#92 – Peter Barus: "Out of the loop"

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From Moderator: Peter Barus is a great friend, going back a half dozen years or so.  When first I knew him, he was an out-east big city guy, a computer specialist, an excellent trainer and all around good guy.  Two or three years ago or so he and his spouse moved into the very rural northeast U.S., to a farm, and here begins his story….
I have been out of the loop for a couple of weeks or more.
And it strikes me now that this is more than burnout or just an upsurge in activity around here  I’ve really had a change in lifestyle.
I used to be plugged in all the time, writing back to everybody, reading everything that came in within minutes or hours of arrival.
What’s happened?  For one thing, I moved to a farm without electricity, with wood heat, and spent two years living as if I hadn’t.  This year, instead of paying over a thousand dollars for enough wood to stay alive til spring, I decided to go get it myself.  after all, this is a 186-acre forest.
There was a big ice storm last winter that knocked the tops out of about a quarter of the big trees at the edges of the fields and along the roadsides.  The plan was to clean up the mess where its close to home, like the cluster of maples that fell on the old tent platform just up the hill beyond the garden; then go out along the roadsides where the Town crew left major trees for us, before the less scrupulous among our neighbros scarfed it up.  And we had some big chunks out of the logging operation from last winter that a neighbor kindly hauled out of the swamp and left me several truckloads in the front yard.
Lots of people around here rent a splitter and spend about two weeks making their winter pile.  I like splitting by hand.  But first I had to go cut up the trunks and load them in the truck and bring them home.  Then I set up a big stump about waist-high and got out the old maul.  This is like the child of an ax and a sledge hammer.
I got to where I’ve been able to stack about five cords so far; seven is comfortable; a dozen would be nice, cause we can just carry it over into next year.
But it hurts!  My hands are all gnarly and knotted and other words that sound like “nnggg!”  All my joints ache.  I’m not complaining!  I’m strong as an ox now, at age 61.  But how many more seasons can I keep this up?
I think the secret is pacing.  A few strokes a day, rather than a crash-and-burn, all-out, heroic effort.
In between all this, clean the chimneys with the long handled brushes, finish re-shingling the roof, host a family reunion, etc.
We live in the previous centruy, or the one before that, now.  sleep when it gets dark, and up with the first hint of a sunrise.  Life here is a direct struggle with nature, and nature is changing fast too.  Weather like nobody’s seen before, changes in soil, habitats, flora and fauna.
Well, as I say, a change in lifestyle.  By the time I get to the Town Library and hook up to the local wi-fi, I ain’t got much to say, somehow.
But keep ’em coming.  I’ll get to it.
Love,
Peter

#77 – Dick Bernard: The political execution of Van Jones (and a possibility or two)

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Van Jones is now history, at least insofar as an office in the White House is concerned.
I heard Van Jones speak in person twice.  The last time, in March, 2009, was apparently his last public speech before joining the Obama administration.  I bought his book, “The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems” (HarperOne 2008).  It comes with an all-star list of endorsers.  It’s well worth reading.  He is a phenomenal person.
Of course, Mr. Jones has now been publicly executed, resigning from his post within the Obama administration for what appears to have been two ‘sins’: signing a petition, and using colorful language about Republicans.  I’m quite certain I signed the same petition some time (questioning the truth of 9-11*); and as for colorful language, my guess is that Jones ‘executioners’ were at least equally colorful in their description of him in their private meetings.  But that is now simply history.  Jones would be a distraction if he remained on the White House staff.  Life goes on.
Jones ‘demise’ is just the latest example of a contemporary political reality: anyone aspiring politically is fair game for anything, whether true or not.  There is no such thing as a truly personal life for a political figure.  We are all quite literally surrounded by our past, remembered or not.  This is a matter of consequence for our version of democracy.  We need gifted people in government; many gifted people say “no thanks” to public life, and not only because they can make more money elsewhere.  The ‘costs’ of the job are simply too high.
Van Jones is a gifted speaker and visionary.  That was obvious the first time we heard him in June, 2008, at the National Media Reform Conference, and the second in March, 2009. At the conclusion of the 2009 speech (at the University of Minnesota) we were told that he would likely not be doing more public speaking. There was another assignment in the offing, we were told.  It was not hard to put two and two together.  Not long after we saw him, he appeared on the White House roster.
Now, presumably, Van Jones can again speak as an individual.
But I really hope that persons interested in nurturing and development of a “Green Economy” don’t sit back and expect Van Jones to do the heavy lifting.  There is a real danger that could happen; perhaps it already had.  After all, one can reason, he’s in the White House, we don’t have to do anything more.  Not true.  In fact, the opposite is true.  With the opportunity comes the work.    
What better a development than have a million or more advocates for the change that Van Jones sought doubling their personal efforts to make his dream not only stay alive, but grow more quickly?
Personally, I don’t need to hear him speak again, and I doubt many others do either.
What is needed are “boots on the ground” doing what needs to be done; putting in place the multitude of ideas he so well articulated for the future of this nation.
Perhaps the Republicans have done the movement a favor – if we make it so.
* – This reminded me of a 9-11 project I need to do: check the July 23 posting at this blog for details.  You may wish to participate as well.

