Provocations

Portland Oregon activates a plan for declining oil

Oil being a finite resource, the current price reduction can only be temporary (unless our technological society has a meltdown). Here's a report posted to the Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society's Listserve:

From a report by Richard Case:

Portland is the first US city to have completed a Peak Oil Task Force Report. A short follow-up report is also available. The first recommendation is "Act Big Act Now", followed by: . . . foster a resilient, interconnected community, reduce fuel use by 50% in 25 years, expand local food production and processing, expand conservation programs, preserve farmland, develop contingency plans for fuel shortages, beef up social and economic support systems, among others. It also predicts that implementation of the recommendations will have an overall positive social and economic impact.

Many other cities now have peak oil initiatives with reports due soon including (San Francisco, Berkeley, Austin, Denver, Hamilton, Oakland, Burnaby; and Bellingham, and at least a dozen more (see….) I’m told that Portland has plans and projects to rip up some paved parking lots, sidewalks, curbs and gutters in favour of swales and more permeable surfaces to improve rainwater infiltration and aquifer recharge. Buses and trolleys in the downtown core are free.

Obama? Romney? How about neither?

When I was a child care worker and I wanted to give a frustrated child a little space, a sense of some autonomy in what was often a very restricted setting, I'd seek to give them a couple of acceptable (to me) options. It often eased the frustration. Are voters in the upcoming US election - and many others - essentially limited to choices that sustain the corporate status quo? If you want to give this some serious thought, try this recent column by Chris Hedges.

How Do You Take Your Poison?

By Chris Hedges — Posted on Sep 24, 2012

We can take it from nurse Romney or we can take it from nurse Obama, but one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down our throats.

Read more

Chris Hedges, the CBC and a recent interview with the Straight.

If you haven't seen this video, it's worth a watch - for Hedges' example of handling a shallow and insulting interviewer, while still getting his point across. Below is a more recent interview by The Straight, which includes his current perspective on his experience at the CBC.

 

From a July 14th  interview on the Straight.

GS: Last year you were ambushed by the CBC. Were you aware of Kevin O’Leary’s reputation before you went on?

CH: I never heard of the guy. And it was really depressing because it was the CBC, and if it was the CBC that it used to be—the CBC or the BBC—and they wanted me, I would go, because I thought they were a first-class news organizations. And the next thing you know, I’m on with an idiot who should be on Fox News. And I was furious because I was in the middle of a huge Occupy demonstration in Washington, and I walked to the CBC studios from it, and it was a waste of my time. And unfortunately I think it’s just emblematic of Harper’s assault against journalism that somebody like this would ever be on a current-affairs program.

GS: We interviewed him here shortly after. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

CH: Well, these guys are idiots. They’re really idiots, and because they can’t compete with you on ideas they descend to insults and character assassination, because that’s the only level of discourse they can engage in. That’s why I don’t go on Fox News. I don’t put myself in those positions, because it doesn’t contribute to public discourse in any way.

Working with beneficial weeds

Using his young food forest as an example, Michael Pilarski shows some of the many riches that can be generated by working with the plant kingdom.

The bottom of the oil barrel is covered in tarsand

Investments and vested interests can cloud vision. Maybe there's enough in this video to break through a few hardened hearts, hardened to the state of our planet and its people.

I think I'd have more respect for someone who said, I know it may be hurting our planet and its people but I still think it's the best thing to do. Instead most support for the tar-sands seems to rely on smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile, true to the pattern of addiction (money, oil . . . ), it is the addiction that drives. And, of course, the whole family suffers; in this case, the human family, starting with the most vulnerable:

A simple way to reduce the rich-poor gap

To put it simply, it's more efficient, more compassionate, more dignified to give citizens enough to live on than to have them suffer until they are desperate, sick, uneducated . . . . Some have called this a guaranteed minimum income, Brazil calls it a family grant. The core idea is the same. With the gulf between rich and poor widening in many affluent nations to the point of obscenity, it's clear that state and private charities do not work (while, of course, they significantly help some people and situations). In wealthy Canada the child poverty rate is very high and not going down.

Tina Rosenberg's article, in the new York Times opinion pages updates this option with the news that a significant number of countries give regular payments to poor families resulting in a significant reduction in the gap between rich and poor. She writes:

The city of Rio de Janeiro is infamous for the fact that one can look out from a precarious shack on a hill in a miserable favela and see practically into the window of a luxury high-rise condominium. Parts of Brazil look like southern California. Parts of it look like Haiti. Many countries display great wealth side by side with great poverty. But, until recently, Brazil was the most unequal country in the world.

Today, however, Brazil’s level of economic inequality is dropping at a faster rate than that of almost any other country. Between 2003 and 2009, the income of poor Brazilians has grown seven times as much as the income of rich Brazilians. Poverty has fallen during that time from 22 percent of the population to 7 percent.

Contrast this with the United States, where, from 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the increase in Americans’ income went to the top 1 percent of earners. (see this great series in Slate by Timothy Noah on American inequality) Productivity among low and middle-income American workers increased, but their incomes did not. If current trends continue, the United States may soon be more unequal than Brazil.

Several factors contribute to Brazil’s astounding feat. But a major part of Brazil’s achievement is due to a single social program that is now transforming how countries all over the world help their poor.

The program, called Bolsa Familia (Family Grant) in Brazil, goes by different names in different places. In Mexico, where it first began on a national scale and has been equally successful at reducing poverty, it is Oportunidades. The generic term for the program is conditional cash transfers. The idea is to give regular payments to poor families, in the form of cash or electronic transfers into their bank accounts, if they meet certain requirements. The requirements vary, but many countries employ those used by Mexico: families must keep their children in school and go for regular medical checkups, and mom must attend workshops on subjects like nutrition or disease prevention. The payments almost always go to women, as they are the most likely to spend the money on their families. The elegant idea behind conditional cash transfers is to combat poverty today while breaking the cycle of poverty for tomorrow.

Read on

A graphic dose of fossil fuel reality

Bad news and good: the cavalry ain't coming - but this is not a job for the cavalry.

Richard Heinberg's been putting this stuff out for a very long time. I know this in more detail than most because I ran his web site for a few years. Sad to say, while his message is updated, it's not that different from what he was saying ten years and more ago. Scientists have known for a lot longer that we are heading for a fuel crisis that is threatening the foundation of most developed economies and cultures as well as the viability of our planet as we know it. But, what do scientists know? Just find one doubter with a degree in something and we can dismiss the seriousness of the situation and continue heading in the same direction.

Solutions are around but, for now, here's a little tool that may help us face the facts. Gotta do that first. My names Jeffrey and I'm a fossil-fuel-aholic. A 12-step process for governments? Maybe. My country's Canada and it's a fossil-fuel-aholic.

The implications of charity - an animation by Slavoj Zizek

This development of charity as a "built-in" feature of our politico-economic system has been grinding away in my mind for a while. It's a relief to have it articulated so well.

In this country, at least, the food bank was intended as emergency relief. Now, as corporate government treats hunger as a food bank responsibility, the food banks are running out of food and calling on the people to give more, many of them the same ones who now need the food bank themselves.

The HST in BC: Some helpful clarification

Wrong HST Question, Premier Campbell

He asks how we can afford to drop the hated tax, so he can give the wrong answer.

By Bill Tieleman, Today, TheTyee.ca

The real question on killing the HST isn't about cutting services or raising the provincial sales tax.

The real HST question Premier Gordon Campbell fears is this: "Do you want to personally pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars in new taxes every year to subsidize big business?"

Read the article

Reality Check on Haiti's recovering manufacturing industries