Time for push on ERA

The pursuit of passage of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has floundered for years after having been passed by House and Senate but never ratified and having subsequently expired.  Since it's original introduction in 1923, the ERA has received shifting support from an interesting mix of republicans and some democrats and opposition from labor and individuals such as Eleanor Roosevelt.  That landscape has changed quite a bit since the 1970's. It is regularly re-introduced, as recently as this year as S. J. RES. 10.

While many of us have our own special interests in cultural change and the legislation that supports such change (my own is environmental protection), an amendment to the Constitution in support of equal rights for all is disturbingly past due.  If there are special protections that are deemed necessary for certain individuals that some fear an ERA would threaten, then address these issues seperately but we should proceed without further delay to push renewed passage and ratification of an ERA.

This effort should be a collaborative effort that transcends ideology and spiteful political maneuvering (as frankly environmental protection should be as well) and should form the foundation and basis of a new political reality based on the significant threats that humanity faces in this modern world.

Orion Magazine: 10 Skills to Hone for a Post-Oil Future

Editor: I think a reskilling list should be longer but these are a good start.

Link to article: 10 Skills to Hone for a Post-Oil Future | Orion Magazine

Boston.com: Coming to a rooftop near you

Link to article here: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/2013/04/30/coming-rooftop-near-you/phctasMMiLhcM7VftXqGPL/story.html

Title:  Coming to a rooftop near you

Truthout.com: Random Notes From the Police State

By William Rivers Pitt

Random Notes From the Police State

Anna Lappe's TEDx Manhattan Talk on Food Industry Marketing

A very passionate and inspiring short talk by Anna Lappe. Certainly only the tip of the iceberg. It has to be a part of an environmental and social education agenda.

Link to Upworthy.com site:  http://www.upworthy.com/watch-the-video-that-coca-cola-and-mcdonalds-hope-you-never-see?c=cd1

How to revitalize rustbucket cities: Pittsburgh might have some thoughts

This blog notes how Pittsburgh might have written the script for revitalization. Do you agree?

http://pittsblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/story-behind-pittsburghs-revitalization.html

Powering leviathan with renewables

Elizabeth Rosenthal's article in the New York Times entitled Life After Oil and Gas gives some hope that with enough resolve and investment, we too here in the U.S. can significantly power our ship with renewables like much of Europe and Canada seems to be committed to. While it can be considered a positive development that the mainstream media is modestly discrediting the fossil fuel industry's message that renewables will never be able to power our civilization alone due to issues such as intermittency and the daunting task of growing the renewables infrastructure, there is a grain of nasty truth to the claim by the greasers.  In fact, what we have built over the past 200 years as industrial and post-industrial civilization is a massive cultural infrastructure that requires fossil fuels to survive.  It is a systemic feedback loop that requires growth in the financial system, which Chris Martenson and others so eloquently describe, and feeding the growth that pays the interest on the loans is fossil fuel energy. No other energy can power the system so efficiently and so cheaply, at least up to now. Oil is the most energy dense fuel and has historically had the highest Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) or Net Energy.

Yet articles like Rosenthal's never touch on key aspects of our energy predicament.  These sticking points are very uncomfortable to raise because we want to cling to the hope that technology and our great resolve and ingenuity will always save us from our looming threats.  This is wishful thinking and we would be better served thinking about and planning for a new system rather than trying to save a system that is soon to be referred to in the past tense. Just to whet your appetite in regard to the predicament and perhaps begin to convince you that a new way of thinking is necessary, let me touch on a few sticking points.

Maintaining the System and its Features

Maybe you're reading this on your iPhone, iPad, or Galaxy Note. Boy, how could you live without that device. It's damn near 45 percent of your brain already and soon your functional and emotional dependence on this device will render you a blubbering mass if you misplaced it. And boy what fun! What would you do waiting in the airport or in line at the DMV if you didn't have a smartphone? You might actually have to look someone in the eye and talk to them. Sorry, I know I'm scaring you.

Ok, well I wonder what percentage of our energy infrastructure supports these devices such as, of course, the electrical system largely based on coal and natural gas. This also powers the servers, routers, cell towers, hotspots, and other elements that allow the telecommunications system to function.  Add broadcast television, radio, and other communications and media and it's pretty impressive.  Now add all the energy necessary to mine and refine the metals, process the plastics, package, transport, stock, sell, buy, use, discard, and deal with as solid waste and you have one hell of a system to support with energy. Each one of these countless steps has an industry and each industry creates jobs and has an industry group lobbying for its welfare and very survival.  Imagine the lobbyists for each of those thousands of industries seeking to make appointments with your senator or congressman on a daily basis and now you should understand a bit more about the scale of the problem.

