I began this discussion of the roadblocks which prevent human advance to higher levels of social awareness and well-being by listing ignorance, greed and a number of corrosive and devitalizing forces and practices which blunt the cutting edge of the crusade to end social backwardness and promote the full use of nature, of human genius, of science, technology, and the social apparatus as means for opening wide the doors of opportunity for the entire human race. Ignorance, poverty, unemployment, dissipation, war and other forms of waste are barriers which must be surmounted and liquidated by the concerted demand of humanity as it struggles for enlightenment, and the fuller use of natural resources and technical equipment to enlarge opportunity, increase knowledge and thus broaden and deepen the stream of human culture.
There are other roadblocks which are deliberately built and maintained, to preserve obsolete features of Western civilization, to limit and restrict human advance and to make such minor reforms in the social apparatus as are necessary to blunt the worldwide movement for social betterment, and to preserve the wealth-poverty balance: wealth for the owners and masters; poverty for those who do much of the world’s work. I shall call these planned, tailor-made roadblocks to social advance “the counter-revolution” because they are the answer of property, privilege and the status quo to the planet-wide revolution of the past half century.
There is nothing casual or customary about the counter-revolution. It has been planned, organized, financed, armed and led by the richest and most powerful big businesses and the richest and most powerful governments of the “free world.” For years after 1917 the big business-military oligarchies which were running the Western empires considered the Russian Revolution and the Chinese, Cuban, Philippine, Turkish and other revolutions which clustered around the Russian Revolution as “impermanent rather than permanent.” When at long last they awoke to the fact that revolution at various levels was sweeping over the planet like a prairie fire, they took the matter seriously and began planning and organizing the counter-revolution.
Needless to say, the counter-revolution had as its purpose the preservation and strengthening of the status quo. It was stimulated and activated in all areas where revolution succeeded or threatened to succeed.
Counter-revolution was directed against revolutionary movements and revolutionary governments in Mexico, Russia, Central Europe, the Near and Middle East, South East Asia, Latin America, Africa. It was so successful in the United States that it all but eliminated the Left as an effective political factor.
Behind the counter-revolution were the prestige, wealth and political authority of western civilization. Immediately after the Russian Revolution it took organized form in the drive to overthrow the Bolsheviks and the parallel revolutions in Germany and Central Europe. Then it appeared as Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. Later, as the threat of planet-wide revolution mounted after war’s end in 1945, it became the Cold War, waged by the remnants of the chief 19th century empires against syndicalism, socialism, communism or any other ideology which questioned the theory and practice of private enterprise and empire building as the logical end and aim of human life. Led aggressively by the business-military complex of the United States after 1946, the Cold War took the center of the western stage and has occupied it ever since, fighting the collectivist “enemy” in the Soviet Union, People’s China, Korea, Vietnam, Iran, the Congo, Cuba, Bolivia, Brazil, and wherever private enterprise profiteers were threatened by popular uprisings.
The counter-revolutionary drive has six chief aspects: the circus aspect; the convenience, comfort, conformity aspect; the petty reform aspect; the corruption aspect; the espionage aspect; and the violence and terror aspect.
The circus aspect of counter-revolution is aimed to amuse, entertain and divert attention from some of the chief issues that concern mankind. Mass conditioning is a very old story. It is being repeated in the present-day West with camera, printing press, movies, radio, television and the other means of communication which modern technology has provided so generally and so generously. Thanks to these discoveries and inventions it is possible for those in authority to reach people in their homes, in their work places, in their schools and recreation centers and on the street, twenty-four hours of each day, with blandishments, scandal, horror stories, doctored “news,” admonitions, warning, threats. Since the means of present-day communication in the West are under the control of the same oligarchies that own the economy, operate the political apparatus and administer the social services, the people can be fed half-truths and lies, or, through silence, kept in virtual ignorance of t~le course of events. At the same time they are told, repeatedly, through the same channels that they are the most enlightened public anywhere on earth.
The convenience, comfort, conformity aspect of the counter-revolution was designed to buy off the popular masses by flooding the mass market with a dazzling, bewildering, engrossing supply of goods and services.
Counter-revolutionaries are in control of production apparatus capable of converting natural resources and human energy into a huge volume and an infinite variety of gadgets and appliances in addition to the assembly-line output of food, clothing, shelter and the social services. These goods and services were poured into the mass market and were matched by wage and salary payrolls which enabled their recipients to buy back two-thirds of the national product.
Trusts, cartels and other forms of economic concentration reduced the number of self-employed enterprisers and professionals. At the same time they increased the number of wage earners and salaried employes, so that those who wished to buy in the mass market were increasingly dependent on blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Holding a job owned by somebody else thus became the key to affluence and the economic basis for status, prestige, promotion.
Jobs were owned by the business-military-political oligarchies which controlled every essential aspect of the more highly industrialized communities. The oligarchs held the key to convenience, comfort, status, preferment.
Did job-holders and their families wish to share in the goods and services heaped on mass market shelves? Did they want to revel in processed food, drive their own cars, own their own homes, enjoy status and get promotions? There was one simple, universal credit card that gave the holder a job with its regular pay check admitting to the mass market. Conformity credit cards (jobs) were issued to those who followed the approved way of life. Approval came from the oligarchy. Acceptance was the oath of fealty sworn by the prospective job-holder. Those who differed and opposed were refused jobs and thus reduced to second-class economic status. They were subversive unemployables, screw balls, misfits, troublemakers.
The Way of Life was outlined in school, in church, in the press, over radio and television. The Way of Life became a religious obligation and a patriotic duty. Those who accepted and followed it had all of the rights and privileges provided for first-class citizens and job holders. Non-conformers received second-class treatment.
Petty reforms are part and parcel of the arsenal with which counter-revolution fights its battles. Revolutionary demands go to the roots and are far-reaching, involving changes in property, class relations and the status of those engaged in the revolutionary struggle. Petty reforms are crumbs, thrown to those who demand bread.
Petty reforms satisfy immediate demands, leaving property and class relations as they were before the reforms were offered. They may include limited hours of labor, better working conditions, broadened education, political representation, an extended suffrage, elections within a specified period, extension of civil rights and social services. Reform preserves the essential structure of society so that those presently in power continue to exercise authority.
Promises of petty reforms are the IOU’s with which the counter-revolution seeks to dull the edge of revolutionary demands and decrease revolutionary enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, each reform (conceded however grudgingly by the masters) involves some limitation of arbitrary authority and adds to the rights and privileges which the ruled are able to exercise and enjoy. Experience in Scandinavia and Great Britain is significant in this respect. In these countries manifold reforms have been made over recent years, in the working and living conditions of the populace. Social services have been improved. Housing has been bettered. Unemployment has been reduced. As a result, the revolutionary movements in these countries have been correspondingly weakened.
“Corrupt” means to debase, deprave, worsen. Corruption undermines integrity and purpose, impairs vitality, decreases effectiveness. It is therefore an important instrument of the counter-revolution. Corruption is particularly effective where the counter-revolutionaries own and control an efficient productive apparatus which is able to provide an abundant supply of goods, services, gadgets and (most important, in a society build around a money economy) to provide quantities of money.
The present-day counter-revolution can offer not only immense quantities and varieties of goods and services but, through its elaborate apparatus of credits and securities, can offer permanent parasitism to those who will follow its line and do its bidding.
Supplied with an abundance of goods, services, money, credit and securities, the counter-revolution can satisfy human hungers to the point of satiety, gratifying the appetites of drug addicts and gamblers, providing amusement and diversion on a grandiose scale, and guaranteeing the supply of such desiderata so long as the existing order endures.
Counter-revolutionaries aim their corrupting activities especially at the younger and less experienced leaders of the revolution, offering them secure, well-paid jobs, regular promotions, status and social recognition, and whatever money will buy.
Espionage is an important aspect of counter-revolution. Early in the present century spies and spying were generally regarded with disfavor in the United States. In Europe, with its semi-popular monarchies, its intense national rivalries and its militant revolutionary minorities, espionage was expected and even taken for granted. In a democratic republic it was considered an intruder.
Today, with the spread of revolutionary activities, the extension of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States government as the patron, financier, armorer and organizer of counter-revolution across the planet, spies and spying have become an integral part of the American Way of Life. In continental United States the Federal Bureau of Investigation fills its dossiers on millions of individuals with fact, fiction and gossip. Abroad the Central Intelligence Agency snoops, prys, plots, and organizes counter-revolution.
These two are the chief spy agencies under the immediate direction of the Federal Government. In addition, the diplomatic and consular services are spying agencies. Each of the armed services has its intelligence department. The treasury has its secret service. Both House and Senate have investigative committees patterned on the notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities. The Post Office, like the Internal Revenue and the Custom Service, have their under-cover men. The Post Office, Customs and the F.B.I. check printed matter coming into the country and exclude undesirable publications. The Post Office may check the personal mail of non-conformists. Individual states and cities have their spies, legislative committees and police departments.
United States big business is honey-combed with spies. Large corporations have their intelligence services which plant spies and spying apparatus in factory departments, in offices, in toilet and social rooms, in the room of the Board of Directors. For smaller enterprises there are national and international detective agencies which specialize in spying and place spies for business enterprises on the premises of their rivals.* Espionage is justified by the one word: security, but as the spy network proliferates and penetrates every corner of society, privacy disappears and insecurity becomes universal.
[*For details, see Vance Packard’s The Naked Society, N. Y.: David McKay 1964]
Most alarming to radicals, among activities of the counter-revolution, has been its use of violence and terror. During the opening years of the present century two assumptions were widespread among western intellectuals: first, western man was too civilized to permit another general war; second, the West had left behind terror tactics such as physical manhandling and physical torture. Both assumptions were blown to bits in the events that accompanied the wars after 1914.
It is difficult for anyone born since 1914 to realize the totality of the revolution in social techniques which took place during this period. In the Victorian Age, which ended in 1914, British, Germans, Frenchmen, and other peoples in the West took it for granted that mankind had advanced to a level far above that of the Middle Ages, with a consequent humanitarianism, a respect for human dignity and a whole-hearted rejection of practices associated with the words “savagery” and “barbarism.” The word “civilization,” as then used, automatically repudiated such savage and barbaric approaches to life. War, revolution and counter-revolution re-opened the flood gates to violence and terror on a scale far exceeding anything known to have existed among the pre-civilized peoples.
Revolution and counter-revolution in the same political area are, in effect, cold or hot civil war, with relative against relative and neighbor against neighbor. Such struggles are traditionally fierce and bloody. Experience during the present period of social revolution and counter-revolution runs true to civil war form.
Since the closing years of the 19th century there have been five parallel and inter-related movements: (1) the technological revolution; (2) the revolts of suppressed and oppressed peoples demanding self-determination and setting up republics dedicated by their constitutions to representative or democratic governments; (3) advances in military preparations and in the weaponry used in two general wars and scores of civil and local wars: (4) the growth of the economic and political labor movement, reaching its climax in the building of planned, socialist societies; and (5) the general and stubborn refusal of the bourgeois to accept and bow to the verdict of social evolution and history. It is the refusal of the business class, led by that of the U.S.A., which has involved humanity in the cold war with its accompanying violence and terror directed not only against socialism, but against the extension or use of the democratic process.
Violence and terror during the past half-century have included the formal denial of human rights as specified in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. These rights include movement, communication, persuasion, organization and joint acts up to the point of disturbing public order and endangering the continuance of existing governments. By common consent during grave emergencies civil rights are subordinated to the need of defending and promoting the common welfare. However, the denials and violations of human rights, especially among the colonial and other dependent peoples has been and still is a matter of course. These denials extend beyond colonial areas into the homelands of the great empires.
Vigilantism and mob violence are permitted, encouraged and often participated in by the police. Vigilante mobs, with no pretense of authority, violate human rights, destroy the property, maim and often take the lives of opponents and victims.
Political opponents are persecuted and prosecuted. They are arrested and detained for long periods without formal charges and without trial; they are tried in secret with public and press excluded. Long prison sentences are imposed and served, under sub-human conditions. Often political opponents are shot out of hand. Physical and psychological torture designed to force admissions of guilt or information concerning associates of the torture victims are carried out by public authorities.
Assassination by public authorities or by private agencies with the connivance of public authority is utilized as a political instrument.
There are mass killing and maiming by troops and police, firing on demonstrations of unarmed people, including women and children. Petrograd, at the Winter Palace in 1905, the Amritzar massacre in 1916 by the British authorities, and the official beating of unarmed Negroes and whites demonstrating in the Deep South of the United States during 1964-65 are outstanding examples.
