Shame on All You Grown Ups.

The Greenpeace video below should make all of your grown-ups feel ashamed.

If you wait to the end of this video, you will find that a leftist group with the word "Peace" in it's name says the lines are drawn and you must choose sides. You are either a friend or an enemy.

I am not sure how one chooses sides on the most complex issue of our day (climate), but our left leaning education system is teaching children to be angry and they are ready to rumble.

That Can't Do Spirit is Back

I wish Earth Day was about celebrating the joys of nature coupled with discussions on conserving resources, reducing waste and improving the quality of life on earth.

I confess. I hold the world view that life is a good thing that can be improved with insight and effort.

Sadly, I get the feeling that environmentalism is trapped in that Hegelian/Marxist mindset where the world is thrashed about thesis/antithesis conflict.

We have this Earth Day thing every year that we could use to measures our actions against our ideals.

Sadly, the primary message being given by the Earth Day Network is the nihilistic statement that Americans, simply by existing, are an affront to Gaia**.

**Gaia, as you probably know, is the new politically correct name for God. The difference between "Gaia" and "God," of course, is that Gaia is a secular god so you can use government money and facilities to worship Gaia. It is strictly forbidden to do so for God.

Nihilism and paradox are apparently compelling. People seem to be drawn to nihilistic messages like flies. The big problem is that when groups build nihilism into the foundations of their system of thinking, they end up undermining the things that the aim to achieve.

The left has a strange tendency to want to push ideas to absurdities while they are in the conceptual phase, but pull back when the idea actually becomes effective. For example, the left pushed the construction of big dams when they were just see as publicly funded public works projects, but turned against hydroelectric energy once it became a lucrative source for energy.

I suspect that there are ways that we could be making better use of the hydropower available in this nation. Unfortunately, progressive politics is such that hydropower is completely off the table.

It is so sad. We seem thrash from extremes where we either have public work projects that destroy drainages with massive dam projects or have a complete restriction on harnessing hydropower.

Handling the energy needs of the future will take a multiplicity of energy sources. Our challenge is to find a way to rationally develop resources. Sadly, our political system is such that it pushes any idea to an extreme, then recoils at the political excess to nihilistic prohibitions on using an energy source.

We are dependent on fossil fuels for energy while we prohibit the sustainable use of biomass.

The growing severity of forest fires shows that absolute conservation of forests, as advocated in the 1970s, is even less sustainable than the exploitation of biomass that comes with cultures that harvest and burn wood for heat.

Too often the environmental movement seems caught in paradox. For example, many environmentalists seem to have their entire psyche invested in elitism or counterculturalism. One dining at the organic bistros of Boulder would likely find the rich professories at the tables recoil in horror if they were to hear the servants at the bistro talking of franchising and bringing organic food to the bourgeoisie. Fresh organic food, after all, should be the exclusive domain of the elitist snits who've back-stabbed themselves to positions of power in the public university system. How dare capitalist dream of bringing organic food to the population at large?

Other environmentalists have their psyche invested in being counter-culture and turn against any good idea that breaks against the environmental movement to become part of the culture they despise.

A true environmentalist cannot be counter-culturalism as the centerpiece of their psyche because the greatest gains are made when a good idea goes mainstream.

The nihilism that seems to imbue the environmental movement is problematic as our economy is in great need of the contributions of this sector. When a person's idealism hits that shrill extreme where they undermine the overall conservation efforts of society, then they end up doing a great deal of damage to our economy and culture.

The Zookeeper's Wife

I just watched a Book TV interview with a Diane Ackerman who penned a tomed called The Zookeeper's Wife. The story is about a Zookeeper who hid Jews at the Zoo during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

The book is $15 at Overstock.com.

In the interview, Ms. Ackerman started talking about the really bizarre spiritual environmentalism of the Nazis. They had all sorts of weird ideas built around evolution and probably would have felt more comfortable posing their smug spiritual superiority at gaia.com than in ranting with the loons at the Republican Convention.

Any idea or sentiment can be perverted.

I have been a dedicated conservationist. In the past I've been properly labeled as an "eco-jabbering meadow muffin." I consider myself a full blown "cactus hugger" with a disdain for those wimps who stop at hugging thornless trees.

So here is my quandary: If all ideas, including conservation, have the potential of being radicalized and perverted, then how does one go about the process of having ideas in ways that preserve the idea from being perverted?

I believe that preserving the environment and conserving resources are both extremely important ideals. A tome on the travails of a zookeeper trying to save animals and people from the radicalism during the Nazi occupation of Poland would be an interesting and relevant read.