Now think about other industries that require perpetual growth to survive. Among the largest still are the homebuilding and commercial construction sector, the automotive and truck industries, and next comes large consumables like household electronics and furniture, office supplies, hardware, kitchenware, and so on. Each of these industries has a great many suppliers who make the component parts of each final product. Each requires energy inputs from building and shipping the product to powering the vehicles their employees use to commute to and from work.  Most use some feedstock for their industry which have to be mined, processed, shipped, and so on.  Each of these industries must keep growing, be consumed, or die. They will fight like hell to save their business as if it were their own child. This is how most people feed their family and house and clothe themselves. Now see how daunting the task of sustainability is?

The point here is that we nearly always analyze our potential energy solutions through the lens of the present system and culture. It is assumed that we wish to continue our present lifestyles and standards and we are seeking energy solutions that will allow us to shut off one valve (oil) and open another (e.g. wind) simultaneously and expect the carousel of progress to continue on its merry way. Please contact me if this is what you believe or hope and we should sit down and talk. My take is that we need to rethink a home and office full of electronic gadgets, homes in cul-de-sac subdivision nirvana, microspecialization in jobs, and a whole host of other aspects of civilization.

Feeding the Renewables

You knew the renewables needed to be fed, didn't you? You didn't think that you would just be able to stick them out there and forget them, did you?  Renewables are no panacea and each takes energy to develop and maintain. There are so many wonderful authors out there like Heinberg, Kunstler, Greer, McPherson, Orlov, Tverberg, Martenson, Hagens, etc. who have each detailed this as part of the analysis of the concept of Net Energy.  Kunstler's The Long Emergency provides a full chapter that discounts the viability of just about every renewable or alternative energy source as a realistic means to replace the oil-based economy, either alone or combined.  A modest example of what they, and by extension I, am talking about is as follows.  You're probably aware that wind energy requires....wind. Therefore, it doesn't work well as an energy source just anywhere. That's obvious. Even where is does work well, those parts of the world where the wind blows constantly or fairly regularly, it sometimes dies down and the turbine comes to a halt. At that time, you either can draw upon the bank of batteries that you've connected to the turbine, begin to draw from the grid while it's "offline", or do without electricity.  This intermittency isn't such a big deal if it is every now and then or perhaps every morning between 10 and 12. But it is a big deal if there are whole seasons of dead air, like in the inland Deep South in the summertime.

The investment in a large-scale wind turbine is fairly large since it takes a large amount of steel and other primary metals and alloys to build the big tower or shaft, the base, the generator, and the blades.  There are many other materials that make up the apparatus such as rare earth metals including neodymium which are rare (really!), expensive, and difficult to mine and process. It takes energy to take all of these steps to make a turbine including mine the metal ores, process them, forge parts, assemble the component parts, ship them to the site, final assembly, and ongoing maintenance and replacement of parts over time. The energy of choice to do all of these things is largely fossil-fuel based. Get the picture? What if that fossil fuel wasn't so available or really damn expensive? Do you think all of the steps necessary to create and site an industrial scale wind turbine could be handled by renewables? Nope. Worried yet? Did you know that a utility scale wind turbine can't even start up without a boost of electricity?  Read it here.

Ignoring Scale

The laissez faire experiment called neoliberal capitalism has over the past 200 years developed an immense economy and a massive population needed to serve it. Since endless growth underpins this economic structure, both the economy and population must continue to grow until something supplies the brakes. That something is likely energy (although the financial system and its reliance on trust as part of the game can cut it short too).  Cheap energy fuels economic growth but when the price of energy climbs beyond the point that it's just a small cost of doing business, when energy emerges as one of the biggest expenditures that households, businesses, and armies make, then things start to grind to a halt. Once this happens, the economy contracts, jobs are lost, the consumption that underpins the economy dries up, and the death spiral of peak energy fibrillates for a while before the whole experiment comes to an end. At that point it's a rather serious and sober game of musical chairs. There will be some who are left standing without a chair to sit in.  The metaphorical chair is a means to survive, to pay the bills, to eat and feed ones offspring, and so on. We are way too big, too developed, too populous, and the crash will be very painful and miserable. For many it will be the end.