Genocide is practiced. Mass extermination of political opponents or racial minorities; undernourishment in concentration camps; gas chambers are employed. These methods reached the highest level of scientific efficiency in Germany under the Nazis, when Jews, Poles, Russians, Yugoslavs and other opponents were destroyed by millions. The victims included men, women and children.
Police and military persecution and suppression of minority political organizations and religious faiths are carried on inside political frontiers. Examples are the anti-socialist drive in Central and East Europe after the Russian Revolution and the Cold War against communism after 1945.
Mob violence and public participation in drives against racial and religious minorities have occurred In South Africa, India, and the United States since the Civil War.
Mass deportations for political reasons have accompanied war and have been carried out for political purposes.
The entire half-century beginning with 1910 has been marred and scarred by unofficial and official violence and terror: by “man’s inhumanity to man.” A radical must describe human conduct during this entire period as disgusting, revolting, appalling, indefensible, degrading and unworthy of reasoning, ethically motivated human beings.*
[*The ghastly array of evidence supporting the charge that during the past half-century humanity had used violence and terror at levels ordinarily associated with one or another form of primitivism must be qualified by reference to another aspect of human behavior during the same period of war and revolution: the movement for non-violent action in opposition to violence.
Within the vast military machines built up by governments to destroy life and property across the frontiers, individual conscientious objectors have taken their stand against war and violence. Some of them were shot out of hand, but the movement of conscientious objection reached minority proportions in the war-ready and warring countries.
There were mass refusals of duty in the face of the enemy. The most massive was the disintegration of the Russian armies before the October Revolution of 1917. Armed men on the front lines during the War of 1914-18, fraternized with their opponents, abandoning discipline and threatening the entire war-waging system. Armed men, waging civil war, turned to agriculture and industry, producing instead of destroying. This was notably true in the People’s Liberation Armies of China. Outstanding examples of non-violent action in the face of overwhelming military power were the campaigns organized by Mohandas Gandhi among Indians in South Africa and later in his native India.
Latest among examples of non-violent action are the campaigns of mass civil disobedience aimed to obstruct the activities of the military. Such demonstrations have been organized in Japan against United States armed forces there; in Britain against the installation of Polaris Missiles; in the United States against biological and chemical warfare. Most notable are the non-violent protests against racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa and in the Deep South of the United States. Mention should be made also of the impressive student demonstrations which frequently have .had profound political effects during the past half century. These have occurred in Japan, South Korea, South Vietnam, Turkey, Egypt, and now are occurring in the Western Hemisphere.]
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
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August 2, 2012
Seven Roadblocks to the Good Life: (5) Combativeness and the Cult of Violence
Competition for existence, expression, recognition and supremacy in a complex, interdependent highly organized society generates a survival struggle in which man’s combativeness, courage, determination and tenacity are severely tested. Such rivalry sifts out weaklings, while it grades and regrades the strong, the shrewd, the masterful.
Survival struggle goes on locally in family and neighborhood. It goes on regionally and nationally. Survival struggle is central and basic in the life process. In its most elaborate form it is called war. Acts of war are exercises in the application of violence.
War is a form of human association in which one party to the combat seeks not only to impose his will upon his rival, but seeks to exterminate the rival by the use of a maximum of violence, directed against the person, the associates and the property of his opponents.
Preparations for war require training in the efficacious use of violence. Violence is therefore taught as an art. A cult of violence is developed and every effort is made to dignify and even deify violence. This process has been an essential phase of the military preparedness that has played so large a role in the life of Western civilization.
Since every tool is a potential weapon, as technology has advanced, the possibilities of violence have been multiplied and magnified until with the advent of atomic and nuclear weapons used in waging total war, it becomes possible, in an instant, to vaporize property and exterminate life wholesale.
Linking combativeness, the cult of violence and nuclear technology has created a situation so decisive that in one supreme combat the existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons could destroy the totality of man’s culture and exterminate man himself, bringing an end to the period of human habitation on the planet earth.
Among the roadblocks to further human progress, the destructive potential of nuclear war seems to impose the most emphatic finality on the future of the human race.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
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Survival struggle goes on locally in family and neighborhood. It goes on regionally and nationally. Survival struggle is central and basic in the life process. In its most elaborate form it is called war. Acts of war are exercises in the application of violence.
War is a form of human association in which one party to the combat seeks not only to impose his will upon his rival, but seeks to exterminate the rival by the use of a maximum of violence, directed against the person, the associates and the property of his opponents.
Preparations for war require training in the efficacious use of violence. Violence is therefore taught as an art. A cult of violence is developed and every effort is made to dignify and even deify violence. This process has been an essential phase of the military preparedness that has played so large a role in the life of Western civilization.
Since every tool is a potential weapon, as technology has advanced, the possibilities of violence have been multiplied and magnified until with the advent of atomic and nuclear weapons used in waging total war, it becomes possible, in an instant, to vaporize property and exterminate life wholesale.
Linking combativeness, the cult of violence and nuclear technology has created a situation so decisive that in one supreme combat the existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons could destroy the totality of man’s culture and exterminate man himself, bringing an end to the period of human habitation on the planet earth.
Among the roadblocks to further human progress, the destructive potential of nuclear war seems to impose the most emphatic finality on the future of the human race.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
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Wind power promotes extractive industries
Reuters reports on the increasing demand for copper due to mandates requiring the building of giant wind turbines:
“Copper is used in wind turbine installations and for sub-sea cables that transfer power back to the grid. ... [W]ind turbines use 3.6 tonnes of copper per megawatt.”
A dissertation from England concludes that wind turbines use ~5.64 tonnes/MW capacity onshore and ~9.58 tonnes/MW capacity offshore.
See also: “Green power LOVES chemicals” and “Green energy”.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
“Copper is used in wind turbine installations and for sub-sea cables that transfer power back to the grid. ... [W]ind turbines use 3.6 tonnes of copper per megawatt.”
A dissertation from England concludes that wind turbines use ~5.64 tonnes/MW capacity onshore and ~9.58 tonnes/MW capacity offshore.
See also: “Green power LOVES chemicals” and “Green energy”.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
August 1, 2012
Seven Roadblocks to the Good Life: (4) Six Human Hungers Which Squander Resources, Time and Energy
Side by side with the six corrosives that devitalize human beings are six human hungers. Attempts to satisfy these hungers squander needed resources, consume time and use up energy that could be employed to greater advantage in other directions.
These hungers are for self-preservation; food and drink; sex satisfaction; power; something for nothing; soporifics. All six plead personal or social necessity as a justification for top priority. Over-indulgence in any or all of them warps, frustrates and cripples normal human functioning and prevents the rounded fruition of human life. All six demand attention, time and energy to a point at which the undisciplined individual is wholly involved and totally committed. Other aspects of life recede into the background until the satisfaction of particular human hungers enslaves the victim.
Food, drink, air, sunshine and sex are prerequisites to the continuance of human life. Without them there would be no life as we know it. All are essential elements in the preservation of the individual and the human race. They are the basis of life and are among the driving forces animating the individual and the race. Man shares these hungers with animals, birds and insects. They are general characteristics of terrestrial creatures.
In a previous section I commented on greed for power. Power hunger is easily stimulated in concentrations of population. The urge behind human hungers inheres in the individual. Sex satisfaction demands at least one partner. Power hunger is associated with population aggregates from the family to larger and more complex social groups.
Gambling (taking a chance on getting something for nothing) is an urge arising out of group life. Drug addiction stems from the effort to overcome pain, to compensate for nutritional imbalance, to off-set weariness and exhaustion or emotional disappointments, as an alternative to boredom.
Through the ages unscrupulous exploiters have used human hungers as a source of easy money. As society moved from a scarcity level to a level of abundance, crafty crooks and grasping businessmen have artfully stimulated human hungers by various forms of propaganda and cashed in on satisfying the hungers at top prices.
Urges to satisfy hungers arouse human beings and stimulate them to greater expenditures of interest and energy. Immoderate indulgence, especially in soporifics, diverts human beings from creative and social usefulness, makes them hapless victims of their animal appetites and denies them any effective role in broadening and ennobling human existence.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
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These hungers are for self-preservation; food and drink; sex satisfaction; power; something for nothing; soporifics. All six plead personal or social necessity as a justification for top priority. Over-indulgence in any or all of them warps, frustrates and cripples normal human functioning and prevents the rounded fruition of human life. All six demand attention, time and energy to a point at which the undisciplined individual is wholly involved and totally committed. Other aspects of life recede into the background until the satisfaction of particular human hungers enslaves the victim.
Food, drink, air, sunshine and sex are prerequisites to the continuance of human life. Without them there would be no life as we know it. All are essential elements in the preservation of the individual and the human race. They are the basis of life and are among the driving forces animating the individual and the race. Man shares these hungers with animals, birds and insects. They are general characteristics of terrestrial creatures.
In a previous section I commented on greed for power. Power hunger is easily stimulated in concentrations of population. The urge behind human hungers inheres in the individual. Sex satisfaction demands at least one partner. Power hunger is associated with population aggregates from the family to larger and more complex social groups.
Gambling (taking a chance on getting something for nothing) is an urge arising out of group life. Drug addiction stems from the effort to overcome pain, to compensate for nutritional imbalance, to off-set weariness and exhaustion or emotional disappointments, as an alternative to boredom.
Through the ages unscrupulous exploiters have used human hungers as a source of easy money. As society moved from a scarcity level to a level of abundance, crafty crooks and grasping businessmen have artfully stimulated human hungers by various forms of propaganda and cashed in on satisfying the hungers at top prices.
Urges to satisfy hungers arouse human beings and stimulate them to greater expenditures of interest and energy. Immoderate indulgence, especially in soporifics, diverts human beings from creative and social usefulness, makes them hapless victims of their animal appetites and denies them any effective role in broadening and ennobling human existence.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
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USDA advocates, then denounces, vegetarian diet
As Mark Bittman reports in the New York Times, an internal newsletter at the USDA (“Greening Headquarters Update”, July 23, 2012) promoted not only “meatless Mondays” but even vegetarianism:
environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, anarchism, ecoanarchism
One simple way to reduce your environmental impact while dining at our cafeterias is to participate in the “Meatless Monday” initiative http://www.meatlessmonday.com/. This international effort, as the name implies, encourages people not to eat meat on Mondays. Meatless Monday is an initiative of The Monday Campaign Inc. in association with the John Hopkins School of Public Health.Cowed by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the USDA has renounced those facts and suppressed the newsletter. The NCBA complained that the USDA “does not understand the efforts being made in rural America to produce food and fiber for a growing global population in a very sustainable way”. Bittman notes
How will going meatless one day of the week help the environment? The production of meat, especially beef (and dairy as well), has a large environmental impact. According to the U.N., animal agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases and climate change. It also wastes resources. It takes 7,000 kg of grain to make 1,000 kg of beef. In addition, beef production requires a lot of water, fertilizer, fossil fuels, and pesticides. In addition there are many health concerns related to the excessive consumption of meat. While a vegetarian diet could have a beneficial impact on a person’s health and the environment, many people are not ready to make that commitment. Because Meatless Monday involves only one day a week, it is a small change that could produce big results.
that meat is not fiber, that its industrial-style production is not sustainable by any normal definition, and that “agriculture” produces the food “Meatless Monday” advocates eat, too.The only possible good that might come of the USDA's brief airing of the truth, if not their subsequent caving to corporatist pressure, is that reactionaries like Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Steve King, both of Iowa, have promised to hasten their own demises by doubling down on their corpse consumption every Monday.
environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, anarchism, ecoanarchism
July 31, 2012
Seven Roadblocks to the Good Life: (3) Six Corrosives Which Deplete Vitality
Human beings are unable to devote themselves to constructive and creative tasks because of six corrosives which deplete vitality. They are malnutrition, ill health (physical, mental, emotional), worry, anger, fear, and hatred. Each one of the six is present, to a greater or less degree, in every human life.
Food intake is one of the chief sources of human energy. The human organism, like any other functional apparatus, can operate only so long as it is adequately supplied with the necessary nourishment. Perhaps three-fifths of mankind attempts to survive on a diet that is insufficient in quantity. Many among the other two-fifths consume stale, processed, devitalized food which is lacking in nutritive value. Comparatively few people are aware of the need for correct food combinations. A rapidly increasing proportion of mankind is being actively poisoned by pollution of the water supply, by the use of chemicals in food processing, and by spraying and dusting foods with high-power poisons aimed at the prevention of food deterioration and at the destruction of harmful micro-organisms and vermin.
