We are excited to announce that we will begin airing our Sixth television ad in New Hampshire — “Chances I Had.” The thirty-second ad discusses Sen. Obama’s plan to ensure every child gets the same educational opportunities that allowed him to succeed, and he stresses parents’ responsibility to do their part in helping kids learn.
We’ll be hosting ten roundtable discussions on education around the state today and tomorrow, November 15 and 16. The discussions — many of which will be hosted by members of New Hampshire Educators for Obama — will bring Granite Staters together to learn more about Obama’s commitment to excellence for every child and support for every teacher.
Tim Foley Proud to be a NH staff member for Barack Obama’s movement for change
The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's Off the Bus.
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi: Screw the Bus
He's often referred to as the next Hunter Thompson but the truth of the matter is, Matt Taibbi is unique. Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine and covers national politics in columns called “Road Rage” and “The Low Post” for the magazine's online version. Taibbi has written for Rolling Stone since the 2004 election and is known for some of his outrageous antics, such as covering the John Kerry campaign in a gorilla costume, interviewing a former drug czar while tripping on acid, and working undercover as a Bush-Cheney campaign volunteer. Prior to that, Taibbi worked for ten years as a journalist in Russia, founded a satirical magazine called The eXile, played baseball for the Red Army, and professional basketball in Mongolia. Upon returning to the States, Taibbi started a Buffalo, NY alternative weekly called The Beast, and covered stories for The New York Daily News, The Nation, and others. But what Taibbi is really know for is his astute no-holds-barred writing style.
In his first book, Spanking the Donkey (The New Press), Taibbi covers the 2004 election and cuts through the dog-and-pony shows that clutter an election year: the perfect backdrops, the puffed-up speeches, and campaign journalists that constantly cover the meaningless and the absurd. Is Howard Dean too prickly to become president? Is John Kerry a good snowboarder or does his ability to speak French hurt his chances to win? Taibbi documents these offenders in a chapter called “Wimblehack,” where journalists compete in a Final Four-like tournament for the worst campaign journalism of the 2004 election.
Taibbi's new book, Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire (Black Cat/Grove-Atlantic Inc.) has just been released and is a compilation of Rolling Stone articles covering corruption in Washington, DC, traveling through the streets of New Orleans in a dinghy with actor Sean Penn, spending three nights in Abu Ghraib prison, and much more. In his latest Rolling Stone article, available on the web and newsstands now, Taibbi covers GOP candidate Mike Huckabee. OffTheBus caught up with Matt Taibbi and discussed a range of issues from the new book and problems surrounding campaign trail journalism.
Below the fold is a portion of the interview regarding Bernie Sanders. The rest of it you have to go to Off the Bus.
Continue.
Off the Bus: In your Rolling Stone articles, you paint a shocking portrait of the United States Government. Among the revelations you made in some of your articles — Congressman Bernie Sanders (of Vermont) getting railroaded on his amendments, the 109th Congress being the laziest in American history, and political corruption involving Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, and others. What would you say were some of the more shocking things you encountered that made you realize something is drastically wrong? Was there anything worse than what you didn't write in “Dead Elephants?”
Matt Taibbi: Well, meeting Bernie Sanders gave me the opportunity to follow him around and get that glass bottom boat look at Congress. It was really educational for me. There aren't that many feature reporters out there that get a chance to spend 7,000 or 8,000 words writing about how arcane and unsexy Congress is or how these committees work and that sort of thing. So it was really a luxury to be able to do that. I think the stuff that Sanders showed me about how bills can be completely rewritten in committee in the middle of the night, how they are sent to the floor and nobody ever reads them, how they can be rewritten in conference, and how amendments can be shot down by House leaders, I think 99% of Americans don't really understand how this stuff works and it was really eye-opening for me. It was amazing how easy it is how two, three, four people strategically placed in Congress can completely dominate the whole process. I think Americans don't understand the extent of influence that a couple of people have. If you just wanted to run Congress for your financial backers, it's really easy to do. The people I talked to, especially Sanders, were very helpful in showing me exactly how that happens. It's unfortunate that I didn't get a chance to spend more time with him. It would have been really interesting to spend a year following that whole process.