#41 – Dick Bernard: Lobbying

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I watch commercial television infrequently, usually local and national news programs in the early evening.  Some times I’m stuck with it, as when we draw baby-sitting duty and some kids channel is on.
For a lot of years I totally boycotted the medium (I didn’t lose anything; on the other hand, it was probably over-kill on my part.)  But what I noticed is that the main purpose of commercial television is to advertise, which is to say, manipulate public opinion.  I had to get away from the medium to see this.
Advertising (lobbying) is incessant.
In the last few days, I have noted from assorted sources something that has long been obvious: Big Business through individual entities like the energy companies, pharmaceuticals, the American Medical Association, the United States Chamber of Commerce, etc., is set to launch major and expensive lobbying campaigns to, essentially, assure that their own status quo (profit making machines) is minimally changed, if at all.
Their target is lawmakers, yes, but really the main target is every one of us.  Prepare for the 2009 version of “Harry and Louise” (the immensely successful 1993 advertising campaign to stop health care reform.)  
Those who we elected to serve us will be bombarded with finely tuned positions.  So will we.
The constant temptation for citizens is to say, in one way or another, “I can’t make a difference anyway”, and then proceed to prove our point by not getting on the court.  This is a dangerous attitude.
The process is easy enough: find out who your own elected representatives are, their local phone number and address, etc., and send them your own brief and polite messages frequently.  It is ideal if they actually know you as people (you’ve worked for them in campaigns, donated or etc.) but regardless, they all know you as the most important person of all: “potential voter”.      Recognize that they have an exceedingly complex job: many constituencies, many priorities. 
Too many of “we the people” still have the attitude I once saw at a polling place: a very grumpy guy went into the booth next to me, came out and said, “now I’ve voted and I have the right to complain.”  I don’t know what he meant by this declaration: was he voting for (or against) somebody; did he mean that all he had to do was vote, and that ended his role in making decisions: did he feel his vote reserved his right to gripe about how terrible things are, but not work to change them? 
He seemed to be leaving the most important part of his job as a citizen behind.
Everything I remember about his attitude that day indicated that he thought he had absolved himself of any responsibility for the outcome between the elections.
Not true.
There are endless sources of information about how to more effectively lobby for your issues.  Here’s one worth looking at: http://www.wellstone.org/organizing-tools/being-successful-citizen-lobbyist.
Get on the court.