Resulting malnutrition leads to a crippling failure of energy. Continued over long periods it lowers vitality, impairs the efficiency of body tissues and organs and becomes a major factor in physical degeneration. Malnutrition is one of the chief causes of physical, mental and emotional disability. There is a direct relation between nutritional deficiencies and the mal-functioning of the human organism.
Ill health also can be caused by natal influences, by accidents, by contagions and infections, by the disintegration of the organism. Where these causes are sufficiently severe, they result in premature death; otherwise they use up vital energy, and force their victims to drag themselves about, suffering constant pain or to spend their days in wheel chairs or in bed.
Worry is hard to measure. There are chronic worriers who devote their lives to this futile practice. There are victims of occasional worry spells. Under stress, most people worry-devoting their attention and consuming their energies upon some imaginary situation which seldom or never actually arises.
Anger, fear and hatred are widely prevalent in the daily lives of human beings. All consume energy, lower vitality and detract attention from constructive and creative endeavors.
Corrosive factors which deplete human vitality should be avoided with the same care that one takes in avoiding collision with a tree, a wall or a moving vehicle. All detract from health and well-being. The normal, healthy individual attempts to avoid them as a matter of course. But mass poverty, mass infection and mass unemployment cannot be dealt with by individuals acting singly. They are social mal-adjustments. As such they can be handled effectively only by social plans and action programs aimed to revive the victims of social maladjustment and to make the changes necessary to remove the causes that undermine individual health and fitness and thus lower the levels of community well-being.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
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Food intake is one of the chief sources of human energy. The human organism, like any other functional apparatus, can operate only so long as it is adequately supplied with the necessary nourishment. Perhaps three-fifths of mankind attempts to survive on a diet that is insufficient in quantity. Many among the other two-fifths consume stale, processed, devitalized food which is lacking in nutritive value. Comparatively few people are aware of the need for correct food combinations. A rapidly increasing proportion of mankind is being actively poisoned by pollution of the water supply, by the use of chemicals in food processing, and by spraying and dusting foods with high-power poisons aimed at the prevention of food deterioration and at the destruction of harmful micro-organisms and vermin.
Resulting malnutrition leads to a crippling failure of energy. Continued over long periods it lowers vitality, impairs the efficiency of body tissues and organs and becomes a major factor in physical degeneration. Malnutrition is one of the chief causes of physical, mental and emotional disability. There is a direct relation between nutritional deficiencies and the mal-functioning of the human organism.
Ill health also can be caused by natal influences, by accidents, by contagions and infections, by the disintegration of the organism. Where these causes are sufficiently severe, they result in premature death; otherwise they use up vital energy, and force their victims to drag themselves about, suffering constant pain or to spend their days in wheel chairs or in bed.
Worry is hard to measure. There are chronic worriers who devote their lives to this futile practice. There are victims of occasional worry spells. Under stress, most people worry-devoting their attention and consuming their energies upon some imaginary situation which seldom or never actually arises.
Anger, fear and hatred are widely prevalent in the daily lives of human beings. All consume energy, lower vitality and detract attention from constructive and creative endeavors.
Corrosive factors which deplete human vitality should be avoided with the same care that one takes in avoiding collision with a tree, a wall or a moving vehicle. All detract from health and well-being. The normal, healthy individual attempts to avoid them as a matter of course. But mass poverty, mass infection and mass unemployment cannot be dealt with by individuals acting singly. They are social mal-adjustments. As such they can be handled effectively only by social plans and action programs aimed to revive the victims of social maladjustment and to make the changes necessary to remove the causes that undermine individual health and fitness and thus lower the levels of community well-being.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
[Click here for all seven roadblocks.]
Thoughts on Americanism and Freedom
When I was growing up in Florida some decades ago, the state required an “Americanism versus Communism” course in 11th grade. “Communism” meant not any economic system, but rather the totalitarian Soviet Union, and “Americanism” presumably its opposite — not only in the means of working towards achieving the universal aspirations of human society, but also in what those aspirations might be. Mostly, of course, the intention was to define Communism as all bad and Americanism as all good. (Our teacher subverted the state’s intention by teaching us a lot of Russian history and about world power politics. She used the official course guide as a spur to commentary and analysis. Today, illustrating how much freedom has been lost with the ascendancy of capitalism, it is unlikely that she could have gotten away with that.)
Americanism is the premise that market capitalism is the best means of securing individual freedom. At its most crude level, it is the belief that everyone striving to maximize his or her own acquisition of wealth ensures the most equitable distribution of wealth. (And too bad if you have other interests than such striving and acquisition — that’s your choice — or if you lack the advantages of the already wealthy — that’s just a greater spur.) The belief has followed that capitalism is synonymous with freedom; and consequently, that any social structure that limits the liberty of capital is an enemy of freedom itself.
Yet by definition, capitalism is a system of hoarding, such that the success of one requires the diminished wealth of many. The imperatives of Americanism require an imperial program of conquest and exploitation both to prevent socialist sharing and to expand wealth.
As more of the world is forced to live by the terms of Americanism, however, it must keep more of its own wealth. American capital must turn on its own citizens to maintain the level of hoarding it expects. Capitalism becomes the enemy of freedom, and Americanism reveals itself as fascism — no longer pretending to benefit the many and redoubling the myth that a weakening of the power of capital is a threat to the liberty of all.
The lie of American democracy also is revealed. Dissent that challenges the myth of Americanism is viewed as not just subversive, but even treasonous: a rebellious act of war. As for an alternate vision of individual freedom, secured by a social system that equitably shares the common wealth, that does not allow one individual or group to hoard while others suffer a lack of food, shelter, leisure, medical care, education, and economic security — such a vision can not be allowed publicity. Its proponents must be vilified as terrorists, whose aim is no less than to bring down the American way of life (which is true, as far as Americanism is a barrier to freedom and not its guarantor).
Politics in the U.S.A. forbids a challenge to Americanism. Only a tinkering with the capitalist myth is allowed, an occasional crumb when the people clamor for bread. One party continues to work to expand Americanism throughout the world, and the other party works to reinforce the equation of unfettered capital and individual freedom. Liberalism is the tool of the former, religion the latter’s weapon. Both muster the energies of self-righteousness and fear which characterize their cynical politics. Hand in hand, they protect capital and strengthen its power against the needs of the people. War — at home as well as abroad — is the price the people must pay for the freedom of capital. The approved parties must either minimize or deny, or deny as currently impractical, the fact that every expansion of popular freedom has been by the limitation of capitalist power.
human rights, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism
July 30, 2012
Seven Roadblocks to the Good Life: (2) Greed for Wealth, Prestige, Power
Webster’s dictionary defines greed as “an unsatiable desire to possess or acquire something to an amount inordinately beyond what one needs or desires.” I would modify this definition thus: greed is the desire to have more of a good, service, or experience after one has had a reasonable sufficiency. Greed violates the Greek slogan “nothing too much.”
Greed shows itself in five chief directions: getting and keeping goods and services; attracting attention to oneself; gaining recognition, prestige, status; attaining and maintaining security, and achieving and holding power.
Miserliness is the most extreme expression of greed for goods and services. The miser accumulates for the sake of accumulation, and short of extreme provocation he refuses to part with any of his hoard. In a society based on scarcity only a genius can reach this level of greed. In a modern, affluent society, however, the abundance and variety of goods and services makes it possible for even the rag-picker to acquire and accumulate more than he can use. Stories of beggars who die leaving valuable property and large bank accounts often make the news columns.
The average home in an industrialized community is littered, cluttered and stuffed with clothing, bric-a-brac, gadgets, utensils, appliances, most of which have no great aesthetic appeal and are seldom used. Despite this glut, the householder continues to acquire, greedily, as occasion offers.
Attracting notice to oneself is a second expression of greed. It begins in infancy and grows into extreme forms of egomania among adults. It is particularly prevalent in a society of potential abundance which measures success in life by the quantity and variety of possessions. “How much is he worth” means “how much has he accumulated.”
Greed finds a third outlet in the desire to gain and hold recognition, prestige, position, status. Status seeking and status keeping preoccupy people whose objective is to get ahead of others by climbing toward the top of the social pyramid.
Greed turned in the direction of power is usually called “ambition.” Power is the possibility of pushing others around, using others to advance the interests of the power-seeker, keeping others in a permanent position of subordination and, if possible, servility. The power-holder is able to satisfy his power urge by keeping the largest possible number of his fellows at his beck and call. In a private enterprise society the power-hungry gain and hold economic, political and social positions which enable them to say: “You work and I will enjoy the product of your labor.”
Greed for power may be seen in families, on school playgrounds, in the economy, notably in politics and in general social relations. It is found at all levels, local, regional, national.
Greed is one of the chief driving forces in an acquisitive society. The clever, the shrewd, the unscrupulous use their talents to get and keep more than their just share of life’s good things. By this unreasonable accumulation of material possessions the greedy separate themselves from their fellows and lay the foundations for a class and caste-divided society.
Greed is an essentially anti-social force. In an acquisitive society it not only has unique opportunities for expression but it absorbs attention, consumes energy and expresses itself in activities which are directed to the aggrandizement of one, rather than the advancement of general well-being.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
[Click here for all seven roadblocks.]
Greed shows itself in five chief directions: getting and keeping goods and services; attracting attention to oneself; gaining recognition, prestige, status; attaining and maintaining security, and achieving and holding power.
Miserliness is the most extreme expression of greed for goods and services. The miser accumulates for the sake of accumulation, and short of extreme provocation he refuses to part with any of his hoard. In a society based on scarcity only a genius can reach this level of greed. In a modern, affluent society, however, the abundance and variety of goods and services makes it possible for even the rag-picker to acquire and accumulate more than he can use. Stories of beggars who die leaving valuable property and large bank accounts often make the news columns.
The average home in an industrialized community is littered, cluttered and stuffed with clothing, bric-a-brac, gadgets, utensils, appliances, most of which have no great aesthetic appeal and are seldom used. Despite this glut, the householder continues to acquire, greedily, as occasion offers.
Attracting notice to oneself is a second expression of greed. It begins in infancy and grows into extreme forms of egomania among adults. It is particularly prevalent in a society of potential abundance which measures success in life by the quantity and variety of possessions. “How much is he worth” means “how much has he accumulated.”
Greed finds a third outlet in the desire to gain and hold recognition, prestige, position, status. Status seeking and status keeping preoccupy people whose objective is to get ahead of others by climbing toward the top of the social pyramid.
Greed turned in the direction of power is usually called “ambition.” Power is the possibility of pushing others around, using others to advance the interests of the power-seeker, keeping others in a permanent position of subordination and, if possible, servility. The power-holder is able to satisfy his power urge by keeping the largest possible number of his fellows at his beck and call. In a private enterprise society the power-hungry gain and hold economic, political and social positions which enable them to say: “You work and I will enjoy the product of your labor.”
Greed for power may be seen in families, on school playgrounds, in the economy, notably in politics and in general social relations. It is found at all levels, local, regional, national.
Greed is one of the chief driving forces in an acquisitive society. The clever, the shrewd, the unscrupulous use their talents to get and keep more than their just share of life’s good things. By this unreasonable accumulation of material possessions the greedy separate themselves from their fellows and lay the foundations for a class and caste-divided society.
Greed is an essentially anti-social force. In an acquisitive society it not only has unique opportunities for expression but it absorbs attention, consumes energy and expresses itself in activities which are directed to the aggrandizement of one, rather than the advancement of general well-being.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
[Click here for all seven roadblocks.]
Wildlife consultants hired to find minimal wildlife impact
Westwood Professional Services was hired as wildlife consultants by National Wind to find no threat to eagles from their proposed wind energy plant in Goodhue County, Minnesota. A presentation by Rob Bouta of Westwood Professional Services, titled “Wildlife Consultants: Narrowing the Gap between Wildlife Agencies and Wind Energy Developers”, clearly shows the fact that their interest is not in reducing — let alone preventing — risks to wildlife but in reducing the developer's risk of losing financing and approval by minimizing the perception of risks to wildlife with the appearance of objective science. Some excerpts:
Goal of Wildlife Consultantswind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights
• Establish scientific credibility.
• Achieve an acceptable level of wildlife risk.
• Obtain agency approval or concurrence.