Off the Bus: He's actually getting a lot of grief from Vermont constituents for not taking a tough stand on investigations into impeachment. There are 36 towns in Vermont that passed impeachment resolutions and they expect Bernie to light a match and get the ball rolling, but now it seems like Congressman Dennis Kucinich is taking care of that.
Matt Taibbi: Well, I understand where they're coming from. There's certainly an argument for impeachment. There's no question Bush committed high crimes and misdemeanors and there's certainly a legal argument to be made. But people need to remember that Bernie Sanders is a freshman Senator and politics is all about accruing political capital and using it to the your best advantage and I think that's what he cares more about than watching an unsuccessful impeachment bid. I think Sanders is the kind of guy who wants to spend his first term trying to do stuff like getting more money for the heating oil program, veterans' health care and other things. I think that's where his head is at and I also think that's smart of him to do that. I mean, look, he's the new kid on the block and even if he were all for impeachment, he wouldn't get it. It's like the old joke about the two bulls who stand up on the hill and the young one says to the old, “Let's run down and fuck all those cows,” and the other one says, “No. Let's walk down and fuck them all.” I think Sanders is thinking in terms of “walking down and fucking them all” (laughter).
“I believe in a sacred contract between our country and America’s veterans and military families. We must stand by those who stand by us. When our service men and women sacrifice so much to defend our freedom and secure peace around the world, we have a moral obligation to take care of them and their families.”– John Edwards
Our Veterans are in serious trouble. Their suicide rates are way up. Paul Rieckhoff has been posting about this, and CBS is finally giving it some necessary attention:
In the meantime, there’s a lot, as laypeople, we can do to help veterans, even when they’re dealing with serious mental illness.
This is a metaphor I commonly use when talking about mental illness:
Think of the human psyche as something which needs to be supported in order to avoid falling into an abyss. Most of us have support of some sort, both internal and external. We have a great deal which we need to balance, so picture someone on a platform above this abyss which needs balance and structure to keep us from falling off when small things (minor gusts of wind) and major things (hurricanes and tornadoes) threaten our sense of balance and self.
Most of us have strong mechanisms. We not only have the platform, but we have guy wires holding it in place, and keep it well maintained and patched (internal mechanisms). We also have external support (nets and ladders) which can catch us when we do fall, (as any one of us is bound to do from time to time, no matter how well designed our platform).
People with mental illness have that platform, but it’s not well-maintained. The effort of maintaining it is too complicated for them, so they can fall through the holes more easily. The platform itself is patchy, and they can fall off it from time to time, but from day to day, many of them manage fine. If, however, a small wind blows by, it’s more of a threat than it is to the rest of us. If a large gust comes by, it could mean major trouble.
There’s always a ladder, and when trouble comes, there are ways to climb out, but not everyone has the skills to find that latter or to know how to get back out of that abyss again. Some are so scared of everything that the ladder itself is seen as a threat. A rare few are so scared of the stability that they leave the platform willingly and never intend to come back to it.
Mental illness happens for a variety of reasons, and it manifests itself in multiple ways. But at its core, it’s almost always about finding ways to cope with the complexities of the world around us, and not everyone knows how to do that.
This connects with the concept of Psychological Adequacy: the ability to handle and withstand various stresses that come at us from time to time. Not everyone can handle the same kind of stress in the same way, but with good support and the right kind of assistance, anyone’s ability to withstand external pressures can be improved.
As a society, we find physical injuries disquieting at times, but we are used to seeing them. Once, when giving a presentation to a group of medical students, one of the other presenters was a veteran who’d lost both his arms in an electrical accident some decades earlier. He showed up, went to introduce himself to me and held out one of his metal appendages to shake my hand. This was a new experience for me but I shook his “hand” and didn’t think much of it after the fact.
Later, when talking to the group, he mentioned how he does that as a matter of routine. People meet him and think “do I talk about the hook? Do I look at the hook? Do I avoid the hook?” They don’t know what to do or say about it, so he just puts it right up to them so they can actually touch it for a moment and just get the whole “what do I do/say/think about the hook” thing out of the way and over with. He was right — it worked perfectly well. I was completely at ease around him from the moment I actually touched the prosthetic.