#34 – Bruce Fisher, Carol Ashley: The Conversation about Climate Change

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A reader comment follows this post.
Note from Moderator: On the local evening news on June 1, the weatherman noted that May, 2009, was one of the driest on record, exceeded only by May, 1934, a year of great drought.  Is May, 2009, just an unusual month of weather, or a looming manifestation of serious climate change problems to come?  Are those concerned about climate change simply worry-warts, or are those unconcerned denying an unpleasant reality?  Do we live in the moment, or act for the long term?
In early April, I publicized a website that features a 20+ section “Crash Course” to help understand the possibilities of the future, and by understanding help deal with those possibilities.  The website is http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse for those interested.  In my opinion it’s well worth the three hours it takes to view the sections. 
Carol Ashley took the time to view the series, and commented on it in #19 on this blog, May 11, 2009.
Bruce Fisher also took the time and on May 25 posted the following, to which Carol filed her own response.
Bruce Fisher: I’ve been thinking about the “Crash Course” and the significance of its concepts for our environment and economy.  A few days ago, [an] article by George Lakoff appeared in the Huffington Post and it struck me that framing is understanding and the environment and economy need to be framed together (the [political] right has done this for years with the emphasis on the environment as material resource for the economy).  As a cognitive scientist, Lakoff knows this best.  For those who have taken the “Crash Course”, [the Lakoff commentary at http://tinyurl.com/08pwon] is an especially relevant article.  [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/why-environmental-underst_b_205477.html ]
Carol Ashley:  From Lakoff’s article “…one of the things Westen and Lake get right is in an incomprehensible diagram on the back page: an explanation of why discussions of climate fail.  It is hidden in a discussion of “associations,” an inadequate way of discussing the public’s frame-based logic.  Climate and weather are usually understood as beyond immediate causation, something you are subject to, but can’t just go out and change right away.  Climate is not directly and causally connected to the values that underlie our concerns about our planet’s future: empathy, responsibility, freedom, and our ability to thrive.  They try to say that in the diagram, but the arrows and lines don’t communicate it.”
What I see in my rural area is that people are prone to see the weather as a daily event: at the most, a weekly or seasonally based phenomena.  It’s kind of the same problem in government…no long range vision.  So people are prone not to see the effects of short term actions, not to see the actuality of broader patterns and rather base assumptions on climate on a cooler than usual spring season, for example.
Rural people and those in small towns often value community and their particular environment.  (Their community tends to be very small comprising only their extended family, church and friends.)  They don’t value getting rich.  They also don’t trust government and haven’t for years. They vote and expect who they voted for to do the work of politics.  They tend not to stay informed.  They don’t have the time and the access to information.  And their lives are often a struggle to survive.  They, therefore, don’t make policy so these observations may not apply to others, but I think some applies to just being human and there are plenty of poor people in cities who for racial reasons are also mistrustful of others and rely on their communities.
There is also an issue of “delayed gratification” here, I think.  That ability to do what needs to be done, sacrificing what one wants for what one will have in the future and even forgoing what one wants for the sake of one’s children and grandchildren.  It’s easier to do that for one’s own children than to consider the world’s children.  I think, in order for delayed gratification to be possible for an individual, one has to have some basic needs met, like food, shelter and some measure of health.  Long-term poverty undermines that.
The reason this may be important is that those on the extreme right are often rural and poor.  People in cities who live in poverty are often focused on basic needs, too, and need framing that applies to them more immediately and practically.  The difference between the rural and city poor, I think, is the very fierce independence of the rural and their valuing of that independence and the rural environment over the desire for wealth.  Either way, the best way to reach these people is through major media and through churches.  (Even then they tend to be pretty independent minded and hold to what they have always believed.)  The framing has to reach them that way.  So the first step is back to square one, in my opinion.  Get corporations out of government and create an avenue for non-profit media.  Is that even possible any more?  Like most rural people, I doubt it.  The super rich are in control and will be.  Haven’t they always been?  Even in the beginnings of our country?
I suppose my pessimism comes partly from being rural and poor.  I have little ability to be an activist.  The poor and rural always seem to be at the mercy of others.
Note from Moderator: Essays from others on this topic are solicited.  Watch future entries.

