicans in Congress are making sure that their ox is protected.

We all know how we are being manipulated, first by a national that considers Charlie Sheen to be the big story of the day year, but also by the political operatives who draw a public salary to be lobbyist. One time John Doolittle / John Ashcroft aide, Kevin Ring, made that very clear on his Daily Caller blog post this month.

If I did not know these critical facts as the lead staffer on the bill, how little did other Hill staffers (and their bosses) know when they agreed to let this bill pass? I know this for certain: If someone had objected, I would have recommended that we accuse the objector of not being serious about saving Americans from this deadly threat.

Ring was talking about how federal legislation regarding methamphetamine and the manner in which offenses are punished. But we surely know that the same type of manipulation goes on in every are. BTW - Ring awaiting sentencing for Abramoff associated dealings. In California, we need to pay attention to how demands for additional growth and invective against the EPA will play out, especially with CA Reps Buck McKeon and Darrel Issa in positions of power right now.

Schwarzenegger was right. This is a time when we will have to manage the climate as best we know how or pass on the consequences of our non-action to our children and grand children. The Climate, Energy, Water nexus of issues will define our future.

As a one time thespian, I am thinking of the line from Death of a Salesman: Attention must be paid.

How much of your food cost is political?

In a recent edition of the Modesto Bee, Victor Davis Hanson asks the question another way.

In times of massive deficits, why are we borrowing millions to subsidize profitable agri- business?

It really becomes very clear what is happening when you scrape away the political rhetoric and look at who is giving thanks for their bounty and who does not reap that harvest. Of all the commodity crops (corn, soy, wheat, sugar, cotton) corn most clearly illustrates exactly how we are all getting the shaft. According to Hanson:

Corn reserves are at their lowest point in 15 years, as prices skyrocketed nearly 70 percent in almost one year. Escalating world wheat prices have caused unrest in the Middle East. Soy, dairy and meat prices are likewise reaching record levels. In other words, a growing world population, increased affluence abroad and demands for higher- priced meats and vegetables, and diversion of prime cropland for biofuel from Europe to Brazil — in perfect-storm fashion — have made food a lucrative business.

Hanson does not even address the most distressing fact concerning corn.  As the US Government moves to increase the amount of ethanol in our transportation fuel, an increasing amount of our crop is being diverted to fuel rather than food. Climate blogger, Joseph Romm, never a fan of ethanol, was petty clear about this today, but with more moral indignation that Hanson managed to convey.

In a world of blatantly increasing food insecurity — driven by population, dietary trends, rising oil prices, and growing climate instability — America’s  policy of burning one third of our corn crop in our engines (soon to be 37% or more) is becoming increasingly untenable, if not unconscionable.

I have written about the problems with commodity subsidies before: here, here and here (with Wisconsin's Jill Bussierer).

Now we have a Republican controlled House of Representative, with a large number of Republican Senators from the very states that grow most of our corn. Kari Hamerschlag, Sr. Analyst at the Environmental Working Group sent out an email about the EWG's Farm Subsidy Database in which she makes the point that the benefits go to a very few. Then concludes her letter by pointing out that we need a new agricultural policy.

In a time of large federal deficits, the agricultural budget is a zero-sum game. Every dollar that goes into wasteful, inequitable programs cannot be committed to solving serious environmental problems, promoting local and sustainable organic food systems, increasing access to healthy foods, or building new opportunities for beginning and minority farmers. A better strategy is needed to help growers and ranchers of all sizes, sectors and regions cope with the myriad challenges facing agriculture.

That is pretty much what Hanson was saying in the Mod Bee OpEd linked above. It seems to me that there is a need for someone who can challenge the status quo of our gerrymandered Central Valley congressional districts, someone who can talk about getting the waste out of Federal Budget, who can talk about putting people to work on their own land; someone who can extol the advantages of decentralizing power back to the local government, someone who knows what farmers have known for millennia, that if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you.

That sounds to me like a Green.

POINT: Madison, Greens and Public Education

This is yet another moment in time when the status quo is being challenged. As Greens we have the obligation to support the emerging vision of peoples in the US and in countries around the world. History has taught us what works and what doesn’t; what’s change and what’s a historical continuum of previously existing paradigms. So some things we can rule out for the future- we can rule out caliphates; we can rule out bureaucratic statism; we can rule out totalitarianism; we can rule out theocracy. When we shift our vision from the telescope of the world with the universe of peoples and places in motion, to the microscope of our own backyard, we can proceed as leaders who present new options and paint new alternatives on the political canvas.

Such is the case of public employees in the United States and the current movement in Madison, Wisconsin. At the heart of the issue is the issue evolved from the Industrial Revolution of union shop vs. open shop. As a disclaimer, I should add that I have been a public employee for most of my life. I have worked in open shops in a “right-to-work” state (New Mexico) for most of that time or in a non-union financial institution. It’s not the hell that it is represented to be. Although, if I really thought that the union leadership would ever be sincere about workers’ rights, I might even hop on the bandwagon of supporting the union shop. I do have scars from the experience that could have been avoided.

I am used to not being in unions while others are. Years ago, I worked in the Northeast in union factory production work and actively engaged union members to oppose plant closings and protect pensions of those who were being displaced. The plants closed while the leadership of the local AFL-CIO refused to initiate any action to address our concerns and the Rust Belt became history throwing thousands like myself out of work. As an aside, there have been times throughout my employment at different places when I sought support to organize a union at my place of work. The irony is that the union organizers who I contacted presented the same reasons to me as the boss as to why they couldn’t organize. Workers’ rights are NOT secured under the two party duopoly.

Greens have a particular need to address issues with an understanding of structural reform that we are presenting to voters. We are not just advocating for policies on one side of the current political debate. We are here to present a real alternative of governance that goes beyond existing bureaucracy and governmental entities. In New Mexico, Greens supported emerging models of education, as public schools repeatedly showed an inability to improve student performance and achievement. There is no emerging example that has demonstrated a consistent record to date. That doesn’t mean we can’t support homeschooling or charter schools. Neither does it mean we are trying to dismantle the entire public education system as some advocate. We know that urban schools are not working and new options are needed to give students a chance. We know there is educational injustice against minorities in urban schools.

