Sean Rooney
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You don’t really want to hear my 2020 Vision, it’s pretty grim.
I do like your play on the term.
The US operates a free wheeling economy in which investors always seek the highest returns. The highest returns are often associated with activities that degrade the biosphere. As a result, what we’ve seen happen since 1950 is a vast despoiliation of our environment and an associated loss of biodiversity, the good folks at the EPA notwithstanding. Many aspects of our economy are quite iterally built to destroy. Pebble Mine anyone?
The government can enact regulations and set forth policies aimed at minimizing the damage, and have in fact done do on a fairly broad scale. But it’s too much like trying to control or manage a monster, a beast that only knows one direction and only has one agenda. A single megaproject like the KXL tar sands oil pipeline can absorb huge numbers of man hours to see they get done right, or not done when they can’t be done right. Fracking alone has swamped the EPA.
Obama can be expected to lauch any number of initiatives, some big, some not so big, in the manner of the recent ruling on the efficiency of microwave ovens, but the Congress seems entirely unwilling to coopporate on anything meaningful vis-a-vis emissions. The EPA continues to struggle to get clean air standards applied to older power plants and its attempts to regulate methane leakage in refineries and other oil facilities have so far come up empty.
I find it pretty hard not to be pessimistic about our chances that much will be done to curb industry’s excesses in the coming years. I think it’s the nature of the beast.
However, we’ll take all we can get and hope for more!
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Media thrives on conflict and won’t usually touch a story that doesn’t involve a dispute betwene one party and another. Conflict is the source of drama of course and our media is filled to overflowing the stories about the “good guys” versus “the bad guys,” whether they be cops and robbers, sheriff’s and cattle rustlers or main street versus wall street or polluters versus regulators.
Squeazing stories that deal with warnings such as those contained in the MAHB concensus statement into that paradigm is difficult to do and hence the media doesn’t even make the attempt. The conflict is too subtle and nuanced.
If we wish to garner media attention we have to formulate our message in a form that can be perceived as a conflict, which I dare say is an artful task. Yet I think it;s one that’s do-able, without being shrill or overly accusatory toward particular individuals or entities.
I’d agreee that some effort would have to be devoted to creating an approach and a form through which the mesage could be conveyed in this manner. I’m sure a few experienced and competent journalists could contribute to this. The art is in writing the press release.
On another note, we should be pleased to learn that a new set of science standards for K-12 have been released by Achieve, an educational nonprofit, which could transform American science education — assuming politicians can keep their distance.
The “Next Generation Science Standards” took two years to create, and are the result of a drafting committee of 41 members — including Nobel Prize laureates, National Research Council members, science education researchers and standards and policy experts. The voluntary plan (which does not carry the force of law and is not yet endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education) included input from 26 states, with 21 states saying they’d seriously consider adopting the standards. However, the final product includes information on global climate change and a preference for evolution over creationism — two of several concepts that could lead some Red States to reject the standards on political grounds.
To learn more, Google “New Science Standards in K-12 education.”
But this does represent a hopful turn.
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It may be too late to expect much from American youth. US university students now shoulder a $trillion in tuition debt; unemployment in the 18-24 year demograhic is above 20 per cent and above 30 per cent in many ethnic comunities. Naionwide, income inequality has never been worse and it’s growing worse by the day; the top two per cent now control nearly half the wealth and take in 2/3 of all income. Four heirs to the Walmart fortune hold more wealth than the entire bottom half of the population.
All that comes out of Washington is petty political bickering in a very mean spirited milieu, certainly enough to turn most youth off. Heck, it turs me off and I’m an adult! The Occupy movement was met with police state tactics at nearly every turn and now seems to have disappeared. After all that pepper spray, can we blame them?
The antiwar movement in the mid-60’s and early 70’s didn’t spring up from nothing, it was an outgrowth of the Civil Rights movmennt of the early 60’s and itself spawned the environmental movement, which thrives today. The youth of today have no precedents to call upon or to emerge from. Many of them have been dumbed down and have retreated into computer gaming, gang bangiing, drug abuse and have been captured by an exceedingly selfish “me, me, me” attitude, the social awareness of a lower class monkey.