#19 – Carol Ashley: Chris Martenson's "Crash Course"

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Dick Bernard: On April 7, my friend John sent me an e-mail, as follows: “My son Joel sent this to me. It is fascinating and disturbing. http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/ You should check out this website and his seminar (several youtube videos embedded on the site). It touches on and brings together the topics of finance, national debt, inflation, peak oil, etc. It is in 20+ parts and takes over 3 hours, but it’s very worth it.”
Carol, whose comments follow, also watched the entire series, as have I and several others I know of. Carol lives in rural Minnesota near a town of perhaps 4000 residents. Following her comments, I add a few of mine. She and I wrote completely independent of each other: we didn’t know what the other had to say. Suffice to say, we think the series is worth your time. You can’t reach a conclusion about it without actually watching it all. Consider taking the time.
Carol Ashley:
No one wants to hear bad news. We had eight years of hearing more and more bad news. I often thought it couldn’t get worse, but it did. Now we just want to hope again. So Chris Mortensen’s Crash Course isn’t for the faint of heart.
When the housing bubble burst, you probably couldn’t help thinking of
the Great Depression. Christian’s of some persuasions were (and are) convinced that the end of the world is imminent. I, too, still think the
financial mess we are in is just the beginning of hard times. There are
a lot more forces coming together that make this a unique crisis and not nearly just a matter of a depression/recession. Martenson’s Crash Course outlines several reasons why, though he doesn’t include global climate change. Martenson makes sense of why by explaining the exponential factor and then showing how it works in various areas. His explanations are easy to understand and very basic. One of the things I’ve been most disgusted with in the constant news about the financial mess is that it seems to relate mostly to people who make a lot of money. Martenson is more about the very roots of economics, in the opinion of people who live much farther down the economic ladder.
Although Martenson gives a little hope at the end in thinking that our
quality of life could improve, he does not see the catastrophic
consequences for those who cannot save or plan for the coming crisis. So do I think there is no hope? I really have very little hope that people will see the light, or that they will work together, or that anything substantial will be done soon enough. I hope to be proven wrong.
America has been so focused on individualism (capitalism is good at
fostering the “pull yourself up by your bootstrap mentality) that I
wonder if people can work together. There are two things I see in my
community. One is that people despise those who can’t “make
it” even though they are among them in the broader sense of who has
wealth. They also despise the government and see no hope coming from that direction. On the other hand though, they also do think there is a lack of focus on community and some are actively working to build local resources in the form of promoting the local food movement.
One other thing I’d like to mention is that Martenson doesn’t bring in
politics per se. He appears to be on the right side of the political
divide. The coming economic disaster is one area where I see some
agreement in what some on the right and the left fear. Unfortunately,
without any sane discussion about the causes, one cannot sanely address solutions.
Martenson includes a self-assessment elsewhere on his website. One thing that struck me was in his section about safety. He asks if one has guns, knows how to use them and has addressed other safety issues, like the development of community with those who live nearby. Somehow, though I’ve had the same thoughts and I’ve heard others on the left express similar thoughts, it struck me as more of a right-wing manner of facing the issue. It is an expression of the extreme individualism in this country…the tendency to focus on taking care of self through one’s own means rather than coming together as a community to address concerns through sane government.
Personally, I think everyone in the country should listen to Martenson’s Crash Course.
Dick Bernard observations made before reading Carol’s: The “3 hours” part was a bit daunting, but I took on the task, initially watching the first 3 or 4 segments, then ultimately the rest. It was helpful that a coffee-time friend of mine, Steve, who I told about the course, actually watched the whole thing before I did, and was glad he did. Steve is a retired manager for a major corporation and not prone to take leaps based on limited or no data. I trusted his judgment. I have only a vague notion of Steve’s political orientation: we’re simply friends sharing a space for an hour or so each morning.
The Crash Course didn’t provide me with any new or unusual information, but I found it very useful. It is in easily digestable “bites”, and can be watched all at once, or over time. Martenson covers the bases of the present and possible future consequences, and does it in a non-partisan way. He teaches well. He presents information he thinks is important. The conclusions are left to the viewer.
No one knows for certain exactly what will happen in the future. But Martenson makes a persuasive case that the next 20 years will not resemble the past 20, and that the longer term is not going to be a time where the lifestyle we’ve become accustomed to over the last 20 years will return. There are too many “exponential curves” facing us, in population, energy use, etc., and if we factor in things like peak oil, climate change, global economic instability and such, and one is foolish to pretend that life can go on without very substantial changes in how we choose to live.
Succinctly, we all lived in the golden years. We, particularly those who come after us, are going to pay for our excess, and more than just in dollars.
Every day I see little ones, those from tiny newborns to teenager, and when I think of the future, I think about what’s ahead for them. My Dad lived about 20 years beyond my present age, so I might be around to see if Martenson’s predictions about the last 20 years are correct. But the present-day youngsters will be faced head-on with what we left behind, and they’ll just be in early adulthood when that 20 years comes.
I highly recommend watching the videos.
Final Notes from Dick after reading Carol’s: I was struck by how often Carol used the words “individualism” and “community” and their near relatives, like “together” or “local” to describe present and coming relationships in our own society. The community vs individual polarity is in itself a very complex yet very important topic for someone interested in writing about it.
Update June 3, 2009:  Note #34 published this date for more on this topic.