Physical injuries are complicating to social interaction, but once you get past them, they’re not very complicated at all.
Mental issues are infinitely more complex, and they tend to touch a certain fear and lack of confidence inside of us and make it much harder to progress. But really, they’re just injuries: damage from experience, chemistry, genetics, etc.
The problem is that they’re injuries which are easy to hide, which most of us prefer not to think about, and which can take time to manifest, sometimes surprising the victim as well as everyone else, and sometimes our first instincts as humans do little to solve the problems.
Treating everything as though it’s normal, for example, might not actually help. When people dealing with extreme trauma are thrust suddenly into an environment of extreme normalcy, it’s sometimes difficult for them to find their place. If the normalcy is so enforced (with the intent of making someone feel at home or comfortable), it can actually make things worse, playing off of the internal sense that if you don’t feel at home or comfortable that there’s something wrong with you.
In the meantime, as IAVA reports, the professional component of this is far from adequate:
90% of military psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers reported no formal training or supervision in the recommended PTSD therapies, and there is a general shortage of trained mental health professionals in the military. The Pentagon screens returning troops for mental health problems via an ineffective system of paperwork. Studies have shown that many troops are not filling out their mental health forms, that there are serious disincentives for troops to fill the form out accurately, and that those whose forms indicate they need care do not consistently get referrals.
Let’s talk again about that platform– even if you come out of combat completely intact from a physical level and never suffer a direct attack, you know you’re in danger while there. This weakens your platform. If you kill someone, even if you’re in no direct danger yourself, your psyche probably suffers some wounds. If your friend or a member of your unit is killed or injured, this does damage as well. If you’re injured and alone for a period of time, not knowing how it’s going to turn out, that’s got to cause problems.
But here’s the thing: all of these wounds are invisible and to people suffering from them, they can take on the form of unexplained fears, terrors and nightmares.
Think about what this means to someone who’s a trained soldier: you’ve got the experience to stare death in the face, but you can’t sit in a restaurant without having your back to the wall because your hands shake when you can’t see the whole room you’re in. You’ve survived 110 degree heat, sniper attacks, land mines, IEDs, but you get home and you almost go off the road when you hear a car backfire.
And you don’t want to talk about this with the people you love and care about because they’ve done so much to make you feel at home and you’re terrified and you don’t want them to be terrified, too, because you’re the strong one and you’ve always been the strong one.
But there’s nowhere for you to go because the VA doesn’t have the resources to provide you with adequate care and even if they could get you in right away, they’re not training their staff to recognize the symptoms.
And you don’t know enough about other soldiers who are surviving with the same thing you’re holding onto, holding in and your platform isn’t just weak now; it’s getting ready to collapse. But you don’t see it because you don’t want to see it and no one around you sees it because they want you to be well and happy and are so invested in you being well and happy that they just don’t have the ability to separate themselves out and be objective about it.
And it’s not just that you’re scared, but terrified of it.
So what do you do?
What’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t just about the damage to the thousands of soldiers who have died, or even those who suffer physical debilitating physical injury. It’s also about the tens of thousands who, whenever they eventually come home, will be facing their own demons. The more we avoid dealing with what’s to come, the worse it will be for our veterans, their families, their communities and their friends.
None of this happens in a vacuum. The damage on the soldiers is bad enough, but when you factor in the damage to families and communities, it’s incalculable.
I don’t have wisdom about this. I don’t have a magic solution. I don’t have a quick fix. I just know that unless we take it seriously, we’re in really big trouble.
I started this with a quote from John Edwards. He’s my favorite in this race, but I’m sure other Democrats have great positions on this, too, and I’m glad to see you all posting links to your own favorite candidates’ point of view in the comments, but I’m going to close with one more quote, from Edwards’ policy position on the treatment of PTSD:
Once our service members become veterans, we have to make sure the system doesn’t fail them. As president, Edwards will create a new national chain of care to ensure that no veteran again falls through the cracks. Because many veterans receive treatment outside the VA system, this chain will coordinate treatment and benefits in outreach centers and clinics in every county where a veteran resides, both within and outside the VA network. Edwards will also improve training for health personnel to recognize and treat PTSD; establish uniform standards for mental health care to address the wide range of quality of care; increase counseling resources within TRICARE and VA networks and permit access outside of the networks; and ensure that outreach is extended to family members who can help recognize symptoms. Caring for the newest generation of veterans must be accomplished without neglecting the continuing needs of veterans from previous generations.