Ecological Mail

Looking for some make work to do in the much advertised and anticipated recession of 2008?

Well, companies can save big bucks cleaning up their junk mail lists. (Err, I mean their important marketing lists).

I just found the site Ecological Mail. This site lets companies cancel mailings that arrive for employees that left the firm.

Cleaning up mail lists could save tons and tons and tons of paper along with all the fossil fuels consumed to make the paper and deliver the junk mail.

Most importantly, the employees who take the initiative to save resources might look busy and avoid the company's mass layoff axe.

Cutting the People Out of Politics

I am livid with President Bush for stifling debate on Iraq during this last legislative session. We are a democracy, in a democracy debates have to take place or we implode. The troop surge is a brilliant idea, but for the sake of the nation we have to have debate. We do not need to be in constant debate. January 2007 was a time when we needed to have a serious bipartisan talks about the direction of mideast policy. Democracy involves input from people. We cannot successfully impose a Democracy on Iraq by stifling a debate that was mandated by the people.

The neocons are simply using the same tactics as the progressives. Progressives play the exact same game of cutting the people out an stifling debate. We see this with Robert Redford's Sundance Summit. Just like Bush's troop surge, I think there is a great deal of merit to the issues discussed at the Sundance Summit. The format of the debate, however, cuts the people out of the process. In Sundance, mayors meet with movie stars. The movie stars give the mayors a progressive agenda along with a set of talking points, etc..

One of the talking points of the 2006 meeting (pdf) was for mayors to make links between the War in Iraq and Global Warming. Drum the talking points in, and you radicalize the population!!!!!

At the next summit, the mayors get judged by how well they carried off the set agenda.

I think that getting people together to talk about issues is great. I even agree with the statement that acting locally has a global effect (BTW, the ideas that your individual actions have a profound effect on the world is a center piece of the Christian tradition).

The problem is that this format used by both progressives and neocons end up destroying the debates that need to take place. The troop, green belts, reducing greenhouse gasses are all great ideas with substantial merit. The democratic method of debating issues helps hone the ideas and increases their viability.

Unfortunately, the political power structure is now dominated by people like Robert Redford and George W. Bush who achieve their objectives by cutting the people out of the process. The problem is on both sides.

And the Runner Up Is ... Smog

I know. It's old news. I guess I am behind the times. Anyway it looks like the second leading source of pollution in Los Angeles is [drum roll] Hollywood! Yep, the politically correct world of Hollywood is a leading producer of greenhouse gasses (report). The NBC4 article says that LA is wont to increase regulations on Hollywood. It sounds like they will spend taxpayers dollars to clean up after the stars.

I find it humorous that, as the Hollywood elite are banning together to criticize Americans for their consumption, the movie making industry itself has a spotted environmental history.

Resource Inflation

The inflation of fuel prices is being driven primarily by world wide demand for fuel.

The relatively small amount of inflation that the US is currently seeing is being driven by the world economy. The US economy is growing at a robust, but not irrational pace (especially considering the current state of world wide expansion).

What I don't understand is that the Federal Reserves has been jacking up interest rates in an effort to slow the US economy. Their aim is to spoil the US economy in a vain attempt to affect the global economy.

It seems to me that the wiser course would be to accept the inflation in the price of natural resources. The inflation that occurs because of rising world demand for oil is not something the US Federal Reserve to control. Trying to control something out of one's control can lead to bad consequences.

At this point, the struggle of the American economy is to realign itself with new global realities. Americans need to invest in conservation and there needs to be a major realignment of American investment so that our business will be better in line with new global realities.

Both of these goals are difficult because of the high interest rates.

The Fed needs to be making its rates decisions based on the state of the US economy (discounting inflation caused by the global economy). The US alone cannot control the global economy. It seems to me that stifling the US economy in a time of global expansion actually puts the US at a disadvantage.

Conservation Boom

I've been reading about some of the insanity going on with the present energy boom going on in the Mountain West. For the most part, the increased price for energy and other resources is good western economies as it means that resource providers are getting a good price for their material they extract and their efforts. Unfortunately, the boom and bust cycles in resource extraction are creating unnecessary pollution and environmental conserns.

A very minor spike in gas prices causes insanity.

This cycle where we throw too many resources into production during the upswing of a boom magnifies the depths of the upcoming energy bust while leaving future generations with a heavy clean up bill. Now is when we need political leadership that cautions resource extraction to go slowly. Instead we seem to have political leadership that simply reacts to trends, but fails to lead.

