M. G. Piety writes about her experience of health care in Denmark, Canada, and the U.S. and American prideful resignation to failure (click on the title of this post for the complete essay):
Throughout the three years I lived in Canada, and the eight years I lived in Denmark, I would periodically return to the U.S. to see family and friends. I would regale my American acquaintances with stories of what it was like to live in a land with little to no poverty, absurdly cheap to outright free higher education, a generous minimum wage and free government healthcare. I was surprised and even hurt to find that instead of inspiring my listeners to lobby for such things themselves, I was branded an “America hater.” My hope that we might bring the quality of life indicators in the U.S. up to, or at least approaching, those of every other economically developed nation was viewed not, as I had conceived it myself, as an expression of fervent patriotism, but as outright treachery. How dare I say that anyone anywhere in the world was actually living better than people in the U.S!
September 14, 2009
Health Care in Other Countries: Japan
New York Times "Prescriptions":
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost is a law professor at Washington and Lee University and frequently writes on comparative health care policy. His work includes an examination of insurance coverage in Switzerland and a comparison of the Swiss and Dutch systems. He spoke to the freelance writer Anne Underwood.
BY THE NUMBERS
Switzerland
- Life expectancy: 82 years (USA: 78)
- Infant mortality: 4 per 1,000 live births (7)
- Health spending as a percentage of GDP: 11.3 (15)
- Percentage of health spending that is private: 40 (54)
- Doctors per 10,000 people: 40 (26)
Q. The Swiss health care system relies on public-private approaches that have been recommended as models for the United States. What are the similarities?
A. In 1996, Switzerland instituted an individual mandate by which people are legally required to purchase health insurance in a competitive market. People buy coverage from private insurers, and the government provides subsidies for those who can’t afford coverage. About a third of the population receives subsidies.
Q. Is there an employer mandate, too?
A. No, it’s an individual mandate. Group health insurance does not exist in Switzerland.
Q. That’s a major difference between the Swiss system and most of the proposals in Congress. Are there others?
A. The most important difference is that health insurance in Switzerland is provided by nonprofit insurers — though some are affiliated with for-profit companies that offer supplemental policies along the lines of Medigap in the United States. The basic benefit package is defined by law and is quite generous. Maximum drug prices are regulated.
Q. Do many people buy supplemental insurance?
A. About a third of the population purchases voluntary supplemental insurance that covers things like private hospital rooms and dental benefits.
Q. Do the Swiss have a choice among policies and insurance companies?
A. They do. The policies differ mainly on deductibles. The standard annual deductible is 300 Swiss francs, or about $200 for adults. There is no deductible for children under 18. Individuals can reduce their premiums by electing plans with higher deductibles — up to 2,500 Swiss francs, or about $2,000. Once the deductible has been met, you pay coinsurance of 10 percent of covered expenses, up to a maximum of 700 Swiss francs. For brand-name prescription drugs, you pay 20 percent of the price if there’s a generic equivalent.
There are also some managed care plans, in which about 12 percent of the people are enrolled.
Q. In the United States, it can be quite confusing trying to purchase an insurance policy on your own. How do the Swiss navigate the system? Is there a national insurance exchange like the one that’s being proposed here — a sort of marketplace where it’s easy for people to go and compare policies?
A. There is no insurance exchange, but Internet comparison sites are available and forms are standardized to minimize switching costs. Most people, however, stay with their insurer and seldom switch.
Q. Are the policies expensive?
A. Yes. In 2004, 40 percent of households — or one third of individuals — received subsidies.
Q. Is there a public option in Switzerland?
A. There is no government-run plan to compete with the private nonprofit plans. But health insurance is considered social insurance. It’s not a for-profit enterprise.
Q. Can the Swiss go to any doctor they want?
A. For the most part, although there are some managed care plans with networks. Otherwise, the Swiss have a free choice of physicians and specialists. There is no “gatekeeper” system limiting their access to specialists.
Q. What does the Swiss health system do particularly well?
A. They’ve achieved near universal coverage. But even before the reform, 96 percent of the population was covered. They’re a very risk-averse society. The culture is that you just don’t go uninsured. Now, with reform, they’re close to 99 percent. But the country is still struggling with how to handle individuals who fail to comply with the mandate — mainly the poor and recent immigrants.
Q. How is the quality of care?
A. The quality of care is excellent. Waiting times are not reported to be a serious problem in Switzerland, and most people can get the services they need quite expeditiously. Modern, high-technology services are readily available. Coverage of some new drugs and procedures, however, is reviewed for effectiveness, and some drugs and procedures available in other countries may not be available in Switzerland if they are not considered to be cost-effective.
Q. What is your biggest criticism of the Swiss system?
A. It hasn’t done well at controlling costs. Switzerland is second only to the United States in the percent of GDP spent on health care. It’s also second to the United States in the rate of health care inflation. Probably the most important reason is that Switzerland is a wealthy nation, and wealthy nations spend more on medical care. But a particular problem is that the Swiss use more health care resources than even we do in the United States, with more doctors, hospitalizations and certain high-tech procedures.
Q. So competition among companies doesn’t keep prices down?
A. In theory, insurers compete with each other to bring down prices. In fact, it doesn’t work all that well. There is also enough wiggle room in the system that insurers are able to cherry-pick — to attract enrollees who are good risks and get rid of those at higher risk. As long as insurers have control over the plan design and some control over the premium classifications, they can manipulate the risk pool. For example, if they give good service to the healthy and less adequate service to the less healthy, the less healthy may try to move on to another insurer.
Q. What is the most important lesson Americans should learn from the Swiss system?
A. You can achieve universal coverage through an individual mandate, coupled with subsidies for people who can’t afford health insurance. But it’s not going to get you cost control unless you enact further measures.
By Anne Underwood
September 18, 2009
Health Care in Other Countries: Canada
New York Times "Prescriptions":
Theodore R. Marmor is professor emeritus of public policy and political science at Yale University and a former fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is the author of “The Politics of Medicare” (Aldine Transaction, 2000). He spoke to freelance writer Sarah Arnquist.
BY THE NUMBERS
Canada
- Life expectancy: 81 years (USA: 78)
- Infant mortality: 5 per 1,000 live births (7)
- Health spending as a percentage of GDP: 10 (15)
- Percentage of health spending that is private: 30 (54)
- Doctors per 10,000 people: 19 (26)
Q. How does the Canadian system provide health care at lower cost than the American system?
A. Canada’s national health insurance, called Medicare, provides hospital and physician insurance to all Canadian citizens. It does not provide health care directly from government hospitals or through publicly employed physicians. Imagine 10 provincial nonprofit health insurance plans without deductibles, co-insurance or co-payments for medically prescribed treatment.
Canada pays for more hospital days and doctor visits per capita than the United States but spends about 40 percent less. Canadians pay their doctors, nurses and other medical personnel less, and provide fewer very expensive equipment and services. Open heart surgery, for example, would cost about 30 percent less in Toronto than in Chicago. The lower supply of expensive equipment means Canadians wait somewhat longer for those services, but in recent years improved management has reduced waiting lists for services like M.R.I. scans. Canada has more general practice doctors per capita than the United States does, so basic office visits are considerably less costly. Private spending, which is about 30 percent of all Canadian health spending, has increased more rapidly than public expenditures over the past 40 years.
The final reason Canada has lower costs is that the provincial governments are responsible for financing health care and directly face the pressure of rising health costs. They must act to control the costs because other government services compete for public funding.
Q. What does the Canadian health system do particularly well?
A. Two features stand out. One is that the financing of medical care is extraordinarily simple for patients, physicians and hospitals. Patients face no bills for acute services and no co-payments. Doctors are paid electronically each month according to a set payment rate, and the hospitals must follow a set budget. Bankruptcy from medical bills, insurance disputes and billing confusion do not exist as problems.
The second strength is clarity about the purposes public health insurance serves and for many Canadians a sense of pride that access to medical care is not treated as a market transaction. Medical care is allocated more by ability to benefit than by ability to pay, however, disparities in medical use still exist between people of different classes and educational backgrounds.
Q. What is your biggest criticism of it?
A. The continued nastiness of federal-provincial negotiations about the shared financing of Medicare is one unappealing feature of the Canadian system. This dual responsibility leads to endless blaming between the national and provincial governments for the pressures of medical expenditures on the budgets of other public programs and tax levels. This, in turn, has partly prevented Canada from handling drug costs in the uncomplicated Medicare program.
Q. What is the most important lesson Americans should learn from the Canadian system?
A. Until the 1960s, Canada was very similar to the United States in its medical, hospital, economic and social context. Canada’s experience since then demonstrates that it is possible to have public health insurance that largely fulfills the explicit purposes set out in the Canada Health Act of 1984: universal insurance, comprehensive hospital and physician benefits (without hidden insurance policy constraints), portable coverage across the nation, clear accountability through the political process and no significant financial barriers to care.
By Sarah Arnquist
August 14, 2009
Health Care in Other Countries: France
New York Times "Prescriptions":
Victor G. Rodwin is a professor of health policy and management at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and co-director of the World Cities Project, International Longevity Center-USA. He teaches courses on health system comparisons and has widely published on the French health care system. He spoke with the blog contributors Sarah Arnquist and Anne Underwood.
BY THE NUMBERS
France
- Life expectancy: 81 years (USA: 78)
- Infant mortality: 4 per 1,000 live births (7)
- Health spending as a percentage of GDP: 11 (15)
- Percentage of health spending that is private: 20 (54)
- Doctors per 10,000 people: 34 (26)
Q. In 2000, the World Health Organization ranked the French health system as the best over all in the world. Do you agree?
A. I question the W.H.O. methodology, which has serious problems with data reliability and the standards of comparison. A study I would take more seriously is one published last year by Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee in the journal Health Affairs. They examined avoidable mortality — that is, deaths whose risk of occurrence would be far lower if the population had access to appropriate health care interventions. In that study, based on data for the year 2000, France was also ranked No. 1, with the lowest rate of avoidable deaths. The United States was last, in 19th place, with the highest rate of avoidable deaths. That’s a severe indictment of our health care system in my judgment and calls attention, quite justifiably, to the high performance of the French health care system.
Q. That finding implies that the French have good access to health care. Do they?
A. On most measures, they do. They don’t do a better job of cancer screening than we do. But when it comes to timely access to primary care, the French are superb.
An important and well-recognized measure is avoidable hospitalizations. People should not end up in the hospital for failure to manage routine, controllable conditions such as asthma, bacterial pneumonia, diabetes or congestive heart failure. Based on studies with my colleagues Michael Gusmano and Daniel Weisz, the United States has exceedingly high rates of avoidable hospitalizations compared with Britain, Germany or France. Comparing Paris and Manhattan, we have 2.5 times the rate of avoidable hospitalizations that they do in Paris.
Moreover, when it comes to specialty care, the French also have ready access. For example, my colleagues and I found that contrary to conventional wisdom, the French provide higher rates of bypass surgery and angioplasty than we do.
Q. As I understand the French health care system, doctors are private, but patients are enrolled in national health insurance. Is it sort of like Medicare for all?
A. Very much so. It’s not government run but government financed. Like Medicare and Social Security, it is funded by compulsory payroll taxes with some income tax contributions. But doctors work predominantly in private, office-based, fee-for-service practices, and there is a mix of public and private hospitals. The main difference from Medicare is that the entire resident population is covered and the benefit package is more generous.
Almost the entire population has some degree of private supplementary insurance, too, much like Medigap policies for Medicare beneficiaries in the United States, to provide better coverage for certain services and to cover a portion of co-insurance.
Q. So it’s not a single-payer system.
A. That’s correct, but it operates much like one. In France, nobody has a choice of insurer for basic coverage. There are three major plans — one for most people who are employed (77 to 78 percent of the population), a smaller one for agricultural workers (4 to 5 percent), and another small one for the self-employed (6 to 7 percent). In addition, there are some very small plans — for railroad workers, the clergy and so forth. But all of these health insurance programs operate under the same rules. Like Medicare, they can’t turn you down for preexisting conditions. They can’t terminate you if you change your job. And they can’t stop paying when your expenses exceed a certain amount.
Q. If the French system resembles Medicare, does that mean that it also faces the problem of rising costs?
A. Yes, all health care systems face the pressures caused by expensive new medical technologies and prescription drugs. Since there are no enforceable budget ceilings on French national health care expenditures, annual increases tend to exceed spending targets, which in turn leads to frequent cries that the system is “unsustainable.” Nonetheless, the French do a better job of controlling health care costs than we do. They spend about half as much per person on health care ($3,200), and spending accounts for 11 percent of the French gross domestic product, versus 17 percent in this country.