Scientific Credibility
• Consultants demonstrate or earn credibility
• Support conclusions with data
• Address concerns of neighbors
• Wildlife agencies have default credibility
• Viewed as experts by permitting agencies
How Much Does Science Matter?
• Permitting decisions are based on politics rather than science
• Perception is reality
• Null hypothesis of agencies: Presumed risk
• Influence the perception of decision makers
What Is Risk?
USFWS Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines:
• The likelihood that adverse impacts will occur to individuals or populations of species of concern as a result of wind energy development and operation.
Wind Energy Developers:
• Anything that threatens the likelihood that a wind project can be successfully designed, permitted, financed, and constructed.
Challenges and Obstacles
Affect potential for wind project financing:
• Wind turbine curtailment
• Agency requests viewed as project risks
• Requests for concurrence met with requests for more studies
July 29, 2012
Seven Roadblocks to the Good Life: (1) Ignorance, Indifference, Inertia
Most universal of all the obstacles to human advancement and social improvement is the failure of most human beings to play a rational, energetic and conscious part in the direction of their own lives and of the social groups to which they belong. We attribute this failure to ignorance (not understanding or knowing); to indifference (not caring sufficiently to translate discomfort into action), and [to] inertia (continuing in the established ruts of tradition, custom and habit.
Ignorance, indifference and inertia are due to a failure of vision, and to unwillingness to couple understanding with effective action. Together they exercise their immense blocking influence over the thoughts and actions of human beings, because it is easier to stay put or drift with the current than it is to break away and swim upstream. Their influence is felt by all members of the human race. In the lives of most people, most of the time, these are the influences which determine both thought and action.
The immense hold which ignorance, indifference and inertia have over men’s lives is not due in the main to any deficiency in human nature, but to the deliberate, determined efforts of ruling minorities to maintain their authority and perpetuate their power. Until recent years, landlords, ecclesiasts and militarists needed docile, obedient dependents who would work, pay rent, contribute to the church and when necessary turn from their ordinary pursuits to fight in wars arranged by their masters.
Industrial revolution brought with it the need of sufficient technical skills to build, service, improve and direct the new machines and the increasingly complex social apparatus. A working class capable of reading drawings and specifications, carrying out technical directives and writing reports became a prime necessity. General education, developed to meet these new requirements, entailed grave dangers. Men and women trained to read and reason would not be content to promote the interests of their masters. Once trained, they were more than likely to advance their own interests and those of the groups or classes to which they belonged. In order to counter this danger, the masters provided the bread, beer and luxuries which have played such an important role in keeping industrial wage earners and the ranks of the rapidly growing middle class in line behind the interests of those who owned the economy and formulated public policy.
Today this phase of masters class activity is called variously advertising, persuasion, indoctrination, brain-washing or propaganda and is covered by one word: “promotion,” or, in the vernacular, “selling.” Men “sell” themselves. Enterprises “sell” ideas, merchandise, services, beliefs, policies. Promotion is taken for granted in business. It is equally widespread in politics. It is the coin current in religion, education and in the multitude of patriotic and social service organizations.
New means of communication and recently developed channels of information have played an important part in this process. Tidal waves of national loyalties, pride and aspiration have helped in the same direction. Equipped with the new technology of persuasion and coercion, the masters are able to keep 24 hour supervision over those who serve them and promote their interests. The same instruments are equally effective against their opponents and enemies at home and abroad.
Modern society is conditioned, rather than enlightened, at state expense and under state control. The process is called “educational.” Unquestionably modern education encourages and imparts technical skills. The educational apparatus presently existing in the “free world” turns out a citizen who is ignorant, insensitive and unaware of the forces, techniques, instruments and machinations which plan, arrange, organize and supervise the environment in which he exists. The products of this conditioning live in deadly fear of change, lest it lead to “communism.” Dulled into the belief that whatever is, is right in this best of all possible worlds, citizens accept regulation, and conform to a social pattern designed by their exploiters to keep their victims ignorant, indifferent, inert.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
[Click here for all seven roadblocks.]
Ignorance, indifference and inertia are due to a failure of vision, and to unwillingness to couple understanding with effective action. Together they exercise their immense blocking influence over the thoughts and actions of human beings, because it is easier to stay put or drift with the current than it is to break away and swim upstream. Their influence is felt by all members of the human race. In the lives of most people, most of the time, these are the influences which determine both thought and action.
The immense hold which ignorance, indifference and inertia have over men’s lives is not due in the main to any deficiency in human nature, but to the deliberate, determined efforts of ruling minorities to maintain their authority and perpetuate their power. Until recent years, landlords, ecclesiasts and militarists needed docile, obedient dependents who would work, pay rent, contribute to the church and when necessary turn from their ordinary pursuits to fight in wars arranged by their masters.
Industrial revolution brought with it the need of sufficient technical skills to build, service, improve and direct the new machines and the increasingly complex social apparatus. A working class capable of reading drawings and specifications, carrying out technical directives and writing reports became a prime necessity. General education, developed to meet these new requirements, entailed grave dangers. Men and women trained to read and reason would not be content to promote the interests of their masters. Once trained, they were more than likely to advance their own interests and those of the groups or classes to which they belonged. In order to counter this danger, the masters provided the bread, beer and luxuries which have played such an important role in keeping industrial wage earners and the ranks of the rapidly growing middle class in line behind the interests of those who owned the economy and formulated public policy.
Today this phase of masters class activity is called variously advertising, persuasion, indoctrination, brain-washing or propaganda and is covered by one word: “promotion,” or, in the vernacular, “selling.” Men “sell” themselves. Enterprises “sell” ideas, merchandise, services, beliefs, policies. Promotion is taken for granted in business. It is equally widespread in politics. It is the coin current in religion, education and in the multitude of patriotic and social service organizations.
New means of communication and recently developed channels of information have played an important part in this process. Tidal waves of national loyalties, pride and aspiration have helped in the same direction. Equipped with the new technology of persuasion and coercion, the masters are able to keep 24 hour supervision over those who serve them and promote their interests. The same instruments are equally effective against their opponents and enemies at home and abroad.
Modern society is conditioned, rather than enlightened, at state expense and under state control. The process is called “educational.” Unquestionably modern education encourages and imparts technical skills. The educational apparatus presently existing in the “free world” turns out a citizen who is ignorant, insensitive and unaware of the forces, techniques, instruments and machinations which plan, arrange, organize and supervise the environment in which he exists. The products of this conditioning live in deadly fear of change, lest it lead to “communism.” Dulled into the belief that whatever is, is right in this best of all possible worlds, citizens accept regulation, and conform to a social pattern designed by their exploiters to keep their victims ignorant, indifferent, inert.
(from Chapter III, The Conscience of a Radical, Scott Nearing, Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1965)
Buy a copy of the book directly from The Good Life Center, Harborside, Maine.
[Click here for all seven roadblocks.]
July 20, 2012
I live in a dangerous neighborhood
Roger Ebert writes:
I was sitting in a Chicago bar one night with my friend McHugh when a guy from down the street came in and let us see that he was packing heat.
“Why do you need to carry a gun?” McHugh asked him.
“I live in a dangerous neighborhood.”
“It would be safer if you moved.”
I was sitting in a Chicago bar one night with my friend McHugh when a guy from down the street came in and let us see that he was packing heat.
“Why do you need to carry a gun?” McHugh asked him.
“I live in a dangerous neighborhood.”
“It would be safer if you moved.”
July 17, 2012
Diggers 2012: towards a new Magna Carta
George Monbiot writes in The Guardian:
To be young in the post-industrial nations today is to be excluded. Excluded from the comforts enjoyed by preceding generations; excluded from jobs; excluded from hopes of a better world; excluded from self-ownership.
Those with degrees are owned by the banks before they leave college. Housing benefit is being choked off. Landlords now demand rents so high that only those with the better jobs can pay. Work has been sliced up and outsourced into a series of mindless repetitive tasks, whose practitioners are interchangeable. Through globalization and standardization, through unemployment and the erosion of collective bargaining and employment laws, big business now asserts a control over its workforce almost unprecedented in the age of universal suffrage.
The promise the old hold out to the young is a lifetime of rent, debt and insecurity.
diggers2012.wordpress.com
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism
To be young in the post-industrial nations today is to be excluded. Excluded from the comforts enjoyed by preceding generations; excluded from jobs; excluded from hopes of a better world; excluded from self-ownership.
Those with degrees are owned by the banks before they leave college. Housing benefit is being choked off. Landlords now demand rents so high that only those with the better jobs can pay. Work has been sliced up and outsourced into a series of mindless repetitive tasks, whose practitioners are interchangeable. Through globalization and standardization, through unemployment and the erosion of collective bargaining and employment laws, big business now asserts a control over its workforce almost unprecedented in the age of universal suffrage.
The promise the old hold out to the young is a lifetime of rent, debt and insecurity.
diggers2012.wordpress.com
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism
July 16, 2012
Wind Energy Impacts on Groundwater Resources
If a wind energy project is proposed for a site that is within a groundwater recharge area, any contaminants released at the site have the potential to be carried downward with the infiltrating stormwater, leading to contamination of the aquifer. Groundwater discharge points occur as seepage into wetlands, lakes, and streams. If a site is proposed in a groundwater discharge area, surface disturbances (such as construction or the building of stormwater retention facilities) that disrupt the local hydrology can lead to such consequences as draining the wetland or causing stream flow to become intermittent, even if the activity does not occur directly in the wetland or surface water.
During construction blasting can have an adverse impact on water supplies. Groundwater yields (including both wells and springs) are influenced by the flow of groundwater through the aquifer materials. Any disruption to these materials can potentially affect both groundwater flow and water quality. In some cases, vibrations from blasting can cause aquifer materials to collapse and compact, thereby limiting flow. In addition, bedrock fractures may be created that draw in flow from other portions of bedrock with poorer water quality, and the use of blasting agents that contain perchlorate may result in groundwater contamination.
—Wind Energy Siting Handbook, American Wind Energy Association
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
July 15, 2012
‘Dominion’: Judeo-Christian justification for meat-eating?
And God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he them. And God blessed them; and God said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God said: Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed — to you it shall be for food; and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is a living soul, every green herb for food.
The last word above is rendered as “meat” in the King James and many other translations. The original Hebrew word, AKLH, in fact means simply “food” or “eating”. The translation used here is that of the Jewish Publication Society of America (1917).
Regarding “dominion”, compare “rule”:
And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.
The words are also different in the original Hebrew. Whereas the sun, moon, and stars provide guiding lights to and define day and night, man simply dominates the rest of creation as the conscious embodiment of the creator, as a trustee of the creator. In the next section describing food, the word dominion is not used.
There is nothing here to justify destructive exploitation of the earth's resources or harassment, enslavement, and consumption of animals, human or otherwise.
As for the commandment to “subdue” the earth, following the command to “replenish” the earth it clearly refers to a nurturing agriculture. Indeed, God plants a garden in Eden and puts man in charge:
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
But this is a prelapsarian idyll and hardly applicable to the realities of later life. Because, of course, the overseers eventually took what was meant for only the boss, who readily sensed they were hiding something and expelled them:
Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread ...
Still nothing about exploitation and consumption of animals.
Alas, by chapter 4 of Genesis, “the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering” of “the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof”, even to the extent of not respecting Cain and Cain's offering of “the fruit of the ground”. The writers are already rationalizing their way of life, which was rather different from what God (called “ALHYM” in the first 3 chapters) commanded Adam and Eve, even to now represent the thoughts of God (now called “YHVH”) as simply reflecting their own.
Which is exactly where we still are today, where vegetarians are cursed as Cain and the only moral demand in slaughtering animals is that it be done with “respect”, which doesn't change anything. A being killed without respect is as dead as one killed with. It means nothing to talk about acting “humanely” when the result is the same as without such talk.
Latter-day apologists of the killing and eating of animals are as degraded as the priests writing Genesis 4, shaping morality to fit their habits and appetites and prejudices rather than the other way around. Making the effort to make sure your victim is healthy and happy, and/or taking the time to pray over your act, is not acting morally, but rather psychotically.
And there is nothing nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing whereof it is said: See this is new? — it hath been already, in the ages which were before us.
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, ecoanarchism
And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he them. And God blessed them; and God said unto them: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God said: Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed — to you it shall be for food; and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is a living soul, every green herb for food.
The last word above is rendered as “meat” in the King James and many other translations. The original Hebrew word, AKLH, in fact means simply “food” or “eating”. The translation used here is that of the Jewish Publication Society of America (1917).