Back to Madison. The teachers are right to support a union shop. They do face an uphill battle, as so few people in this nation even know what a union shop is today. And fewer are willing to switch their own position with that of teachers in this nation. The demonstrations are large and significant in expressing their resolve not to become a “right-to-work” state. And that is the focus of the battle. From the scenes of the mass demonstrations it is obvious how adamant teachers in Wisconsin are. Three realities they confront today that they might not have faced in other times. 1. The recession and unemployment has created budget crises in numerous states throughout the U.S. 2. The failure of the public education system as it exists to improve student achievement levels impacts on public opinion. 3. The low percentage of union workers in the US and the conflict between state and city budgets and state employee benefits of public employees.

From all appearances, there is much public support within Wisconsin as the public school system has demonstrated a strong record of student performance. Wisconsin fourth grade science scores were not significantly above the national average of scores in 2009, but they were higher than the national average in 8th grade science. See also NEA state stats regarding public education financing: . This year these students may face an extended school year this summer as a result of the strike of teachers against the bill before the State Legislature.

Democrats want us to fight each other to polarize public opinion and are playing their hands as anyone would in a power struggle. The actions of Democrats in the State Senate DO NOT represent the interests of teachers or other workers in Wisconsin. There are many questions in regards to the motives of the latest actions as there were reports as late as February 13 that the teachers’ union had come to an agreement with Governor Walker. “For the first time, the Wisconsin Education Association Council endorsed several major reforms that for years it had stubbornly resisted and stalled. This includes: Junking the outdated teacher pay schedule that rewarded longevity and advanced degrees. Instead, the union now supports merit pay so high-performing and high-demand teachers will earn more. Dramatically improving teacher evaluations using, among several other factors, student test results. Making it easier to get rid of the worst teachers if mentors and other help doesn’t boost performance. Shaking up the failing Milwaukee Public Schools.”

There are also forces that are pushing the Tea Party into such polarizing positions and are now mobilizing their ranks to oppose the teachers. The fact is that Greens should agree with the fiscal responsibility of the Tea Party as many did in 1992 with the Perot candidacy. Greens want to see something emerge beyond the status quo. In the United States, this is not only a budget issue, but is also a collective bargaining issue and a student achievement problem. The existing bureaucracy and public school system hasn’t proved capable of addressing any of these issues. One thing that is clear: if the teachers stay away from work too long there will be parents and others who will step in to create new alternative. If the State Legislature is unable to act, people will learn to live without it. There will be private options developed to avoid these options in the future. And there will be winners in these fights; none of whom currently are sitting at their desks for the next school day in Wisconsin.

Inevitably, I ask where the state workers were when the factories in the Northeast were closing. And the answer is they were expanding as the number of social workers increased to service the unemployed. Where were the unions when political action was needed to protect the pensions of factory workers in the Rustbelt? The structural problems of this economy have dragged us all down and its time we begin to make adjustments that mean change for everyone. Change in how our localities are governed- so that we can depend on local resources for local economies of scale; so that we can develop integrated local economies not dependent on outside corporate investment; so that we can govern and manage the natural resources in our regions with stakeholders and not corporate shills representing us. Our political institutions, our schools, our state bureaucracies and our corporate giants are devouring us all. Feeding the bureaucracy is NOT the solution. Calling it a union is not the same as calling it democracy.

If one thinks that the pension issues can be avoided come to San Francisco where one proposition has been defeated but others loom on the horizon. The bankruptcy of liberalism lies not in its intention but in its impact. The bankruptcy of conservatism is not in its impact but in its intentions. Regionally, we need to establish priorities together and come to consensus. We need to avoid the repeated scenarios of crisis-resolution-crisis and begin to plan regionally. So the warning to teachers: Don’t cook the goose that lays the golden egg. The warning to the State Legislature: Don’t leave home without it. We might not be here when you get back. To our children we say: Climb every mountain.

Long range plans and political reality.

For all of the good words that the CA legislature wrapped around it's full slate of water bills last year, which I strongly criticized, it seems that little has changed. Yes, they brought down the curtain on the puppet theater known as CalFED and replaced it with the Delta Stewardship Council, but that council was given goals that appear to be mutually exclusively… to maintain the Delta ecosystem and to provide water for both agricultural and urban use. The fact is that there just is not enough water to do both.

Yes, I know that we have had rain this year. The San Jose area might make it up to 100% of normal, y-t-d if the rains continue into next week. So, what is the problem?

Well, part of it stems from the fact that the Bay Delta Stewardship Council, acting according to a legislatively imposed schedule, has released the initial version of their plan and it is missing the most important issues, like how much water needs to flow through the Delta in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem. It also has no answer for the question of how any work is to be funded. The lack of adequate funding is one of the things that ensured the failure of CalFed.

There is an intriguing analysis of the situation at On the Public Record. I agree with most of it, including the comments by waterwonk that this analysis was incomplete. At least waterwonk provided more partial information and that is helpful.

When I posted my original critique last year, on anonymous poster responded with the most common defenses against criticism of power: we are the experts so just nod your head in agreement and shut up.

Instead of declaring all of this a failure and attacking those who are trying to help the environment (e.g., Huffman -- who has forgotten more about the Delta than you'll ever know), why don't you get off your Green Party Duff, shake off the "I won't support anything that might work" dogma, and join the environmental groups who are actively fighting for numeric public trust criteria in this State Board proceeding, which would make a big difference.

In retrospect, I think that I was right. The political system in California will not allow a responsible plan to be made for the future of the Delta. We have a Republican Congressman from the San Joaquin Valley, Devin Nunes (CA-21) who continuously rails against "wacko" environmentalists while sneaking provisions into every piece of legislation that he can find which would prevent the funding of any action that is taken to implement the federal governments own scientific findings. Nunes will use his position on the House Committee for Natural Resources to control funding for water projects in CA.