Q. How do they control health care costs?
A. Three ways. First, the government negotiates prices for doctors, hospitals and prescription drugs. Second, France has far fewer private health insurers, so the system requires less expenditure on administrative costs for marketing, underwriting and managing complex reimbursement rules. Third, France’s investor-owned insurance sector is far smaller than in the United States, and its medical-industrial complex is far less powerful, so the government can negotiate stronger cost controls.
Q. But you also said the French have no choice in their plan. Americans seem to want choice.
A. The French have no choice among insurers for the basic plan. But French National Health Insurance gives them more choice of doctors and hospitals than the average American has.
Q. Does insurance cover the entire cost of an office visit, or are there additional charges?
A. There are no deductibles. French National Health Insurance typically pays 70 percent of an office visit. A G.P. typically charges the patient 30 percent of the $35 fee, and a specialist will charge 30 percent of the $45 fee. But co-insurance is waived for all patients with serious chronic medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart disease or any other medical condition requiring more than $100 per month in payments.
Most physicians in private practice accept negotiated N.H.I. fees. However, in large cities and for most subspecialties, 50 percent to 80 percent of physicians have chosen to “extra bill.” These physicians must pay higher premiums for their own health insurance coverage (as subscribers of the fund for the self-employed). Most of their patients can use their supplemental policies to cover some of these additional costs. But such extra billing does create hardship for people with few resources, who forgo seeing these specialists and must therefore go to hospital outpatient departments or to health centers. That’s one of the big issues now.
Q. Are the insurance companies nonprofit?
A. All health insurance funds that provide benefits under the national plan are legally private nonprofit organizations. The companies that provide supplemental insurance are a mix of for-profit and nonprofit entities. But they represent only 8 percent of total health care expenditures. It’s a smaller industry because benefits under French N.H.I. are extensive. Prescription drugs, for example, are covered exceedingly well. What’s not covered well is dental care and vision care.
Q. Is there rationing of care?
A. There is no explicit health care rationing in France. There are no waiting lists for specialized hospital treatments. There is very easy access, perhaps too easy, to specialized services. An important characteristic of the French system is that the sicker you are, the better you’re reimbursed.
Q. What does the French system do particularly well?
A. They have great access to primary care. In addition, they make specialty care available to anyone needing it. They have excellent prescription drug coverage, and they give extraordinary choice and freedom to people to navigate the system as they see fit.
Q. What’s your the biggest criticism of the French system?
A. There is poor care coordination between general practitioners and specialists, and also between hospitals and patients who move into ambulatory care. It’s a problem for people with chronic diseases.
Q. Medical malpractice has become an issue now in the debate over health care reform in this country. How much of every health care Euro in France goes to pay for malpractice costs?
A. I’ve never seen such an estimate, but even in the U.S. this figure is much smaller than people generally believe — less than 1 percent of health care expenditures.
Q. Doctors in the United States complain about having to practice “defensive medicine,” ordering unnecessary tests just to cover any potential charges of negligence later on. Is that an issue in France?
A. No, this is not an important issue in France for two reasons. First, since 2002 there has been a national no-fault compensation scheme. Second, the number of attorneys per capita in France is far smaller than in the United States.
Q. Have the French achieved universal health care?
A. Yes, the entire population legally residing in France is covered — more than 99 percent of the population. There are always people who fall through the cracks. But they are covered under a special plan that covers people whenever they show up at the E.R., the hospital outpatient department or health center.
Q. Are the French happy with their health care system?
A. Eurobarometer, Harris Interactive and other studies of consumer perceptions have consistently reported high rates of satisfaction among the French — among the highest in the European Union and certainly higher than in the United States. Still, my French colleagues were surprised when the W.H.O. report came out, ranking their system No. 1, because they are typically critical of their system. I don’t know any health system about which you can’t tell a horror story that occurred to a patient. That’s why it is so important to avoid cocktail party anecdotes of health system performance and rather examine evidence in a more systematic fashion.
Q. What key lessons can the United States learn from France?
A. The French health system demonstrates that it is possible to achieve universal coverage without a government-run system that regulates how doctors practice medicine. In fact, U.S. physicians should note that their French colleagues are not constrained by private managed care insurance plans and have greater clinical autonomy.
The French system also demonstrates that in contrast to some single-payer systems, universal coverage does not preclude the existence of private insurers. In France, there’s a whole private insurance sector — not enormous, but big enough — and that’s important for the insurance industry to recognize.
By Anne Underwood and Sarah Arnquist
September 11, 2009
Between the Lines
Displeasure with (Hatred of) Obama (blacks) is helping conservative lawmakers (racist honkies) gain ground in those states (the former Confederacy) where skepticism about his agenda (fear of communist takeover) has fed doubts (paranoia), leading to calls for restraint (lynch mobs).
--Ironic Times
September 11, 2009
But what have the Panças to do with the Quixotes?
Well, let's to our old Places again, and sleep out the little that's left of the Night. To Morrow is a new Day. Sleep, Sancho, cry'd Don Quixote, sleep, for thou were born to sleep; but I, who was design'd to be still waking, intend before Aurora ushers in the Sun, to give a Loose to my Thoughts, and vent my Conceptions in a Madrigal, that I made last Night unknown to thee.
September 10, 2009
Michael Pollan Is Sick
More evidence that food writer Michael Pollan is a paid spokesman for the health insurance industry, or perhaps just their useful idiot, comes in today's New York Times. Pollan offers an opinion piece explaining how for-profit health insurance is key to reforming the American diet.
His argument is that new rules preventing denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions will impel the insurance industry to fight against obesity, and their power is necessary in opposing high-fructose corn syrup subsidies.
The incentive, however, already exists, and the source of profits will not change. In fact, by expanding public expenditure, the existing incentives would also expand.
Pollan ignores the fact that obesity is more an issue of poverty and sedentary work and leisure than of diet per se. He ignores the fact that the consequences of obesity (e.g., type 2 diabetes, heart disease, circulatory disease) mostly manifest at a later age, when Medicare is paying. And that suggests that since, as Pollan aptly notes, "the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup", a position it is already in, then it is the government that needs to resolve that conflict — for the public good, not to maximize insurance-company profits.
Pollan legitimizes some of the worst elements in this debate: the concern for private insurance companies (as if they must be accommodated in any change rather than the other way around), and the illogical distraction of "personal responsibility". But to call for empowering Big Insurance in the hope that they will take on Big Food is simply idiotic.
human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism
His argument is that new rules preventing denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions will impel the insurance industry to fight against obesity, and their power is necessary in opposing high-fructose corn syrup subsidies.
The incentive, however, already exists, and the source of profits will not change. In fact, by expanding public expenditure, the existing incentives would also expand.
Pollan ignores the fact that obesity is more an issue of poverty and sedentary work and leisure than of diet per se. He ignores the fact that the consequences of obesity (e.g., type 2 diabetes, heart disease, circulatory disease) mostly manifest at a later age, when Medicare is paying. And that suggests that since, as Pollan aptly notes, "the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup", a position it is already in, then it is the government that needs to resolve that conflict — for the public good, not to maximize insurance-company profits.
Pollan legitimizes some of the worst elements in this debate: the concern for private insurance companies (as if they must be accommodated in any change rather than the other way around), and the illogical distraction of "personal responsibility". But to call for empowering Big Insurance in the hope that they will take on Big Food is simply idiotic.
human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism
Who's the liar? In search of the million dollar illegal immigrant to end all health care reform
Esther Cepeda writes (click the title of this post) that it costs more to find out undocumented immigrants than to provide health care services for them, that undocumented immigrants pay taxes just as everyone else does, that many citizens are not able to document their status, and that the flu doesn't care but affects us all.
September 9, 2009
Michael Pollan in pay of health insurance industry?
Russell Mokhiber writes on Counterpunch (click the title of this post):
Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
He’s a prolific author and speaker.
And he’s a campaigner for fresh, wholesome, locally grown organic food.
He’s the author of many books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
On his web site, he lists all of his recent appearances and speaking engagements.
Missing from the list?
Pollan’s June 4, 2009 appearance before the annual convention of America’s health insurance industry lobby – America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
Title of the panel on which Pollan appeared?
“Changing American Attitudes Towards Personal Responsibility and Health.”
The personal responsibility thing is, of course, at the heart of the national debate over health insurance reform.
Are we our brother’s keeper?
Or are we not?
Pollan stepped right in it last month when he posted an item on conservative David Frum’s New Majority web site.
In it, Pollan sides with Whole Foods and against those – like Single Payer Action – who have called for a boycott of Whole Foods.
Single Payer Action called for the boycott last month the day after Whole Foods CEO John Mackey penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that there is no right to health care in the United States.
And that there shouldn’t be.
It’s about personal responsibility, Mackey says.
“Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health,” Mackey writes. “This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.”
Pollan says he won’t join the boycott of Whole Foods.
“Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder,” Pollan writes.
Check that out: farmers matter more to Pollan that the political views of Mackey.
How far do you want to take that Michael?
What if Mackey were a flag burner?
Or a racist?
Would Pollan say that Whole Foods’ support for farmers matters more to him than the racist views of its founder?
Or the flag burning views of its founder?
No, he would not.
But, after all, we are just talking about life and death here.
Pollan has in the past taken the view that we can’t just be active consumers.
We have to be both active consumers and active citizens – rolled into one.
And as active citizens, how can we support a corporation whose CEO believes there is no human right to health care?
Can’t afford organic foods?
Tough luck, brother.
Can’t afford health insurance?
Tough luck, sister.
Every country of the Western industrialized world recognizes a basic human right to health care.
Except for the USA.
The result:
More than 60 Americans dead every day from lack of health insurance.
In his blog posting on David Frum’s web site, Pollan says he disagrees with Mackey on health care – but then says he wants to keep for profit health insurance companies in the game.
“When health insurers realize they will make thousands more in profits for every case of type II diabetes they can prevent, they will develop a strong interest in things like corn subsidies, local food systems, farmer’s markets, school lunch, public health campaigns about soda,” Pollan writes.
Pollan might know about his tofu and asparagus.
But he needs to brush up on his health care politics.
Keeping for profit health insurance corporations in the game will just guarantee the daily carnage of 60 Americans dead every day.
As Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine puts it – single payer national health insurance – everybody in, nobody out – is not only the best option – it’s the only option that will insure everyone and control costs.
We sent Pollan two e-mails over the last couple of weeks, seeking some explanation.
As of now, no answer.
So, we don’t know what you have up your sleeve, Michael – blogging for David Frum, cavorting with health insurance executives at their annual meeting, and advocating for a health care system that keeps profit health insurance corporations in the game.
But it sure does pose a dilemma.
And it has nothing to do with being an omnivore.
[Note: Anyone who didn't until now think that Michael Pollan is a cut-throat corporatist probably isn't vegetarian. Pollan argued in The Omnivore's Dilemma that choosing not to kill animals for food actually avoids the moral choice it appears to be. I suppose he thinks that by not eating meat you're not influencing the industry to be more humane, as he is. Except, that by not eating meat, you're contributing to the demise of the industry altogether. While his "conscious" corpse-eating legitimizes the very imperative of feed lots etc. In other words, the omnivore's dilemma is that he wants his cake and to eat it, too. The Prius is still a car.]
human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism
Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
He’s a prolific author and speaker.
And he’s a campaigner for fresh, wholesome, locally grown organic food.
He’s the author of many books, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
On his web site, he lists all of his recent appearances and speaking engagements.
Missing from the list?
Pollan’s June 4, 2009 appearance before the annual convention of America’s health insurance industry lobby – America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).
Title of the panel on which Pollan appeared?
“Changing American Attitudes Towards Personal Responsibility and Health.”
The personal responsibility thing is, of course, at the heart of the national debate over health insurance reform.
Are we our brother’s keeper?
Or are we not?
Pollan stepped right in it last month when he posted an item on conservative David Frum’s New Majority web site.
In it, Pollan sides with Whole Foods and against those – like Single Payer Action – who have called for a boycott of Whole Foods.
Single Payer Action called for the boycott last month the day after Whole Foods CEO John Mackey penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that there is no right to health care in the United States.
And that there shouldn’t be.
It’s about personal responsibility, Mackey says.
“Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health,” Mackey writes. “This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.”
Pollan says he won’t join the boycott of Whole Foods.
“Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder,” Pollan writes.
Check that out: farmers matter more to Pollan that the political views of Mackey.
How far do you want to take that Michael?
What if Mackey were a flag burner?
Or a racist?
Would Pollan say that Whole Foods’ support for farmers matters more to him than the racist views of its founder?
Or the flag burning views of its founder?
No, he would not.