Regarding “dominion”, compare “rule”:
And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; and the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.
The words are also different in the original Hebrew. Whereas the sun, moon, and stars provide guiding lights to and define day and night, man simply dominates the rest of creation as the conscious embodiment of the creator, as a trustee of the creator. In the next section describing food, the word dominion is not used.
There is nothing here to justify destructive exploitation of the earth's resources or harassment, enslavement, and consumption of animals, human or otherwise.
As for the commandment to “subdue” the earth, following the command to “replenish” the earth it clearly refers to a nurturing agriculture. Indeed, God plants a garden in Eden and puts man in charge:
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
But this is a prelapsarian idyll and hardly applicable to the realities of later life. Because, of course, the overseers eventually took what was meant for only the boss, who readily sensed they were hiding something and expelled them:
Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread ...
Still nothing about exploitation and consumption of animals.
Alas, by chapter 4 of Genesis, “the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering” of “the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof”, even to the extent of not respecting Cain and Cain's offering of “the fruit of the ground”. The writers are already rationalizing their way of life, which was rather different from what God (called “ALHYM” in the first 3 chapters) commanded Adam and Eve, even to now represent the thoughts of God (now called “YHVH”) as simply reflecting their own.
Which is exactly where we still are today, where vegetarians are cursed as Cain and the only moral demand in slaughtering animals is that it be done with “respect”, which doesn't change anything. A being killed without respect is as dead as one killed with. It means nothing to talk about acting “humanely” when the result is the same as without such talk.
Latter-day apologists of the killing and eating of animals are as degraded as the priests writing Genesis 4, shaping morality to fit their habits and appetites and prejudices rather than the other way around. Making the effort to make sure your victim is healthy and happy, and/or taking the time to pray over your act, is not acting morally, but rather psychotically.
And there is nothing nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing whereof it is said: See this is new? — it hath been already, in the ages which were before us.
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, ecoanarchism
July 13, 2012
What do you mean by the Green Party’s “majoritarian agendas”?
“They’re for single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital. That’s been a majoritarian position for years. Living wage? Overwhelming. Anti-war? [About] 70% want us out of Afghanistan now. The Green Party stands for bringing the soldiers back and curtailing the American empire. Cutting the military budget? A majority of Americans think that the military’s budget is too big and should be cut. Getting rid of special tax breaks for corporations? Overwhelming support. Renegotiating NAFTA and WTO? Majority support. I can go on and on.”
So why doesn’t the Green Party have a majority-sized following?
“That’s the conundrum. A minority party fostering a majority agenda. The reason is that the two-party duopoly has every conceivable way to exclude and depress and harass a third-party. Whether it’s ballot access. Whether it’s harassing petitioners on the street. Whether it’s excluding them from debates. Whether it’s not polling them. And with a two-party, winner-take-all electoral system, it’s easy to enforce all those. Unlike multi-party Western countries where you have proportional representation, the voters [in America] know that if you get 10% of the vote, you don’t get anything. Whereas in Germany, you get 10% of the parliament. So voters say, ‘Let’s just vote for the least worst.’”
—Ralph Nader, Q&A at Time Magazine
[related: see “Ralph’s Fault” about Bush's stealing of the 2000 election]
[also see: “Basic Steps of Election Reform”]
So why doesn’t the Green Party have a majority-sized following?
“That’s the conundrum. A minority party fostering a majority agenda. The reason is that the two-party duopoly has every conceivable way to exclude and depress and harass a third-party. Whether it’s ballot access. Whether it’s harassing petitioners on the street. Whether it’s excluding them from debates. Whether it’s not polling them. And with a two-party, winner-take-all electoral system, it’s easy to enforce all those. Unlike multi-party Western countries where you have proportional representation, the voters [in America] know that if you get 10% of the vote, you don’t get anything. Whereas in Germany, you get 10% of the parliament. So voters say, ‘Let’s just vote for the least worst.’”
—Ralph Nader, Q&A at Time Magazine
[related: see “Ralph’s Fault” about Bush's stealing of the 2000 election]
[also see: “Basic Steps of Election Reform”]
July 12, 2012
Mix Tapes
A few sites with groovy mix/compilation tapes to download:
Ghostcapital
Aquarium Drunkard
Global Groove
1967 — O Ano da Psicodelia
All of these sites have links to other great music blogs.
Ghostcapital
Aquarium Drunkard
Global Groove
1967 — O Ano da Psicodelia
All of these sites have links to other great music blogs.
July 7, 2012
Low Benefit — Huge Negative Impact
Industrial wind promoters claim their machines produce on average 30–40% of their rated capacity. For example, a 400-ft-high 2-megawatt (2,000-kilowatt) turbine assembly would produce an average of 600–800 kilowatts over a year.
The actual experience of industrial wind power in the U.S., however, as reported to the federal Energy Information Agency, is that it produces at only about 25% of its capacity, or 500 kilowatts.
It will produce at or above that average rate only two-fifths (40%) of the time. It will generate nothing at all (yet draw power from the grid) a third of the time.
Because the output is highly variable and rarely correlates with demand, other sources of energy cannot be taken off line. With the extra burden of balancing the wind energy, those sources may even use more fuel (just as cars use more gas in stop-and-go city driving than in more steady highway driving).
The industry is unable to show any evidence that wind power on the grid reduces the use of other fuels.
Denmark, despite claims that wind turbines produce 20% of its electricity, has not reduced its use of other fuels because of them.
Large-scale wind power does not reduce our dependence on other fuels, does not stabilize prices, does not reduce emissions or pollution, and does not mitigate global warming.
Instead, each turbine assembly requires dozens of acres of clearance and dominates the typically rural or wild landscape where it is sited. Its extreme height, turning rotor blades, unavoidable noise and vibration, and strobe lighting night and day ensure an intrusiveness far out of proportion to its elusive contribution.
Each facility requires new transmission infrastructure and new or upgraded (strengthened, widened, and straightened) roads, further degrading the environment and fragmenting habitats.
Why do utilities support them?
Given a choice, most utilities choose to avoid such an unreliable nondispatchable source. In many states, they are required to get a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources. In other states, they anticipate being required to do so in the near future. These requirements do not require utilities to show any benefit (e.g., in terms of emissions) from using renewables—they just need to have them on line.
In Japan, many utilities limit the amount of wind power that they will accept. In Germany, the grid managers frequently shut down the wind turbines to keep the system stable. In Denmark, most of the energy from wind turbines has to be shunted to pumped hydro facilities in Norway and Sweden.
Yet wind energy is profitable. Taxpayers cover two-thirds to three-fourths of the cost of erecting giant wind turbines. Governments require utilities to buy the energy, even though it does not effectively displace other sources.
In addition, wind companies can sell “renewable energy credits,” or “green tags,” an invention of Enron. They are thus able to sell the same energy twice.
The companies generally cut the local utilities in on some of the easy profits.
Why do communities support them?
Developers typically target poor communities and make deals with individual landowners and the town boards (which are very often the same people) long before anything is made public.
With the prospect of adding substantially to the tax rolls and/or hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs each year, it is understandable that a lot of people are reluctant to consider the negative impacts. They are willing to ignore the effects of such large machines on themselves and their neighbors. Excited by the financial promises of the wind companies, they forget that their giant machines will destroy precisely what makes their community livable.
As people find out more, support for this harmful boondoggle evaporates.
—from “SAY NO! to destroying the environment and our communities”, brochure by National Wind Watch
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont
The actual experience of industrial wind power in the U.S., however, as reported to the federal Energy Information Agency, is that it produces at only about 25% of its capacity, or 500 kilowatts.
It will produce at or above that average rate only two-fifths (40%) of the time. It will generate nothing at all (yet draw power from the grid) a third of the time.
Because the output is highly variable and rarely correlates with demand, other sources of energy cannot be taken off line. With the extra burden of balancing the wind energy, those sources may even use more fuel (just as cars use more gas in stop-and-go city driving than in more steady highway driving).
The industry is unable to show any evidence that wind power on the grid reduces the use of other fuels.
Denmark, despite claims that wind turbines produce 20% of its electricity, has not reduced its use of other fuels because of them.
Large-scale wind power does not reduce our dependence on other fuels, does not stabilize prices, does not reduce emissions or pollution, and does not mitigate global warming.
Instead, each turbine assembly requires dozens of acres of clearance and dominates the typically rural or wild landscape where it is sited. Its extreme height, turning rotor blades, unavoidable noise and vibration, and strobe lighting night and day ensure an intrusiveness far out of proportion to its elusive contribution.
Each facility requires new transmission infrastructure and new or upgraded (strengthened, widened, and straightened) roads, further degrading the environment and fragmenting habitats.
Why do utilities support them?
Given a choice, most utilities choose to avoid such an unreliable nondispatchable source. In many states, they are required to get a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources. In other states, they anticipate being required to do so in the near future. These requirements do not require utilities to show any benefit (e.g., in terms of emissions) from using renewables—they just need to have them on line.
In Japan, many utilities limit the amount of wind power that they will accept. In Germany, the grid managers frequently shut down the wind turbines to keep the system stable. In Denmark, most of the energy from wind turbines has to be shunted to pumped hydro facilities in Norway and Sweden.
Yet wind energy is profitable. Taxpayers cover two-thirds to three-fourths of the cost of erecting giant wind turbines. Governments require utilities to buy the energy, even though it does not effectively displace other sources.
In addition, wind companies can sell “renewable energy credits,” or “green tags,” an invention of Enron. They are thus able to sell the same energy twice.
The companies generally cut the local utilities in on some of the easy profits.
Why do communities support them?
Developers typically target poor communities and make deals with individual landowners and the town boards (which are very often the same people) long before anything is made public.
With the prospect of adding substantially to the tax rolls and/or hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs each year, it is understandable that a lot of people are reluctant to consider the negative impacts. They are willing to ignore the effects of such large machines on themselves and their neighbors. Excited by the financial promises of the wind companies, they forget that their giant machines will destroy precisely what makes their community livable.
As people find out more, support for this harmful boondoggle evaporates.
—from “SAY NO! to destroying the environment and our communities”, brochure by National Wind Watch
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont
July 6, 2012
Sanders voted yes
Alexander Cockburn wrote in The Golden Age Is In Us (1995), entry from September 6, 1994:
I thought the point of having an independent socialist in Congress was precisely that: to be an independent and a socialist. Instead of which we have Bernie Sanders (supposedly the ‘independent socialist’ from Vermont), hack Democrat. He voted for Clinton’s budget, and now he’s voted for the crime bill, a milepost in the development of the repressive corporate state.
This summer we passed, for the first time, the million mark for people in US prisons (not counting city and county jails). Steve Whitman of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown calculates that the imprisonment rate for blacks is now 1,534 per 100,000, compared with a white rate of 197. The central aim of the crime bill, passed on August 25, is to lock up even more black people. ...
People designated as gang members can have their sentence for certain offenses (even those unconnected with gang membership) increased by up to ten years. ... There's no medical or scientific distinction between the two substances, but poor people use crack and rich people use powder. ... Get five years for first-time possession of more than five grams of crack; get no jail time for possession of the same amount of coke powder. The crime bill did nothing to alter such inequities.
This is to pass over the rest of the fascist panorama of the bill: the three-strikes provision, the enhanced mandatory sentencing, the stripping of federal judges of their power to enforce constitutional rights of prisoners, the ending of Pell grants which provide funding for prisoners to get higher education, the car searches, the hysterical and unjust treatment of sex offenders, and on and on, through the expansion of the death penalty to cover more than fifty crimes.
... Sanders voted yes. I asked him why and he faxed me four paragraphs of pitiful blather — almost all other ‘Progressives’ had voted yes; rejection of this bill would have meant a worse one down the road ...; there was money in the bill for cities and towns and for battered women's shelters.
For over a decade I've listened to the rap from Sanders and the Progressive Coalition in Vermont about the need for an alternative to the two-party system. Some alternative! Sanders’ record is scarcely more liberal than that of Vermont’s Republican senator, Jim Jeffords. To their everlasting shame, not one squeak, so far as I can ascertain, was raised by the Vermont Pwogwessives abut Sanders’ crime bill vote. I suppose the money for battered women’s shelters caused them not to notice one of the most rabid expressions of racism in the nation’s legislative history.
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, Vermont
I thought the point of having an independent socialist in Congress was precisely that: to be an independent and a socialist. Instead of which we have Bernie Sanders (supposedly the ‘independent socialist’ from Vermont), hack Democrat. He voted for Clinton’s budget, and now he’s voted for the crime bill, a milepost in the development of the repressive corporate state.