In CA, Assembly Member Jared Huffman was a key figure in both creating the structure we have now and also in getting the Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC), his one time employer, to support it. Hell, they helped draft it and should be just as accountable for creating yet another agency whose very mission, with its mutually exclusive goal, especially without adequate funding, is almost guaranteed to fail.

It is even clear that, as Restore the Delta intimates, the Delta Stewardship Council may not want to hear the real scientific findings.

I rather agree with the version of the plant that On the Public Record wants to see. It would be as refreshing as a long drink of cold mountain spring water.

You know what would be an awesome plan? If they said, “We don’t believe the political process can resolve Delta issues and correct them before the crisis, especially since system collapse is both imminent and potentially sudden. Here is what will happen when the Delta collapses, and how we can minimize the losses.”

SSS - Somebody Should Syndrome

I wish that I had an antidote for the Somebody Should Syndrome (SSS) that seems to be a pandemic, spreading quickly through social medial. You have all seen it, the quick little tweet that says "Somebody should put Sen. Inhofe out to pasture" or even the collective "we have to do something about health care."

One of the reasons that I am a Green is the fact that one of the key values of the Green Party is Personal and Global Responsibility. I never imagined that personal responsibility stopped when you identified a problem that somebody should go to work on.

This is all the more a strange phenomenon is a party that does not accept large corporate donations, and thus must rely mostly on volunteers. So everyone should know that effective community organization starts when someone begins to organize the community, going door to door, talking to friend as the supermarket, calling a meeting at some local diner on Saturday Morning to plan how you can make you community better.

I know what I can best do. I write. I have this blog. I have have a monthly column in my local home town newspaper called Green Talk. It takes time. But it adds up.

I read the following on a Green Party Committee's email list this week.

This would be much easier to arrange, post notices for, etc. if there was a working forum for the Greens that people actually used. (Part of my strategy proposal, of course.)

A while back I thought it would be a good thing for the GPCA to have a twitter account also. So I made one. Now, others post there, but someone had to act. If we are really true to the Green values, then the cure for SSS is someone should I will…

Qualifying Green Candidates

There is not a lot of time between now and the next election cycle... not nearly enough if California Greens have to think about candidate training as well as recruitment.  Depending on what happens with the special election for California's House of Representatives District 36 special election, we may even see a state wide special election for Secretary of State is Debra Bowen can defeat Janice Hahn for that soon to be vacated (by Jane Harman) Congressional seat. 

This just means that we need to bring more focus to recruiting candidates to run in 2012... and I would hope that Dr. Forrest Hill takes another look at the Secretary of State position if that opens up again. 

National
While California Greening is mostly about  this state, I also think that we need to consider the 2012 presidential election.  Securing the right candidate in 2012 could help us all, in every state, build the party.  Selecting the wrong candidate for the times, as we did in 2008, could make our hold harder to climb out of.

Just as was the case in 2008, a Green Party candidate for 2012 will have to be able to articulate an economic policy that make sense for all.   It goes without saying that any Green Candidate will have to articulate a position based on economic justice, they will also have to talk convincingly about ecological justice.  I have seen nothing from Cynthia McKinney that indicates she has the interest to do either.

The issues of peace and freedom of expression are important and having the correct understanding of these issues is mandatory for a Green Party candidate, but they will not win over new voters any time soon. 

A Green Candidate will also have to deal persuasively with the issue of corporate power, in particular the power of corporations to influence elections.  We can not simply pass this responsibility off to the David Cobb led Move to Amend or Russ Feingold's Progressives United.

I have my own list of people that I would like to see run: Winona LaDuke and Ben Manski are near the top.  I also know that there will be a scattering of not so serious candidates&hellip: exempt in their own minds.  We need to treat them kindly, hear them out looking for a gem in the rough, but keep our minds on finding a real candidate with broad appeal.

California:
For all state-wide or local candidates in California, the budget crises looms like tsunami about to crash on our heads.   Every politician has simplistic solutions that will not work.  I am not sure that anyone has "the answer." We will need all of our candidate to be able to articulate the options and what it means for the particular constituency they are addressing.  If they can't do that one basic thing, then we should not be supporting them from the GPCA.

In many ways, I hope to seen Greens run for school boards in the next election cycles.  Education takes up over 50% of the state budget.  When Sacrament tries to balance the budget, it will necessarily hit the schools harder than any other sector.  If we have any obligation to the future, it is to make sure that our children are educated and understand how to think.  This is what we are up against, a concerted effort to turn all local offices into incubators for future anti-tax corporate puppets and our children into acquiescent followers.

“We want to have a wide, deep victory,” he told a few hundred people gathered Sunday morning at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. “We want to take over school boards, fire boards, water boards, city councils.”

I feel that now, more than ever, Greens hold the future of CA in our hands We must not fail.

If you thoughty you understood climate change

guess again.  I take that back, don't guess.  Read the most recent post by David Roberts at Grist.  If there is one piece of writing that will change how you think about the climate... or even about politics... this just may be it. 

Roberts clearly lays out the two notions of dealing with the climate changes coming, one from the climate scientists who are panicked about our continued under estimation of the rate of change and the economists who so believe in the power of the market to solve all problems that keep telling us not to worry. 

Humanity has never had to grapple with a problem that measures itself in centuries, threatens our very existence, and requires global cooperation to overcome. We are fairly beset by gaping uncertainties. We know it could get really bad, but we don't know exactly how bad it will get, or how fast, or where. We don't know how much it will cost to re-engineer the world along sustainable lines, or how quickly we can do it, or even whether we can do it at all.