But, after all, we are just talking about life and death here.
Pollan has in the past taken the view that we can’t just be active consumers.
We have to be both active consumers and active citizens – rolled into one.
And as active citizens, how can we support a corporation whose CEO believes there is no human right to health care?
Can’t afford organic foods?
Tough luck, brother.
Can’t afford health insurance?
Tough luck, sister.
Every country of the Western industrialized world recognizes a basic human right to health care.
Except for the USA.
The result:
More than 60 Americans dead every day from lack of health insurance.
In his blog posting on David Frum’s web site, Pollan says he disagrees with Mackey on health care – but then says he wants to keep for profit health insurance companies in the game.
“When health insurers realize they will make thousands more in profits for every case of type II diabetes they can prevent, they will develop a strong interest in things like corn subsidies, local food systems, farmer’s markets, school lunch, public health campaigns about soda,” Pollan writes.
Pollan might know about his tofu and asparagus.
But he needs to brush up on his health care politics.
Keeping for profit health insurance corporations in the game will just guarantee the daily carnage of 60 Americans dead every day.
As Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine puts it – single payer national health insurance – everybody in, nobody out – is not only the best option – it’s the only option that will insure everyone and control costs.
We sent Pollan two e-mails over the last couple of weeks, seeking some explanation.
As of now, no answer.
So, we don’t know what you have up your sleeve, Michael – blogging for David Frum, cavorting with health insurance executives at their annual meeting, and advocating for a health care system that keeps profit health insurance corporations in the game.
But it sure does pose a dilemma.
And it has nothing to do with being an omnivore.
[Note: Anyone who didn't until now think that Michael Pollan is a cut-throat corporatist probably isn't vegetarian. Pollan argued in The Omnivore's Dilemma that choosing not to kill animals for food actually avoids the moral choice it appears to be. I suppose he thinks that by not eating meat you're not influencing the industry to be more humane, as he is. Except, that by not eating meat, you're contributing to the demise of the industry altogether. While his "conscious" corpse-eating legitimizes the very imperative of feed lots etc. In other words, the omnivore's dilemma is that he wants his cake and to eat it, too. The Prius is still a car.]
human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism
Adverse health effects from wind turbines in Sweden and the Netherlands
Two noise surveys from Europe are frequently cited by energy industry defenders as evidence that there are no ill health effects found in people living near industrial wind turbines. The applicability of these surveys to most proposed and recently built facilities, however, is very limited. And in fact, their findings of significant annoyance at low sound levels and small relatively turbines suggest reason for concern. Annoyance from noise, by the way, is an adverse health effect, according to the World Health Organization ("Guidelines for Community Noise", 1999), as is disturbed sleep, which can lead to many physical and psychological symptoms.
The survey from Sweden is: Pedersen and Persson Waye, 2007, "Wind turbine noise, annoyance and self-reported health and wellbeing in different living environments", Occupational and Environmental Medicine 64 (7): 480-486. The survey from the Netherlands is: Van den Berg, Pedersen, Bouma, and Bakker, Project WINDFARMperception, 2008, "Visual and acoustic impact of wind turbine farms on residents", FP6-2005-Science-and-Society-20 project no. 044628. Nina Pierpont provides a medical critique of the latter study on pages 111-118 of her book Wind Turbine Syndrome. Note that none of the survey authors are physicians, and neither the design of nor the conclusions from the surveys are reliable medically.
Here, I will simply describe what these surveys found and why they are not very relevant to current debates about wind turbine siting near homes. The general aim is to minimize the increase of noise, especially at night inside people's bedrooms. The World Health Organization says that the noise level at night inside a bedroom should not exceed 30 dB(A) and that to ensure that level, the noise 1 meter away from the house should not exceed 45 dB(A). Ontario requires that the noise level 30 meters from the house should not exceed 40 dB(A).
In the Swedish survey (Pedersen and Persson Waye, 2007), the average sound level estimated at the respondents' homes was 33.4 ± 3.0 dBA. The average distance from the turbines was 780 ± 233 m (2,559 ± 764 ft), and facilities of turbines down to 500 kW in size were included.
In the Dutch survey (Van den Berg et al., 2008), only 26% of the turbines were 1.5 MW or above, and 66% of them were smaller than 1 MW. Only 9% of the respondents lived with an estimated noise level from the turbines of more than 45 dB.
With such little exposure to potentially disturbing noise, it would be surprising indeed to find much health effect. And just so are they quoted. For example, from Pedersen and Persson Waye: "A-weighted SPL [sound pressure level] was not correlated to any of the health factors or factors of wellbeing asked for in the questionnaire"; "In our study no adverse health effects other than annoyance could be directly connected to wind turbine noise".
But note that they did find a substantial level of annoyance, especially in rural areas and hilly terrain, and, as they note, "Annoyance is an adverse heath effect." And: "Annoyance was further associated with lowered sleep quality and negative emotions. This, together with reduced restoration possibilities may adversely affect health."
And from Van den Berg et al.: "There is no indication that the sound from wind turbines had an effect on respondents’ health ...".
The elided part of the sentence is: "except for the interruption of sleep".
Again, they found a substantial level of sleep disturbance and annoyance. They note: "From this study it cannot be concluded whether these health effects are caused by annoyance or vice versa or whether both are related to another factor" (such as low-frequency noise). In other words, the data are inadequate for making any statement regarding health effects (and remember, annoyance, along with interruption of sleep, is a health effect). "Annoyance with wind turbine noise was associated with psychological distress, stress, difficulties to fall asleep and sleep interruption." "From this and previous studies it appears that sound from wind turbines is relatively annoying: at the same sound level it causes more annoyance than sound from air or road traffic."
In conclusion, even in the low-impact situations surveyed in these studies (small turbines, setbacks large enough to ensure low A-weighted noise levels), health effects, particularly due to annoyance and sleep disturbance, were seen. With larger turbines and facilities and smaller setbacks from homes, adverse health effects would clearly be expected to affect more people and to a greater degree.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
The survey from Sweden is: Pedersen and Persson Waye, 2007, "Wind turbine noise, annoyance and self-reported health and wellbeing in different living environments", Occupational and Environmental Medicine 64 (7): 480-486. The survey from the Netherlands is: Van den Berg, Pedersen, Bouma, and Bakker, Project WINDFARMperception, 2008, "Visual and acoustic impact of wind turbine farms on residents", FP6-2005-Science-and-Society-20 project no. 044628. Nina Pierpont provides a medical critique of the latter study on pages 111-118 of her book Wind Turbine Syndrome. Note that none of the survey authors are physicians, and neither the design of nor the conclusions from the surveys are reliable medically.
Here, I will simply describe what these surveys found and why they are not very relevant to current debates about wind turbine siting near homes. The general aim is to minimize the increase of noise, especially at night inside people's bedrooms. The World Health Organization says that the noise level at night inside a bedroom should not exceed 30 dB(A) and that to ensure that level, the noise 1 meter away from the house should not exceed 45 dB(A). Ontario requires that the noise level 30 meters from the house should not exceed 40 dB(A).
In the Swedish survey (Pedersen and Persson Waye, 2007), the average sound level estimated at the respondents' homes was 33.4 ± 3.0 dBA. The average distance from the turbines was 780 ± 233 m (2,559 ± 764 ft), and facilities of turbines down to 500 kW in size were included.
In the Dutch survey (Van den Berg et al., 2008), only 26% of the turbines were 1.5 MW or above, and 66% of them were smaller than 1 MW. Only 9% of the respondents lived with an estimated noise level from the turbines of more than 45 dB.
With such little exposure to potentially disturbing noise, it would be surprising indeed to find much health effect. And just so are they quoted. For example, from Pedersen and Persson Waye: "A-weighted SPL [sound pressure level] was not correlated to any of the health factors or factors of wellbeing asked for in the questionnaire"; "In our study no adverse health effects other than annoyance could be directly connected to wind turbine noise".
But note that they did find a substantial level of annoyance, especially in rural areas and hilly terrain, and, as they note, "Annoyance is an adverse heath effect." And: "Annoyance was further associated with lowered sleep quality and negative emotions. This, together with reduced restoration possibilities may adversely affect health."
And from Van den Berg et al.: "There is no indication that the sound from wind turbines had an effect on respondents’ health ...".
The elided part of the sentence is: "except for the interruption of sleep".
Again, they found a substantial level of sleep disturbance and annoyance. They note: "From this study it cannot be concluded whether these health effects are caused by annoyance or vice versa or whether both are related to another factor" (such as low-frequency noise). In other words, the data are inadequate for making any statement regarding health effects (and remember, annoyance, along with interruption of sleep, is a health effect). "Annoyance with wind turbine noise was associated with psychological distress, stress, difficulties to fall asleep and sleep interruption." "From this and previous studies it appears that sound from wind turbines is relatively annoying: at the same sound level it causes more annoyance than sound from air or road traffic."
In conclusion, even in the low-impact situations surveyed in these studies (small turbines, setbacks large enough to ensure low A-weighted noise levels), health effects, particularly due to annoyance and sleep disturbance, were seen. With larger turbines and facilities and smaller setbacks from homes, adverse health effects would clearly be expected to affect more people and to a greater degree.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
August 27, 2009
VPIRG calls for 1,000 megawatts of wind
In their new report, "Repowering Vermont", the Vermont Public Interest Research Group outlines how the power from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant can be replaced.
Mostly, they see us buying more from Hydro Quebec, New York, and the New England pool for about 10 years, while keeping demand growth down by stepped-up efficiency measures.
Then, depending on subsequent growth, VPIRG suggests that by 2032, 25-28% of our electricity can be generated by in-state wind turbines.
They dramatically misrepresent the physical reality of such a program, however.
One scenario calls for wind to provide 25% of 6,300 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2032, the other 28% of 8,400 GWh. VPIRG says these would require 496 megawatts (MW) and 766 MW, respectively, of installed wind capacity, using 24 and 39 miles, respectively, of mountain ridgelines. In each scenario, 66 MW of the installed capacity would be small residential and business turbines.
Their estimation of miles of ridgeline required is based on placing 6 turbines per mile. But that figure is based on 1.5-MW turbines, not the 3-MW models VPIRG assumes. Larger turbines require more space between them (Vermont Environmental Research Associates, whose work VPIRG cites, spaces the turbines by 5 rotor diameters: as the turbines get bigger, so does the space between them). A better figure for estimation is 10 MW capacity per mile. The results are 43 and 70 miles for the two scenarios.
Then their translation of energy production to capacity is based on a 35% capacity factor. That is, for every 1 MW of capacity, they project that the turbines would produce at an average annual rate of 0.35 MW, and over a year the energy produced would be 0.35 MW × 8,760 hours = 3,066 megawatt-hours (MWh).
But the average capacity factor for the U.S. is only 28%, and that of the Searsburg facility in Vermont is only 20%. It is typically less than 10% for small turbines. So it would be reasonable (and still overly hopeful, especially as this degree of building would require siting in less productive locations) to assume a 20% capacity factor. Thus, the two scenarios would actually require 835 and 1,316 MW of installed wind.
And that would require 75 and 123 miles of mountain ridgelines (plus 116 MW of small turbines not on ridgelines). Vermont is only 60 miles across through Montpelier and 160 miles long.
Finally, VPIRG completely ignores the impacts of new heavy-duty roads, transformers, transmission lines, and several acres' clearcutting of forest per turbine.
Let alone the noise and light pollution and the aesthetic (and moral) dissonance of 400-ft-high industrial machines with 150-ft-long turning blades (a sweep area of 1.5 acres) dominating formerly wild and rural landscapes.
All for a technology that is only an expensive add-on to the grid and actually replaces nothing.
Vermont Yankee ought to be shut down, but it is ridiculous to pretend that wind can or should fill any significant fraction of the resulting gap.
(Oh yeah: VPIRG's treasurer is Mathew Rubin, wind developer manqué, and one of the trustees is David Blittersdorf of Earth Turbines and anemometer maker NRG Systems -- both of which companies are advertised, without any conflict-of-interest note, on page 23 of VPIRG's report.)
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
Mostly, they see us buying more from Hydro Quebec, New York, and the New England pool for about 10 years, while keeping demand growth down by stepped-up efficiency measures.
Then, depending on subsequent growth, VPIRG suggests that by 2032, 25-28% of our electricity can be generated by in-state wind turbines.
They dramatically misrepresent the physical reality of such a program, however.
One scenario calls for wind to provide 25% of 6,300 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2032, the other 28% of 8,400 GWh. VPIRG says these would require 496 megawatts (MW) and 766 MW, respectively, of installed wind capacity, using 24 and 39 miles, respectively, of mountain ridgelines. In each scenario, 66 MW of the installed capacity would be small residential and business turbines.
