Obama Is Losing It.

Mr. O has been saying some really stupid things lately. Instead of trying to find ways to put thieving banksters in prison he praises them as savvy businessmen and says he doesn’t begrudge their obscene compensation. He went on to make a totally spurious comparison to fabulously paid sports stars.

While it’s true that most major teams in America are subsidized by local and state governments in the form of taxpayer built stadiums the amounts involved are minuscule compared to the bank bailouts. Moreover sports stars aren’t rewarded for failure and aren’t responsible for high unemployment and foreclosures that have made life hell for millions of Americans and brought hardship to people all over the world.

In fact, it does take savvy (not to mention arrogant, greedy and shameless) businessmen to demand that government - the same one they otherwise love to hate - rescue their institutions from their own malfeasance and then use the free money they receive to reward themselves with fabulous compensation. Goldman Sachs earned about 13 billion dollars last year, just about the same amount they received from the AIG bailout, so their profits are totally the result of government welfare.

They’ve also used their generous gifts from the people to lobby against legislation that would protect Americans from a similar meltdown happening again. Regulation? That’s a dirty word, the market will take care of everything; and if it doesn’t there’s always another bailout from Uncle Sam.

Meanwhile they are creating the conditions for a new bubble by engaging in the same risky behavior that brought them to the brink of bankruptcy in the first place. Why not? Obama will be there for them in their hour of need. If anyone is interested in the details, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine wrote an excellent article describing their current scams. It was also published a couple days ago on commondreams.org.

After hurting the banksters’ feelings by calling them fat cats, he seems to be wanting to get all chummy, to show them he’s really on their side… and keep those campaign dollars rolling in. Moreover, now that the Extreme Court has opened the door for unlimited corporate expenditures on political campaigns he maybe figures they will spend billions if need be to defeat anyone who tries to restrain them and their profits. The too-big-to-fail banks have made so many billions they could give every candidate they like millions of dollars with out even feeling the pinch. Result: a government bought and sold, as if it wasn’t mostly already.

They may be savvy businessmen but their work adds nothing of value to society: they are leaches, parasites, predators. That’s not even considering their deceit or thievery. That refers strictly to their function in the economic world, the malfeasance is merely the frosting on the cake.

Big time banks skim the cream off the top of the economy, while serving no social purpose. They drain the lifeblood of society by grabbing much too big a share for themselves. If they have the rights of people, they should also have the responsibilities and face the same penalties for breaking the law. At this point, many deserve the death penalty.

The vast majority of Americans, both left and right, socialists and teabaggers, feel only anger and vitriol against the banksters, so how can Obama defend them? What can he gain by siding with those sleazebags?

The other ludicrous garbage, not to mention deceit, that’s come out of his mouth was in reference to a bipartisan meeting he’s arranged on health care legislation. He said to the Repugs, If you can show me a better plan that can increase coverage, lower costs and rein in insurance company abuses, you tell me, I want to see it.

Did he somehow forget that he was an advocate for single-payer health care and campaigned on that basis for many years prior to becoming president? Has he been hit with a stroke of amnesia?

He’s spent a whole year emasculating every important legislative program in order to placate the Repugs and a handful of conservative Dems with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Wake up Mr. President, time to represent the people interests instead of your savvy fat cat businessmen friends. Time to can the empty rhetoric and get real.

Maybe he’s expecting to use the health care summit to try to shame the Repugs, make them look bad, but, Mr. O, why bother? Why don’t you just pass your little-bit-is-better-than-nothing health care plan with whatever legislative maneuvering you have at your disposal and then talk about what a great advance it is in spite of the fact that it doesn’t control costs, doesn’t cover everyone and doesn’t even begin to increase coverage until 2013. Don’t mention how it sets up tiers of coverage leaving many people with low quality care and pays for increased coverage (at least the Senate version) by taxing the only people who do have quality insurance.

The only improvement I can see over the presidency of Bushman is the appointment of a decent Extreme Court justice. Otherwise the whole mess stinks to high heaven.

No Nukes is Good Nukes

There’s a big push lately to revive the corpse of nuclear power, especially using global warming as an rationale since no CO2 is emitted in the production of electricity. There are lots of reasons why that is a terrible mistake.

While it’s true that no CO2 is produced at the end of the cycle, a tremendous amount is emitted in the construction of the plants; they are massive edifices. Containment vessels are typically one foot – 30cm - of steel surrounded by 12 feet of concrete. Copious amounts of energy are used in the construction of cooling towers.

The mining and refining of uranium also requires large amounts of energy and is toxic to miners and everybody involved in the process. It’s also a non-renewable resource. A large increase in uranium extraction will see it depleted in a couple of decades.