#5 – Dick Bernard: What will be left for our Grandchildren and their descendants? Do we think long or short-term, or not at all?

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Reader comment follows this post.
Today our Congresswoman is holding a town hall meeting quite certainly aimed at stopping something called “Cap and Trade” which, she says in a recent op ed, is a “tax [that] would require energy producers and businesses to pay to emit carbon emissions in the hope of reducing greenhouse gases.”
I plan to attend the meeting. [See postscript, which follows below, written April 10.]
The Congresswomans focus seems completely on the present: taxes, jobs, cost of gasoline, government regulation. There is nothing apparent in her remarks that exhibit concern for the future generations, those who will pay big time for our countries short-sightedness now and, indeed, in the past. We continue to live as if there is no tomorrow, and we seem to have forgotten that our kids, grandkids, their cohort worldwide, and their descendants after them, will have to live (and die) with what we have left them.
Below is my small contribution to the “cap and trade” conversation that I will, at minimum, leave with the Congresswoman.
My feelings of concern are elevated by the fact that earlier today I spent a couple of hours with a third grade grandson at his school. (Today they were having an international day, and my class hour was spent learning about China from a young woman who grew up in Beijing. It was very interesting.)
Here is my very brief summary of the history of energy in our country (and by extension the world.)
“Peaks”
? – Peak use of trees as source of fuel and light.
1847 – Peak Whale Oil* (for lamps and such).
1859 – Oil business begins in western Pennsylvania
U.S. population then was 10% of today
Early 1900s – Commercial production of horseless carriages
U.S. population was about one-fourth of today
Five present states were not yet in the Union
1927 – U.S. wells pump 75% of world’s oil supply**
No activity in Arabian peninsula.
2000s – Peak Oil passes – now its all “down hill”***
U.S. population exceeds 300,000,000
with about 250,000,000 motorized vehicles
Do we pay now, or do we pay later? In my mind, there is no doubt which should be chosen, unless we truly don’t care about those descendants springing from our generation.
Notes:
* – Penn State Professor Richard Alley of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change www.ipcc.ch  (from his talk to school kids at Augsburg Nobel Peace Prize Festival Minneapolis March 5, 2009. His informative talk is on YouTube.  See http://www.peacesites.org/educators/nobelfestival for a link to the talk.)
** – recollection after looking at a 1927 Encyclopedia Britannica in London late October, 2001.
*** – Major editorial in Minneapolis Star Tribune August 27, 2005.
Postscript after the Congresswoman’s session:
I attended the entire session which appeared to attract about 300 people. The main presenter was a representative of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an oil-company backed think tank. It was hard to ascertain the makeup of the crowd since proceedings were tightly controlled, including police presence. No signs were permitted, and only written questions were accepted – and only a few of those made the cut. The presentation was predictable, almost impossible to take notes, full of sarcasm and a good sized enemies list. It was devoid of proposed solutions. It was against, not for.
I left the session with some dominant thoughts:
1) I wouldn’t (and didn’t) change any of what I wrote prior to the meeting (see above).
2) “Global warming” and its impact may be impossible to tie down with precision, but the accumulation of evidence through science is not wise to ignore or dismiss or ridicule. Humankind may well be courting disaster through its own actions (and inactions) and, worse, these errors in judgment are not reversible by man. We had one chance to do it right. I think the advocates sounding the alarm about global climate change have a stronger argument, and the public is listening. People are not at all sure we are in routine times. Industry knows this. Big business is far more culpable than ordinary people for the problem since it has and had greater research capacity, but simple culpability (blaming) will not solve the problem. That’s for all of us.
3) Scarcity of elements essential to contemporary society like fossil fuels are easier to quantify and, thus, to use as warnings to the public.
4) As I was leaving the parking lot I got to thinking about desperately poor Haiti (which got a couple of sarcastic mentions from the speaker – and chuckles from some in the audience). Haiti was one of Christopher Columbus’ early stops about 1492. After its discovery, it was a treasure trove of natural resource, ripe for the picking. It was a source of great wealth for France. The Spanish first, then the French and finally we Americans, “raped, looted and pillaged” the Caribbean island into a corpse of its former self. A too-cold-to-live-in Haiti is where our developed countries are ultimately heading, in my opinion. Once our resources are gone, or too expensive to recover or purchase, we end. And this could happen sooner than later.
5) We are well advised to listen to, take seriously, and prepare for the worst case scenarios, especially as they relate to resource scarcity, especially fossil fuels.
6) We are also well advised to work hard and sacrifice now for a better than expected future. This is no time to give up.
A recommendation:
I would also urge readers to check http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/  and take the time to watch the entire “crash course” which requires 2-3 hours, in very manageable time segments of from a couple of minutes, to 15 or so. It comes highly recommended by a friend who is analytical, not partisan and not prone to overreaction. Check out the about page for the credentials of the author of the seminar then make your own decision.
Chris Martenson ultimately talks about 20 years out from now; the grandson I visited in school yesterday (one of many in my constellation) will be 29 then. It makes one think.

