Author Archive for admin – Page 4

Clean Power Plan

The Supreme Court recently took the unprecedented move to stall the implementation of the Clean Power Plan. Given the players involved (big fossil fuel and utility companies plus some right wing states – including Arizona) and given the leanings of the 5 justices who voted for the stay, it’s not difficult to deduce why the Court took the step it did. It has nothing to do with Constitutional issues or American values or the needs of the people. Here is an article by John Farrell, the energy guru at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the go-to place for learning how to live well by living locally.
 
Several months ago, the Obama administration released the Clean Power Plan, requiring substantial greenhouse gas emissions reductions from the electricity sector. The Plan sets targets from the top down, but largely leaves the details to states, providing a significant opportunity to craft rules that encourage energy development and ownership from the bottom up.

These 50 state plans have huge stakes.

Collectively, U.S. electric customers spend over $360 billion each year. Most of that is generated from fossil fuels, frequently extracted outside their own state. In other words, most of that money leaves their community to pay for dirty energy. But the electricity system is in the midst of an enormous transformation from the bottom up just as the federal plan pushes utilities to cleaner energy from the top down.

Driven by improvements in energy efficiency, electricity consumption peaked in 2007 and has been stagnant ever since. Distributed solar, like that found on home rooftops, has provided more than 5% of newly added power plant capacity from 2011 through 2015. In 2013, nearly one-third of all new power plant capacity was from solar energy. The profusion of smartphones is giving customers innovative ways to control energy use, from web-connected thermostats to light bulbs. Consulting firm Accenture estimates that these “disruptive” and economical technologies could save electric customers up to $48 billion over the next 10 years.

Read More→

Climate CoLab

MIT has a project to focus collaboration on addressing climate change. Check out the website. There are a bunch of proposals and conversations that are very interesting.

Objective

The goal of the Climate CoLab is to harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people from all around the world to address global climate change.

Inspired by systems like Wikipedia and Linux, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Collective Intelligence has developed this crowdsourcing platform where citizens work with experts and each other to create, analyze, and select detailed proposals for what to do about climate change. 

Approach

Anyone can join the Climate CoLab community and participate. Community members are invited to submit and comment on proposals outlining ideas for what they think should be done about climate change. In some contests, members create proposals for specific kinds of actions such as generating electric power with fewer emissions or changing social attitudes about climate change.  In other contests, members combine ideas from many other proposals to create integrated climate action plans for a country, a group of countries, or the whole world. Experts evaluate the entries and pick finalists, and then both experts and community members select the most promising proposals. For more, see Contest phases. Read More→

Education in Arizona – How Are We Doing?

Arizonans consistently agree education must be a top priority, so imagine if we all acted accordingly. Every child, regardless of background, income or ZIP code would receive a world-class education—from the early years through college and career. Our students would be the most educated, skilled and sought after innovators of the 21st century. Arizona would lead the nation in attracting and growing jobs. Everything from property values to health care to crime rates would be positively impacted. In partnership with Expect More Arizona, the Center for the Future of Arizona developed the indicators below to track our collective progress. Click through each one to learn more about each issue, statewide efforts to address them and ways to get involved.

Take a look.

Water Threats in the West

Water in the WestThere has been a furor about water quality in the wake of the man-made water disaster in Flint, Michigan. While Flint is a modern horror story, we have similar ongoing water stories throughout the West…wherever mining and oil/gas drilling has occurred. Listen to this story on H2O.

Ideology > Humanity

You can’t write about the drinking water debacle in Flint, Michigan, without first recognizing the depth of the tragedy. For more than a year, an entire city was exposed to the risk of lead poisoning. Of the people we already know have been poisoned, more than half are children under the age of six. Those children will suffer neurological damage for the rest of their lives. Long after you and I are gone, some of them will still be living a life diminished. No matter what happens now, that cannot be undone. No overdue apology, no grudging mea culpa, no release of emails, and no state-of-emergency declaration can undo that damage. Take a moment and imagine how you’d react if you were that child’s mother or father.

That terrible fact makes it all the more infuriating that this disaster can’t be called an accident. Instead, it was the inevitable result of a callous and reckless disregard for human life — specifically, the lives of the people who live in Flint, most of whom are black and many of whom are poor. When Governor Rick Snyder released 274 pages of heavily censored emails about the crisis this week, the cruel arrogance on display only made you wonder about the redacted parts that were so much worse they couldn’t bear to make public. Here’s how the New York Times summarized the released portions:

A top aide to Michigan’s governor referred to people raising questions about the quality of Flint’s water as an “anti-everything group.” Other critics were accused of turning complaints about water into a “political football.” And worrisome findings about lead by a concerned pediatrician were dismissed as “data,” in quotes.

The consequences for the people of Flint, though, are but one especially horrible example of what is happening to minority and low-income communities everywhere and every day. Pick any type of pollution — then look to see who is the most exposed and the most harmed. Take lead, for instance. Although lead exposure had declined overall, African American children are five times more likely to be poisoned than white children. Why? In part because the neighborhoods where they live are more likely to have been exposed to lead when cars still used leaded gas. Decades later, children are still paying a price.

Governor Snyder and his Department of Environmental Quality are rightly being castigated not only for ignoring the problem but also for actively denying, in the face of all evidence, that Flint’s water was contaminated. But their culpability for this tragedy extends even further. Before Flint’s water was compromised, its democracy was.