That last phrase is what scares me "whether we can do it at all." Where does the will to act come from?  It surely will not come from those who do not take seriously the lessons of ecology.  I follow Matthew I Kahn's Environmental and Urban Economics blog, He frequently hypes his own view expressed in his book Climatopolis.  I have also mentioned it in my own posts because I don't understand where we find the revenue required by the massive infrastructure re-invention that his Climatopolis would require.  It seems the work of a free market economist who does not understand governmental fiscal policy at any level.

the street can rule but it cannot govern

It is worth saying that the street can rule but it cannot govern. Egypt is deciding its own future just as Eastern Europe and Russia decided its future. A working alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in the current crisis is not surprising. It is an organization that will be there. We have seen in Lebanon and Gaza that the ramifications of enabling political Islamist organizations impact on the future. Other organization need to establish leadership bodies within the movement and "make the rules" that even the MB is bound to follow. But beware of sleeping with the tiger, cause when he wakes he might be looking for breakfast.
Likewise, army rule in Turkey did not prevent the oppression of the Kurdish nation and its people. It has not provided democracy or equal rights. And the continued influence of the military in governing Egypt will not be changed. In this sense, this is not a revolution at all. More like a coup from the bottom or a change of faces at the top.
Structure is something that needs to be formulated to give the democratic process a real world context. To date everything is focused on the personal reign of Mubarek. I am in solidarity with the hopes and aspirations of the Egyptian people, but if they are to govern then the place to start is with the Constitution of their nation.

California Falling Down, Falling Down, Falling Down by Wes Rolley

Those Greens who are thinking about running fro state wide and / local California offices by 2012 need to make sure that they can clearly articulate a sound fiscal policy for California. We have a new governor who is trying to demonstrate that, nearing the end of his long political career, he can give CA the tough love that it needs.

High on Brown's list is to end the practice of financing development through the use of Redevelopment Agencies. Originally introduced as a way for municipalities to finance the recovery of "blighted" areas, we find that the definition of blighted becomes very loose when municipalities figure out a way to get more tax revenue from the property in question. Often the resulting end picture is not as rosy as their consultants painted it. Just read what Michael Hiltzik has to say in the LA Times.

... redevelopment agencies. Maybe you're not familiar with this odd corner of government, but you should be.
That's because local government redevelopment agencies lay claim every year to about $5 billion in property taxes that would otherwise go to school districts, counties and the state. But they've never had to show they're worth the money. In fact, they've never had to show that their efforts produce any measurable net gain in property values or employment in the state, which is the whole point of having them in the first place.

It is not going to be enough to chant "tax the rich" to win any election. If we are to have credibility, we need to be able to explain how things would be better were Greens given the power to make the budget. Maybe we collectively need to have a panel of economists positioned to help us understand the relationship between tax policies, civic revenue and a sustainable future for all.


The first thing to remember is that the primary goal of Redevelopment is to allow government to use a lager share of a dwindling revenue stream. Can Jerry Brown solve California's Budget problems without killing the Redevelopment Agencies? Can our Cities solve their own budget problems if they lose the Redevelopment revenue stream? The mayor's of our nine largest cities were in Sacramento to meet with Brown and to make the point that they can not.

The Craziness of Politics

The logic of the sociopath is to accuse people who focus on improving their family's lives of being criminals, instead of those who commit violence, rape, assault, robbery and anti-social acts. Jared Loughner's video monologue stand as the rantings of a sociopath aimed at all the students at Pima Community College and anyone who dares to live normal lives. The psychotic breaks from the acceptance of socially adaptable behavior and is focused on punishing the world for being the world. Jared Loughner made the leap into the fire because he learned to love the flames.



The criminal, who crosses the line between being responsible and becoming predatory or commiting acts of violence, need not be a sociopath. The violence in the Bay Area is as bad as the violence in other urban centers in the U.S. It is a culture of violence and it is reinforced. All the rhetoric of "non-violence" by Bay liberals has done nothing to de-escalate the violence. All the talk of sanctuary cities have not stopped the sex slave trade of women immigrants in the Bay Area or addressed the drug gang subculture. Posturing is the exercise of public officials, here in San Francisco, who are unable to resolve problems.



Credibility is evaluated by how often you can discredit the opposition. Meanwhile, the city continues to deteriorate. Those with the best of intentions often hesitate to speak out of concern that their words are misconstrued or deliberately misrepresented by others. Those with the worst of intentions feel free to arrogantly accuse all manner of crimes to any and all who speak other than themselves. It constricts the discussion, diffuses the substance of the issues and obscures the essential elements that really need to be reviewed. Following that, there becomes a presumption regarding the motives and intent of all others who try to point out relevant background that could help to clarify the discussion. And discussions degenerate into a THEM VS. US shouting match. This is encouraged by the political parties because their base is stablized in the most polarized situations.



As a Green in NM, I have seen Democrats accuse Greens the day before elections of being Republicans because former Republicans are active in Green campaigns. I have seen the Democratic Speaker of the House in the NM State Legislature try to prevent major party status for third parties by presenting legislation that made the requirements impossible to achieve. I have stood before the Republican Governor and criticized his managed health care from the podium and saw an acute psychiatric facility closed as a result of his policies. We have had a Green engage in the Gubernatorial debate to define us from left Democrats, as well as Republicans. We have also had Republicans offer $250,000 to the Green Party state co-chair to sponsor a PAC and a straw candidate to take votes away from Democrats. Even after the story hit the NY Times, some voters in the state still thought the Green Party had taken the money. I also heard of how a Green Party candidate was surrounded by a mob organized by local social justice groups in an attempt to get him to withdraw so the Democratic Party would win.



When we get into politics it is with the understanding that politics is dirty. But, it is only when there is something at stake, such as a candidate's reputation or an official's integrity, do we really find out what this means. Often the gap between guilty and not guilty is simply a matter of what the statute says. Other times we are led to the trough by unscrupilous individuals with their own axe to grind. Soap operas, nouvellas, have been replaced by cable news commentators, bloggers and op-ed writers. The drama is powerful but the impact on reality will always be minimal. There is no intention to solve inequalities or violence in our nation. Even if there was some intention, it is only through political action that these can truly take shape. Real leaders for our nation can come from any party. But, real solutions for our nation can only come from the people. It is the people who govern and it is we who must decide the best for our nation.

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It is time to tell the climate story like it really is

Yesterday, I received a reference to two recent book, sort of capsule reviews written by Lorna Salzman. I want to re-print these today for the simple reason that there is nothing more important to be working on that the resolution of climate change.

Carl Safina's latest book, View from Lazy Point, is reviewed - actually, raved about - in this Sunday's NY Times Book Review. If you have not yet read anything of Carl's, shame on you....so get this book. Carl heads the Blue Ocean Institute, among his long list of credits, and is a superlative writer. 
 