#4 – Dick Bernard: The 2009 Red River Flood as Messenger

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Just 250 miles northwest of where I type, a local crisis, a threatened flood in the Red River Valley, is occurring which pleads for a dialogue dealing with long term and global implications. The news focus will be on the immediate and the local (saving someone’s home, etc.). Once the crisis passes, and the damage assessed, most will return to business as usual…until the next local crisis, wherever that happens to occur.
As I write, Fargo-Moorhead and the Red River Valley are between crests of threatened devastating floods. It would appear, because of two separate crests, that the Valley may dodge a disastrous flood in 2009, only a dozen years after the huge floods of late April 1997 which came a month later in the spring. Heavy snow, plus an early thaw this year, and a very close call with high waters in late March, may have helped avert a greater disaster in coming days. Time will tell.
Some would say that this flood and other catastrophes are random acts of nature; others would say there is evidence of the consequence of global warming. Other culprits can be claimed to be urban development, farmers draining their fields, people living in places they shouldn’t live, dikes interfering with the normal course of high water, just plain bad weather – the previous record flood, after all, was in 1897…. Of course, someone wrote a letter to the editor of the Fargo paper that God was punishing a certain clinic in Fargo….
As instant events go, any individuals speculation is as good as anyone else’s. Most of us simply don’t have the needed “data”, or we simply pick and choose what it is we wish to believe. Fantasy works, for a while, anyway.
*
The 2009 flooding, which began about March 25, caused me to think back to three past events which are – in my mind at least – related to the news about Fargo-Moorhead and the Red River Valley.
1. In mid-August 2005, I completed a major revision of a family history of my mother’s side of the family. Included in the text was a new chapter on a treasure-trove of letters from 1905-06 found in the attic of the old North Dakota farm house where my mother grew up. The letters had come from my Grandparents kin and others in rural Wisconsin, mostly from Grandma’s six sisters. There were over 100 of them.
The letters were very interesting. One of the letters dated July 13, 1905, said “Sunday, Maggie and Ida had a horse for themselves to church and they met an automobile and she tied the horse to a rail fence but the horse dident move and Ann Miller was in with them and she was hollering let me out.” (p. 20)
The automobile they met was a curiosity, including to the horse. The comment reminds that even in our short history, cars are a new-fangled thing.
By 2005, the automobile had long been ubiquitous in our society; the weather has seemed to be changing markedly. Significant changes? Your choice.
I was printing the book, literally, when the August 27, 2005, Minneapolis Star Tribune had a long editorial entitled “Oil’s peak: The end may be nearer, it seems.” I decided to include the editorial as an insert with the book. I put a hand-written note on the margin of the editorial: “…and we can’t ignore Hurricane Katrina & possibilities that hurricanes and such might connect to Global warming.”
The day after I mailed the book, Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Louisiana coast.
