Back to the permanent recession

Analysis at The Oil Drum suggests that $85/barrel oil puts the economy into recession.  At this hour, oil is trading above $89/barrel, and it has been hovering in the mid- to high-$80 range awhile.  Now that the census figures are trickling out, the south is poised to increase their number of Congresspeople.  Of course, that means that once state legislatures have redrawn their electoral district maps, we will see more republicans in the House.  I don’t think I need to remind anyone who stops by here (anyone? hello?) how damaging republican priorities (I wouldn’t call them policies) are to our future.

More of the same

What to say after a hiatus?  Ever since the IEA report confirming peak oil, discussions have focused on what do to next.  Beats me.  I’ve been trying to focus on that for quite some time, and the report doesn’t change that.  I remain convinced that a strong, central response is required. 

Now that Obama has shown his true stripes on economic policy, which should neither be called democratic nor stimulative, we’re in trouble.  The way to fix things is not to weaken the federal government in influence or money.  The fix comes with honesty – and frankly, community organization of the entire country.

So long, Congressional Panel on Global Warming

Take that, earth. Boehner's pulled the plug.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for the incoming House majority leader, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the decision was consistent with a Republican pledge "to save taxpayers' money by reducing waste and duplication in Congress." Steel said that the select committee was created "to provide a political forum to promote Washington Democrats' job-killing national energy tax."

Thanks.

2012

I’m opening up the discussion to proposals for the 2012 election.  Who should run?  We need someone to run from Obama’s left; he’s already running to his own right, considering all the folding he’s done in preparation for a republican house.  How about Russ Feingold, departing Wisconsin Senator?

I would like to see the campaign season bring out public debate of the open secrets on this blog.  Priority one is not deficit reduction.  And if you have to talk about deficit reduction, priority one there is not freezing federal pay, but either raising taxes – yes, Raising Taxes! – or reducing the defense budget.  There, I said that, too – Cut the Defense Budget!

The top priorities are dealing with climate change and the end of cheap energy.  Everything follows from those two things.

Happy Thanksgiving

See you after the holiday. Have a tasty one.

Back to the mission

Pardon the light posting lately. The blog has turned into a repository of bad news, not my original intention for it. I want this blog to be a place to find positive ideas and to discuss plans that can be put into action. Any ideas?

Environmental Keynesianism

Susan George tackles how we can beat environmental problems within the capitalist framework.  Because we are stuck with capitalism…

George's prescription is not to lobby governments to impose sane and planet-saving reforms on corporations; that’s not likely to happen when most politicians (in the developed nations, at least) are fervently and blindly pro-laissez-faire-capitalism themselves. Nor does she have any faith that business leaders can be persuaded to abandon their global warming ways voluntarily.

Her solution is to replicate for a “war” against climate change the same large-scale political-business collaboration that was mounted to fight the war against Nazi Germany. In that historic campaign, both politicians and CEOs saw not only the urgent need to join forces to win the Second World War—but the profit to be made as well. The politicians increased their popularity with the voters, and the CEOs increased their revenues by manufacturing guns, tanks, bombers, warships, and submarines.

Fascinating read.  If anyone has access to her original article, please comment here.

What I’m also excited about is that I now have a label to use for the economic transition, Environmental Keynesianism.  Sometimes having a name is a needed step toward a transition.

Food production and the economy

George Mobus asks a good question:

Could we solve two problems at once?

Solving the Unemployment Problem and Preparing for Power Down Simultaneously

He suggests a new kind of Civilian Conservation Corps for farmland, set up for permaculture.

Thoughts?

Local food

Sharon Astyk brings up some good issues. 

What I want to argue, in fact is that the accusation that local food is elitist is actually a product of the industrial food infrastructure - that is, the requirements of an industrial food system, the presumption that the basic structure of food production should be industrialized is what makes the price of good food higher. The accusation that local food isn't "serious" because it costs more is an accusation in bad faith - the reason it costs more is because the same system makes it cost more.

Read on and stay tuned for more posts about food.

A big step?

Stu Ostro, Sr. Meteorologist at The Weather Channel, was interviewed on the channel this morning to explain that he is no longer a climate denier. He now believes global warming is man-made and that individual weather events can now be tied to global warming. This is big for The Weather Channel, which has been almost completely silent on the issue to date. I hope the new attitude seeps into their day-to-day coverage.

Biofuels–part 2

So much for algae as an environmentally friendly replacement for fossil fuels.  Scientific American says:

Growing algae for use in biofuels has a greater environmental impact than sources such as corn, switch grass and canola, researchers found in the first life-cycle assessment of algae growth.

The problem, in part, as with many biofuels, is that they cannot grow without using fossil fuel inputs.  The article continues:

The culprit, the researchers say, is fertilizer. Growing algae in open ponds is akin to producing them in a shallow swimming pool, Clarens said, so all of the nutrients -- nitrogen and phosphorus -- needed to keep them alive and boost their production come from outside sources.

And that fertilizer has an environmental impact because it's often made from petroleum feedstocks, Clarens said.