At some point, and I believe we've passed it several years ago, tax receipts at all levels dry up and government is no longer able to provide a support system.  Of course, we can artificially extend it for a while or we can artificially cut it off immediately as both primary political parties have situated themselves policy-wise.  At some point, probably way too late, we're going to realize that the entire cultural superstructure is going to fail and we need to develop a locally-based alternative. This local alternative must be a much smaller scaled project and many groups and organizations are beginning to develop the component parts of this replacement culture. Movements like relocalization, transition, permaculture, local food, local economy, and local small-scale energy are all moving in the right direction, with little help and often with significant impediment from government and business. Yet far too few people are involved in this, too few people are talking about these things, and much of what will no longer be in a few years and what is the core of the problem, remains the sole measure of progress in our culture.  I hope this will change soon and rapidly but my expectation is that it will not. Prove me wrong.

London Evening Standard: Kensington digs in with ban on 'mega basements'

Link: Kensington digs in with ban on 'mega basements' - London - News - London Evening Standard

Editor: Amazing. The desire for magaspaces seems boundless.

NYTimes.com: In Search of Energy Miracles

In Search of Energy Miracles

By JUSTIN GILLIS

While scientists race to develop a technology, probably nuclear-based, that can slake our energy thirst without a huge environmental cost, it would be folly to wait that long to tackle carbon emissions.

NYTimes.com: In the South and West, a Tax on Being Poor

In the South and West, a Tax on Being Poor

By KATHERINE S. NEWMAN

Struggling Americans are worse off in regions with regressive systems for raising money.

Go to article here: http://nyti.ms/16hcVk9

Arkansas Times: Senate passes bill to end zoning as we know it

Arkansas Senate passes bill to end zoning as we know it: The Arkansas State Senate today passed Sen. Jim Hendren's bill to hamstring regulation and zoning by state and local governments.

DC.StreetsBlog.org: Sprawl Madness: Two Houses Share Backyard, Separated by 7 Miles of Roads

Sprawl Madness: Two Houses Share Backyard, Separated by 7 Miles of Roads

NYTimes.com: Nestle Pulls 2 Products in Horse Meat Scandal

Nestle Pulls 2 Products in Horse Meat Scandal

By STEPHEN CASTLE

Nestlé, one of the world's best-known food companies, said it was removing pasta meals from store shelves in Italy and Spain.

Link to article:  http://nyti.ms/11Skj6n  

Editor: Might this be the scandal that tips the scale in favor of fresh, unprocessed foods? If you just can't trust the food conglomerates, then maybe it's time to bypass them.

The Strong Towns Podcast: Jeff Speck and the Walkable City

Check out this podcast featuring Jeff Speck, author of "Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time." This is great information for anyone seeking top make their community more genuinely walkable and thus more (choose one: civil, community oriented, safe......)

Jeff Speck and the Walkable City

NYTimes.com: Suffolk County Still Struggling to House Sex Offenders

Suffolk County Still Struggling to House Sex Offenders

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Two trailers in a wealthy town stand as testament to an increasingly intractable problem for localities across the country: where to let sex offenders live after prison.

Editor:  Showing a bit of social conservatism, I don't take stock in rehabilitation or rights of these offending individuals as they abdicated them with their actions.  There is no reason to sweat distances to day care centers or hours that they can be in public. The answer lies in segregating them in penal colonies for life. I would suggest an inaccessible island in a climate suitable to grow subsistence food crops but otherwise let them fend for themselves in an Animal Farm sort of social structure or whatever naturally evolves. Oh and make sure sharks are plentiful off the coast. I have other ideas along these lines and will share as the opportunities arise.

Peak Prosperity: Mark Sisson: The Importance, and Achievability, of Being Fit

Fitness is absolutely a criteria for resiliency in the face of uncertainty. This is a good piece on the subject.

Mark Sisson: The Importance, and Achievability, of Being Fit

Resilience.org: Restoring the Commons

This from John Michael Greer originally published on his blog The Archdruid Report:

Restoring the Commons

Michael Ruppert's Collapse

I had the link to the film Collapse bookmarked for some months now. You know those un-categorized loose bookmarks that populate the bottom of your bookmarks list before you eventually slot them in somewhere or get rid of them. The film is based on the work of Michael Ruppert and with Michael himself as the sole interviewee sitting in a chair in an empty room, a basement or warehouse or something similar to the location that the film The Prophets of Doom, in which he also participated, was set.

I've viewed a number of similar documentary films such as The End of Suburbia, A Crude Awakening, and the slide show Crash Course by Chris Martenson. While a little self-serving, but perhaps deservedly so, Ruppert's Collapse is a no nonsense grab you by your lapels noticed served that our way of life is grinding to a halt as we speak. Ruppert describes the concept of peak oil and peak everything as many of our industrial commodities are becoming rapidly depleted and our industrial economy can no longer rely on an endless supply to manufacture the trappings of our lifestyle nor the machinery and equipment that makes the trappings.