“As we speak”, in 2009, stuff is still whirring around the internet about how dumb and shiftless those people in New Orleans were for living there in the first place, for not saving themselves when the hurricane was bearing down on them, and for not relying on their own resources for their recovery.
A similar narrative is unlikely about Fargo and the flood-prone Red River Valley. Indeed, the North Dakota and Minnesota officials have already asked for massive federal aid to repair and prepare for the next flood…. There is no serious thought about relocating Fargo-Moorhead to the east or to the west to mitigate against future flood problems.
*
2. On March 5, 2009, I attended the annual Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Speaking to over 500 school kids that morning, Professor Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University packed a huge amount of content into eight entertaining and enlightening minutes. (His complete talk to the youngsters and a summary video of the Festival will be on YouTube soon.).
Professor Alley is one of a team of thousands of scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change http://www.ipcc.ch/, and who co-won, with Al Gore, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on climate change.
Professor Alley’s message to the kids on the issue was succinct: he came, he said, from Pennsylvania, whose name means “Penn’s Woods”. He gave a little history lesson starting with a chart of the Mesa Verde settlement in southwest Colorado: human activity and population there were controlled entirely by available water. If there was water, there were people; no water, no people.
In early Pennsylvania, wood was the first reliable fuel; then it became Whale Oil for lamps. “Peak Whale Oil” came in 1847, he said.
The oil age really began when the first oil well was drilled in western Pennsylvania in 1859, only 150 years ago this year. Someone 75 years old has lived a “half-life” of this Fossil Fuel era. And we’ve passed the Peak, and the demand for energy guarantees a more rapid and uncertain downhill slope.
*
3. In October, 2001, we were staying at a bed and breakfast in London. In the hallway was a 1927 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. One day I looked at the section on petroleum. My recollection is that the Britannica said, that in that era the U.S. produced 75% of the worlds petroleum, and even though oil had been discovered and recovered in many places by then, the only major producer elsewhere was an oil field in Persia (now Iran). The Middle East countries? None of them appeared on the chart.
*
Times have changed, and circumstances as well. In 1859, the U.S. population was roughly one-tenth of today’s, and motor vehicles not even a dream. In 1905, there were only 45 states and roughly one-fourth of today’s population. Cars were a curiosity. Today we have over 300,000,000 people in our country alone, and there are over 800 motorized vehicles per 1000 population (2004 data).
We don’t have 150 years to get our act together. We may not even have ten. Our addiction is killing us.
Is climate change a myth, or an ominous trend? Are we running out of affordable fossil fuel? What do we do about our insatiable appetite for “fossil algae” (Oil)? What cause in the matter of climate change are we as humans? What are the consequences for those who follow us? It should matter to us.
How we answer those questions is our choice. Our descendants will experience the consequences.
To dismiss the Fargo-Moorhead floods, and other facts as being simply local events is to be short-sighted. We have to pay attention and act.