Their estimation of miles of ridgeline required is based on placing 6 turbines per mile. But that figure is based on 1.5-MW turbines, not the 3-MW models VPIRG assumes. Larger turbines require more space between them (Vermont Environmental Research Associates, whose work VPIRG cites, spaces the turbines by 5 rotor diameters: as the turbines get bigger, so does the space between them). A better figure for estimation is 10 MW capacity per mile. The results are 43 and 70 miles for the two scenarios.
Then their translation of energy production to capacity is based on a 35% capacity factor. That is, for every 1 MW of capacity, they project that the turbines would produce at an average annual rate of 0.35 MW, and over a year the energy produced would be 0.35 MW × 8,760 hours = 3,066 megawatt-hours (MWh).
But the average capacity factor for the U.S. is only 28%, and that of the Searsburg facility in Vermont is only 20%. It is typically less than 10% for small turbines. So it would be reasonable (and still overly hopeful, especially as this degree of building would require siting in less productive locations) to assume a 20% capacity factor. Thus, the two scenarios would actually require 835 and 1,316 MW of installed wind.
And that would require 75 and 123 miles of mountain ridgelines (plus 116 MW of small turbines not on ridgelines). Vermont is only 60 miles across through Montpelier and 160 miles long.
Finally, VPIRG completely ignores the impacts of new heavy-duty roads, transformers, transmission lines, and several acres' clearcutting of forest per turbine.
Let alone the noise and light pollution and the aesthetic (and moral) dissonance of 400-ft-high industrial machines with 150-ft-long turning blades (a sweep area of 1.5 acres) dominating formerly wild and rural landscapes.
All for a technology that is only an expensive add-on to the grid and actually replaces nothing.
Vermont Yankee ought to be shut down, but it is ridiculous to pretend that wind can or should fill any significant fraction of the resulting gap.
(Oh yeah: VPIRG's treasurer is Mathew Rubin, wind developer manqué, and one of the trustees is David Blittersdorf of Earth Turbines and anemometer maker NRG Systems -- both of which companies are advertised, without any conflict-of-interest note, on page 23 of VPIRG's report.)
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
August 23, 2009
More absence of wind turbine noise and health complaints
Wind Concerns Ontario (WCO) reports that, "According to the land registry office in Orangeville, six homes in Dufferin County have been purchased by wind developers. ... Before these families could escape the nightmare of their unliveable homes, they had to agree to sign strict nondisclosure contracts -- in other words, gag orders -- to protect the wind companies. [Canadian Hydro Developers] has spent over $1.75 million dollars clandestinely buying out these people, yet they claim there were no complaints."
As WCO notes, "Their homes became unfit for human habitation. The purchases by the wind developer are an admission that wind turbines have created health issues that affect residents. Unfortunately, the wind industry and the McGuinty government have failed to publicly acknowledge or act on health issues and the pleas for help from the families affected."
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, human rights
| Family Name | Address | |
| Ashbee | Pt Lt 29, Con 7, Pt 1, 7R742, Amaranth | |
| Fraser | 58234 County Rd 17, Melancthon | |
| Benvenete | Pt Lts 284 & 285, Con 4, Melancthon | |
| Brownell | Pt Lt 29, Con 5, Pt 1, 7R787, Amaranth | |
| Williams | 58232 County Rd, RR 6, Melancthon | |
| Barlows | Pt Lt 1, Con 5, Melancthon |
As WCO notes, "Their homes became unfit for human habitation. The purchases by the wind developer are an admission that wind turbines have created health issues that affect residents. Unfortunately, the wind industry and the McGuinty government have failed to publicly acknowledge or act on health issues and the pleas for help from the families affected."
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, human rights
August 22, 2009
Nope. No complaints anywhere.
Nicole Geneau of Nextera, i.e., Florida Power & Light, is a liar.
John McPhee writes in the Aug. 11 Walkerton (Ontario) Herald-Times:
The d'Entremonts abandoned their home on Feb. 21, 2006. Evidently, to Nicole Geneau and her industry, that represents a solution, not a complaint.
The Brockton council has good reason to be concerned.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights
John McPhee writes in the Aug. 11 Walkerton (Ontario) Herald-Times:
... Nicole Geneau, project manager with NEXTera, along with two consultants, visited Brockton council to provide information on two six-turbine sites planned for lands near Formosa and Paisley. ...Nicole Geneau is a liar. According to Wind Concerns Ontario, two weeks earlier, on July 25, she was sitting at the kitchen table of Daniel d'Entremont's abandoned home in Pubnico, Nova Scotia -- abandoned because of ill health effects from nearby 1.8-megawatt Vestas V80 turbines, the closest one about 1,000 feet (305 meters) away. They began experiencing problems as soon as the first turbine began operating, which was 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) away.
While new regulations are still being studied by the province, they noted the minimum setback for each turbine will most likely remain at 550 metres and the setbacks for larger projects could be set up to 1,000 metres without noise barriers.
Bruce County planner David Smith, who was also present for the Thursday session, did point out that some developers are pressuring the province to go with site specific noise studies that could reduce the setback to 400 metres.
Coun. Dave Inglis argued the setbacks should be bigger for any project. ...
Local officials were more interested in the project near Formosa as part of Brockton is within the study area.
Geneau told them their concerns were unfounded. “The study area is bigger than what we need. We just want to see the potential and the impact, it’s not to say we’re going to put more turbines up there,” she said, adding they couldn’t just put turbines anywhere.
When Mayor Charlie Bagnato asked about the high number of those against wind farms at a recent public meeting in Port Elgin, Becker informed him of public meetings in Toronto where “the majority of people are in favour” of wind turbines. ...
Geneau told council her company is the largest owner and operator of wind turbines in North America with 8,200 operating in 65 different projects across 24 states and two provinces.
“I have not heard one single complaint,” Geneau said. “That tells us the process we’re using is working. We use the best science and follow regulations.” She added her company has even won environmental awards.
Geneau was asked to keep locals informed by updates at Bruce County council.
After the meeting [Coun. Dan] Gieruszak and Inglis were still not convinced. ...
“I am concerned that there will be a long-term reduction of quality of life in rural Ontario, for the benefit of urban populations,” Gieruszak said.
Inglis agreed. “I’ve always had concerns about the health issues and the setbacks, they’re not big enough.” ...
The d'Entremonts abandoned their home on Feb. 21, 2006. Evidently, to Nicole Geneau and her industry, that represents a solution, not a complaint.
The Brockton council has good reason to be concerned.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights
Wind goes up, wind goes down -- only one gets reported
A Bonneville Power Administration press release on August 14 announced that earlier in the month, 6:19 p.m. on Aug. 6, wind energy production reached a new high of 2,089 megawatts, 92% of the total installed wind capacity on BPA's grid.
Production levels for wind, the press release says, had been high for the preceding week and continued to be good through the following week.
As the chart below shows (click on it to enlarge), however, wind production (the blue line at the bottom of the chart) fluctuates quite a bit, and the rises and falls of its production rarely coincide with those of actual demand (the red line at the top of the chart).
Furthermore, from Aug. 15 to Aug. 20, wind production was virtually nil the whole time.
Not surprisingly, the latter "milestone" was not as widely touted.
We thank Gary and Kris Troyer at the KandG blog for watching these numbers and capturing the earlier production graphic from BPA.
wind power, wind energy
Production levels for wind, the press release says, had been high for the preceding week and continued to be good through the following week.
As the chart below shows (click on it to enlarge), however, wind production (the blue line at the bottom of the chart) fluctuates quite a bit, and the rises and falls of its production rarely coincide with those of actual demand (the red line at the top of the chart).
Furthermore, from Aug. 15 to Aug. 20, wind production was virtually nil the whole time.
Not surprisingly, the latter "milestone" was not as widely touted.
We thank Gary and Kris Troyer at the KandG blog for watching these numbers and capturing the earlier production graphic from BPA.
wind power, wind energy
August 13, 2009
Burning Forests for Electricity
Michael Donnelly writes in Counterpunch (click the title of this post for the complete article):
All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent. --David Brower
... On a daily basis of late, plans are unveiled for new biomass “renewable energy” electricity plants nationwide, complete with State and Federal “Renewable Energy Tax Credits.” Over 100 are already up and running or approved and under construction. Another 200 are in the approval process. Ten in Michigan; six in Arkansas; three in Massachusetts; two in Georgia; three in Maine; three in Florida; even one in swanky Vail, Colorado. If a state has trees, it has a burner(s) on the drawing board. Of all the proposals working their way through state governments, only those in Oregon have been (so far) thwarted. There, Governor Ted Kulongoski has vetoed legislation giving the renewable tax credit designation to existing Timber Industry wood-to-electricity and existing garbage burner electricity plants that sailed through Oregon’s Democrat-dominated Legislature with GOP support. On the other hand, Kulongoski and Oregon have given their renewable energy tax imprimatur to giant wind farms. For some 3,550 megawatts of peak production, Oregon is handing these private wind power producers a projected $144 million in tax subsidies this biennium alone. But, that's a different part of the story.
... Instead of the usual dirty coal, or the more expensive natural gas or oil firing the boilers, these new plants burn “Biomass” - forests. The already operating plan is to grind up small diameter trees, understory plants, dead standing trees (snags) and fallen woody debris (read: future soils) and then using the resulting “hog fuel” to run the boilers.
The first such facility not adjunct to a timber mill, but solely for electricity production, has been in operation for 25 years at Avista’s Kettle Falls Generating Station along the Columbia River in NE Washington. This one plant burns 70 tons (140,000 pounds or two semi-truck loads) per hour, generating 53 megawatts of electricity. Of course, it takes far longer than an hour for Nature to create 70 tons of wood fiber. And, then there are a host of other issues: from pollution to ecosystem degradation. ...
The rationales for providing electricity this way are: it gives off less pollution; the trees are going to waste anyway; the trees are a fire threat; and, the ever fungible, it’s sustainable/renewable.
Pollution
... As of 2002, 63% of sulfur dioxide emissions (read: acid rain); 22% of NOx, nitrogen oxide (smog); 39% of carbon (climate change); and, 33% of mercury (all sorts of health threats) were identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as resulting from electricity generation using coal-fired steam generators. Hydroelectricity has its own set of tragic eco-costs (dead salmon) as does wind power (carbon-intensive production materials and area-wide impacts - roads, noise, viewshed, wildlife) and solar (toxic ingredients). Wind, solar, tidal and other intermittent forms of electricity production also fail to provide the steady uninterrupted power the nation's power grid requires, unlike steam plants, which is a major motivator for biomass.
Biomass plants hardly diminish steam/electricity's sorry pollution record. In fact, NOx is a huge issue due to the high nitrogen content of biomass. Such fuels also emit far more carbon monoxide (CO) than the typical dirty coal plant.
Such burners also give off a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) - the main greenhouse gas. CO2 emissions per BTU from a "green" wood biomass burner, as written into provisions of H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act 2009 (Waxman/Markey) and endorsed by the Big Greens are greater than those from an old coal-fired power plant. In comparison, living forests sequester up to 30% of all CO2 emitted from all sources. The collection and transportation of biomass fuels adds considerably to the net pollution.
Human Health
The greatest threat to human health are the microscopic particulates - “nanoparticles” – which are resistant to current pollution control technologies and are rarely even measured, much less regulated. Yet, they are very present in the ash that biomass, garbage and coal burners currently create. Physicians for Social Responsibility has led the way on fighting the particulate menace.
Just recently, scientists have proven that nanoparticles of titanium dioxide (TiO2) can travel directly from the nose to the brain, causing cell damage. TiO2 is an ever present carcinogen that is abundant in power plant emissions. It’s also incredibly found in paint and a host of cosmetic products, notably sunscreen. It’s even added to food as a coloring or a way to keep colors from blending; found in cottage cheese, horseradish and numerous sauces, among other foodstuffs.
Waste? In Nature?
There is no such thing as "waste" in nature. Everything has its purpose. Heavy equipment and roads necessary for the collection and transportation of biomass fuels and the removal itself robs nutrients, fouls water, compacts soils and degrades habitat – some estimates are that over 30% of all bird species depend on dead trees. Past misguided efforts removing dead trees as “Fire Hazards” have already led to a short supply of nesting, foraging and roosting opportunities.