No country in world has yet created a permanent facility for the disposal of radioactive waste. The huge cost of locating and constructing permanent waste repositories is not included as part of plant cost. A US repository is twenty years behind schedule even after tens of billions of dollars expended in the search. And assuming one is built, who will pay the cost of maintaining those facilities thousands of years in the future?

Most waste is stored in temporary cooling ponds at the plants themselves. Temporary in this case can also be thought of as not very secure and therefore a great target for terrorists.

One simple reason why no nuclear plant has been ordered in the US since 1973 is that no investor in their right mind would ever commit a dollar of their own money for a nuclear project. The only way any new plant can be built is if loans are 100% guaranteed by the government; Congress is now trying to slip in $50 billion in such guarantees. One problem for investors is the extreme length of time it takes to bring one on line; in the states about 10 years. Since they now cost about $10 billion to construct, it would take some really deep pockets to invest billions now without a return for a decade.

And how is it that Congress is so quick to subsidize nukes and fossil fuels but can never commit more than a pittance for renewables? In the pockets of industry maybe? Money invested in wind power brings a return in a year or two. Except for those few people who are offended by the presence of windmills marring their scenic views and those living in close proximity who are bothered by the low hum they emit, windmills are totally benign. Yes the wind is intermittent, but if you have a large number of installations scattered around a large area, say the US, there will always be some producing power and evening out the load.

No plant would ever have been built in the US if Congress had not exempted nuclear plants from carrying full liability insurance coverage. No matter how much damage might be caused by a meltdown, the operators are shielded from full liability. It’s the community that pays. And don’t buy the hype that nobody died from Three Mile Island; the incidence of cancers in that area is far above the norm.

We hear how France, which gets 80% of its power from nukes has a cookie-cutter, boiler-plate design which is cheap and speedily constructed. Finland bought that line and ordered one which is now years behind schedule and double over budget.

In my mind the most frightening aspect of the nuclear push is where new plants are being built; in countries like India, China, Vietnam. These are third world countries that haven’t begun to get their social trip together.

India can’t figure out how to provide toilets for more than half of its people so even in Mumbai, the country’s financial center and richest city, you see people shitting on the sidewalk, so how’s it going to properly maintain nukes? Chinese dairies are still adulterating their milk with melamine, a toxic industrial chemical, a year after a major scandal that killed several children and sickened hundreds of thousands. Whose going to enforce safety standards in a place where environmental campaigners are considered enemies of the state? If any country produces shoddier goods than China it has to be Vietnam; how can they be trusted with an industry in which mistakes can impact the entire world?

Don’t get me wrong, all three are great countries destined to take their rightful place in the modern world; they just aren’t ready for an industrial process that involves such an inherent, fundamental danger.

Add it up, that’s the future of nuclear power… and it ain’t pretty.

Cadillac Health Plans

A central means of paying for the US Senate’s version of Obama’s health care plan is a very high tax (40%) on high-cost, so-called Cadillac Plans. The whole debate over that tax goes to the heart of the question of whether health care is a universal right, as it is in every other developed country, or a commodity, thought of the way you purchase a car.

Would you prefer a Caddy or a Chevy? The assumption is that the Caddy, in order to justify its higher cost, has a lot more in the quality and comfort department than a Chevy. The Chevy, however, will get you there just the same so the added cost is entirely in non-essentials. An old rust bucket would also get you there the same… usually, but you might sometimes have to contend with questions of reliability and safety. And some people have no wheels at all so have to get there any way they can. Ultimately, your choice will, with rare safety lapses, or the slightly greater risk of small cars, have little or no bearing on life or death.

Health care, I would think, must be different. It seems axiomatic that every government would want its citizens to be as healthy as possible and yet the excise tax on high-cost health plans could only serve to lower standards of care for large numbers of people.

The idea behind the tax, in addition to raising money, is to get employers to offer lower cost coverage. And just how might those insurance cost reductions be achieved? Doctors taking a pay cut? CEO’s offering to work for less? Stockholders asking management to make less profit so they can have lower dividends?

Probably first would be elimination of dental and eyesight coverage. Next would be increases in deductibles and co-pays. All of which would inevitably lead to a less healthy population.

If health care is a basic right then all would be treated equally – is one person’s health or life less important than another’s? – though if it’s a right and government is thereby necessarily involved, there will always be fiscal restraints. For instance, health care in the UK is absolutely free and available to all but it doesn’t always provide Cadillac quality, so if you need a hearing aid the National Health Service will provide you with a big old style one because they are cheap rather than the tiny little $5000 ones that fit nicely in your ear and are entirely unobtrusive. Seems fair to me. Everybody gets to hear; all have basic coverage. If your vanity can’t deal with big hearing aids you put out your own money for a small high-tech one.