The other book is World on the Edge, by Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute. This book is the culmination of a long list of his books on the deterioration of the planet and what needs to be done. Let me warn you that this one is possibly the most apocalyptic, but were it not, it would be dishonest. Let me give you some short quotes. Then you should order a copy from EPI (epi@earth-policy.org) or download it from their web site free, www.earth-policy.org  

Brown predicts "the perfect storm" of food emergencies and loss of fresh water supplies (which are linked), all stemming from the kind of severe climate events we are now experiencing regularly (heat wave in Russia, floods in Pakistan), compounded by overpopulation and loss of ecosystems and their services. We are already in overshoot mode and have been so since 1980, i.e. humanity's collective demands  have surpassed the earth's regenerative capacity. Brown says that today, global demands exceed sustainable yields by 50%; it would thus take 1.5 earths to maintain our current consumption.

Brown: "No previous civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural supports. Nor will ours. Yet economists look at the future through a different lens...annual growth..is measured in the trillions. In the eyes of mainstream economists, the world has not only an illustrious economic past but also a promising future. Mainstream economists see the 2008=09 global economic recession and near-collapse of the international financial system as a bump in the road..before a return to growth as usual. Projections of economic growth..typically show the global economy expanding by roughly 3 % a year. At this rate the 2010 economy would easily double in size by 2035".

"But as the economy expanded some 20-fold over the last century, it has revealed a flaw- a flaw so serious that if it is not corrected it will spell the end of civilization as we know it"...The market..is not telling us the truth...Modern economic thinking and policymaking have created an economy that is so out of sync with the ecosystem on which it depends that it is approaching collapse. How can we assume that the growth of an economic system that is shrinking the earth's forests, eroding its soils, depleting its aquifers, collapsing its fisheries, elevating its temperature, and melting its ice sheets can simply be projected into the long-term future? "

"If we continue with business as usual, civilization collapse is no longer a matter of whether but when. We now have an economy that is destroying its natural support systems, on that has put us on a decline and collapse path. We are dangerously close to the edge. Peter Goldmark, former Rockefeller Foundation president, puts it well: 'The death of our civilization is no longer a theory or an academic possibility; it is the road we're on'"

This book lays out the evidence. Apart from Brown and EPI, the rest of the environmental community is in denial mode, believing that wind turbines and solar power will rescue us. This book makes it quite clear that they will not. It says what needs to be done...and fast, including a CO2 reduction of 80% not by 2050, the date arbitrarily chosen by those who do not understand the emergency including our fearless leaders like NRDC, EDF and 350.org,  but by the year 2020. Nine years from now. 

It isn't just capitalism that will collapse. It is human civilization, and our history has shown how earlier civilizations collapsed from environmental causes (Sumer in Mesopotamia, Maya). We ignore Brown at our own peril. Have the courage to read this book.  

LS

For those of you in denial about overpopulation, here is what Brown says about Pakistan, which lost thousands of people to floods last year and where the temperature in south central Pakistan reached 128 degrees F. in May, a record for Pakistan:

"The Indus River, the lifeline of Pakistan, and its tributaries were overflowing. Levees that had confined the river to a narrow channel so the fertile floodplains could be farmed had failed. Eventually the raging waters covered 1/5 of the country. ...Some 2 million homes were damaged or destroyed. More than 20 million people were affected by the flooding. Nearly 2,000 Pakistanis died. Some 6 million acres of crops were damaged or destroyed. Over a million livestock drowned. Roads and bridges were washed away."

"Pakistan's 185 million people are squeezed into an area 8% that of the United States. 90% of the forests in the Indus Basin are gone, leaving little to absorb the rainfall and reduce runoff. Beyond this, Pakistan has a livestock population of cattle, water buffalo, sheep and goats of 149 million, well above the 103 million grazing livestock in the United Stats. The result is a country stripped of vegetation. When it rains, rapid runoff erodes the soil, silting up reservoirs and reducing their capacity to store flood water. Twenty or more years ago, Pakistan chose to define security largely in military terms. When it should have been investing in reforestation, soil conservation, education, and family planning, it was shortchanging these activities to bolster its military capacity. In 1990, the military budget was 15 times that of education and a staggering 44 times that of health and family planning. As a result, Pakistan is now a poor, overpopulated, environmentally devastated nuclear power where 60%  of women cannot read and write".

Some might think of the climate issues as yet one more piece of evidence of the tree hugger tendency among Greens. Nothing could be further from the truth. Concern about the effects of climate change is evidence of the concern of Greens for social justice and the plight of millions. Read carefully the comments regarding last summer's flood in Pakistan. Then think about the more recent floods in Nashville, Columbia, Brazli (April and again now), Australia, Sri Lanka, Benin, Burkina Faso. Nature does not select according to the ability of land to cope.


We should be ashamed to have taken on the mantle of being Green, to have proclaimed our devotion to the issues of social justice and to have done so little.

Ckimate adaptation might not save us.

I have been a bit frustrated by the fact that one of the blogger that I follow does not allow comments. I am referring to Dr. Matthew E. Kahn, UCLA Economics professor who writes Environmental and Urban Economics from which he occasionally reminds us that he has a recently published book entitled Climatopolis.

You don't have to read the book to get a few of Kahn's basic points, especially his belief that market economics will provide the mechanism by which society will adapt to a changing warming climate. That is made clear in all of the promotions for Climatopolis.

There are two basic assumption here:

• that there is time to start mitigating the effects of climate change after the reality become so clear that even hard core deniers like Alan Watts will be crying about missed opportunities to do something if only the scientists had been more clear.
• that there will be both time enough and financing enough to accomplish what needs to be done to protect our economy and our way of life.

Neither of these are shown to be true. I am not an economist and I have not read Kahn's Climatopolis (though I did request my local library to purchase a copy… sharing is green.) However, I do read a lot and have two observations.