Fire
Studies have consistently shown that efforts to “fire-proof the forests” (now, there’s an oxymoron) by "fuel reduction projects" are counterproductive. It is questionable whether removing biomass has any ameliorative effect on reducing wildfires. In fact, like all biomass rationales, the opposite is true. Not only does removing the biomass release more carbon than a fire racing through the same "biomass" would, the biomass-stripped remaining forest has been shown to be less fire-resistant. Even if a forest burns, it releases less carbon to never "salvage" the remaining biomass. Just letting the forest recover naturally has been proven to return the forest to carbon sequestration far more quickly than any "salvage" and plant management.
A recent study published in the professional journal Ecological Applications notes that “fuel reduction treatments” (i.e., biomass removal) cripple the forest’s ability to sequester carbon “over the next 100 years.” This results in a major carbon output into the atmosphere that would otherwise be captured.
Another study has shown that if our forests were managed solely for carbon sequestration, they would double or triple the amount of carbon sequestered.
Ecologist George Weurthner, an expert on wildfire, recently wrote an essay debunking the entire rationale that the forests are "unhealthy" and need to be thinned for any reason; “A forest with a lot of dead trees is actually a sign of a healthy forest ecosystem. There are even some ecologists who believe we don’t have enough dead trees."
Sustainable? Of course not.
Number of years the United States could meet its energy needs by burning all its trees: 1 --Harper's Index for January 2006
Cui Bono?
This biomass scourge, indeed the entire "renewable" energy industry, is motivated by one thing only: money - tax money; ratepayers' money. All the other rationales are flimsy smokescreens, easily disproven disinformation. ...
Big Timber is becoming Big Hog Fuel on the taxpayers’ dime. It’s analogous to the late 19th Century when the timber industry leveled Michigan and Wisconsin forests and then morphed into utilities (one, a subsidized private company ludicrously named Consumers' Power) and built hydroelectric dams along the degraded Au Sable and other rivers that industry once commandeered as highways to transport logs. Those very same forests - now public-owned national forests, replanted by legions of kids and Kiwanis Clubs; finally recovering over a century later, are now targets of the Hog Fuel industry.
Though the Big Greens will gladly do it for them (and are), the Electric Utilities can Greenwash themselves and grab tax credits at an even greater rate than Big Timber. All they have to do is cry, "We thneed it" and the politicians take note. All that money Oregon is lavishing on Big Wind - foregoing all property and payroll taxes for 12 to 15 years - produces little in the way of local jobs and the power is mostly shipped to California.
Yet, the Northwest Power Planning and Conservation Council, a sub-set of the government-owned Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) just released a report noting that the Northwest can meet 85 percent of its new electricity needs over the next 20 years solely through conservation, and do so at half the cost of building power plants of any type. Every five years a review is made and the report is used to make plans for the BPA and the 147 consumer-owned utilities to which it sells power. Private utilities are livid as their plan is to always cry "thneed" and build more; charging the ratepayers for all new facilities.
And, last, but never least, there are the usual enablers: foundation-supported “Greens” and the “we’re not the corporate pawn GOP, but we’re close enough” industry-supported Democrats.
environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism
All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent. --David Brower
... On a daily basis of late, plans are unveiled for new biomass “renewable energy” electricity plants nationwide, complete with State and Federal “Renewable Energy Tax Credits.” Over 100 are already up and running or approved and under construction. Another 200 are in the approval process. Ten in Michigan; six in Arkansas; three in Massachusetts; two in Georgia; three in Maine; three in Florida; even one in swanky Vail, Colorado. If a state has trees, it has a burner(s) on the drawing board. Of all the proposals working their way through state governments, only those in Oregon have been (so far) thwarted. There, Governor Ted Kulongoski has vetoed legislation giving the renewable tax credit designation to existing Timber Industry wood-to-electricity and existing garbage burner electricity plants that sailed through Oregon’s Democrat-dominated Legislature with GOP support. On the other hand, Kulongoski and Oregon have given their renewable energy tax imprimatur to giant wind farms. For some 3,550 megawatts of peak production, Oregon is handing these private wind power producers a projected $144 million in tax subsidies this biennium alone. But, that's a different part of the story.
... Instead of the usual dirty coal, or the more expensive natural gas or oil firing the boilers, these new plants burn “Biomass” - forests. The already operating plan is to grind up small diameter trees, understory plants, dead standing trees (snags) and fallen woody debris (read: future soils) and then using the resulting “hog fuel” to run the boilers.
The first such facility not adjunct to a timber mill, but solely for electricity production, has been in operation for 25 years at Avista’s Kettle Falls Generating Station along the Columbia River in NE Washington. This one plant burns 70 tons (140,000 pounds or two semi-truck loads) per hour, generating 53 megawatts of electricity. Of course, it takes far longer than an hour for Nature to create 70 tons of wood fiber. And, then there are a host of other issues: from pollution to ecosystem degradation. ...
The rationales for providing electricity this way are: it gives off less pollution; the trees are going to waste anyway; the trees are a fire threat; and, the ever fungible, it’s sustainable/renewable.
Pollution
... As of 2002, 63% of sulfur dioxide emissions (read: acid rain); 22% of NOx, nitrogen oxide (smog); 39% of carbon (climate change); and, 33% of mercury (all sorts of health threats) were identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as resulting from electricity generation using coal-fired steam generators. Hydroelectricity has its own set of tragic eco-costs (dead salmon) as does wind power (carbon-intensive production materials and area-wide impacts - roads, noise, viewshed, wildlife) and solar (toxic ingredients). Wind, solar, tidal and other intermittent forms of electricity production also fail to provide the steady uninterrupted power the nation's power grid requires, unlike steam plants, which is a major motivator for biomass.
Biomass plants hardly diminish steam/electricity's sorry pollution record. In fact, NOx is a huge issue due to the high nitrogen content of biomass. Such fuels also emit far more carbon monoxide (CO) than the typical dirty coal plant.
Such burners also give off a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) - the main greenhouse gas. CO2 emissions per BTU from a "green" wood biomass burner, as written into provisions of H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act 2009 (Waxman/Markey) and endorsed by the Big Greens are greater than those from an old coal-fired power plant. In comparison, living forests sequester up to 30% of all CO2 emitted from all sources. The collection and transportation of biomass fuels adds considerably to the net pollution.
Human Health
The greatest threat to human health are the microscopic particulates - “nanoparticles” – which are resistant to current pollution control technologies and are rarely even measured, much less regulated. Yet, they are very present in the ash that biomass, garbage and coal burners currently create. Physicians for Social Responsibility has led the way on fighting the particulate menace.
Just recently, scientists have proven that nanoparticles of titanium dioxide (TiO2) can travel directly from the nose to the brain, causing cell damage. TiO2 is an ever present carcinogen that is abundant in power plant emissions. It’s also incredibly found in paint and a host of cosmetic products, notably sunscreen. It’s even added to food as a coloring or a way to keep colors from blending; found in cottage cheese, horseradish and numerous sauces, among other foodstuffs.
Waste? In Nature?
There is no such thing as "waste" in nature. Everything has its purpose. Heavy equipment and roads necessary for the collection and transportation of biomass fuels and the removal itself robs nutrients, fouls water, compacts soils and degrades habitat – some estimates are that over 30% of all bird species depend on dead trees. Past misguided efforts removing dead trees as “Fire Hazards” have already led to a short supply of nesting, foraging and roosting opportunities.
Fire
Studies have consistently shown that efforts to “fire-proof the forests” (now, there’s an oxymoron) by "fuel reduction projects" are counterproductive. It is questionable whether removing biomass has any ameliorative effect on reducing wildfires. In fact, like all biomass rationales, the opposite is true. Not only does removing the biomass release more carbon than a fire racing through the same "biomass" would, the biomass-stripped remaining forest has been shown to be less fire-resistant. Even if a forest burns, it releases less carbon to never "salvage" the remaining biomass. Just letting the forest recover naturally has been proven to return the forest to carbon sequestration far more quickly than any "salvage" and plant management.
A recent study published in the professional journal Ecological Applications notes that “fuel reduction treatments” (i.e., biomass removal) cripple the forest’s ability to sequester carbon “over the next 100 years.” This results in a major carbon output into the atmosphere that would otherwise be captured.
Another study has shown that if our forests were managed solely for carbon sequestration, they would double or triple the amount of carbon sequestered.
Ecologist George Weurthner, an expert on wildfire, recently wrote an essay debunking the entire rationale that the forests are "unhealthy" and need to be thinned for any reason; “A forest with a lot of dead trees is actually a sign of a healthy forest ecosystem. There are even some ecologists who believe we don’t have enough dead trees."
Sustainable? Of course not.
Number of years the United States could meet its energy needs by burning all its trees: 1 --Harper's Index for January 2006
Cui Bono?
This biomass scourge, indeed the entire "renewable" energy industry, is motivated by one thing only: money - tax money; ratepayers' money. All the other rationales are flimsy smokescreens, easily disproven disinformation. ...
Big Timber is becoming Big Hog Fuel on the taxpayers’ dime. It’s analogous to the late 19th Century when the timber industry leveled Michigan and Wisconsin forests and then morphed into utilities (one, a subsidized private company ludicrously named Consumers' Power) and built hydroelectric dams along the degraded Au Sable and other rivers that industry once commandeered as highways to transport logs. Those very same forests - now public-owned national forests, replanted by legions of kids and Kiwanis Clubs; finally recovering over a century later, are now targets of the Hog Fuel industry.
Though the Big Greens will gladly do it for them (and are), the Electric Utilities can Greenwash themselves and grab tax credits at an even greater rate than Big Timber. All they have to do is cry, "We thneed it" and the politicians take note. All that money Oregon is lavishing on Big Wind - foregoing all property and payroll taxes for 12 to 15 years - produces little in the way of local jobs and the power is mostly shipped to California.
Yet, the Northwest Power Planning and Conservation Council, a sub-set of the government-owned Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) just released a report noting that the Northwest can meet 85 percent of its new electricity needs over the next 20 years solely through conservation, and do so at half the cost of building power plants of any type. Every five years a review is made and the report is used to make plans for the BPA and the 147 consumer-owned utilities to which it sells power. Private utilities are livid as their plan is to always cry "thneed" and build more; charging the ratepayers for all new facilities.
And, last, but never least, there are the usual enablers: foundation-supported “Greens” and the “we’re not the corporate pawn GOP, but we’re close enough” industry-supported Democrats.
environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism
10 Questions to Ask at ObamaCare Town Hall Meetings
Dave Lindorff, at Counterpunch (click the title of this post):
1. If Canada's single-payer system is so god-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don't like their health care system, why haven't they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?
2. Why is rationing by income, as we do it here, better than rationing by need, as they do it in Canada?
3. Wouldn't single-payer mean that companies could no longer threaten working people with the loss of their health insurance? Why is this a bad idea?
4. The bigger the insurance pool, the better. So doesn't having a national pool, as with single-payer, make the most sense?
5. Why should we be allowing politicians who are taking money from the medical industry to write the new health care legislation?
6. How can the Congress be developing a health system reform scheme and not even invite experts from Canada down to explain their successful system?
7. If Medicare--a single-payer system here in America--is so popular with the elderly, how come it's no good for the rest of us?
8. Isn't it true that Medicare currently finances the most costly patient group--the elderly and infirm--so that extending it to the rest of the population--most of whom are young and healthy--would be much cheaper, per person?
9. The AMA, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Insurance Industry all bitterly opposed Medicare in 1964-5 when it was being debated in Congress and passed into law, with the right, led by Ronald Reagan, calling it creeping socialism. It became a life-saver for the elderly and didn't turn the US into a soviet republic. Why should we give a tinker's damn what those same three industry groups and the Republican right think of expanding single-payer now?
10. The executives of Canadian subsidiaries of US companies all support Canada's single-payer system, and even lobby collectively to have it expanded and better funded. Why does Congress listen to the executives of the parent companies here at home, and not invite those Canadian execs down to explain why they like single-payer?
human rights
1. If Canada's single-payer system is so god-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don't like their health care system, why haven't they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?
2. Why is rationing by income, as we do it here, better than rationing by need, as they do it in Canada?
3. Wouldn't single-payer mean that companies could no longer threaten working people with the loss of their health insurance? Why is this a bad idea?
4. The bigger the insurance pool, the better. So doesn't having a national pool, as with single-payer, make the most sense?
5. Why should we be allowing politicians who are taking money from the medical industry to write the new health care legislation?
6. How can the Congress be developing a health system reform scheme and not even invite experts from Canada down to explain their successful system?
7. If Medicare--a single-payer system here in America--is so popular with the elderly, how come it's no good for the rest of us?
8. Isn't it true that Medicare currently finances the most costly patient group--the elderly and infirm--so that extending it to the rest of the population--most of whom are young and healthy--would be much cheaper, per person?