Read the article for more details.  And there is also the entirely separate issue that algae production on a large scale will cost the consumer magnitudes more than its gasoline equivalent.

Climate change as a local issue

Coach P comments:

Are state legislatures a feasible option for passing climate change legislation when Congress won't?

Unfortunately not.  Local piecemeal action is too little, too late.  According to Der Spiegel’s fascinating coverage of Copenhagen climate summit negotiations:

Merkel took one last stab. The reduction of greenhouse gases by 50 percent, that is, limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, was a reference to what is written in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Then she directed a dramatic appeal at the countries seeking to block the treaty: "Let us suppose 100 percent reduction, that is, no CO2 in the developed countries anymore. Even then, with the (target of) two degrees, you have to reduce carbon emissions in the developing countries. That is the truth."

To be blunt, even if western industrialized nations cut greenhouse emissions to zero today, we would still be in trouble. 

Biofuels

This afternoon brings the first installment of why conventional ideas about alternative energy needs to be rethought.

Reuters is reporting: Biofuel worse for climate than fossil fuel – study.

European plans to promote biofuels will drive farmers to convert 69,000 square km of wild land into fields and plantations, depriving the poor of food and accelerating climate change, a report warned on Monday.

...

As a result, the extra biofuels that Europe will use over the next decade will generate between 81 and 167 percent more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels, says the report.

Farmland should be used to produce food, not energy.

Could have chosen differently

Via Digby, who excerpts Matt Taibbi’s book, Griftopia:

With the $13-plus trillion we are estimated to ultimately spend on the bailouts, We could not only have bought and paid off every single subprime mortgage in the country (that would only have cost $1.4 trillion), we could have paid off every remaining mortgage of any kind in this country-and still have had enough money left over to buy a new house for every American who does not already have one.

This comes back to a question I have not yet written about: How do we transform our economy when it is based on debt?  I cannot leave my job (and thereby stop commuting) because I need to pay my rent.  How can we expect people who have mortgages, student loan and/or credit card debt, medical insurance premiums, etc. to accept lower pay for the sake of using less gasoline?  All our encouragement to people that they sacrifice to conserve is empty talk if that sacrifice is going to lead them into bankruptcy.  We need strong government action at the national level to make this happen.  Taibbi’s suggestion could have been one place to start.

Permanent recession

Excuse the redundancy of posts over the next few days.  I’m trying to get the search engines to recognize the blog.

Here is an article on one aspect of the permanent recession: rising food and transportation prices.

Because oil is so fundamental to our economy, oil price increases ripple through the entire economy.

Take food as an example: current factory farming methods are entirely dependent upon oil from planting to processing to getting the food to market. ... As the price of oil increases, so goes the price of food.

Read more at the link for a more optimistic view than I have.

Car talk on Car Talk

Overheard on Car Talk this morning, the fellas mentioned that you should maintain your car as long as possible.  Their suggestion was that the longer you maintain your car, the more you can postpone buying a new car.  That will mean one less car will be produced – at an environmental cost – and one less car will go to the landfill.  Excellent idea, boys.

I can hear the response now: what about the manufacturing jobs?  Jobs, jobs, jobs!  A fine point.  A good argument.  Where does that leave us?  We need to choose between our future and our present.  We are currently choosing the present, and not very well, at that.  How do we deal with future needs at the same time as present ones?  By changing our current priorities.  “Business as usual” is not functional.  Looking to the future means changing our present.

Climate legislation

It’s dead.  If it couldn’t pass through a democratically led legislature, it sure won’t make it through one that is split.

Thank goodness we in California defeated Prop. 23.  Had it passed, it would have essentially nullified our Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.  Keep in mind that fighting global warming needs to be addressed worldwide, but at least we didn’t take a step backwards.

2030?

Krugman writes today:

So, we have a “strong” jobs report — with total employment still 7 1/2 million less than it was three years ago, we had job gains slightly higher than the number needed to keep up with population growth.

At this rate we’ll return to full employment around 2030 or so.

This is with current economic policies and not including rising energy and global warming costs.  Including those terribly relevant factors, we’ll have full employment when?  Never – without a major restructuring of our entire economy.

Election reflections

It’s been two days since the 2010 mid-term elections, enough time to come up with some responses.  First, there does not seem to be a compelling narrative to explain each and every race.  The tea party didn’t sweep – but it did manage to pull the republican party further to the right.  As a consequence, the democrats have also moved to the right.  This was not necessarily seen in the election (though Feingold lost, Boxer won; though Grayson lost, so did most of the blue dogs).  It is seen in the Obama administration’s response.

Following a cabinet meeting today, Obama (or one of his spokespeople) declared that priority one for the lame duck congress is to extend the Bush tax cuts.  This is a giant mistake.  How far to the right are you trying to go?  And if you were planning this, you really should have proposed it before the election as a way to save some dem seats (or fought it, similarly as a  way to save dem seats).  What is the political strategy here?  Take the lame duck session and try to ram through the final liberal items you will be able to tackle for the next two years.  Don’t start the republicans’ agenda for them.