Gag me with a … well you know what I mean. I'm still hearing/reading this “poor Peter Welch” line. Welch is part of the problem at this time. No matter what he tells us he is solidly behind a pro-war, helpful to Bush Democratic leadership in D.C.
Want to solve a problem? Okay, start with what the problem is. When it comes to our federal government the federal government is the problem. We have a congress led by a Democratic “leadership” that refuses to take a serious stand on anything.
Sure when the Republicans hand the Dems a win on a silver platter, such as the water bill, the D.C. Democrats can shine, but what have they done each and every time the Democrats have run in resistance? They've collapsed, claimed they tried and moved on.
The failing in D.C. is a group failure. Sure there are some individuals who have said and voted in ways that make sense and look to actually make a difference, but the only meaningful action will be to change direction of the group. Washington politics is not about this person or that person. Washington politics is about coalitions and caucuses and whatnot. So when an agenda doesn't move forward in Congress it's because group politics has failed somewhere.
So what can Welch do as an individual to change the group direction? Well he can stubbornly vote against war funding, constantly vote to reduce the rest of the bloated military budget and push, push, push for impeachment because that is really the only way to end the disaster we know as the Bush administration.
Perhaps most importantly he can withdraw any and all support for Pelosi as Speaker and start working with others to do so too.
If one wants things to change, one changes the way one does things.
For my individual part I know I have three things to offer any politician: my time, money and vote. I can promise Welch and any other Democratic, Republican, Independent or whatever politician they will not receive any of those items from me unless they move to impeach Cheney/Bush.
And I mean as a group … not individual. As long as Welch insists on undying loyalty to a failed Democratic “leadership” he is as guilty as anyone else for the decisions made therein.
No, it's not poor Peter Welch … it's poor United States of America.
This one aint easy, which likely means it's gonna be a complete empty vessel into which kneejerk Welch defenders will project the positive, and kneejerk Welch bashers project the negative. For the rest of us, welll…
First the positives. Number one is the fact that Welch voted against the motion to recommit, which could have set up a clean appropriation for the war, like last time. Technically, this is a bill with a timeline, requiring Bush to start pulling troops in thirty days, and to have it done by December of 2008, so Welch is making good on his word. It's also important to note that they gave Bush way less money than he wanted. This bill squeaked by, 218-203. With the exception of Kucinich, the bill had the support of the anti-war leaders in the House:
“This bill is not perfect,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat from California. “It is the boldest step yet, however, and we must support it.”
The return of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division — currently operating in the Diyala province — is the beginning of the force adjustments that are part of the troop drawdown that President Bush announced in September
So technically, Bush is already there. Sounds an awful lot like status quo.
The reality: Bush is gonna veto it. It doesn't matter that it's a fluff piece that only challenges him in the most technical of senses, rather than meaningfully. It becomes almost a low-grade punt that keeps us all at the same place, with the issue still in play. The big test will now be how the House responds to the veto – whether or not crossing the decider (and what will likely be a positive public reaction) boosts them up to send something back with more teeth (and perhaps pick up a few more votes), or whether they simply throw up their hands and say “we tried” once again.
We'll see. In the meantime, this bill will have the unique quality of both giving the Welch-haters ammunition to continue attacking him, and his defenders ammunition to stick up for him.
For the rest of us, the holding pattern continues, as nothing has changed…yet.
Here's the list of upcoming public hearings on same-sex marriage. Please try and make as many as you can, and bring as many people as you can. Bring your whole family (and please come back and write a user diary on how it went – I'll make sure to promote it to the front page). For details, check out the Freedom To Marry website.