What Ruppert does so well is boils down concepts such as the two laws of thermodynamics in such a way that a layperson can understand them, for example:

1. First Law of Thermodynamics:  Energy cannot be either created or destroyed.
2. Second Law of Thermodynamics:  Energy only converts in one direction, from useable to un-useable, which is otherwise known as the Law of Entropy.  In an energy transaction, some energy is always lost.

Therefore, this implies that our economy always needs ever larger energy inputs in order to keep growing. But peak oil is the game changer that will, and some argue already has, put an end to this ponzi scheme, which is how Ruppert refers to our economy. He says, "So you have finite energy and you have a financial paradigm which requires endless growth."

Ruppert touches on key concepts such as demand destruction which means that when the price of a commodity like oil rises to a level high enough to impact economic growth (e.g. people can't go to work anymore because they can't afford to buy gasoline), then the commodity price declines since demand drops.  He also discusses net energy or energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) which is at the crux of peak oil since we will never actually run out of oil but only that oil which is economically recoverable.  Therefore, net energy is energy that pays for itself rather than costing more to recover, transport, refine, etc. that the energy is worth.

I realize that most readers are aware of these concepts and I've written about them extensively as have many others. Yet I was impressed how simple Ruppert made the concepts sound and also how passionate he was that we humans see the obvious and save ourselves.

Collapse, (2009) Documentary, Writer: Michael Ruppert; Director: Chris Smith
IMDB Site:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1503769/

The quinoa debacle and industrial ag

From Technorati.com

This article in the New York Times clearly exemplifies the market problem with industrial agriculture. Few haven't heard of the ecological disaster that industrial scale agriculture has wrought. Fewer are aware of the cultural mass destruction that occurs because the large western market economies latch on to a staple food of some indigenous culture and scale it up to meet some boutique demand for dieting or holiday party dip. The unintended consequences (there are always unintended consequences) otherwise known as externalities, tend to further the decline of said culture.

And so it goes with quinoa.  This Andean staple has become a western superfood and the Bolivian and Peruvian peasant now has to decide between cheap junk food and the now more expensive grain of their ancestors. Life, and global markets, are indeed a bitch.  There are so many examples of economic globalization forcing export-based monocultures on country after country in order to pay off their debt. This debt, from World Bank loans as part of structural adjustment programs that Jerry Mander has so eloquently derided, becomes the sole focus of their economy. If such a state does not retool their economy by plowing up local sustenance crops to establish palm oil plantations or some other damaging monocrop, they would then be in violation of their agreements and be subject to sanctions.

So really the global food market really hits in two ways like a one-two punch from an MMA champ. First, the local historically appropriate staples are eliminated so that rapeseed, oil palm, or some other global commodity can be grown with all of the obvious ramifications to the local diet which now must be met with frozen meals, cheese curls, or fast food hamburgers. Not so well know is the significant damage such monocrops have on the local ecology by filling wetlands, cutting rainforests, creating erodable open soil which when then eroded become less likely to ever be rainforest again.

But the second punch comes when even if the populations want to feed themselves with the historically appropriate foodstuff, it is no longer grown locally and is three times as expensive as it used to be.  What an abomination.  We in the west need to recognize these relationships and move to focus exclusively on the 100 mile diet those foods that are grown locally and appropriate to the climate. Can there be trade in food? Of course, limited no doubt and only to supplement and complement one's own regional diet, and then only with other communities that engage in the same sustainable and ethical practice.

A sustainable world needs more voices

Ever since I removed my long time blog, The Localizer Blog, due to some political heat, I’ve been looking forward to getting back into the blogging game for several reasons.  First, I enjoy writing and have missed it quite a bit. So often I have something burning to say about some current issue but no platform in which to say it. So now I will again and politics be damned.

Second, I believe fervently that environmental stewardship and sustainability need to be championed with loud, sustained, and passionate voices.  People who may be reluctant to speak out due to fear of retribution or social sanctions need to know that there are significant numbers of people out there that share their sentiments. I have been inspired by people recently who have overcome their fears and decided to speak out. This is the keystone argument of my doctoral dissertation and its such an important human behavioral characteristic.

Third, I just enjoy the feedback from readers, both critical and complimentary.  I’ve missed the community that I developed at The Localizer and hope I can get a bit of it back. I also reposted on Energy Bulletin, now called Resilience.org, and I hope to be able to do that again too.  This is a critical time for humanity and the biosphere. I need to get back to what I do best, write in a critical, thoughtful, and hopefully entertaining way.

Stay tuned for posts on fracking, growth and development, the definition of sustainability, and many other topics in the coming weeks. There will be some topics I will avoid, for now at least, but hopefully soon I can take those on without restraint too. See ya!