I read two or three days ago about four teenagers who were killed when driving at high speed in Newport Beach, California, went off the road and hit a tree, which broke their Lexus in half and set it afire. Utter irresponsbility. Utter waste. Utter stupidity and neglact. They thought they were “exceptional.” It’s hard to generalize the condition of youth in a country like America, in which people under 20 years of age make up over a quarter of the population (27.3%), which works out to be about 86 million youth. Many of them are socially conscious and aware and engaged in one way or another with progressive movements, they just don’t ever get any media attention to speak of. But there’s no national organization or even a loose coalition such as we had in the Vietnam era.
Leadership is sorely lacking. We had Dr. King and H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmicael and Cezar Chavez and Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and a host of others. Today? Pretty close to zero. Youth need heroes, people they can admire and emulate and point to. But in their hour of need, they are largely absent. Justin Beiber isn’t him.
At least we still have Willy, Springsteen, Dylan, and Mick Jagger, and Paul too in his way. The last half-decent role model in America was probably Garth Brooks or Joe Montana, both of whom have disappeared from the radar screen now.
Our only hope is that perhaps before it’s too late, some leaders will arise to spark our youth into the rebellion they need to take on if were to stand a ghost of a chance of finding our way to some kind of decent solutions to what ails us. -
Any time I see the words “fast and easy,” my impulse is to turn and run. Nothing is ever “fast and easy,” is it? No.
Nevertheless, it’s good to see people taking on the challenge and working hard to make some progress toward solutions. Eventually, the power of the corporate world will have to be challenged and brought to heel, a tall order since it’s doubtful it’ll go down easy and has the resorces to fight a long arduous battle.
I certaibly wish you well in this endeavour and hope to see updates here from time-to-time.
Thanks!
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Most solar plants are located in desert terrain that’s not viable farming or ranching land.
Agricultural pursuits often occur in conjunction with windfarms; as well, many windfarms are being located off shore.
Geothermal powerplants require relatively small plots of land.
Tidal power can be harnessed with no impacts on argiculture.
You link doesn’t work. From what I know of Ms. Baker she’s a Charter of Rights and political activist. See at: http://charterproject.ca/forums/topic-tag/httpwww-huffingtonpost-comsocialdennisearlbaker2012-a-breakthrough-for-r_b_1263543_135881292-html/
It should probably occur to all of us that if we are to kick our fossil fuel habit we’ll have to use every viable source of green energy we can concoct, including a bit of fast reactor nuclear.
But first, we have to get our governents off the dime and start seriously engaging the emissions problem. This appears quite unlikely to occur any time soon in Canada, which persists in pushing tar sands oil nor in the US, where the Congress is utterly gridlocked by a Republocan party that won’t support Obama on anything, let along a climate change initiative.
James Hanson, America’s leading climate scientist (who recently retired from NASA Goddard) has proposed a fossil fuel “fee-and-dividend” approach, and 2. 100% of a continually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies at the domestic mine or port-of-entry, distributed uniformly to all legal residents (electronically to bank accounts). 60% of people would receive more in the dividend than they pay in increased prices, but to get or stay on the positive side of the ledger they must pay attention to their fossil fuel use.
Hanson says that economic modeling shows that our fossil fuel use would decrease 30% after 10 years. A rising carbon fee provides a viable international approach to reduce global emissions, the basic requirement being a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and China. A border duty on products from nations without an equivalent carbon fee or tax would provide a strong incentive for other nations to join.
This sound like an excellent plan to me, but again, until our political leaders get off the dime and decide to take action, it won’t go anywhere.
Technically, solving our emissions problem is not rocket science, but it a an enormous political problem, with huge economic forces driving it. In the end, governments may hae to nationalize the fossil fuel industry to get emissions under control.
Cheers!
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