Read more…

Privilege, Pathology and Power

by Paul Krugman, New York Times

Wealth can be bad for your soul. That’s not just a hoary piece of folk wisdom; it’s a conclusion from serious social science, confirmed by statistical analysis and experiment. The affluent are, on average, less likely to exhibit empathy, less likely to respect norms and even laws, more likely to cheat, than those occupying lower rungs on the economic ladder.

And it’s obvious, even if we don’t have statistical confirmation, that extreme wealth can do extreme spiritual damage. Take someone whose personality might have been merely disagreeable under normal circumstances, and give him the kind of wealth that lets him surround himself with sycophants and usually get whatever he wants. It’s not hard to see how he could become almost pathologically self-regarding and unconcerned with others.

So what happens to a nation that gives ever-growing political power to the superrich?

Modern America is a society in which a growing share of income and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, and these people have huge political influence — in the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, around half the contributions came from fewer than 200 wealthy families. The usual concern about this march toward oligarchy is that the interests and policy preferences of the very rich are quite different from those of the population at large, and that is surely the biggest problem.

But it’s also true that those empowered by money-driven politics include a disproportionate number of spoiled egomaniacs. Which brings me to the current election cycle. Read more…

The Sustainable Spirit

Finding Balance as Part of the Whole

Dawn is just cresting the mountain ridge as you hike silently up to your favorite spot, a perch where you can see – unseen by other hikers. Here, you position yourself to meditate. The golden rays paint the rocks, and trees glisten with their own energy. You reach out to embrace the view. Suddenly, it feels as if your spirit leaves your body and becomes a part of all around you. Then, just as suddenly, you are back inside your own skin wondering what just happened.

You had a transcendental experience, leaving this “mortal coil” to join with all that is the universe, to become one with creation. It is an awe-inspiring experience that may last for only an instant but leave its impact for a lifetime.

If you are lucky enough to have had an experience similar to this, you have had a vision of the world as it truly is…where everything is connected to everything else. As Martin Luther King said, “we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny…” This is the core tenet of sustainability, understanding that we humans are not the masters of the Earth. We are part of and connected to everything that exists. When we understand this most basic concept, all that we do to pursue sustainability becomes almost self-evident. Read More→

Paul Hawken’s 2009 Commencement Address University of Portland

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done. Read More→

Iowa’s Climate-Change Wisdom – NY Times 11/20/15

Negotiators en route to the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris, scheduled to begin later this month, should take a detour on rural roads here in Johnson County. A new climate narrative is emerging among farmers in the American heartland that transcends a lot of the old story lines of denial and cynicism, and offers an updated tale of climate hope.

Recent polls show that 60 percent of Iowans, now facing flooding and erosion, believe global warming is happening. From Winneshiek County to Washington County, you can count more solar panels on barns than on urban roofs or in suburban parking lots. The state’s first major solar farm is not in an urban area like Des Moines or Iowa City, but in rural Frytown, initiated by the Farmers Electric Cooperative.

In the meantime, any lingering traces of cynicism will vanish in the town of Crawfordsville, where children in the Waco school district will eventually turn on computers and study under lights powered 90 percent by solar energy. Inspired by local farmers, who now use solar energy to help power some of their operations, the district’s move to solar energy will not only cut carbon emissions but also result in enough savings to keep open the town’s once financially threatened school doors.

Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.

Wind turbines now line cornfields across the state, providing nearly 30 percent of Iowa’s electricity production. With some $10 billion invested in wind energy and manufacturing in Iowa, Republicans and Democrats alike recognize the benefits of green jobs. Read More→

Objectivism vs. Sustainability

Rand & Objectivism, a Shortcut to Extinction

(Note: I wrote this in 2009 in response to some rants after the financial collapse. It seems timeless given the propensity of many to rewrite history.)

First, I have to say that, in my lifetime, I never met or talked with Ayn Rand. I have read her works a bit. Truth to tell, her prose bogged me down, and I never enjoy slogging through dialectics, especially those that tend to ignore reality when attempting to make a point. That’s one reason why I find it interesting that her works and philosophy are experiencing a renewal in interest. Today, the Rand philosophy of Objectivism has become an excuse to continue the pursuit of a particularly ravenous form of capitalism and to castigate the new administration and their effort to restore the economy to some sort of balance.

I also find it interesting that some people are again trying to justify greed. “Greed is good,” said Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Meanwhile, one could argue that it was the greed of a few that once again brought financial calamity to us all – spurring the “socialistic” actions taken by Washington.

At the core of Rand Objectivism is the belief that a person can and should pursue his own “rational self-interest” supported by a laissez faire form of capitalism and a social structure where individual rights reign supreme. The concept of altruism is anathema. Sharing is bad. Taking for oneself is good. At least, this is the theme offered by self-proclaimed new Objectivists and the burgeoning Rand Fan Club.

So let’s look at this Objectivism from the standpoint of Sustainable Development, because both share some underlying terms, though the definition of those terms may be very different. Sustainable Development means thriving today while ensuring that future generations may thrive. It insists on altruism and sharing as essential for survival on “Spaceship Earth.” As such, it seems diametrically opposed to Objectivism and redefines “self-interest.” Read More→