9. The AMA, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Insurance Industry all bitterly opposed Medicare in 1964-5 when it was being debated in Congress and passed into law, with the right, led by Ronald Reagan, calling it creeping socialism. It became a life-saver for the elderly and didn't turn the US into a soviet republic. Why should we give a tinker's damn what those same three industry groups and the Republican right think of expanding single-payer now?
10. The executives of Canadian subsidiaries of US companies all support Canada's single-payer system, and even lobby collectively to have it expanded and better funded. Why does Congress listen to the executives of the parent companies here at home, and not invite those Canadian execs down to explain why they like single-payer?
human rights
August 9, 2009
The subtlety of Cervantes' satire
'In my Opinion, you are not unlike the Moors, who are incapable of being convinc'd of the Error of their Religion, by Scripture, speculative Reasons, or those drawn immediately from the Articles of our Faith; and will yield to nothing but Demonstrations, as evident as those of the Mathematicks, and which can as little be deny'd, as when we say, If from two equal Parts, we take away two equal Parts, the Parts that remain are also equal. And when they do not understand this Proposition, which they seldom do, we are oblig'd by Operation, to make it yet more plain and obvious to their Senses; and yet all this Labour will at last prove ineffectual to the convincing them of the Verities of our Religion.'
--Don Quixote, Part I, Book IV, Chapter VI, 'The Novel of the Curious Impertinent'
(The joke is that the mathematical process described here is Algebra, learned by the Europeans from the Moors.)
--Don Quixote, Part I, Book IV, Chapter VI, 'The Novel of the Curious Impertinent'
(The joke is that the mathematical process described here is Algebra, learned by the Europeans from the Moors.)
August 7, 2009
Two Health Care Systems: One works, the other doesn't
Michael Rachlis writes in the Aug. 3 Los Angeles Times:
Universal health insurance is on the American policy agenda for the fifth time since World War II. In the 1960s, the U.S. chose public coverage for only the elderly and the very poor, while Canada opted for a universal program for hospitals and physicians' services. As a policy analyst, I know there are lessons to be learned from studying the effect of different approaches in similar jurisdictions. But, as a Canadian with lots of American friends and relatives, I am saddened that Americans seem incapable of learning them.
Our countries are joined at the hip. We peacefully share a continent, a British heritage of representative government and now ownership of GM. And, until 50 years ago, we had similar health systems, healthcare costs and vital statistics.
The U.S.' and Canada's different health insurance decisions make up the world's largest health policy experiment. And the results?
On coverage, all Canadians have insurance for hospital and physician services. There are no deductibles or co-pays. Most provinces also provide coverage for programs for home care, long-term care, pharmaceuticals and durable medical equipment, although there are co-pays.
On the U.S. side, 46 million people have no insurance, millions are underinsured and healthcare bills bankrupt more than 1 million Americans every year.
Lesson No. 1: A single-payer system would eliminate most U.S. coverage problems.
On costs, Canada spends 10% of its economy on healthcare; the U.S. spends 16%. The extra 6% of GDP amounts to more than $800 billion per year. The spending gap between the two nations is almost entirely because of higher overhead. Canadians don't need thousands of actuaries to set premiums or thousands of lawyers to deny care. Even the U.S. Medicare program has 80% to 90% lower administrative costs than private Medicare Advantage policies. And providers and suppliers can't charge as much when they have to deal with a single payer.
Lessons No. 2 and 3: Single-payer systems reduce duplicative administrative costs and can negotiate lower prices.
Because most of the difference in spending is for non-patient care, Canadians actually get more of most services. We see the doctor more often and take more drugs. We even have more lung transplant surgery. We do get less heart surgery, but not so much less that we are any more likely to die of heart attacks. And we now live nearly three years longer, and our infant mortality is 20% lower.
Lesson No. 4: Single-payer plans can deliver the goods because their funding goes to services, not overhead.
The Canadian system does have its problems, and these also provide important lessons. Notwithstanding a few well-publicized and misleading cases, Canadians needing urgent care get immediate treatment. But we do wait too long for much elective care, including appointments with family doctors and specialists and selected surgical procedures. We also do a poor job managing chronic disease.
However, according to the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, both the American and the Canadian systems fare badly in these areas. In fact, an April U.S. Government Accountability Office report noted that U.S. emergency room wait times have increased, and patients who should be seen immediately are now waiting an average of 28 minutes. The GAO has also raised concerns about two- to four-month waiting times for mammograms.
On closer examination, most of these problems have little to do with public insurance or even overall resources. Despite the delays, the GAO said there is enough mammogram capacity.
These problems are largely caused by our shared politico-cultural barriers to quality of care. In 19th century North America, doctors waged a campaign against quacks and snake-oil salesmen and attained a legislative monopoly on medical practice. In return, they promised to set and enforce standards of practice. By and large, it didn't happen. And perverse incentives like fee-for-service make things even worse.
Using techniques like those championed by the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, providers can eliminate most delays. In Hamilton, Ontario, 17 psychiatrists have linked up with 100 family doctors and 80 social workers to offer some of the world's best access to mental health services. And in Toronto, simple process improvements mean you can now get your hip assessed in one week and get a new one, if you need it, within a month.
Lesson No. 5: Canadian healthcare delivery problems have nothing to do with our single-payer system and can be fixed by re-engineering for quality.
U.S. health policy would be miles ahead if policymakers could learn these lessons. But they seem less interested in Canada's, or any other nation's, experience than ever. Why?
American democracy runs on money. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies have the fuel. Analysts see hundreds of billions of premiums wasted on overhead that could fund care for the uninsured. But industry executives and shareholders see bonuses and dividends.
Compounding the confusion is traditional American ignorance of what happens north of the border, which makes it easy to mislead people. Boilerplate anti-government rhetoric does the same. The U.S. media, legislators and even presidents have claimed that our "socialized" system doesn't let us choose our own doctors. In fact, Canadians have free choice of physicians. It's Americans these days who are restricted to "in-plan" doctors.
Unfortunately, many Americans won't get to hear the straight goods because vested interests are promoting a caricature of the Canadian experience.
Universal health insurance is on the American policy agenda for the fifth time since World War II. In the 1960s, the U.S. chose public coverage for only the elderly and the very poor, while Canada opted for a universal program for hospitals and physicians' services. As a policy analyst, I know there are lessons to be learned from studying the effect of different approaches in similar jurisdictions. But, as a Canadian with lots of American friends and relatives, I am saddened that Americans seem incapable of learning them.
Our countries are joined at the hip. We peacefully share a continent, a British heritage of representative government and now ownership of GM. And, until 50 years ago, we had similar health systems, healthcare costs and vital statistics.
The U.S.' and Canada's different health insurance decisions make up the world's largest health policy experiment. And the results?
On coverage, all Canadians have insurance for hospital and physician services. There are no deductibles or co-pays. Most provinces also provide coverage for programs for home care, long-term care, pharmaceuticals and durable medical equipment, although there are co-pays.
On the U.S. side, 46 million people have no insurance, millions are underinsured and healthcare bills bankrupt more than 1 million Americans every year.
Lesson No. 1: A single-payer system would eliminate most U.S. coverage problems.
On costs, Canada spends 10% of its economy on healthcare; the U.S. spends 16%. The extra 6% of GDP amounts to more than $800 billion per year. The spending gap between the two nations is almost entirely because of higher overhead. Canadians don't need thousands of actuaries to set premiums or thousands of lawyers to deny care. Even the U.S. Medicare program has 80% to 90% lower administrative costs than private Medicare Advantage policies. And providers and suppliers can't charge as much when they have to deal with a single payer.
Lessons No. 2 and 3: Single-payer systems reduce duplicative administrative costs and can negotiate lower prices.
Because most of the difference in spending is for non-patient care, Canadians actually get more of most services. We see the doctor more often and take more drugs. We even have more lung transplant surgery. We do get less heart surgery, but not so much less that we are any more likely to die of heart attacks. And we now live nearly three years longer, and our infant mortality is 20% lower.
Lesson No. 4: Single-payer plans can deliver the goods because their funding goes to services, not overhead.
The Canadian system does have its problems, and these also provide important lessons. Notwithstanding a few well-publicized and misleading cases, Canadians needing urgent care get immediate treatment. But we do wait too long for much elective care, including appointments with family doctors and specialists and selected surgical procedures. We also do a poor job managing chronic disease.
However, according to the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, both the American and the Canadian systems fare badly in these areas. In fact, an April U.S. Government Accountability Office report noted that U.S. emergency room wait times have increased, and patients who should be seen immediately are now waiting an average of 28 minutes. The GAO has also raised concerns about two- to four-month waiting times for mammograms.
On closer examination, most of these problems have little to do with public insurance or even overall resources. Despite the delays, the GAO said there is enough mammogram capacity.
These problems are largely caused by our shared politico-cultural barriers to quality of care. In 19th century North America, doctors waged a campaign against quacks and snake-oil salesmen and attained a legislative monopoly on medical practice. In return, they promised to set and enforce standards of practice. By and large, it didn't happen. And perverse incentives like fee-for-service make things even worse.
Using techniques like those championed by the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, providers can eliminate most delays. In Hamilton, Ontario, 17 psychiatrists have linked up with 100 family doctors and 80 social workers to offer some of the world's best access to mental health services. And in Toronto, simple process improvements mean you can now get your hip assessed in one week and get a new one, if you need it, within a month.
Lesson No. 5: Canadian healthcare delivery problems have nothing to do with our single-payer system and can be fixed by re-engineering for quality.
U.S. health policy would be miles ahead if policymakers could learn these lessons. But they seem less interested in Canada's, or any other nation's, experience than ever. Why?
American democracy runs on money. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies have the fuel. Analysts see hundreds of billions of premiums wasted on overhead that could fund care for the uninsured. But industry executives and shareholders see bonuses and dividends.
Compounding the confusion is traditional American ignorance of what happens north of the border, which makes it easy to mislead people. Boilerplate anti-government rhetoric does the same. The U.S. media, legislators and even presidents have claimed that our "socialized" system doesn't let us choose our own doctors. In fact, Canadians have free choice of physicians. It's Americans these days who are restricted to "in-plan" doctors.
Unfortunately, many Americans won't get to hear the straight goods because vested interests are promoting a caricature of the Canadian experience.
August 6, 2009
Obama and Neoliberalism
Michael Lind writes at Salon:
... By neoliberalism I mean the ideology that replaced New Deal liberalism as the dominant force in the Democratic Party between the Carter and Clinton presidencies. In the Clinton years, this was called the "Third Way." The term was misleading, because New Deal liberalism between 1932 and 1968 and its equivalents in social democratic Europe were considered the original "third way" between democratic socialism and libertarian capitalism, whose failure had caused the Depression. According to New Deal liberals, the United States was not a "capitalist society" or a "market democracy" but rather a democratic republic with a "mixed economy," in which the state provided both social insurance and infrastructure like electric grids, hydropower and highways, while the private sector engaged in mass production.
When it came to the private sector, the New Dealers, with some exceptions, approved of Big Business, Big Unions and Big Government, which formed the system of checks and balances that John Kenneth Galbraith called "countervailing power." But most New Dealers dreaded and distrusted bankers. They thought that finance should be strictly regulated and subordinated to the real economy of factories and home ownership. They were economic internationalists because they wanted to open foreign markets to U.S. factory products, not because they hoped that the Asian masses some day would pay high overdraft fees to U.S. multinational banks.
New Dealers approved of social insurance systems like Social Security and Medicare, which were rights (entitlements) not charity and which mostly redistributed income within the middle class, from workers to nonworkers (the retired and the temporarily unemployed). But contrary to conservative propaganda, New Deal liberals disliked means-tested antipoverty programs and despised what Franklin Roosevelt called "the dole." Roosevelt and his most important protégé, Lyndon Johnson, preferred workfare to welfare. They preferred a high-wage, low-welfare society to a low-wage, high-welfare society. To maintain the high-wage system that would minimize welfare payments to able-bodied adults, New Deal liberals did not hesitate to regulate the labor market, by means of pro-union legislation, a high minimum wage, and low levels of immigration (which were raised only at the end of the New Deal period, beginning in 1965). It was only in the 1960s that Democrats became identified with redistributionist welfarism -- and then only because of the influence of the New Left, which denounced the New Deal as "corporate liberalism."
Between the 1940s and the 1970s, the New Deal system -- large-scale public investment and R&D, regulated monopolies and oligopolies, the subordination of banking to productive industry, high wages and universal social insurance -- created the world's first mass middle class. The system was far from perfect. Southern segregationist Democrats crippled many of its progressive features and the industrial unions were afflicted by complacency and corruption. But for all its flaws, the New Deal era is still remembered as the Golden Age of the American economy.