THIRD PUBLIC HEARING Monday November 19th Lyndon State College Alexander Twilight Theater Lyndonville, VT 5pm-6ish – Informational Session 7pm-9pm – Public Hearing
FOURTH PUBLIC HEARING Wednesday December 5th Brattleboro Time & location: TBA
FIFTH PUBLIC HEARING Monday December 10th St. Albans Bellows Free Academy Auditorium 71 South Main 5pm-6pm: Informational Session 6:30pm-8:30pm: Public Hearing
SIXTH PUBLIC HEARING Tuesday December 18th Montpelier Statehouse Time: TBA
SEVENTH PUBLIC HEARING Saturday January 12th Bennington Time & location: TBA
EIGHTH PUBLIC HEARING Saturday February 2nd Rutland Time & location: TBA
NINTH PUBLIC HEARING Monday February 11th Williston Time & location: TBA
Chris Dodd's presidential website is decked out in activist mode over the upcoming review in the Senate Judiciary Committee of the intelligence bill that would famously give telephone companies that went along with Bush's blatantly illegal wiretapping of US citizens retroactive immunity from legal action (while those that stood their ground get punished with jail time). If you click on the linked image-widget to the right, you'll see that Senator Leahy is still down as a “maybe” on this.
(Leahy) “They won't tell us what it was they did to break the law but they want us to pass a law saying it's OK. Whatever they did to break the law is all right but we can't tell you what it was they did to break the law. That's Alice in Wonderland and I have no intention of voting for something like that.”
Sanders has also come out against it, as did Rep. Welch some time back.
Now it may be that the time will come to pressure Leahy and Sanders to support a filibuster, which will likely be the only meaningful vote on whether or not a Senator is truly opposed, given an issue like this (and given that this will probably go through the Judiciary Committee, given that it already has the support of the west-coast Lieberman, California Senator Dianne Feinstein). But we're not there yet. (ht Kagro X)
UPDATE: Well, well – according to MoonWomyn in the comments, Leahy is indeed being non-committal, and his statement to VPR should be parsed with a fine toothed comb (see below). I should say he probably should be getting the calls to his office after all, given this news. Click on the image for a link.
(This gave me a lot to think about. – promoted by JulieWaters)
I just read JDRyan's thoughtful reflections to all this Welch meeting hoopla over at his site, Five Before Chaos. Very well put, productive, and worth the read in my opinion.
It also got me thinking- well, actually, I've been thinking about these things for quite a while, but it got me motivated to write a quick piece about those thoughts.
In life, and in politics, we approach -or we could, or we should approach- matters with a simple formula that, depending on the issue or one's own inclination, allows for us to make it as simple or as complicated and in-depth as we wish. In a nutshell, we identify our goal, develop a strategy (or even strategies) for obtaining that goal, and then within the context of that strategy(s) we identify various tactics (some that we decide to employ and others we might decide not to employ) which will work towards supporting our strategy (and a successful strategy will hopefully accomplish our goal)…..
So, one goal for many Vermonters is to bring an “end to the war” as quickly and efficiantly as possible. In fact, the various opinions on this -immediate withdrawl, a timeline, no timeline, etc- would be a great example of the various strategies that one could adopt towards reaching that goal.
For some -myself not included- one strategy is to focus on pressuring/appealing to their elected representatives to do anything and everything they can to “end the war”. The tactics used in this strategy- letters, emails, phone calls, followed by office visits, sit-ins, and then a request for a face-to-face meeting, are quite visible and have generated a lot of public discussion and debate (perhaps that's part of the strategy).
And I for one am a huge fan of a diversity of tactics. The more depth and breadth that can cover an issue, the better. I also have few idealogical limits as far as what I think is “on the table” (I'm talking in general terms, not only about this one issue). But I believe there is a fundamental flaw in the strategy of appealing to elected representatives on this issue, and I think that may be a part of the, er, chaotic and controversial nature of the meeting with Welch in Barre on Sunday.
Most importantly, I fail to see, or at least, I'm not at all convinced, that even if Peter Welch became the leading voice in Washington against the war in Iraq, even if he said “yes” to all 15 of those questions from Sunday (and stood to his word), how would the goal -ending the war- be accomplished? I haven't seen a single person arrgue that this would be the case, so it seems to me that there's a fundamental flaw in the strategy; namely, it has pretty close to zero chance of accomplishing the goal. Would it be helpful? Sure. Is it worth pursuing this particular strategy (especially if it's within the context of other strategies being pursued simultaniously)? Yes, I think so.