The first is that most climate models have been wrong in their predicted rate of climate change. It has been happening much more quickly than even Hansen predicted. This, along with the fact that scientists have been loath to connect extreme weather events to climate change, has led many to an overly optimistic view of the future. It may be fortunate that we have had so many extreme weather events this year, especially flooding, that the scientists can now make the point that the frequency of these events is the result of man caused climate change.

My second observation is the fact that almost every government is strapped for cash and does not have the ability to invest in the huge infrastructure projects required to meet the demands of a significant relocation of population such as Kahn talks about in Climatopolis. The money just isn't there and the private sector, ever concerned with long term investments in non-profit making activities, isn't going to do it on their own.

In today's post, Kahn chides a group of climate hawks for their pessimism over future events.  He selected a list of regular commenters from Joe Romm's Climate Progress.  That choice may or may not have been motivated by Romm's negative critiques of Climatopolis.  Kahn even views their pessimism through his optimistic lens of the wisdom of the market.

They know that we are on a doom path but if they know it, then others know it and the anticipation of potential doom creates opportunities for innovators.

Such innovation, on the massive scale required takes both time and capital, neither of which can be supplied in the quantity required. Kahn clearly understands what is going to happen. He links to one of his own OpEds where he lays out the social / economic consequences of our changing climate.

Cities in the developing world will face additional challenges in coping with climate change. Over the next 100 years, the major growth in urbanisation will take place in the developing world. Climate change is likely to accelerate this urbanisation as many farmers find that the profitability of continuing to farm has declined due to changes in climate. As these new urbanites move to cities, local wages will decline and local rents will increase. These general equilibrium effects mean that incumbent urban poor will suffer from such urban migration. The local urban politicians are unlikely to have strong incentives to scale up the infrastructure to provide for the new migrants. Those cities that offer rural migrants a high quality of life are likely to attract even more of such migrants. A type of tragedy of the commons will emerge.

I completely fail to understand how he maintains such a faith in the efficacy of free market capitalism to motivate doing the right thing for long term survival. Long term is not generally rewarded and risks are not normally considered without great reward. Did we not just go through this with the Great Recession?

Is there a future for CaGreening?

I feel that I need to ask our few readers is it is worth continuing California Greening. On a daily basis, we generally do not have over 10 readers. I am not sure why that is. What is it about California Greening that fails to attract followers? Should we make changes in how we cover issues? Might it be better to shut this down and move on to facebook or twitter? (I really dislike that fact that you can not cover any complex issue is the few words that they allow and a blog does allow us to explain, expand in a way that is not otherwise possible.

Is the problem that we focus on ecological issues and most Greens do not have the same level of concern?

I would like to have some advice on this, because my instinct is to shut it down.

Joe Romm's Full Global Warming Solution

It would be presumptuous of me to try and improve on what Joe Romm produced at Climate Progress today. It is an update to his "wedges" discussion that shows how we can achieve our climate goals if we only had the political will. Romm lays out The full global warming solution: How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm. This is how he sets the stage.

Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or lower is not politically possible today — not even close — but is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective, as I and others have said for years.

Humanity has only two paths forward at this point. Either we voluntarily switch to a low-carbon, low-oil, low-net water use, low-net-material use economy over the next two decades or the post-Ponzi-scheme-collapse forces us to do so circa 2030. The only difference between the two paths is that the first one spares our children and grandchildren and countless future generations untold misery (see “Intro to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water” and “A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice“)

. If we are serious about being Green, then we need to figure out what to do because one major party denies that there is a problem and the other can't figure out what to do about it.

Memory

Over the holiday's I have been reading at Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson's detailed recounting of America's great migration… that of a significant percentage of black America away from both the Jim Crow laws of the South and the roots of their own culture. It is not an easy read and I will return the book to the library today, unfinished. I would rather buy the book than to try and deal the pauses I must take in order to absorb what I have just understood.

Wilkerson chose to illustrate this bit of history by capturing and relaying the memories of those who lived, grabbing the memories before they were gone, lost in those who would deny it, closed off by those who did not want to relive it. This narrative has overlapped much of my own 70 years, but not much of my own experience, of which I will write later.

As I probed my way into her chosen narratives, I was reminded of another writer who based his books on re-told personal narratives, Studs Terkel. I pulled up my well thumbed paperback edition of The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream(© 1988). I got no further than the introduction before I had to stop and think again.

In the making of this book (and even while considering it), I was burdened with doubts far more disturbing than any I had ever experienced earlier. In understanding this self-assigned and at times perverse task, I was away of an attribute lacking in the 1980's that had been throbbingly present in the earlier decades, even in the silent 1950's: memory.

There is no doubt that we have command with a lot of facts, most of them irrelevant to how we live our lives. As we lurch from media headline to media headline, prodded into thinking that what Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen have done is really important. We have a collective memory that lasts no longer than it takes us to click the remote sort of a national Alzheimer's of things important.

Along the way, Mark Zuckerberg became Time's Man of the Year for replacing social interaction with social media where our ever increasing trivial utterance is packaged for analysis by those who would sell us yet another diversion… is it Cityville now?

Can we challenge ourselves to create new memories, or do we just not want to get involved.

If you think it has rained enough, guess again.

In a recent feature on CA water, (subs req'd) High Country News contributing editor, Matt Jenkins, brings us back to a harsh reality.

Nothing can be done in California that will keep its farms and big cities thriving at today's levels and also keep the fish and the De;lta alive. There's simply not enough water to go around anymore.

The print edition has a different title "California Dreamin'" followed by Twenty years of wishful thinking have twisted the state's water politics -- with national repercussions. Every time you hear a local meteorologist opine that we have had enough rain, or that the ski areas love the snow pack, just understand that it isn't enough and never will be.

Jenkins feature article gives a truly (not faux) fair and balanced view of what is happening with this one piece of the CA water puzzle. It is by far not the only piece nor should it be the sole focus of Green ecological advocacy. Water is one part of a nexus of issues which, along with climate change and energy, are so intertwined as to defy any separation.

There is another aspect to this which Greens should consider. In the most recent (Jan. - Feb. 2011) issue of Orion Magazine, Derrick Jensen writes about just how idiotic it is to expect to have it all.

