This is hardly surprising
From a recent Gallup Panel survey (received via email):
When asked to rate the overall quality of the environment in the United States right now, 6 in 10 panelists say it is poor (13%) or only fair (49%) while more than one-third of panelists say it is good (34%) or excellent (4%). There are vast differences in answers by panelists’ reported political affiliation: Most Democrats (85%) say that current environmental quality is poor or only fair, while more than two-thirds of Republicans say that the nation’s environment is good or excellent.
Using this, and extrapolating from the 2004 election results, then, I’d say approximately 100 million Americans, or about 33%, are on crack.
I mean, really. Who honestly thinks things are still going swimmingly here? When I saw Sherman Alexie speak a couple of weeks ago, he said something witty and biting about the President’s hemorrhaging approval rating and the tolerance of the “deluded souls” who can’t get enough of the shit being shoved down their throats. Except it was much funnier, and much meaner than that.
Cut to the chase, Al
Kunstler on Live Earth:
The last thing we need now is the carefully packaged postures of concern from “stars.” Al Gore could do a lot more good militating to get regular hourly passenger train service running between Nashville and Atlanta, or stomping his state, from Memphis to Chattanooga for swapping sales tax on regular merchandise for a higher tax on gasoline. Or, he could just put aside his pretensions for being a kind of global Wizard of Oz and just cut the shit and run for president of the US, where he might actually make a difference.
Yes.
A new personal low?
I need more to do. Case in point:
While perusing this week’s Parade (a highlight of my Sunday morning paper reading, and, unarguably, a pinnacle of journalistic excellence), I was troubled by the apparent ideological discrepancy between their smartly-written, reader-driven piece titled “You Found a Better Idea” and the spot-on, hard-hitting news of the “Intelligence Report.”
To wit:
You Found a Better Idea
Disposable measuring cups.
Paper liners with the measurements marked would fit inside regular cups.
Why we like it: Disposable cups would allow you to measure different ingredients without having to stop and wash the measuring cup. Then youd just throw out the liner.
Intelligence Report: To the Woodshed
The average American uses up 75 cubic meters of solid wood a year in paper and other products…. Across the globe, 32 million acres of trees disappear each year…. With them go key sources of oxygen and global cooling.
Talk about mixed messages.
This inconsistency from such a noted source was unbelievable. I took the fight to them. I made the bold move of registering on their site and I left them with a biting, perceptive comment.
Parade, feel my wrath. I expect a full explanation in the next issue.
Some light reading
This report, by Professor François Cellier of the Institute of Computational Science of ETH Zurich, Switzerland, is simply one of the best things about energy/sustainability that I’ve read in a long time. It succinctly lays out some of the big issues that societies will have to face as they make (or are forced to make) decisions concerning future development.
The picture it paints is one that will be very unappealing to many, of course. Being a model-driven analysis, it is only as good as its underlying assumptions, but even given a broad tolerance for error, the possibility of enjoying a future as abundant as ours is right now appears dim indeed.
Some choice quotes follow.
On sustainability and quality of life:
In order for the inhabitants of planet Earth to lead a decent life without taxing the resources of the planet in an unsustainable fashion, each nation should consume less than the 1.8 hectares per capita of the ecological footprint available, while being granted an HDI [Human Development Index] of 0.8 or better. Hence all nations should strive to have their dots move to the orange box in the lower right corner of the graph.
Currently, there is only one nation that has its dot inside the orange box. That nation happens to be Cuba. In order to move towards a sustainable world, we all must become not Berliners, but Cubans.
“Unfortunately,” Cellier writes, “expansion is in our genes.”
On the problems of exponential growth and market forces:
We can rely on our business managers and politicians to fix the exponential growth problem as much as we can rely on junkies to fix the drug abuse problem.
and
Since market forces always optimize with a short time horizon of two years or less, our politicians and business managers will invariably embrace the blue or red scenarios [models that maximize short-term gains while neglecting the stewardship of existing resources], and consequently, we are meeting our demise with our eyes wide shut.
On population collapse
In order to get an annual excess death rate of 3% [the attrition rate that would achieve a “sustainable” population of approximately 1 billion people] or better, we would need, on a global scale, a situation that is worse than that of current-day Iraq [150,000 war deaths/year] by a factor of six, and we would need to maintain these conditions for 50 years in a row.
This is not a cheery subject. But it’s well worth the read.
Progress, finally
I wrote about the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement eight months ago. Yesterday, our mayor, spurred on by the impending election, no doubt, took up the recommendation of our city council and signed on to the agreement. The day is looking up already.
A better way
This summer, Arielle and I, along with our friends Jon and Meredith, became CSA members of a local farm, Harvest Valley Farms. Run by the King family, it’s a small (by conventional standards) operation about 20 miles north of the city. Every week, from June to November, we receive a large bundle of fresh fruits and vegetables that we split; it’s generally enough to keep us from having to buy produce at the grocery store for the entire week.