Now, I don't blame the people who adopted this strategy entirely for this short-coming. I know many of them, respect all of them, and have been working in other capacities with many of them recently. The logic is fair enough: Welch represents the people of Vermont, Vermont is a leader in national opposision to the war (70% against is the number I see thrown around often), so it makes sense to hold Welch accountable and try and pressure him to do everything within his power to accomplish the goal of many -most- Vermonters, ie, end the war. Add to that the fact that Welch ran on a ticket of being the anti-war guy, and well, sure, the strategy isn't nuts. But, given that I still haven't seen, met, or heard any compelling reasons to believe this strategy will end the war, well…. as I said, I believe in a wide range of tactics and a diversity of strategies, so I don't write off what has been done or what its looked like. I also prefer to use my time and energy actively pursuing other strategies.
Which may just bring me to my point: there is a goal, and there are many, many (nearly countless in fact) different strategies to try and reach that goal (some more effective than others, but that doesn't discount any of them), and then there are particular tactics to employ within the frame of any one given strategy. The fact that so much time and energy is being spent between people with little or no particular involvement in pursuing a particular strategy seems to me a bit pointless. If we all share a goal, why not recognize that some of us are going to take one approach, while others a different approach. If neither of those is appealing to me, then I develop my own approach and go for that. Hopefully, one, or several, or (in my own personal opinion) all of these strategies together will bring us to….gasp! accomplish the goal that we share.
So, if your particular strategy involves spending time judging and arrguing against the effectiveness of someone else's strategy, well, I wonder how well your own “end the war” efforts would stand up to such attacks. I imagine that there is no perfect way to go about achieving our goal; but accepting that different people are going to do what makes sense to them, and then proceding with my own personal strategies is what makes sense to me. We do, afterall, share a goal. We don't, thankfully, all think the same way about it.
Well, apparently Obama's very bold technology plan (full details at link) unveiled at Google today has made quite an impression on Matt Stoller. And if the past has been any guide, that's not an easy thing to do.
Today, Obama is throwing down the gauntlet on a internet freedom, telecom lobbyists, and on opening up government in general to the public. It's some genuinely radical stuff, and it includes the use of blogs, wikis, and openness in government hearings. Significantly, Larry Lessig has endorsed Obama's platform.
He continues…
High speed broadband is a core tool for citizens to engage politically; it's not an accident that Color of Change emerged in 2006-2007, after massive growth in broadband to African-Americans. Building this network out, as Obama is putting forward, and opening up government could create organizing opportunities the likes of which we haven't dreamed. Imagine the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley combined with the power of government and the movement building organizing capacity of the netroots, and that's a start. Of course, what's possible is not necessarily what will happen, and it's all in the execution, but this is reaching for something bold.
And finally (my emphasis)…
…Obama has thrown down a big gauntlet, policy-wise. He is pushing to break up the wireless gatekeepers, net neutrality will be a strong priority in his administration, and open government will allow citizens to generate new sources of political power. I don't trust Obama's politics and I find his post-partisan rhetoric problematic, but I believe in organizing, and I believe that if he is willing to put the government on an open level playing field for all citizens while protecting our ability to access it, good things will happen. That's more than I can say about Clinton. It is tough to figure out where these candidates really do disagree, but on open networks, it seems like this is a clear line of demarcation.
I am now leaning towards Obama in my choice for President…
[More below the fold…]
Oh yeah, and on a related note, Bowers backs off his claim that Obama's campaign is dead…
At this point, with the time to make a final decision looming, and faced with a primary election that, no matter the inaccuracy of the media narrative, is still primarily a choice between Clinton and Obama, the progressive creative class has decided that it still prefers Obama to Clinton no matter what Obama may or may not have done wrong so far. This is the vote that Obama absolutely needs in order to win either Iowa or New Hampshire, and it seems as though he is keeping enough of that vote in order to stay competitive in both states.
The Netroots opinion leaders have been notably fickle during this primary season, but as Iowa draws near, it's interesting to track where support is trending.
Apparently — as is the case with many other indicators in the past couple of weeks — it's trending Obama.