So many of the resources that we are rushing into the market today will not come online until the upcoming energy bust. The fact taht we rushed the development, means excessive pollution from the development.

We do not need politicians to rush more resources on line at the moment. What the public needs at this moment is a conservation boom, not an energy boom.

Kick the Oil Habit

Robert Redford is lending his star power to an initiative called Kick the Oil Habit which takes it cue from President Bush's 2006 confession that the US has an Oil Addiction. The site promotes alternative energy.

The site promotes the use of E85, windpower and other alternative fuels. NOTE, the site fails to mention that biodeisel and E85 have the negative effects of making our fuel supply compete directly with our food supply. A massive switch to bio fuels will probably result in mass starvations. Wind Power litters the environment with windmills that our children are likely to find are costly to maintain. Solar Cells run the risk of covering large sections of land with rather toxic pieces of litter.

This is all worth pursuing and promoting. There is no perfect energy source (The bicycle gets close, but it is hard to ride a bike during a snow storm).

Robert Redford appeared on Larry King last night. I think it would be great to have Redford taking a leading role in promoting alternative fuels. Unfortunately, instead of promoting fuel, he kept falling into partisan attacks. Here are a few quotes:

"the planet has already been trashed enough, particularly with the policies of this administration. Excuse me but it's a fact."

I agree that Bush has been a horrible president (especially in regards to energy). This is an opinion, however, and not a fact. The real problem here is that Redford leads directly off Bush's admitting that his policies were wrong into a partisan attack. I don't think that making that making energy policy more partisan will end up making sound energy policy.

Several times in the interview attacked Bush for secretly setting policy objectives behind the scene without public input. That is fair criticism. However, Robert Redford has been playing the exact same game for decades. The Sundance Summit is a case in point. In this and other initiatives, Redford would have closed meetings with town mayors (hypnotized by star power). In the closed meetings, Redford would set objectives for the town ... completely skirting the step of pulic input on important local projects.

My guess is that, in progressive fashion, Redford defines himself as "the public". Therefore public input is achieved when a movie star has a closed door session with politicians to set political agendas for a town. Yeah. Right!

I started writing this blog post hoping to praise the Kick the Habit site. Unfortunately, both the web site and the Kick the Oil Habit site are vacuous political hack jobs. The site was designed by The American Progressive Action Committee. The effort seems aimed primarily at making the development of alternative fuels more politically charged than it already is.

All of these alternative fuel sources have problems. They should all be developed, but there is no free lunch.

Kick the Oil Habit puts forward E85 as the free lunch (E85 is 85% ethanol and 15% oil). Yes, the fuel should be developed. However, this product will put fuel consumption in direct competition with food. It will increase demands on farmland, etc.. Corn is a good source for fuel, but it is not perfect.

In the end I have to pan Redford's initiative. Kick The Oil Habit appears to be more about creating partisan division than in working on the most difficult problem faced by our generation.

If you want real information on alternative fuels, the National Renewal Energy Laborator (NREL) is a better source.

Exxon Mobile's profits are on the move

There is a great big stink being made about Exxon's first quarter profit. Apparently Exxon's profits hit a record $8.4 billion.

The talking heads on TV are reaching news pitches of shrill while government wanks plan ways to buy political favoritism by finding ways to punish the oil companies. (For example Pete Domenici wants to raise a tax then buy voters with a $100 gas rebate.)

Anyway, looking at Exxon's profits. A few people have noted that most of this profit was made overseas. So, while Americans buy gas from overseas, a little bit of it comes back to the US in the form of profits.

Meanwhile the rise in gas prices is spurring American people to do something that no amount of legislation could accomplish. American people are once again engaged in figuring out how to use less gas! We are conserving more, and pumping investment dollars into research for alternative fuels.

I think there is a very good argument that Exxon/Mobile is too big. There is even a good argument that it is so large that it can assert monopolistic behavior. Approval of the Exxon Mobile merger was a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad mistake. Maybe splitting the company in half again would be in order.

A brain dead plan like raising taxes to give everyone a tax rebate check would be stupid. Cutting the taxes on gas would also be stupid since it would stop the current trend to conservation.

Encouraging people to stop wasting fuel is the right path.

I know!!! Why not leave the car home and ride the bike. Yes. Bikes are good. Bikes are fine. They only thing better than riding a bike is walking! Imagine walking a little bit more, and driving just a little be less?

Once Again ... The Price of Gas

I keep hearing people saying absurd things about the price of oil. The primary reason for the increase in the price of oil is that demand is skyrocketing. Here are a few of the wrong things people say about the price of gas:

A: The price of gas is going up because of taxes!