I'm continually stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go unquestioned.

We see this so clearly in the Obama administration's economic policy. If Larry Summers has had Obama's ear, then he has surely heard this bit cited by Jensen:

There are no… limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind at any time in the foreseeable future. …The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error.

I would rather think that the idea that a consumerist culture is not bound by natural limits is an act of profound hubris, but the Obama / Summers economic policy requires that growth to solve our problems.

The question for Greens is whether we can find the political will to unmask the meme of perpetual growth and help society to live within it's means. If we return to the issues of water, climate, energy then we have to immediately confront the myth of perpetual growth.

Global warming is why you are freezing.

For anyone who has to deal with the climate deniers who, like Sen. Inhofe, would point to the recent cold weather storms as evidence that global warming is a hoax, there is a very good, easily understandable story in the NY Times this week. Juath Cohen manages to make it so clear that even Sen. Inhofe should be able to understand it.

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organization report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

Read the full text here:

Transition for my town

This is scheduled for the 12/31 issue of the Morgan Hill Times.

The history of the Santa Clara Valley is one of constant transition. Long gone are the days when the Union Pacific RR advertised it as the Valley of the Heart's Delight. Some of the agricultural economy has remained but the structure has radically changed. No longer do we have packing sheds next to the railway. Morgan Hill is not even just a bedroom community for Silicon Valley, as it was when I moved here over 30 years ago. Rather we are transitioning to something new and don't really know just what that will be.

One of the most important drivers for the past transitions has been the value of our land. How do we use it? How do we tax it? Is it more valuable for agriculture or for industrial development. You have only to examine the office parks along Cochrane Rd. to appreciate how we have answered those questions.

It seems obvious that we may not always answer those questions in the same manner, or that we will start asking new question. As our economic life changes, there will be new drivers for local decisions.

In a recent NY Times column, Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman discusses the new economic normal. “Oil is back above $90 a barrel. Copper and cotton have hit record highs. Wheat and corn prices are way up. Over all, world commodity prices have risen by a quarter in the past six months.” With changes like this, perhaps it will become more valuable to maintain agricultural land in close proximity to where we live.

Krugman gets right to the point. “What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story.”

That is a big change from that past vision of America. How do we adapt to the reality of a finite world, one in which resources are limited, access to them is increasingly expensive when transportation costs are added, and America no longer has an inexhaustible supply. Politicians talk about meeting out energy needs through the exploitation of oil shale, but they never mention the costs, direct and indirect, that oil shale operations have. There is probably no single process that would destroy more watershed than a massive exploitation of the shale deposits in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. This is water that would go to the Colorado River and make that water supply unusable.

There are other drivers that we have to consider; a changing climate is just one. The frequency of extreme weather events that we are currently experiencing around the world is on of the predicted results of increased greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere. New York has been hard hit by a blizzard while Greenland continues to warm. In the Southern Hemisphere, South Australia has experienced their worst drought while Queensland had record rainfall and flood this week. It may rival the flood from Pakistan but affect fewer people. Remember: a warmer atmosphere will hold more water and that will fall somewhere.

We can no longer count on our state and federal governments to prevent future catastrophic events, or even to adapt to them after it happens. There is neither the fiscal capacity in either Washington or Sacramento nor the political will act if it costs money. We can only raise taxes so much and I doubt that the incoming Republican House of Representatives, filled as it is with new Tea Party members, is gong to do much of anything productive about energy or climate change.

Morgan Hill has to recognize that the future of this community depends on what we do, collectively, here and now. There is a good model for this cooperative community action in the Morgan Hill Community Emergency Response Team. (http://www.mhcert.com/) This is how we take local action to deal with a sudden emergency because we know that immediate help will not be coming form State or Federal agencies. This is not because those agencies don't want to help, it is because the can't.

How will we deal with events that are not sudden, but rather assert themselves over time. There is a model for this as well. Morgan Hill is uniquely positioned to be a Transition Town, developing a local resilience that will see us through, transitioning to a newer reality. You can find more information about Transition Towns by following Hopedance, an online journal published by Bob Banner of Santa Barbara. (http://bit.ly/huvptZ)

The key objective of a Transition Town is to provide that local resilience. They begin by asking different questions: What is the true cost of consumerism? How willing are we to push down other people in order to maintain our idea of American Exceptionalism? How do we best adapt to this new world we have created? These are moral questions as well as economic ones.

California's water wars are nothing

compared to this.

Environment and Economics: a hot topic.

It may be that economists and ecologists speak very different languages. The gap of understanding seems as big as that between Vulcan and Klingon. Nowhere does this seem more apparent than in the exchanges between Dr. Joseph Romm (Physicist, owner of the Climate Progress blog) and Dr. Matthew E. Kahn (Economics, Professor at UCLA and owner of the Environmental and Urban Economics blog.

At issue is the question of whether the capitalist system of markets will enable us all to adapt to the realities of climate change. Kahn's main thesis seems to be that, "cities and regions will adapt to rising temperatures over time, slowly transforming our everyday lives as we change our behaviors and our surroundings". Maybe Miami will be under water, but spring in Fargo might be nice. He has described this at some length in a recent book: Climatopolis.

This is beginning to look like a pissing contest between two academics intent on preserving their reputations. It would be a mistake to leave you with that impression. This is very serious and we had better get it right the first time. There might not be a second chance.

T split the rest of this comparison as well as some comments on what it means for Green Politics off the main page and you can read it here:



Romm has reviewed Kahn's book twice. After the first scathingly negative review
(Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future [Not!}), Kahn accused Romm of the sin of reviewing a book that he had not yet fully read. So, Romm read it cover to cover, and then wrote another review that was sharper than the first.(Review: Climatopolis: How our cities will thrive in the hotter future by Matthew Kahn is not a good book)

Kahn could hardly be expected to refrain from a reply.