This summer we passed, for the first time, the million mark for people in US prisons (not counting city and county jails). Steve Whitman of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown calculates that the imprisonment rate for blacks is now 1,534 per 100,000, compared with a white rate of 197. The central aim of the crime bill, passed on August 25, is to lock up even more black people. ...
People designated as gang members can have their sentence for certain offenses (even those unconnected with gang membership) increased by up to ten years. ... There's no medical or scientific distinction between the two substances, but poor people use crack and rich people use powder. ... Get five years for first-time possession of more than five grams of crack; get no jail time for possession of the same amount of coke powder. The crime bill did nothing to alter such inequities.
This is to pass over the rest of the fascist panorama of the bill: the three-strikes provision, the enhanced mandatory sentencing, the stripping of federal judges of their power to enforce constitutional rights of prisoners, the ending of Pell grants which provide funding for prisoners to get higher education, the car searches, the hysterical and unjust treatment of sex offenders, and on and on, through the expansion of the death penalty to cover more than fifty crimes.
... Sanders voted yes. I asked him why and he faxed me four paragraphs of pitiful blather — almost all other ‘Progressives’ had voted yes; rejection of this bill would have meant a worse one down the road ...; there was money in the bill for cities and towns and for battered women's shelters.
For over a decade I've listened to the rap from Sanders and the Progressive Coalition in Vermont about the need for an alternative to the two-party system. Some alternative! Sanders’ record is scarcely more liberal than that of Vermont’s Republican senator, Jim Jeffords. To their everlasting shame, not one squeak, so far as I can ascertain, was raised by the Vermont Pwogwessives abut Sanders’ crime bill vote. I suppose the money for battered women’s shelters caused them not to notice one of the most rabid expressions of racism in the nation’s legislative history.
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, Vermont
July 5, 2012
Coercive Harmony
Alexander Cockburn wrote in The Golden Age Is In Us (1995), entry from September 9, 1993:
These days we have the numbing rituals of consensus formation, a collective act of brainwashing dictated, as always, by the most unstable participant, exercising the tyranny of the hysteric, the unhinged, anybody whom sensible people in the group decide it’s not worth the trouble to upset. So there's consensus, since these more-or-less stable participants realize that their concerted objective is to please this weakest member, who obviously agrees.
Laura Nader, professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley, gave a striking interview in the San Francisco Examiner the other day in which she noted the growth of ‘coercive harmony’, a process she recognized from methods of pacification introduced by European missionaries during the colonial period to control indigenous villagers.
According to the article, ‘Alternative dispute resolution’, she said, ‘was a response to the confrontation and litigiousness of the 1960s civil rights movement.’ Spearheaded by former US Chief Justice Warren Burger, it aimed to free courts of cases that could be settled through mediation or arbitration. But in the pursuit of compromise, justice often has been forgotten ... and the pursuit itself has carried far beyond the justice system.
‘It's basically a movement against the contentious in anything, and it has very strange bedfellows, from people with various psychiatric therapy movements, Christian fundamentalists, corporations sick of paying lawyers, activists who believe we should love each other ... and it’s spread into different parts of American life.
‘We are talking about coercive harmony — an ideology that says if you disagree, you should really keep your mouth shut.’
[These days we have the corporatist development of coercive harmony and consensus formation in ‘community consultation’ to find the ‘win-win’ solution, that is, what does the developer need to pay to get the community to support its own destruction. The developer representing the most unhinged of society, the most sociopathic participant. Because the only purpose of these ‘consultations’ is to bless the developer's plans.]
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism
July 4, 2012
Bombs bursting in the air
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
There it is.
By the destroying light of bombs and rockets they hail their flag.
anarchism
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there
There it is.
By the destroying light of bombs and rockets they hail their flag.
anarchism
July 2, 2012
Wind Power: a Model of Successful Public Policy?
An article published today at the World Energy Forum by Antoine Dechezleprêtre, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics, and Matthieu Glachant, CERNA, Mines ParisTech, has some interesting statements undercutting wind industry claims of success:
And if wind does not actually do much to reduce carbon emissions, then CDM compounds that debacle not only by driving the construction of sprawling, almost useless, wind energy facilities in developing countries, but by providing the means for developed countries to continue emitting as much carbon as ever.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
The massive deployment of wind turbines across the world has been driven mainly by public policy support. European countries like Spain, Portugal, Germany or Ireland have mostly relied on feed-in tariffs. In the USA, Renewable Portfolio Standards and systems of tradable certificates [and tax breaks] have been implemented. The Clean Development Mechanism has played a prominent role in emerging countries. For instance, almost all Chinese wind farms are either registered as CDM projects or are in the pipeline.The result of the need for backup is actually worse than suggested there, because wind power production is highly variable, requiring open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT) which are able to ramp their output fast enough to balance that from wind. But the carbon emissions from OCGT are about twice those from CCGT, so that a system of wind + OCGT may actually see more carbon emissions than a system of CCGT alone.
The spread of wind policies and the rapid growth of wind energy have gone hand in hand. So can we consider these policies a success? Installation of wind capacity is not an end in itself, and in the short term these policies have actually increased the cost of energy. The cost of wind power generation is still high relative to conventional electricity. According to the International Energy Agency, the cost of onshore wind ranges from 70-130 US$/MWh compared to 20-50 US$/MWh for coal-fired power plants and 40-55 US$/MWh for CCGT [combined-cycle natural gas–fired turbines]. Offshore wind is even more expensive (110-130 US$/MWh).
Even counting the benefits of avoided carbon emissions, it is not clear whether the social cost of wind energy is lower. The social cost of carbon according to the World Bank is around $20/ton, which in the best conditions puts wind energy and coal at parity. However, the net impact of wind energy on carbon emissions remains a controversial issue as the intermittency of wind power production requires a carbon-emitting backup such as combined cycle gas turbines. Moreover, in developing countries, the so-called additionality of some CDM wind projects has been challenged, casting serious doubt about their net carbon impacts.
And if wind does not actually do much to reduce carbon emissions, then CDM compounds that debacle not only by driving the construction of sprawling, almost useless, wind energy facilities in developing countries, but by providing the means for developed countries to continue emitting as much carbon as ever.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
June 29, 2012
‘no great principles to compromise’
Substitute “Obama” for “Clinton”:
Every politician accumulates IOUs, but Clinton has them by the truckload, starting with Wall Street. The herald of ‘change’ is utterly traditional in his fealty to the traditional lobbies, starting with the military-industrial complex.
... The week before the election, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette unleashed some of the harshest abuse that the governor had ever sustained. The editorial asked what Governor Clinton's record could teach us about President Clinton:
‘A purely rhetorical approach to issues that may please all, coupled with a tendency to side with those interests powerful enough to do him some political good ...
‘Finally, and sadly, there is the unavoidable question of character ... it is not the duplicitous in his politics that concerns so much as the polished ease, the almost habitual, casual, articulate way he bobs and weaves. He has mastered the art of equivocation. There is something almost inhuman in his smoother responses that sends a shiver up the spine. It is not the compromises he has made that trouble so much as the unavoidable suspicion that he has no great principles to compromise.’
—Alexander Cockburn, Nov. 6, 1992, The Golden Age Is In Us
June 28, 2012
Dear Pat
Dear Senator Leahy [Vt.]:
You write:
"In passing the Affordable Care Act, Congress built on the cornerstones of modern America like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to strengthen the Nation's social safety net and help protect hardworking Americans."
That is such obvious bullshit that you must think words have no meaning if you were able to sign your name to it. Social Security is provided by the government, not by forcing people to buy annuities on their own. Medicare and Medicaid are insurance programs provided by the government, not by forcing people to enrich private insurers.
As an aside, don't you also cringe at the word "hardworking"? Is there to be a panel to determine who is "hardworking" enough to receive what is due to them as a citizen? In fact, it is the least hardworking who seem to be the most rewarded, cheered on and even subsidized to live off the labor of others. You write, "It's time to stop the political posturing. Congress works best for the American people when we are able to come together to solve national problems." Yet here you are, challenging your readers as to how "hardworking" they are or flattering what is normal life as something that puts one group against their mythically "lazy" neighbors.
But back to the "Affordable Care Act": It strengthens nothing except the grip of for-profit insurance on our lives. To require the industry to cover our right limbs, we must pay with our left limbs. And you may not know this, enjoying some of the best medical insurance in the world, paid for by all Americans, but coverage means nothing when the company actually has to pay for something. Their business is to deny payment. This "Affordable Care Act" is no better than kicking everyone off welfare and saying poverty has ended.
Making it illegal not to have medical insurance does not strengthen the social safety net. It only underscores its absence. And the absence of a government worth the name.
human rights, Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism
You write:
"In passing the Affordable Care Act, Congress built on the cornerstones of modern America like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to strengthen the Nation's social safety net and help protect hardworking Americans."
That is such obvious bullshit that you must think words have no meaning if you were able to sign your name to it. Social Security is provided by the government, not by forcing people to buy annuities on their own. Medicare and Medicaid are insurance programs provided by the government, not by forcing people to enrich private insurers.
As an aside, don't you also cringe at the word "hardworking"? Is there to be a panel to determine who is "hardworking" enough to receive what is due to them as a citizen? In fact, it is the least hardworking who seem to be the most rewarded, cheered on and even subsidized to live off the labor of others. You write, "It's time to stop the political posturing. Congress works best for the American people when we are able to come together to solve national problems." Yet here you are, challenging your readers as to how "hardworking" they are or flattering what is normal life as something that puts one group against their mythically "lazy" neighbors.
But back to the "Affordable Care Act": It strengthens nothing except the grip of for-profit insurance on our lives. To require the industry to cover our right limbs, we must pay with our left limbs. And you may not know this, enjoying some of the best medical insurance in the world, paid for by all Americans, but coverage means nothing when the company actually has to pay for something. Their business is to deny payment. This "Affordable Care Act" is no better than kicking everyone off welfare and saying poverty has ended.
Making it illegal not to have medical insurance does not strengthen the social safety net. It only underscores its absence. And the absence of a government worth the name.
human rights, Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism
Dear Bernie
Dear Bernie [Senator Bernie Sanders, Vt.]:
Your defense of industrial-scale wind energy is logically fallacious.
It does not follow that because wind turbines don't produce carbon emissions, they reduce such emissions from other sources.
It does not follow that because wind turbines don't produce toxic air pollution, they reduce the pollution from coal-burning plants.
It does not follow that because wind turbines don't have the impacts of fracking or nuclear waste, they reduce those impacts.
The fact is, after decades of experience, it is impossible to detect any meaningful reduction of carbon emissions, air pollution, or other poisonings of the environment from other sources of electricity due to industrial wind energy on the grid.
That being the case, there is no excuse for continuing support of this industry that has no beneficial effect and leaves only a legacy of divided communities, degraded landscapes, and destroyed natural habitats.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
Your defense of industrial-scale wind energy is logically fallacious.
It does not follow that because wind turbines don't produce carbon emissions, they reduce such emissions from other sources.
It does not follow that because wind turbines don't produce toxic air pollution, they reduce the pollution from coal-burning plants.
It does not follow that because wind turbines don't have the impacts of fracking or nuclear waste, they reduce those impacts.
The fact is, after decades of experience, it is impossible to detect any meaningful reduction of carbon emissions, air pollution, or other poisonings of the environment from other sources of electricity due to industrial wind energy on the grid.
That being the case, there is no excuse for continuing support of this industry that has no beneficial effect and leaves only a legacy of divided communities, degraded landscapes, and destroyed natural habitats.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
June 24, 2012
Wind Energy Is Wasteful and Harmful
The president of Wind Watch writes:
Climate change, dwindling resources, ecological and geopolitical concerns surrounding conventional sources of electricity — all are prominent worries today, as they should be.
Wind power companies and their lobbyists — and many in the environmentalist community — assure us that industrial wind can break our dependence on other fuels, reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and help build a “green” economy of 21st-century jobs.
A closer look, however, reveals that wind’s actual record has not lived up to those promises — despite billions of dollars of public and private investment and an increasingly undeniable toll on the environment and on the citizens, mostly rural, who must bear the personal costs of 500-foot turbines thrust into their neighborhoods.
Generous handouts — paid for by every American — intended to create a smattering of factory jobs could be much more efficiently spent to help the economy as a whole, and to work towards seriously addressing concerns of resource depletion, energy security, and pollution control.