And then America went downhill.
The "stagflation" of the 1970s had multiple sources, including the oil price shock following the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and the revival of German and Japanese industrial competition (China was still recovering from the damage done by Mao). During the previous generation, libertarian conservatives like Milton Friedman had been marginalized. But in the 1970s they gained a wider audience, blaming the New Deal model and claiming that the answer to every question (before the question was even asked) was "the market."
The free-market fundamentalists found an audience among Democrats as well as Republicans. A growing number of Democratic economists and economic policymakers were attracted to the revival of free-market economics, among them Obama's chief economic advisor Larry Summers, a professed admirer of Milton Friedman. These center-right Democrats agreed with the libertarians that the New Deal approach to the economy had been too interventionist. At the same time, they thought that government had a role in providing a safety net. The result was what came to be called "neoliberalism" in the 1980s and 1990s -- a synthesis of conservative free-market economics with "progressive" welfare-state redistribution for the losers. Its institutional base was the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and the affiliated Progressive Policy Institute.
Beginning in the Carter years, the Democrats later called neoliberals supported the deregulation of infrastructure industries that the New Deal had regulated, like airlines, trucking and electricity, a sector in which deregulation resulted in California blackouts and the Enron scandal. Neoliberals teamed up with conservatives to persuade Bill Clinton to go along with the Republican Congress's dismantling of New Deal-era financial regulations, a move that contributed to the cancerous growth of Wall Street and the resulting global economic collapse. As Asian mercantilist nations like Japan and then China rigged their domestic markets while enjoying free access to the U.S. market, neoliberal Democrats either turned a blind eye to the foreign mercantilist assault on American manufacturing or claimed that it marked the beneficial transition from an industrial economy to a "knowledge economy." While Congress allowed inflation to slash the minimum wage and while corporations smashed unions, neoliberals chattered about sending everybody to college so they could work in the high-wage "knowledge jobs" of the future. Finally, many (not all) neoliberals agreed with conservatives that entitlements like Social Security were too expensive, and that it was more efficient to cut benefits for the middle class in order to expand benefits for the very poor. ...
By the time Barack Obama was inaugurated, the neoliberal capture of the presidential branch of the Democratic Party was complete. ...
Instead of the updated Rooseveltonomics that America needs, Obama's team offers warmed-over Rubinomics from the 1990s. Consider the priorities of the Obama administration: the environment, healthcare and education. Why these priorities, as opposed to others, like employment, high wages and manufacturing? The answer is that these three goals co-opt the activist left while fitting neatly into a neoliberal narrative that could as easily have been told in 1999 as in 2009. The story is this: New Dealers and Keynesians are wrong to think that industrial capitalism is permanently and inherently prone to self-destruction, if left to itself. Except in hundred-year disasters, the market economy is basically sound and self-correcting. Government can, however, help the market indirectly, by providing these three public goods, which, thanks to "market failures," the private sector will not provide.
Healthcare? New Deal liberals favored a single-payer system like Social Security and Medicare. Obama, however, says that single payer is out of the question because the U.S. is not Canada. (Evidently the New Deal America of FDR and LBJ was too "Canadian.") The goal is not to provide universal healthcare, rather it is to provide universal health insurance, by means that, even if they include a shriveled "public option," don't upset the bloated American private health insurance industry.
Education? In the 1990s, the conventional wisdom of the neoliberal Democrats held that the "jobs of the future" were "knowledge jobs." America's workers would sit in offices with diplomas on the wall and design new products that would be made in third-world sweatshops. We could cede the brawn work and keep the brain work. Since then, we've learned that brain work follows brawn work overseas. R&D, finance and insurance jobs tend to follow the factories to Asia.
Education is also used by neoliberals to explain stagnant wages in the U.S. By claiming that American workers are insufficiently educated for the "knowledge economy," neoliberal Democrats divert attention from the real reasons for stagnant and declining wages -- the offshoring of manufacturing, the decline of labor unions, and, at the bottom of the labor market, a declining minimum wage and mass unskilled immigration. One study after another since the 1990s has refuted the theory that wage inequality results from skill-biased technical change. But the neoliberal cultists around Obama who write his economic speeches either don't know or don't care. Like Bill Clinton before him, Barack Obama continues to tell Americans that to get higher wages they need to go to college and improve their skills, as though there weren't a surplus of underemployed college grads already.
Environment? Here the differences between the New Deal Democrats and the Obama Democrats could not be wider. Their pro-industrial program did not prevent New Deal Democrats from being passionate about resource conservation and wilderness preservation. They did not hesitate to use regulations to shut down pollution. And their approach to energy was based on direct government R&D (the Manhattan Project) and direct public deployment (the TVA).
Contrast the straightforward [emphasis added*] New Deal approaches with the energy and environment policies of Obama and the Democratic leadership, which are at once too conservative and too radical. They are too conservative, because cap and trade relies on a system of market incentives that are not only indirect and feeble but likely to create a subprime market in carbon, enriching a few green profiteers. At the same time, they are too radical, because any serious attempt to shift the U.S. economy in a green direction by hiking the costs of non-renewable energy would accelerate the transfer of U.S. industry to Asia -- and with it not only industry-related "knowledge jobs" but also the manufacture of those overhyped icons of the "green economy," solar panels and windmills.
While we can't go back to the New Deal of the mid-20th century in its details, we need to re-create its spirit. ...
[*Medicare for all. Higher gas tax.]
... By neoliberalism I mean the ideology that replaced New Deal liberalism as the dominant force in the Democratic Party between the Carter and Clinton presidencies. In the Clinton years, this was called the "Third Way." The term was misleading, because New Deal liberalism between 1932 and 1968 and its equivalents in social democratic Europe were considered the original "third way" between democratic socialism and libertarian capitalism, whose failure had caused the Depression. According to New Deal liberals, the United States was not a "capitalist society" or a "market democracy" but rather a democratic republic with a "mixed economy," in which the state provided both social insurance and infrastructure like electric grids, hydropower and highways, while the private sector engaged in mass production.
When it came to the private sector, the New Dealers, with some exceptions, approved of Big Business, Big Unions and Big Government, which formed the system of checks and balances that John Kenneth Galbraith called "countervailing power." But most New Dealers dreaded and distrusted bankers. They thought that finance should be strictly regulated and subordinated to the real economy of factories and home ownership. They were economic internationalists because they wanted to open foreign markets to U.S. factory products, not because they hoped that the Asian masses some day would pay high overdraft fees to U.S. multinational banks.
New Dealers approved of social insurance systems like Social Security and Medicare, which were rights (entitlements) not charity and which mostly redistributed income within the middle class, from workers to nonworkers (the retired and the temporarily unemployed). But contrary to conservative propaganda, New Deal liberals disliked means-tested antipoverty programs and despised what Franklin Roosevelt called "the dole." Roosevelt and his most important protégé, Lyndon Johnson, preferred workfare to welfare. They preferred a high-wage, low-welfare society to a low-wage, high-welfare society. To maintain the high-wage system that would minimize welfare payments to able-bodied adults, New Deal liberals did not hesitate to regulate the labor market, by means of pro-union legislation, a high minimum wage, and low levels of immigration (which were raised only at the end of the New Deal period, beginning in 1965). It was only in the 1960s that Democrats became identified with redistributionist welfarism -- and then only because of the influence of the New Left, which denounced the New Deal as "corporate liberalism."
Between the 1940s and the 1970s, the New Deal system -- large-scale public investment and R&D, regulated monopolies and oligopolies, the subordination of banking to productive industry, high wages and universal social insurance -- created the world's first mass middle class. The system was far from perfect. Southern segregationist Democrats crippled many of its progressive features and the industrial unions were afflicted by complacency and corruption. But for all its flaws, the New Deal era is still remembered as the Golden Age of the American economy.
And then America went downhill.
The "stagflation" of the 1970s had multiple sources, including the oil price shock following the Arab oil embargo in 1973 and the revival of German and Japanese industrial competition (China was still recovering from the damage done by Mao). During the previous generation, libertarian conservatives like Milton Friedman had been marginalized. But in the 1970s they gained a wider audience, blaming the New Deal model and claiming that the answer to every question (before the question was even asked) was "the market."
The free-market fundamentalists found an audience among Democrats as well as Republicans. A growing number of Democratic economists and economic policymakers were attracted to the revival of free-market economics, among them Obama's chief economic advisor Larry Summers, a professed admirer of Milton Friedman. These center-right Democrats agreed with the libertarians that the New Deal approach to the economy had been too interventionist. At the same time, they thought that government had a role in providing a safety net. The result was what came to be called "neoliberalism" in the 1980s and 1990s -- a synthesis of conservative free-market economics with "progressive" welfare-state redistribution for the losers. Its institutional base was the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and the affiliated Progressive Policy Institute.
Beginning in the Carter years, the Democrats later called neoliberals supported the deregulation of infrastructure industries that the New Deal had regulated, like airlines, trucking and electricity, a sector in which deregulation resulted in California blackouts and the Enron scandal. Neoliberals teamed up with conservatives to persuade Bill Clinton to go along with the Republican Congress's dismantling of New Deal-era financial regulations, a move that contributed to the cancerous growth of Wall Street and the resulting global economic collapse. As Asian mercantilist nations like Japan and then China rigged their domestic markets while enjoying free access to the U.S. market, neoliberal Democrats either turned a blind eye to the foreign mercantilist assault on American manufacturing or claimed that it marked the beneficial transition from an industrial economy to a "knowledge economy." While Congress allowed inflation to slash the minimum wage and while corporations smashed unions, neoliberals chattered about sending everybody to college so they could work in the high-wage "knowledge jobs" of the future. Finally, many (not all) neoliberals agreed with conservatives that entitlements like Social Security were too expensive, and that it was more efficient to cut benefits for the middle class in order to expand benefits for the very poor. ...
By the time Barack Obama was inaugurated, the neoliberal capture of the presidential branch of the Democratic Party was complete. ...
Instead of the updated Rooseveltonomics that America needs, Obama's team offers warmed-over Rubinomics from the 1990s. Consider the priorities of the Obama administration: the environment, healthcare and education. Why these priorities, as opposed to others, like employment, high wages and manufacturing? The answer is that these three goals co-opt the activist left while fitting neatly into a neoliberal narrative that could as easily have been told in 1999 as in 2009. The story is this: New Dealers and Keynesians are wrong to think that industrial capitalism is permanently and inherently prone to self-destruction, if left to itself. Except in hundred-year disasters, the market economy is basically sound and self-correcting. Government can, however, help the market indirectly, by providing these three public goods, which, thanks to "market failures," the private sector will not provide.
Healthcare? New Deal liberals favored a single-payer system like Social Security and Medicare. Obama, however, says that single payer is out of the question because the U.S. is not Canada. (Evidently the New Deal America of FDR and LBJ was too "Canadian.") The goal is not to provide universal healthcare, rather it is to provide universal health insurance, by means that, even if they include a shriveled "public option," don't upset the bloated American private health insurance industry.
Education? In the 1990s, the conventional wisdom of the neoliberal Democrats held that the "jobs of the future" were "knowledge jobs." America's workers would sit in offices with diplomas on the wall and design new products that would be made in third-world sweatshops. We could cede the brawn work and keep the brain work. Since then, we've learned that brain work follows brawn work overseas. R&D, finance and insurance jobs tend to follow the factories to Asia.
Education is also used by neoliberals to explain stagnant wages in the U.S. By claiming that American workers are insufficiently educated for the "knowledge economy," neoliberal Democrats divert attention from the real reasons for stagnant and declining wages -- the offshoring of manufacturing, the decline of labor unions, and, at the bottom of the labor market, a declining minimum wage and mass unskilled immigration. One study after another since the 1990s has refuted the theory that wage inequality results from skill-biased technical change. But the neoliberal cultists around Obama who write his economic speeches either don't know or don't care. Like Bill Clinton before him, Barack Obama continues to tell Americans that to get higher wages they need to go to college and improve their skills, as though there weren't a surplus of underemployed college grads already.
Environment? Here the differences between the New Deal Democrats and the Obama Democrats could not be wider. Their pro-industrial program did not prevent New Deal Democrats from being passionate about resource conservation and wilderness preservation. They did not hesitate to use regulations to shut down pollution. And their approach to energy was based on direct government R&D (the Manhattan Project) and direct public deployment (the TVA).
Contrast the straightforward [emphasis added*] New Deal approaches with the energy and environment policies of Obama and the Democratic leadership, which are at once too conservative and too radical. They are too conservative, because cap and trade relies on a system of market incentives that are not only indirect and feeble but likely to create a subprime market in carbon, enriching a few green profiteers. At the same time, they are too radical, because any serious attempt to shift the U.S. economy in a green direction by hiking the costs of non-renewable energy would accelerate the transfer of U.S. industry to Asia -- and with it not only industry-related "knowledge jobs" but also the manufacture of those overhyped icons of the "green economy," solar panels and windmills.