Joe Romm is a smart angry man. He throws some new punches at my Climatopolis. Under the scenario that greenhouse gas concentrations reach 1000 ppm (which sounds high and if we reach that number this would take place in the year 2200?), some of the scenarios he sketches may play out. He makes some reasonable points about tightening some of the raw calculations but he ignores two key facts about my book. In the next edition of the book, I will address his points but in no way do his points detract from the book's core thesis. Capitalism will help us to adapt to climate change. Out of self interest, we will rebuild our future cities in places that are less at risk from climate change and we will be pro-active in embracing strategies to protect ourselves from different dimensions of climate change . (Bold emphasis is mine.)

In particular, Greens need to sort this out clearly and to put forward candidates who understand not only the science that is telling us why our climate is changing, but also the long range economic issues at play. I am not convinced that we have found or developed more than a couple of candidates who might qualify on both counts. That will have to be the subject of later posts.

I will admit that I too have not read Climatopolis. I do follow both Romm and Kahn's blogs on a regular basis, especially since Kahn did some of the best initial economic analysis of the effect of California's AB 32 (p.55 of the PDF linked.)

While I support the Governor’s broad AB32 goals, I am troubled by the economic modeling analysis that I have been asked to read. AB32 is presented as a riskless “free lunch” for Californians. These economic models predict that this regulation will offer us a “win-win” of much lower greenhouse gas emissions and increased economic growth.

Kahn describes himself as a rational expectations economist. That is where my gut tells me that he is wrong. His expectations are that people and companies will have the economic ability to adapt, making rational choices for long range gains rather than taking. The trouble with climate change is that it does not respond to quarterly report. If capitalism and it's response to market signals is going to determine how we adapt, we had better have a longer range view than that of a hedge fund supercomputer tweaking seeking advantage in a fraction of a point.

Kahn talks about how we make decisions when "we know that we do not know." It is my experience that most of us do not do that very well, especially when the goal is for some general greater good rather than being specific as to our selves, our families, our work. People tend to delay those decisions until the threat is imminent. By the, with climate change, it may be too late.

I don't have statistics to back up my conclusions, only some observation of human behavior through much of my 70 years. If we can not count on governments having the financial ability to provide for adaptation, and we also can not count on corporate long term decision making, we had better be building resilient local communities that can whether the storms to come.

Even Silence Has an End

It may seem like a rush to judgment, but I will recommend a book for all to read after completing less that half of it (220 of 528 pages).

I'm currently reading "Even Silence Has an End" by Ingrid Betancourt. You may remember that Betancourt was the Green Party candidate for President of Columbia is 2002 when she was captured and held hostage by the FARC. This book tells of her 6 and a half years of captivity in Columbia's jungles and her final rescue.

More that a mere chronicle of events, or a political statement, Betancourt has written a spiritual memoir detailing her times of self examination and her effort to not merely survive, but to survive with her soul intact.

At least Greens take a stand

I have seen multiple appeals for telling the California Air Resources Board to put some teeth into the regulations to implement SB 32's Cap and Trade program.  They have come from:

• California League of Conservation Voters:
• Union of Concerned Scientists 

Now, you can add the Green Party of California to that list. 

If I get any calls on this, since I am so freely quote, I hope that I am equal to the task.

Giving away your future.

When the California Legislature passed AB 32, it was heralded as ground breaking and promising to be the model for other states, or countries, to follow.  In last month's election, the citizen's of California had to vote to protect the provisions of AB 32 from attack by unified oil interests (Valero, Tesoro and the Koch Brothers empire).

Having accomplished that much we seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief and turned our attention to the next crisis du jour.  Wrong choice!  While we were media fed British Royal pablum or questioned whether Sarah Palin's visit to Haiti was intended to give her foreign policy credibility, California's Air Resources Board (ARB), the organization responsible for defining the rules under which polluters would be permitted to continue business as usual, was giving away those permits.  They make that intention clear on their web site as they publish the background information for Thursday Dec. 16 Board Meeting.  You can read the description of the free allocations here.

Next10 has posted the results of a recent study of implementation scenarios.  They find that "The research shows that giving away allowances for free helps energy-intensive industries, but this
strategy actually hurts the CA economy overall."  In fact, they find that both strategies will have a positive effect on employment in California, but that the free allocations will significantly reduce the number of net new jobs created.

I am increasingly doubtful that the public input will have much of an effect.  However, like chicken soup for the flu, it can't hurt. Contact your state legislators, and make sure that you have made it clear to the ARB that California jobs are more important than the financial health of major polluters but giving your comments here.

Climate Zombies

Think Progress has a list of the Climate Zombies in the 112th Congress. Not surprisingly, all of the CA list are Republicans.

There are some, like CA-02's Wally "Walleye" Herger who are so ineffective that the Washington Press named him as the Congressman who could disappear and no one would know. That is not the case with a few others.

Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) was considered for the Chairmanship of the House Committee on Science and Technology. The one selected, R. Holt from Tx. is marginally better in that he is a not a buffoon. We know that Rohrabacher got his political start with money from the Charles Koch of Koch Industries.

Darrell Issa CA-49 will likely be the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee. He has stated that he will frequently subpoena members of the Obama Administration to challenge their direction and how they are wasting spending public money.


Brian Bilbray was recently announced as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.  Here, he could easily use hearing after hearing to ask stupid questions in order to re-state long debunked ideas.

This is all the more reason that Green Climate Hawks need to take to the air… even to the airways if we can raise enough money… and make sure that our local communities are ready to transition to the new reality of 21st Century Climate.

Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood

If you are a Green, live in California and care about the quality of water that you drink, you should get to know Lloyd G. Carter. Actually, if any of the above conditions, you should probably learn more about Lloyd and his Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood.

More than anything, I really want you to follow the leads that he has put in this post. Lloyd has pointed out the work of the Environmental Water Caucus to bring some sanity and common sense to the issues of the Sacrament / San Joaquin Delta, California Water, etc. Right now, all we have is corporate agriculture playing political games and sorting out their favorite legislator while the rest of us are forgotten.

I am of the opinion that CA legislators, especially the LA based Democrats, are too beholden to the contributions of Stewart and Linda Resnick to be very anxious to do what needs to be done.

I would not feel too badly for some of the farmers who might just have an out by taking their selenium befouled land and transforming that acreage into a solar farm.