After noting that current energy policies will likely lead to “huge global calamities…” Wolff told the audience “…in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could ‘keep fuel flowing’ by transforming the billions of people who die into oil… With more fossil fuels comes a greater chance of disaster, but that means more feedstock for Vivoleum. Fuel will continue to flow for those of us left.”
Dark humor aside, we might argue over when, but at some point, the oil is going to run out.
Today, I’ll explore how we use energy, how we can change our sense of what energy means and why that change will be so much easier if started earlier than later.
The picture, by the way, is not a Photoshop effect. It’s long-exposure work, using an infra red filter to reduce the amount of light entering the shutter. When you do very long exposures (this was 29 seconds), images that pass across the screen don’t always appear, and when they do appear, they often appear ghosted. In this case, you get the ghost effect of the car as it paused for a moment at the intersection and then continued on.
Okay, so enough of the photo geek babble. Now onto science geek babble.
How will you pay to run your car? How will you get the children to school? How will you heat your house? How much will transported food go up in price?
How will we pay for plastics, metals, rubber, cheap flights, Simpson’s DVDs, 3G phones and everlasting economic growth?
The basic answer is, we won’t.
This is the message from the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO).
People may disagree on when it’s going to happen, but there’s no real question that it will happen in many of our lifetimes. Per the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
What would happen if the world were to start running out of oil? Conventional wisdom says we’ve got 30 years, but there’s a growing fear amongst petroleum experts it’s happening much sooner than we thought – that we are hitting the beginning of the end of oil now. So how soon will the oil run out, and can we stop our economy collapsing when it does? How prepared are we for the real oil crisis?
What are we going to do in order to make this transition from an oil-based economy to making better use of other fuel sources? How are we going to make this transition as easy as possible, and how will we do it as painlessly as possible?
Here in Vermont, Post Oil Solutions is organizing around local economy. They run workshops, educate the public, and support people trying to take control of their own energy solutions.
These are all projects that were started by people on a small scale and are growing into something big.
And this effort at getting people to think about energy, energy usage and our impact has a direct effect on personal behavior. I’ll just take a moment to outline some personal changes we’ve made as a household in the past few years. Many of these are more recent and directly a result of the localvore challenge:
Composting: I attended a Master Composter course last Fall. In doing so, I learned how to save resources by not just throwing out uneaten/spoiled food. We now collect all our scraps, store them and reuse them in gardens once they’re converted to healthy, nutrient-rich, compost.
Local Harvesting: We’ve started paying a lot more attention to where our food comes from. This is big. When you purchase food from across the county, you’re not just paying for the food. You’re paying for the cost of transporting that food. When we buy local food, we’re not only supporting our local economy, we’re paying attention to where our food comes from and what the conditions are. When I visit Hope Roots Farm to buy eggs, I know they’re free range because I see the chickens wandering around. Usually, I just take it on faith.
Food Dehydrating: This ties in directly with the local foods. There are only certain times of year when you can get certain foods locally: blueberries; apples; root vegetables. Many of these can be dried when they’re in season, stored in various fashions, and used down the line for all sorts of purposes and it’s a lot cheaper to dry food and store it than to refrigerate it.
Attention to How I Drive: I don’t always have as much choice about this as I’d like: I have places to be and places to be on time. But, if I have time, I don’t drive as fast as I might otherwise do. My car (a Prius Hybrid) is much more efficient at 55mpg than it is at 65. So don’t go faster than 55mpg unless I need to and I don’t ever go faster than 65. But for different cars, there are different efficiency levels. Whatever car you own, you can probably drive it more efficiently than you do today and you can learn a lot about that through some simple research.
Paying More Up Front for Better Appliances I’m fortunate in that I have the resources to do this. I understand that a lot of people don’t. But for those that can, there’s a significant difference between sticker price and cost. Buying energy-efficient appliances makes good sense from both an earth and an economic sense down the line. So why not offer low-interest loans or tax rebates so more people can buy things that, in the long run, will be cheaper for them?
None of these are rocket science; they’re simple steps that can be done in small increments. You don’t have to compost everything you can. You can make it a small project, composting the easy stuff, which at least reduces waste. You don’t have to buy everything local. But you can commit to having one day a week where all your food comes from local resources. You don’t have to drive slow all the time. But you can drive at the speed which is best for your vehicle when you have the opportunity to do so.