The wind is diffuse, intermittent, and variable. When the realities of the electrical grid are taken into account, wind energy’s theoretical benefit is drastically reduced, because other sources have to stay on line — and operate less efficiently — to not only provide electricity on demand, but also balance the fluctuating wind-generated supply.
Not only are industrial wind turbines a waste of land and money, they also have serious negative impacts.
Wind projects usually target open areas and undeveloped mountain ridges. A single turbine weighs 250 tons or more and requires wide heavy-duty roads for construction and maintenance. It is supported by an underground foundation of hundreds of tons of steel-reinforced concrete. A group of turbines is a sprawling facility that dominates the landscape for miles. The facility also needs a substation and high-voltage transmission lines to connect to the grid.
In addition to wind energy's impact on rural landscapes and wild habitats, human neighbors often suffer from the noises generated by the giant machines. Leases typically include “gag orders” to keep landowners quiet about their complaints. Neighbors — many of them unsuspecting — are induced to silence in return for small “forbearance” payments.
As more people speak out, many jurisdictions are insisting that at least 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) separate the turbines from any residence to protect people's health. Others are recognizing the necessity of limiting low-frequency and pulsating noise.
The wind industry has benefited for decades from favorable treatment by all levels of government. Yet to this day it has been unable to demonstrate the results that are still promised. Against this backdrop of a failed experiment, the clear burdens imposed by industrial wind — on our diminished landscape, on wildlife, on people’s right to enjoy their homes — are unacceptable. It is time to hold this industry to account. Strict environmental siting and nuisance regulations are needed to limit its impacts. We need to end the many direct and indirect subsidies that prop it up.
Industrial wind has shown itself to be a great waster of resources, both natural and human. As more communities around the world learn about the harm it does, and stand up to say no, our business people and politicians would do well to take heed.
The people are indeed speaking up in ever greater numbers. They are your neighbors. And they are starting to be heard above the roar of the turbines.
[Click here to download PDF]
Climate change, dwindling resources, ecological and geopolitical concerns surrounding conventional sources of electricity — all are prominent worries today, as they should be.
Wind power companies and their lobbyists — and many in the environmentalist community — assure us that industrial wind can break our dependence on other fuels, reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and help build a “green” economy of 21st-century jobs.
A closer look, however, reveals that wind’s actual record has not lived up to those promises — despite billions of dollars of public and private investment and an increasingly undeniable toll on the environment and on the citizens, mostly rural, who must bear the personal costs of 500-foot turbines thrust into their neighborhoods.
Generous handouts — paid for by every American — intended to create a smattering of factory jobs could be much more efficiently spent to help the economy as a whole, and to work towards seriously addressing concerns of resource depletion, energy security, and pollution control.
The wind is diffuse, intermittent, and variable. When the realities of the electrical grid are taken into account, wind energy’s theoretical benefit is drastically reduced, because other sources have to stay on line — and operate less efficiently — to not only provide electricity on demand, but also balance the fluctuating wind-generated supply.
Not only are industrial wind turbines a waste of land and money, they also have serious negative impacts.
Wind projects usually target open areas and undeveloped mountain ridges. A single turbine weighs 250 tons or more and requires wide heavy-duty roads for construction and maintenance. It is supported by an underground foundation of hundreds of tons of steel-reinforced concrete. A group of turbines is a sprawling facility that dominates the landscape for miles. The facility also needs a substation and high-voltage transmission lines to connect to the grid.
In addition to wind energy's impact on rural landscapes and wild habitats, human neighbors often suffer from the noises generated by the giant machines. Leases typically include “gag orders” to keep landowners quiet about their complaints. Neighbors — many of them unsuspecting — are induced to silence in return for small “forbearance” payments.
As more people speak out, many jurisdictions are insisting that at least 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) separate the turbines from any residence to protect people's health. Others are recognizing the necessity of limiting low-frequency and pulsating noise.
The wind industry has benefited for decades from favorable treatment by all levels of government. Yet to this day it has been unable to demonstrate the results that are still promised. Against this backdrop of a failed experiment, the clear burdens imposed by industrial wind — on our diminished landscape, on wildlife, on people’s right to enjoy their homes — are unacceptable. It is time to hold this industry to account. Strict environmental siting and nuisance regulations are needed to limit its impacts. We need to end the many direct and indirect subsidies that prop it up.
Industrial wind has shown itself to be a great waster of resources, both natural and human. As more communities around the world learn about the harm it does, and stand up to say no, our business people and politicians would do well to take heed.
The people are indeed speaking up in ever greater numbers. They are your neighbors. And they are starting to be heard above the roar of the turbines.
[Click here to download PDF]
Climate change hysteria
There is only one thing worse than climate change hysteria, and that is the hysteria of climate change denial.
There is no denying the fact that humans make a mess of their environment. This is not news. Environmental concerns are neverending and myriad.
Slowing the human contribution to climate change will not stop all the other crimes against our planet, nor would debunking climate alarmism or exposing opportunism obviate the need to be as concerned as ever about our environment.
Hysteria on both sides, both driven by fears we are all susceptible to, ultimately ensures that business carries on as usual, exploiting those fears, playing one group against another, and walking away with easy profits. And the environment continues to lose.
environment, environmentalism
There is no denying the fact that humans make a mess of their environment. This is not news. Environmental concerns are neverending and myriad.
Slowing the human contribution to climate change will not stop all the other crimes against our planet, nor would debunking climate alarmism or exposing opportunism obviate the need to be as concerned as ever about our environment.
Hysteria on both sides, both driven by fears we are all susceptible to, ultimately ensures that business carries on as usual, exploiting those fears, playing one group against another, and walking away with easy profits. And the environment continues to lose.
environment, environmentalism
June 23, 2012
Wind and Coal and Natural Gas
So how's it going, the reduction of fossil fuel emissions with the expanded erection of industrial wind? Today I looked at IEA data for electricity generation in the U.S., which I haven't done since a few years.
From 2006 to 2010 electricity from coal went down 139.8 TWh, from natural gas up 165.4 TWh, and from wind up 68 TWh. Overall generation went up 55.3 TWh.
If anything is replacing coal, it is obviously natural gas, whose increase seems to be proportional to that of wind.
Natural gas emits about half of what coal does, and without particulates, so that is indeed an improvement. The practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to get more natural gas, however, is certainly a worrying one, and the emissions and widespread contamination from fracking may well cancel any benefit of switching from coal to natural gas.
Furthermore, there are different kinds of natural gas–fired turbines: open-cycle and combined-cycle. The latter can be about twice as efficient as the former. But because wind turbines are also being erected, the less efficient open-cycle gas turbines must be used, because combined-cycle gas turbines can not power on or ramp their output quickly enough to balance the fluctuating power generated by wind.
In summary, wind is not doing much at all to reduce fossil fuel emissions, and may well be responsible for less reduction than is possible without wind. That only makes industrial wind's own environmental and social impacts that much more unacceptable.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
From 2006 to 2010 electricity from coal went down 139.8 TWh, from natural gas up 165.4 TWh, and from wind up 68 TWh. Overall generation went up 55.3 TWh.
If anything is replacing coal, it is obviously natural gas, whose increase seems to be proportional to that of wind.
Natural gas emits about half of what coal does, and without particulates, so that is indeed an improvement. The practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to get more natural gas, however, is certainly a worrying one, and the emissions and widespread contamination from fracking may well cancel any benefit of switching from coal to natural gas.
Furthermore, there are different kinds of natural gas–fired turbines: open-cycle and combined-cycle. The latter can be about twice as efficient as the former. But because wind turbines are also being erected, the less efficient open-cycle gas turbines must be used, because combined-cycle gas turbines can not power on or ramp their output quickly enough to balance the fluctuating power generated by wind.
In summary, wind is not doing much at all to reduce fossil fuel emissions, and may well be responsible for less reduction than is possible without wind. That only makes industrial wind's own environmental and social impacts that much more unacceptable.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
June 17, 2012
Mike Barnard doesn't know much about wind
Comments to a pair of editorials in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution by AWEA CEO Denise Bode and Wind Watch President Eric Rosenbloom have apparently been closed, so we received this late reply to the most substantial one. It is notable that all of the comments attacked Rosenbloom's piece (despite most commenters obviously not having read it), with unquestioning acceptance of Bode's inane sales pitch. It looks like the "New South" is still easy prey to carpetbaggers.
Mike Barnard (June 13, 1:10 pm) appears to be a one-man propaganda machine on behalf of the big energy companies hiding behind wind. He misrepresents not only his own apologias but also Rosenbloom's arguments.
For example, at aweo.org (not com), Rosenbloom notes that wind turbines on the grid consume a significant amount of energy. One of the sources is the Danish Wind Energy Association. He admits that the exact amount can only be speculated, however, because, as he also notes, it is not measured, as reported by the Electric Power Research Institute. This is an example of questions we should be asking but that the industry refuses to answer.
To some of Barnard's other points:
1. Intermittency. There's a big difference between predictable intermittency and knowing exactly how that intermittency will shape up. And there's a big difference between continuous minute-to-minute variability and the occasional loss of a single coal or nuclear plant. In fact, the grid is overbuilt precisely to handle such an event. Building wind requires using that excess capacity to balance wind's variability (as Rosenbloom says in this piece). And, as Germany has discovered, when that excess capacity is tied up with the wind, the loss of a coal or nuclear plant would be catastrophic.
2. Subsidies. It is a strange argument to say that money has long been wasted on other sources so it is only fair to waste more on wind. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, wind received 42% of all federal subsidies for electricity production while producing 2.3% of the electricity generated. Wind is clearly benefiting from a very unlevel playing field already.
3. Wind "farms" are usually built, with their roads, platforms, substations, and transmission lines, in previously undeveloped, even wild, places. The impacts of such massive and sprawling constructions are obvious.
4. There has actually been no "peer-reviewed" study showing no connection between giant wind turbines and health problems. The "reviews" that Barnard cites are essentially echos of each other that carefully avoid the ever-growing reports of health problems that begin when the turbines start turning and that disappear when the person leaves the area. It can only be called sociopathic to reverse the cause and effect, as Barnard does by blaming the doctors and acousticians who report findings of harm. In contrast, an editorial in the preeminent British Medical Journal (BMJ, 8 Mar 2012) recognizes the health effects of large-scale wind energy facilities and calls for serious study to provide the basis for adequate regulation to protect the public.
5. The science of biological effects of low-frequency noise and infrasound (LFN/IS) is young. In fact, LFN/IS is rarely measured as part of noise control regulations. But it is known (as reported in "peer-reviewed" journals) to have serious physiological effects and that large wind turbines produce it.
6. While I was composing this reply, wind was generating less than 4% of Ontario's electricity, according to the Independent Electricity System Operator. And the province was exporting about the same amount. To say that wind, even in part, allowed switching off coal clearly ignores the facts. In fact, Ontario has replaced coal with more nuclear and natural gas.
wind power, wind energy
Mike Barnard (June 13, 1:10 pm) appears to be a one-man propaganda machine on behalf of the big energy companies hiding behind wind. He misrepresents not only his own apologias but also Rosenbloom's arguments.
For example, at aweo.org (not com), Rosenbloom notes that wind turbines on the grid consume a significant amount of energy. One of the sources is the Danish Wind Energy Association. He admits that the exact amount can only be speculated, however, because, as he also notes, it is not measured, as reported by the Electric Power Research Institute. This is an example of questions we should be asking but that the industry refuses to answer.
To some of Barnard's other points:
1. Intermittency. There's a big difference between predictable intermittency and knowing exactly how that intermittency will shape up. And there's a big difference between continuous minute-to-minute variability and the occasional loss of a single coal or nuclear plant. In fact, the grid is overbuilt precisely to handle such an event. Building wind requires using that excess capacity to balance wind's variability (as Rosenbloom says in this piece). And, as Germany has discovered, when that excess capacity is tied up with the wind, the loss of a coal or nuclear plant would be catastrophic.
2. Subsidies. It is a strange argument to say that money has long been wasted on other sources so it is only fair to waste more on wind. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, wind received 42% of all federal subsidies for electricity production while producing 2.3% of the electricity generated. Wind is clearly benefiting from a very unlevel playing field already.
3. Wind "farms" are usually built, with their roads, platforms, substations, and transmission lines, in previously undeveloped, even wild, places. The impacts of such massive and sprawling constructions are obvious.