So the republicans will have the House, and the dems the Senate.  Let’s take the Senate first.  The dems have a smaller caucus that now includes Joe Manchin, someone further to the right than Ben Nelson.  Good luck with that.  And the republicans have the house and, along with it, subpoena power.  I have a feeling a do-nothing congress will be better than anything that can pass through these two legislative bodies.

I’ll take on California’s good news in a later post.  Go, California!

Open thread

Light posting lately.  The Mrs. has been under the weather.

In the meantime: Vote tomorrow!

More on the Gulf

I’d like to direct you to this Orion Magazine article, "The Gulf Between Us," by Terry Tempest Williams.  It gives a human face to the disaster.

The oil is not gone. This story is not over. We smelled it in the air. We felt it in the water. People along the Gulf Coast are getting sick and sicker. Marshes are burned. Oysters are scarce and shrimp are tainted. Jobs are gone and stress is high. What is now hidden will surface over time.

What I want to highlight is not the specific environmental and personal damage caused by the disaster, but to discuss how every choice has a cost.  Our relationship with oil, and fossil fuels in general, has costs that do not appear at the pump or in the electric bill.  We have chosen to use a resource that can cause immediate disaster, like in the article, or the long-term disaster of global warming. 

We choose to mine coal and we get mountaintop removal and a polluted water table.  What we also get when we choose “no more taxes” is not to have our workplace safety regulations enforced.  We have said that an extra $1 in our pocket at the end of the year is more valuable than preventing another mine disaster, more valuable than the lives of the mine workers.

Remember that when it comes time to vote next week.  Remember the theme of this blog: the answer is not “tough luck,” but “we are in this together.”

How to start a political movement

Joe Romm and Bill McKibben discuss how to make climate change a viable political movement.  Thoughts?  It’s part of what this blog is trying to figure out.  When smarter and more active and influential people than I can’t come up with something concrete, where does that leave us?  Thoughts?

Really, it’s not over

Via Digby, via Naked Capitalism:

Guest Post: Reappearance of Huge Plumes of Oil is Making It Hard to Pretend that the Problem Has Disappeared

Click through to the links to read about all the human and animal illness, hemorrhaging, Corexit problems, and oil plumes.

What a relief that the well has been plugged and the problems are over!

Another note on supertrains

Sure, we all want superfast supertrains like they have in France and Japan, but we have a different concept of emminent domain here.  Unless you want to change our property laws, give up on the supertrains. 

We will discuss the impact of the New London decision another day.

Missing the point

According to an article in yesterday’s LA Times:

The California high-speed train project will receive at least $731 million from a $902-million grant the federal government awarded on Monday for rail improvements across the state.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, $715 million will help pay for the design and construction of a section of the planned bullet train in the Central Valley. An additional $16 million was earmarked for the high-speed rail corridor between San Francisco and San Jose.

You know how to better spend that money? On much less glamorous intra-city public transportation. How many people each day will ride a train from San Francisco to Los Angeles – 1000, 10,000, 100,000? How many people would benefit from improving bus and rail service in LA County? Ten million in the metropolitan area, first by making commuting easier, and then by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the removal of those commuters from their cars.

Commuting

Question: how can I drive less when I have to get to work, can’t find a job closer to home, and public transportation isn’t a viable option?

Then: translate this into the big picture.  How do the millions of commuters in my situation, and even those who think they’re too good to ride the bus, get to work?  Hint: the answer is not “tough luck for you.”

We’re all in this together.  Cutting down everyone’s driving is a mutual benefit. 

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Looks like the gulf oil isn’t all gone.  Article here.  Pics here.

All we need is a disaster to prompt us to talk about our relationship with oil and its varied environmental devastation.  Or not.

Apples or oranges question: would you rather have the millions of barrels of oil in the gulf waters or in our atmosphere?

A Little Good News

Congratulations to my friend on his engagement.  Best wishes to you both!

Public Transportation

How do you improve public transportation?  A bus (or rail or subway) service needs to be extensive enough, reliable enough, and fast enough or it will not be attractive to potential riders.  But until the service reaches that critical point, those opposed to funding public transit can point the the service and say that no one uses it.  Why, then, should we spend more money on a service people don’t use?

I want to use public transportation for my work commute.  In fact, my commute is always morally painful.  I would love not to drive.  I could take a bus and two trains to get to work, costing me at least an additional hour each way, and not saving much money.  And each night I risk missing the last train home.  Frankly, my wife wouldn’t be thrilled with me catching the last train anyway and coming home through some of the most dangerous parts of Los Angeles at such a late hour.

So how do we improve the situation?  If someone like me, who wants to take public transportation, doesn’t, how can we make it attractive to people who don’t even want to take it in the first place?

Welcome

This blog is intended as a way to turn ideas into action.  We are facing an economic decline brought about by two separate, intertwined reasons: the increasing cost of energy and global warming.  Energy prices will continue to be a drag on our economy, while global warming morally mandates that we produce less and consume less.

But how do we deal with this impending negative-growth?  We’re past the point where discussing the issues addresses our predicament.  How do we turn our ideas, and I welcome hearing whatever you say they are, into a political movement?  And how do we make our transition as painless as possible for as many people as possible?