While we can't go back to the New Deal of the mid-20th century in its details, we need to re-create its spirit. ...
[*Medicare for all. Higher gas tax.]
August 5, 2009
Wind Turbines Give You Spots
These photos are from Yvonne Sheehan in County Cork, Ireland. Click the title of this post to read her diary of life with her grandson in the shadow of industrial wind turbines. The ill effects don't stop with spots.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms human rights
August 4, 2009
Taking note of wind turbine syndrome
A quick blog search today for "Pierpont wind" shows that Nina Pierpont's study of "wind turbine syndrome" is getting noticed after The Independent's story on Sunday, along with those in the Daily Mail and the Belfast Telegraph.
Earth2Tech (picked up by Reuters)
Treehugger
C-Questor Carbon Markets and Climate Change
Geoffrey Lean (Telegraph)
Cambs Times—Fen Diary
Fast Company
Nordic Briefing
Impact Lab
Grist
Sideways News
Bayou Renaissance Man
The Independent
NHS Choices
World Of Mysteries, World of Facts
Thermonuclear Thought
Curb Global Warming
This Magazine
Lake Ontario Waterkeeper
Wild Singapore
Tinnitus Treatments Info
David Jones, MP
Roger Helmer, MEP
Jo Abbess
Business Green
Neat Stuff
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
Earth2Tech (picked up by Reuters)
Treehugger
C-Questor Carbon Markets and Climate Change
Geoffrey Lean (Telegraph)
Cambs Times—Fen Diary
Fast Company
Nordic Briefing
Impact Lab
Grist
Sideways News
Bayou Renaissance Man
The Independent
NHS Choices
World Of Mysteries, World of Facts
Thermonuclear Thought
Curb Global Warming
This Magazine
Lake Ontario Waterkeeper
Wild Singapore
Tinnitus Treatments Info
David Jones, MP
Roger Helmer, MEP
Jo Abbess
Business Green
Neat Stuff
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
August 2, 2009
A Wind Farm Is Not the Answer
Paul Kingsnorth, in the August 1 Guardian (U.K.), questions the green movement's fixation with technology:
How would you imagine an environmentalist would react when presented with the following proposition? A power company plans to build a new development on a stretch of wild moorland. It will be nearly seven miles long, and consist of 150 structures, each made of steel and mounted on hundreds of tons of concrete. They will be almost 500 feet high, and will be accompanied by 73 miles of road. The development will require the quarrying of 1.5m cubic metres of rock and the cutting out and dumping of up to a million cubic metres of peat.
The answer is that if you are like many modern environmentalists you will support this project without question. You will dismiss anyone who opposes it as a nimby who is probably in the pay of the coal or nuclear lobby, and you will campaign for thousands more like it to be built all over the country.
The project is, of course, a wind farm - or, if we want to be less Orwellian in our terminology, a wind power station. This particular project is planned for Shetland, but there are many like it in the pipeline. The government wants to see 10,000 new turbines across Britain by 2020 (though it is apparently not prepared to support the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight). The climate and energy secretary, Ed Miliband, says there is a need to "grow the market" for industrial wind energy, and to aid this growth he is offering £1bn in new loans to developers and the reworking of the "antiquated" (ie democratic) planning system, to allow local views on such developments to be overridden.
Does this sound very "green" to you? To me it sounds like a society fixated on growth and material progress going about its destructive business in much the same way as ever, only without the carbon. It sounds like a society whose answer to everything is more and bigger technology; a society so cut off from nature that it believes industrialising a mountain is a "sustainable" thing to do.
It also sounds like an environmental movement in danger of losing its way. The support for industrial wind developments in wild places seems to me a symbol of a lack of connectedness to an actual, physical environment. A development like that of Shetland is not an example of sustainable energy: it is the next phase in the endless human advance upon the non-human world - the very thing that the environmental movement came into being to resist.
Campaigners in Cumbria are fighting a proposed wind development near the mountain known as Saddleback, a great, brown hulk of a peak which Wordsworth preferred to call by its Celtic name, Blencathra. Wordsworth thought the wild uplands a place of epiphany. Other early environmentalists, from Thoreau to Emerson, knew too of the power of mountain and moor to provide a clear-eyed and humbling view of humanity.
Many of today's environmentalists will scoff if you speak to them of such things. Their concerns are couched in the language of business and technology - gigawatt hours, parts per million of carbon, peer-reviewed papers and "sustainable development". The green movement has become fixated on a single activity: reducing carbon emissions. It's understandable, what the science tells us about the coming impacts of climate change is terrifying. But if climate change poses a huge question, we are responding with the wrong answers.
The question we should be asking is what kind of society we should live in. The question we are actually asking is how we can power this one without producing carbon. This is not to say that renewable energy technologies are bad. We need to stop burning fossil fuels fast, and wind power can make a contribution if the turbines are sensitively sited and on an appropriate scale.
But the challenge posed by climate change is not really about technology. It is not even about carbon. It is about a society that has systematically hewed its inhabitants away from the natural world, and turned that world into a resource. It is about a society that imagines it operates in a bubble; that it can keep growing in a finite world, forever.
When we clamour for more wind-power stations in the wilderness, we perhaps think we are helping to slow this machine, but we are actually helping to power it. We are still promoting, perhaps unintentionally, the familiar mantras of industrial civilisation: growth can continue forever; technological gigantism will save us; our lives can go on much as they always have.
In the end, climate change presents us with a simple question: are we going to live within our means, or are we, like so many civilisations before us, going to collapse? In that question lies a radical challenge to the direction and mythologies of industrial society. All the technology in the world will not answer it.
See also: Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, by Paul Kingsnorth.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
How would you imagine an environmentalist would react when presented with the following proposition? A power company plans to build a new development on a stretch of wild moorland. It will be nearly seven miles long, and consist of 150 structures, each made of steel and mounted on hundreds of tons of concrete. They will be almost 500 feet high, and will be accompanied by 73 miles of road. The development will require the quarrying of 1.5m cubic metres of rock and the cutting out and dumping of up to a million cubic metres of peat.
The answer is that if you are like many modern environmentalists you will support this project without question. You will dismiss anyone who opposes it as a nimby who is probably in the pay of the coal or nuclear lobby, and you will campaign for thousands more like it to be built all over the country.
The project is, of course, a wind farm - or, if we want to be less Orwellian in our terminology, a wind power station. This particular project is planned for Shetland, but there are many like it in the pipeline. The government wants to see 10,000 new turbines across Britain by 2020 (though it is apparently not prepared to support the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight). The climate and energy secretary, Ed Miliband, says there is a need to "grow the market" for industrial wind energy, and to aid this growth he is offering £1bn in new loans to developers and the reworking of the "antiquated" (ie democratic) planning system, to allow local views on such developments to be overridden.
Does this sound very "green" to you? To me it sounds like a society fixated on growth and material progress going about its destructive business in much the same way as ever, only without the carbon. It sounds like a society whose answer to everything is more and bigger technology; a society so cut off from nature that it believes industrialising a mountain is a "sustainable" thing to do.
It also sounds like an environmental movement in danger of losing its way. The support for industrial wind developments in wild places seems to me a symbol of a lack of connectedness to an actual, physical environment. A development like that of Shetland is not an example of sustainable energy: it is the next phase in the endless human advance upon the non-human world - the very thing that the environmental movement came into being to resist.
Campaigners in Cumbria are fighting a proposed wind development near the mountain known as Saddleback, a great, brown hulk of a peak which Wordsworth preferred to call by its Celtic name, Blencathra. Wordsworth thought the wild uplands a place of epiphany. Other early environmentalists, from Thoreau to Emerson, knew too of the power of mountain and moor to provide a clear-eyed and humbling view of humanity.
Many of today's environmentalists will scoff if you speak to them of such things. Their concerns are couched in the language of business and technology - gigawatt hours, parts per million of carbon, peer-reviewed papers and "sustainable development". The green movement has become fixated on a single activity: reducing carbon emissions. It's understandable, what the science tells us about the coming impacts of climate change is terrifying. But if climate change poses a huge question, we are responding with the wrong answers.
The question we should be asking is what kind of society we should live in. The question we are actually asking is how we can power this one without producing carbon. This is not to say that renewable energy technologies are bad. We need to stop burning fossil fuels fast, and wind power can make a contribution if the turbines are sensitively sited and on an appropriate scale.
But the challenge posed by climate change is not really about technology. It is not even about carbon. It is about a society that has systematically hewed its inhabitants away from the natural world, and turned that world into a resource. It is about a society that imagines it operates in a bubble; that it can keep growing in a finite world, forever.
When we clamour for more wind-power stations in the wilderness, we perhaps think we are helping to slow this machine, but we are actually helping to power it. We are still promoting, perhaps unintentionally, the familiar mantras of industrial civilisation: growth can continue forever; technological gigantism will save us; our lives can go on much as they always have.
In the end, climate change presents us with a simple question: are we going to live within our means, or are we, like so many civilisations before us, going to collapse? In that question lies a radical challenge to the direction and mythologies of industrial society. All the technology in the world will not answer it.
See also: Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, by Paul Kingsnorth.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism
July 30, 2009
Social stigmata
“Not every windfarm should be licensed, but the great bulk of them will need to be. In a country that is serious about tackling climate change, raising objections might need to become something that carries a certain social stigma, as the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, has suggested.” —The Guardian, Editorial, July 30
Anything other than entertain the possibility for a moment that for tackling climate change windfarms are useless ...
This is the same paper that consistently defends horrible and useless animal experimentation against stigmatization by those who are serious about tackling unnecessary cruelty. For a supposedly “liberal” paper, it might be upsetting to note that the common thread is a defense of corporate violence, whether against animals or against the landscape and rural residents – both activities pointless except as demonstrations of power.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism
July 24, 2009
Unselling single-payer
Helen Redmond writes at Counterpunch:
... There’s been virtually no stories about labor’s support for HR 676 [Representative John Conyers' single-payer legislation], despite the fact it’s been endorsed by 554 union organizations in 49 states and by 130 Central Labor Councils. But we heard plenty when Andy Stern, the president of the SEIU sat down with Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-mart to discuss solutions to the nation’s health care crisis. Those two are experts on providing health care to workers? What about the nurses and doctors who support single-payer and got dragged out of, and arrested in Max Baucus’s senate hearings in Washington, DC? If doctors and nurses had been arrested for any other political issue it would have been the lead story in every newspaper and online edition. Doctors and nurses never deliberately get arrested -- that’s news!
The sea change in the public’s attitude toward government financed health care, however, has gotten press. A New York Times poll in June found that 72 percent supported a government-administered insurance plan – like Medicare for everyone under the age of 65. That poll also reported 64 percent believed the federal government should guarantee coverage to the entire population, i.e. health care should be a human right. Another interesting number: 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt. This is in stark contrast to President Obama’s position of tepid, incremental reform. Obama asserts if he was starting from scratch he might favor SP, but we aren’t so he can’t. He wants to build on the existing system and not “disrupt” the employment-based provision of health care. As if employment-based health coverage isn’t being massively “disrupted” by the economic depression that has laid off millions of workers and forced them down into the ranks of the 50 million uninsured.
But what is truly disgusting is how the “progressive” left has caved so quickly and cravenly, given up the fight for single-payer and support for HR 676. They have become the indignant foot soldiers, apologists and spinmeisters for Obama’s piece of shit legislation. They are betraying what they absolutely know to be true: the private insurance industry must be evicted in order to provide health care to everyone and end the fiscal crisis the multiple-payer system creates.
Even the insurance companies know that, according to revelations by Cigna whistleblower Wendell Potter. He reports the implementation of a single-payer health care system is what keeps the billionaire CEO’s of insurance companies and Karen Ignagni, the high priestess of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), awake at night cowering in fear and forced to spend 1.4 million dollars a day to make sure it doesn’t happen. They don’t fear a public option despite their protestations; they accept that due to the depth of the crisis, a few token compromises are in order to stay in business. It’s chump change and in exchange for perhaps losing a little market share, they’re going to get a mandate that legally obligates every person to buy their priced-to-make-profits “insurance products” or be financially penalized. If the Obama bill subsidizes the uninsured going into private plans, that’s millions of new customers to extract profits from and a transfer of taxpayer dollars into insurance industry coffers. The Massachusetts mandate madness gone nationwide. ...
human rights, anarchosyndicalism
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)