4. There has actually been no "peer-reviewed" study showing no connection between giant wind turbines and health problems. The "reviews" that Barnard cites are essentially echos of each other that carefully avoid the ever-growing reports of health problems that begin when the turbines start turning and that disappear when the person leaves the area. It can only be called sociopathic to reverse the cause and effect, as Barnard does by blaming the doctors and acousticians who report findings of harm. In contrast, an editorial in the preeminent British Medical Journal (BMJ, 8 Mar 2012) recognizes the health effects of large-scale wind energy facilities and calls for serious study to provide the basis for adequate regulation to protect the public.
5. The science of biological effects of low-frequency noise and infrasound (LFN/IS) is young. In fact, LFN/IS is rarely measured as part of noise control regulations. But it is known (as reported in "peer-reviewed" journals) to have serious physiological effects and that large wind turbines produce it.
6. While I was composing this reply, wind was generating less than 4% of Ontario's electricity, according to the Independent Electricity System Operator. And the province was exporting about the same amount. To say that wind, even in part, allowed switching off coal clearly ignores the facts. In fact, Ontario has replaced coal with more nuclear and natural gas.
wind power, wind energy
June 16, 2012
Bloomsday
More than any other writer, Joyce gave voice to the uncommon in the common, the commonness of the uncommon.
He rejected God and State for the human, who made (and makes) them.
He rejected God and State for the human, who made (and makes) them.
Noisy village
I can only assume there is a "noisiest village" contest today, which I did not know about.
Or perhaps it's national weed-whacker day? To celebrate what is perhaps the ultimate symbol of rude, lazy, and wasteful?
I felt quite antisocial and unpatriotic quietly scything the dog pen amidst the roar of gas engines near and far.
environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism, "Guns, Gas Engines, and Jesus"™
Or perhaps it's national weed-whacker day? To celebrate what is perhaps the ultimate symbol of rude, lazy, and wasteful?
I felt quite antisocial and unpatriotic quietly scything the dog pen amidst the roar of gas engines near and far.
environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism, "Guns, Gas Engines, and Jesus"™
June 14, 2012
Military Hero Worship
Thomas H. Naylor writes at Counterpunch:
Nations which amass military might always find a way to use it. The risk of war increases in direct proportion to the military power of the state. Wars also cover up a plethora of political and economic problems by deflecting public attention away from the real issues.
Many, but not all, of our troops are naïve, well intended, ill-informed, patriots, who have been manipulated into risking their lives for false gods by our prowar media and political system. But heroes they are not.
In stark contrast to the troops, Obama, Biden, Panetta, Clinton, Petraeus, Stevens, Leahy, and Sanders know better. They are all people of the lie. They know exactly what business they are in. It’s call technofascism.
Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism
Nations which amass military might always find a way to use it. The risk of war increases in direct proportion to the military power of the state. Wars also cover up a plethora of political and economic problems by deflecting public attention away from the real issues.
Many, but not all, of our troops are naïve, well intended, ill-informed, patriots, who have been manipulated into risking their lives for false gods by our prowar media and political system. But heroes they are not.
In stark contrast to the troops, Obama, Biden, Panetta, Clinton, Petraeus, Stevens, Leahy, and Sanders know better. They are all people of the lie. They know exactly what business they are in. It’s call technofascism.
Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism
May 30, 2012
Blinded by industry
A friend writes, regarding “On wildness and carbon” by David McKay:
If anyone finds the wind industry compelling, there’s a lot they aren’t getting and probably never will, because they don’t want to. People are reluctant to admit there is no solution, [that] all we can do on an insanely overcrowded planet full of greedy people is use far less energy, and start planning massive overhauls of cities and towns, making our lives smaller, getting some trains running, getting rid of cars, bike lanes everywhere, electricity only for parts of the day, smaller stores, small passive energy houses, using air conditioning only in extreme weather, shut down the meat and dairy industry, the list is endless. But that is apparently not ever going to happen on a large scale, because the changes are too huge for people to comprehend and corporate lobbyists wouldn’t allow it. Modern lives are built around electricity and technology, so going back to a more natural, sustainable way of life is probably impossible. People’s lives in the not so distant future will be forcibly curtailed by nature, not because they chose a wiser path.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
If anyone finds the wind industry compelling, there’s a lot they aren’t getting and probably never will, because they don’t want to. People are reluctant to admit there is no solution, [that] all we can do on an insanely overcrowded planet full of greedy people is use far less energy, and start planning massive overhauls of cities and towns, making our lives smaller, getting some trains running, getting rid of cars, bike lanes everywhere, electricity only for parts of the day, smaller stores, small passive energy houses, using air conditioning only in extreme weather, shut down the meat and dairy industry, the list is endless. But that is apparently not ever going to happen on a large scale, because the changes are too huge for people to comprehend and corporate lobbyists wouldn’t allow it. Modern lives are built around electricity and technology, so going back to a more natural, sustainable way of life is probably impossible. People’s lives in the not so distant future will be forcibly curtailed by nature, not because they chose a wiser path.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
May 29, 2012
Mr Dooley spurns the church and state
From “Dooleysprudence” by James Joyce (1916):
...
Who is the funny fellow who declines to go to church
Since pope and priest and parson left the poor man in the lurch
And taught their flocks the only way to save all human souls
Was piercing human bodies through with dumdum bulletholes?
...
Who is the tranquil gentleman who won’t salute the State
Or serve Nebuchadnezzar or proletariat
But thinks that every son of man has quite enough to do
To paddle down the stream of life his personal canoe?
anarchism
...
Who is the funny fellow who declines to go to church
Since pope and priest and parson left the poor man in the lurch
And taught their flocks the only way to save all human souls
Was piercing human bodies through with dumdum bulletholes?
...
Who is the tranquil gentleman who won’t salute the State
Or serve Nebuchadnezzar or proletariat
But thinks that every son of man has quite enough to do
To paddle down the stream of life his personal canoe?
anarchism
May 28, 2012
Coey 2012
Learning about the power of genetic engineering are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with Monsanto Education Officer Laura Coey.
Learning about the power of hydraulic fracturing are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with Halliburton Education Officer Laura Coey.
Learning about the power of unmanned drone warfare are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with General Atomics Education Officer Laura Coey.
Learning about the power of submission to Jesus are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with Billy Graham Crusades Education Officer Laura Coey.
Learning about the power of wind energy are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with Action Renewables Education Officer Laura Coey.
May 26, 2012
Time waves
Just as, in listening to Cottard, Brichot and many others, I had come to realise that, through common culture and fashionable fads, a simple undulation sends the same mannerisms of speech and thought over the surface of the globe, in the same way over the whole expanse of time great tidal waves bring up from the depths of the ages the same hatreds, the same sorrows, the same types of bravery, the same strange fancies running through superposed generations, each section made at various levels in the same series giving a repetition (like shadows cast on a row of screens) of a phenomenon as identically reproduced although often not as trivial, as the family trait which set M. Bloch junior at odds with his father-in-law, M. Bloch senior with M. Nissim Bernard, and others before them whom I had never known.
[De même qu’en écoutant parler Cottard, Brichot, tant d’autres, j’avais senti que par la culture et la mode, une seule ondulation propage dans toute l’étendue de l’espace, les mêmes colères, les mêmes tristesses, les mêmes bravoures, les mêmes manies, à travers les générations superposées, chaque section prise à plusieurs niveaux d’une même série, offrant la répétition, comme des ombres sur des écrans successifs, d’un tableau aussi identique quoique souvent moins insignifiant que celui qui mettait aux prises de la même façon M. Bloch et so beau-père, M. Bloch père et M. Nissim Bernard et d’autres que je n’avais pas connus.]
—Marcel Proust, The Past Recaptured
(1932 translation of Le Temps Retrouvé (1928) by Frederick Blossom):
[De même qu’en écoutant parler Cottard, Brichot, tant d’autres, j’avais senti que par la culture et la mode, une seule ondulation propage dans toute l’étendue de l’espace, les mêmes colères, les mêmes tristesses, les mêmes bravoures, les mêmes manies, à travers les générations superposées, chaque section prise à plusieurs niveaux d’une même série, offrant la répétition, comme des ombres sur des écrans successifs, d’un tableau aussi identique quoique souvent moins insignifiant que celui qui mettait aux prises de la même façon M. Bloch et so beau-père, M. Bloch père et M. Nissim Bernard et d’autres que je n’avais pas connus.]
—Marcel Proust, The Past Recaptured
(1932 translation of Le Temps Retrouvé (1928) by Frederick Blossom):
May 25, 2012
Vermont Wind Proposals
Also see: "Large wind projects in Vermont"
And listen (and chat or call in) to Wind Wise Radio, May 27, 7:00 p.m.: Stand Against the Wind — Chris Braithwaite and other guests talk about the destruction of Lowell Mountain in northern Vermont, co-hosted by Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
May 23, 2012
wind = natural gas
On May 1, 2012, Windpower Monthly published an interview by Ros Davidson with Denise Bode, CEO of industry lobby American Wind Energy Association. Besides her incoherence about the Production Tax Credit (the industry will die without it! the industry no longer needs it!), here is an interesting excerpt about natural gas. Before moving to the AWEA in 2009, Bode was CEO of natural gas lobby American Clean Skies Foundation.
Bode's comment that "You can safely frack" reminds us of this statement from the AWEA strategy memo leaked from its November 2011 board meeting:
Cf "Breaking Up with the Sierra Club", in response to the discovery that the wind industry cheerleader had accepted more than $25 million dollars from fracker Chesapeake Energy.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
RD: You and Texan oil billionaire T Boone Pickens have promoted the idea of a wind–natural gas partnership, using both sources for generation and natural gas for vehicles. You co-authored an article on the issue with Pickens on Politico (the political journalism website) just before the 2011 AWEA conference. Yet, many people are increasingly uncomfortable with natural gas because of questions about the environmental safety of fracking - a procedure that releases gas from underground shale rocks - and because of methane emissions. Where does that leave AWEA and the prospect of natural gas as a "bridge fuel" to a low-carbon future?It is obvious that wind needs natural gas, not just to ensure power on demand, but also to effectively balance wind's high degree of variation. However, natural gas does not need wind. In fact, without wind, natural gas turbines can operate about twice as efficiently - ie, with about half the emissions. In other words, to support wind on the grid is not only to support more fracking for natural gas, but also to support less efficient use of that natural gas.
DB: You're talking to somebody who was a state regulator of oil and gas. You can safely frack. You can regulate and manage it. The natural gas industry really got ahead of itself because they were drilling in places that did not have a mature regulatory structure. They also didn't have the infrastructure to properly address the fracking. Over time that will change, whether it is through federal or state regulation. It can be managed.
RD: So the controversy over fracking and methane emissions doesn't change your view of wind and gas collaborating?
DB: It's a matter of fact that wind and gas will be the two largest new sources of electricity generation.
RD: But doesn't the public perception of natural gas fracking make the partnership more difficult to sell?
DB: You know, we're focused on the PTC and don't spend a lot of time promoting our partnership. We try not to tear somebody else down and build ourselves up. We talk about the benefits of wind. Natural gas has to pretty much make its own case, although we do need to work together. We need each other to balance utilities' portfolios. Natural gas provides peak power in a way that wind can't. We need each other and should work together as much as possible.
Bode's comment that "You can safely frack" reminds us of this statement from the AWEA strategy memo leaked from its November 2011 board meeting:
We need to create a space for the wind energy industry without defining it as an alternative to fossil fuels and coal and that goes beyond being one of many "renewables." "Renewables" in general are saddled with weaknesses that we don’t want to have to carry.That is to say, wind has moved from serving as atonement for consumerism to now being little more than the greenwashing arm of the natural gas industry.
Cf "Breaking Up with the Sierra Club", in response to the discovery that the wind industry cheerleader had accepted more than $25 million dollars from fracker Chesapeake Energy.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
May 15, 2012
Denmark's ecological footprint worse than U.S.
This just in from Common Dreams: The World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report 2012 finds that:
“The U.S. has the fifth largest ecological footprint in terms of the amount of resources each person annually consumes. We rank only behind Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Denmark in the global rankings of the Ecological Footprint.”
Denmark: 4th largest per-capita ecological footprint in the world.
U.S.: 5th.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
“The U.S. has the fifth largest ecological footprint in terms of the amount of resources each person annually consumes. We rank only behind Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Denmark in the global rankings of the Ecological Footprint.”
Denmark: 4th largest per-capita ecological footprint in the world.
U.S.: 5th.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
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