This statement is wrong. In the case of gase, prices are a fixed dollar amount and have not been raised. For that matter, if the taxes were lower, the proportional increase that we would be seeing at the pump would be higher. GasPriceWatch tells me the Federal gas tax is $0.184. The Colorado tax is $.22 per gallon. Utah taxes are $0.245. So, we are looking at a tax of about 40 cents a gallon.

In the last 5 years or so; we've seen an increase of about $1.00 per gallon to $3.00 a gallon. That is a nasty three fold increase. If the taxes were $.25 a gallon lower, we would have seen an increase from $.75 to $2.75. That would be a 3.6 percent increase!

The rise in gas prices in not being driven by a rise in taxation.

Personally, I think that, after prices stabilize, the government should think about raising gas taxes.

b: The Government is benefitting from the high gas price.

Since the rise in gas prices decreases consumption, then it reduces the amount of taxes collected. The government does get increased revenue from corporate taxes on oil companies and increased taxes on the income of mudloggers and other colorful characters in the gas industry. Of course, this increase is partially offset by the increased deductions for gas consumption in business and recessed economic activity caused by the rise in gas prices.

The US government is one of the biggest gas consumers in the world. The increased gas prices are hitting all areas of our resource intensive government hard.

c: Increasing production capacity will solve our problems.

In most situations, increasing production capacity solves supply issues. The consumption of a nonrenewable resource is a bit different. Different reports I've seen seem to indicate that the world is sitting near its maximum oil extraction rate. Any artificial increase in the extraction of oil simply transfers the dwindling reserves that future generations have into our gas tanks.

It is a hard fact to accept, but I fear that conservation of fuel and the development of alternative renewable energies are the only real long term solutions to our problem. With gas at $3 a gallon, we need to make sure we use each gallon wisely.

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day World!

Let your inner butterfly spirit flutter, recycle an aluminum can, use less gas and be happy.

Fuel and the Industrial Military Complex

Perhaps this is the answer to Bush's mysterious switch on conservation. Apparently, the US miltary is being weighed down by its consumption of fuel. Gelu Sulugiuc reports that the US military is consuming 12 times the fuel per soldier in Iraq than the US consumed in WWII.

I doubt Bush would have thought much of conservation if it was just something to preserve nature. The fact that the world's oil consumption is a major threat to the US military will spur action. The US prominence in the world today is funded strongly on our high per capita consumption of fuel. The great American suburban sprawl and dream of single family home ownership are not tenable at $10 a gallon gas.

One thing mentioned in the article is that armored vehicles consume more gas than unarmored vehicles. Did you notice in the recent spat about some US vehicles not having adequate armor only talked about the price of the armor and not about the price of the extra fuel needed to transport the armor.

How should human lives figure in this equation of conservation of energy? If doubling the energy consumption per US soldier could reduce American casualities in Iraq, should we double that consumption?

Anyway, do to the skyrocketing cost of fuel, the US military is now becoming a leading conservationist.

As for the rest of us. I am always baffled as to why so few people figure the cost of fuel into their various equations. We consider the cost of the RV into the our dreams of seeing the west, but fail to factor in the tanks of gas.

Wetlands

One of the big culprits in the New Orleans floods was the degradation of wetlands south of New Orleans (story). The two big contibuting factors here are oil drilling in the swamp and the various levee projects that protect New Orleans from the Mississippi and keep shipping channels open.

The problem with the modern re-engineered delta is that the delta is a living system that requires replenishing silt from the Mississippi River to stay in tact. We can argue that the problem was man's interference with nature.

This argument falls apoart because, if left to its own devices, the Mississippi River would have changed course decades ago.

I contend that another big factor was the overall problems with the levee systems that came to light in the 1993 Mississippi floods. In this flood we found that the large number of levee projects in the Mississippi basin were increasing the magnitude of the floods. In the attempt to protect everyone from floods, the massive government funded levees were creating a situation where we were more at risk.

The 1993 flood really dampened the Federal Government's willingness to fund levee projects.

Added to this was the realization that federally funded levee projects had the strange tendency to encourage people to live in flood plains.

A wise nation would have doubled its efforts to protect major urban areas (St. Louis and New Orleans) and left the rest to major flooding. Sadly, we don't live in a world of wise government, we live in a world of politicians.

As for the political circus. Looks like we are starting the great finger pointing game. Fortunately, we see expresidents united in efforts to help in the clean up: This is the Bush Clinton Katrina Fund. Habitat for Humanity is gearing up for a major house building effort.