But in the meantime, though these are good personal steps, they’re small steps and, as individuals, we can only go so far with this. With so much of our energy being through large-scale industrial facilities, how can we compete with this?
The simple answer is that we can’t compete with it, but we can influence change and we have to do it by demanding more from our government, our corporations and our people. We can’t stay silent about this, nor can we expect that merely changing ourselves is sufficient.
We’ve got to make changes, and a lot of those changes have to be mandated through law if they’re going to stick. Changes like Manure Power:
Four Vermont farms will soon be producing electricity from cow manure with the help of Central Vermont Public Service Corp… Farms in Sheldon, Fairlee, West Pawlet and St. Albans will receive the grants from the CVPS Renewable Development Fund, established in 2004 to encourage farmers to develop new renewable generation and provide new manure management options through Cow Power.
It gets better. According to CVPS President Robert Young, “these grants will help develop 8,400 megawatt-hours of clean renewable energy right here in Vermont… enough energy to supply 1,395 average homes using 500 kwh per month.”
This isn’t science fiction. This is real. It’s happening right now, but we need to take it a step further: don’t just award grants for this. Make it a requirement that farms above a certain production level give back to their communities by using manure power for their operations. If it’s true that cows contribute to global warming then it’s perfectly reasonable to expect large-scale farms to support anti-global warming efforts.
What if you don’t live in an agricultural state? Where might you find better energy resources there? I’ve written before about people power. I’m not talking about people powered political movements. I’m talking literally about energy derived from the day to day activities of individuals:
The band takes center stage, the fans surge forward and the sheer power of the crowd’s excitement amplifies the sound of their favorite songs – providing enough energy, in fact, to move a train… The Crowd Farm, a conceptual design by two graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology… seeks to milk the mechanical movement of hundreds or thousands of assembled people to produce electrical power… the students have shown how the simple act of sitting on a stool can generate enough power to turn on four LED lights.
Think about what this could mean: roads designed to harness the power of the vehicles that move across them; sidewalks designed to power the town’s lighting system. Even without this technology we have playgrounds designed to power water systems. Can you imagine if we combined this technology with such playgrounds? What if basketball stadiums were designed to work with the power of the people and the players? What if assembly lines used the movement of their workers to help power the belt? What if the movement of people through lobbies powered the elevators? What if those great big buildings with the huge glass atriums combined solar power and human power to provide resources for their energy? What if we combined those with small, rooftop-based windmills, to add supplemental energy into the system?
What if all these systems generated more power than they needed? What if they could sell the excess energy at floor-based charging systems to anyone who wanted to power their phone, their iPod, their electric car or anything else that needed a quick charge? Think about what that could do for our economy?
And what if we provided federal grants for the research and development of these systems? Wouldn’t that fall under the sort of option that would dramatically improve national security?
What if we started to produce portable solar generators that we could use to power our own electronic devices? Oh wait, we already do.
US researchers have developed… a way to cheaply and efficiently generate hydrogen gas from readily available and renewable biomass such as cellulose or glucose, and could be used for powering vehicles, making fertilizer and treating drinking water… their reactor generated hydrogen gas at nearly 99 percent of the theoretical maximum yield using aetic acid, a common dead-end product of glucose fermentation.
I’m not a scientist. I don’t have the technical background to know all the details behind the exact process behind this. But I can do math and I understand the basics. I can look at our choices and see that there is no future in an oil based economy. I can read and learn and understand that there are things that I can do better, but we need this tackled on a grand scale to make a significant difference.
I don’t know that it’s not too late to change the things we need to change, but I have to live as though we still have meaningful choices, both as individuals and as a nation.
Sure. We can talk about when the oil runs out. We can talk about what’s going to happen in the future. And we can say it’s a long way off, and worry about what’s going to happen when it finally arrives.
But what if we took the lead? What if we decided here and now that we’re not going to wait for the oil to run out? What if we decided today that it was time that we stopped treating oil like a necessity and started treating it like the last resort? What if we decided today that it’s better to invest in safe, renewable energy as though the oil were going to run out next month rather than next century?
We can do this. We have the resources to do it. We have the genius to do it.