I’m writing this because we were invited out to the farm today to tour the facilities, and I came back a refreshed man.
In short, it’s something I’m extremely proud to be a member of. Our conventional agricultural model is a mess, and is determined by economies of scale that benefit from our access to cheap supplies of energy and our willingness to sell out the long-term health of the land for a quick buck. To paraphrase my favorite curmudgeon, how else would it be feasible to harvest a head of lettuce in California, ship it across the country in a refrigerated rail car or tractor-trailer, and sell it in a supermarket in Pittsburgh? Even Whole Foods, the supermarket “good guy” gets it wrong sometimes. Exotic fruit from South America? No thanks. The amount of energy required to get that piece of fruit up here dwarfs what my body is going to get from eating it. “Organic” doesn’t always equal “sustainable.”
But the CSA model, as exemplified by the King farm, is something different. On just 132 acres, they manage to grow over 60 different kinds of produce. Weed control consists of a homemade Roundup-spraying device attached to a tractor, plastic-lined rows, and straw-lined aisles between the rows. Innovative natural methods are used to control pests, and plantings are done in carefully-laid rows complete with drip irrigation, just in case the rainfall isn’t enough. So far, it hasn’t been used much.
Their market, according to David King, is largely contained within a 25 mile radius of the farm. Our weekly shipment, for example, is delivered to a volunteer’s house in the neighborhood; I, along with about 25 others, stop by and pick it up from their front porch after work. Everything we get was still on the plant the day before, and it shows. It looks, smells, and tastes fresh; supermarket produce, in comparison, looks artificial and its tendency to rapidly deteriorate once we bring it home serves as a fine reminder that we’re eating stuff that’s at least a week old.
Being closer to your food has been a hot topic as of late. I was glad to see the fields where my meals come from, but I was even more glad to see the people who make it possible. It heartens me to see someone who understands the big picture and is willing to work within the constraints imposed upon them by the forces of sustainability. We need more people like this.
I was able to make our monthly payment in person today. As I handed over the check, I felt like I had a better understanding than ever before of where my money was going. And I couldn’t be happier to see it go.
An Inconvenient Truth
We finally had the chance to see An Inconvenient Truth this weekend. Not surprisingly, I liked the film and found it to be a rousing call to action, accessible to the relatively uninformed masses (e.g. most of America).
Al Gore’s presentation is based on facts compiled during hundreds of scientific studies. The demonstration of trends over time — atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, temperature readings, and population growth, to name a few — foretells of a future that’s not so rosy.
America obviously needs to improve their approach to environmentalism, from top to bottom. On a large scale, the Kyoto Protocol would have been a good start. Unfortunately, our stubborn and selfish leadership won’t allow it. There is a movement by U.S. Mayors to advance the goals of the Protocol. Pittsburgh, unfortunately, is not on the list; I’ve sent letters to our city leadership and I encourage others to do the same.
(Update: On July 5, I received a phone call from a staffer of my city councilman, informing me that the council passed a resolution encouraging the mayor to join the program. Chances for success look good, he said. I hope so.)
On a smaller scale, but no less important, is a personal recognition of the environmental impact one makes every day. Ignorance of/indifference to the environmental consequences of our actions has been the norm for far too long; modern oil society has flourished because of it. But the writing is on the wall: We need to make changes.
Yes, sometimes environmentalism is hard. It’s hard to reconcile a life in the suburbs with sound green living. I find my own attachment to the local grocery store, with its oil-powered thousand-mile long supply chains, to be troubling (thankfully, there are alternatives).
But there is no simple way around it. Nothing is going to improve if we continue down the path we are on. What an inconvenient truth.
Why, why, why?
President Bush’s response to a question inquiring if he will see Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, isn’t surprising, but it irritates me nonetheless. How much more of an arrogant prick can one be?
How did someone with absolutely no intellectual curiosity get elected to the most powerful office in the world?
No need to answer that; it’s merely rhetorical. I think I know.
Do-it-yourself fun
I love Chevrolet.
Not really.
But I do love their new promotion for the 2007 Tahoe. You can make your own Tahoe love-fest commercial and submit it to win a bunch of shit that would make SUV owners everywhere drool (more than they normally do, anyway).
Or you can use the tools to make something more meaningful. It’s ripe for subversive use. And it takes only a couple of minutes.
I am especially pleased with my creation. Pass it on.
You can say that again
Taken out of context, this quote from a defender of the Administration’s environmental policies speaks the truth forcefully. In its original context, it’s just another sad case of self-delusion.
“With regard to what the United States is doing on climate change, the actions we have taken are next to none in the world.”
Context here.