If it’s a commodity then some, who have the wherewithal, will be healthier than others who can’t pony up in the extremely high cost American system. That includes the many who do have insurance but their income is so low and it’s such poor quality coverage that high deductibles keep them from going to the doctor, or they can’t pay for adequate medicine in the one country where drugs are most expensive. Others will have coverage with co-pays that are so high they are forced into bankruptcy even with insurance. The majority of people who file for bankruptcy for medical reasons actually had insurance.

The Senate plan seeks to lower the quality of health care for large numbers of Americans, a counterproductive program if there ever was one. But par for the course for a government owned by industry.

On a related note Democrat Martha Coakley managed to lose an election to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the country. It wasn’t easy; she had to be so overconfident that she barely campaigned. The national Democratic Party helped by ignoring her pleas for money. It was, however, easy for the Republican to raise money all over the country to try to make a point of defeating her.

The real culprit though is probably the enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats. When asked if they were certain or very likely to vote 80% of Republicans said yes, 65% of independents replied in the affirmative, but barely more than half of Democrats did. Obama is reportedly angry about the outcome, as well he should, but he has only himself to blame. At least he’s starting to show some emotion; it’d be good if he could get himself fired up about something.

I’m personally glad it happened, now there’s no need to compromise everything good out of the health care bill, or any legislation, just to get a few right wing Dumbs on board to reach the magic sixty vote number. The Repugs have made it clear they have no intention of voting for anything put forward by the Dumbs no matter how reasonable or even conservative it might be. No matter how much Obama coddles the banks, insurance companies or other corporate darlings of the Repugs, he’ll never get a single vote out of the opposition.

So very simple, you throw away the garbage bill voted by the Senate and the better, but still not very good one moving through the House and put forward a Medicare-for-all bill. Everyone in, nobody out. Even right wing morons like their Medicare (for many, because they don’t know it’s actually run by the government otherwise they’d hate it) so let’s throwaway uninspiring words like single-payer and public option and just say MEDICARE. It is liked by seniors and most Americans have a good impression of it.

Even using those dullish words, in every poll I’ve seen a majority of Americans - almost always over 60% - were in favor, so using the word Medicare could only enhance those numbers. It’s not a radical idea, it’s mainstream. It’s what the people want, it’s what they voted for in the last election.

The Dumbs are so steeped in cowardice every time the Repugs only mention the word filibuster, they cave. Majority leader Harry Reid won’t even bother with bringing up legislation if he doesn’t already have 60 votes in his pocket. Well, why not bring it up and let the Repugs actually filibuster, you know, try to talk the bill to death? Let them spend endless hours telling the American people why Medicare-for-all is such a terrible idea. If they managed to defeat the bill, it’d be their downfall in the next election. To repeat, it’s not a radical leftwing idea, it’s what the people have repeatedly said they want.

There’s also a procedure in the Senate for measures that involve the budget called reconciliation which only requires 51 votes for a bill to pass. All the talk about bipartisanship is worthless tripe. You are elected by the majority, you know what they want (and surely remember what you campaigned on) so fight for it. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t pass the first time, at least the electorate know where you stand when it comes to the next election. Ah, but easy for me to say; the Dumbs, unfortunately, can’t disappoint the fat cats who financed their campaigns; without the bankster money, the pharma cash, where would they be?

I keep hoping that Obama will receive an epiphany, that he’ll suddenly realize how stupid he’s been and start to think of the people first and finally that he should stand for something. He’s such a decent, likeable guy, something is bound to click, to turn him around, to finally point him in the direction he promised to take the country.

I’ve been turned off to the Democratic Party for so long, I harbor only the slightest glimmer of hope that they will do the right thing. But miracles do happen.

China Restricts Exports of Rare Earth Elements

A fascinating article appeared recently on my favorite web news site, commondreams.org, that was reprinted from the Independent newspaper in the UK. The article detailed China’s near monopoly on the production of rare earth elements.

Ever hear of neodymium, cerium, lanthanum, terbium, dysprosium? They are among 17 elements referred to as rare earths, which are not only hard to find, as their name implies, but they have unique qualities that are essential to many high-tech and alternate energy products, including cell phones, low energy light bulbs, windmills and advanced electric motors. Their use is expanding rapidly. The Toyota Prius, for instance, uses 16kgs of rare earths.

The gist of the article is that 97% of the world’s supply of rare earth ores are produced in China, almost all, in fact, at a single mine in Inner Mongolia province, and that China is beginning to restrict the export of that production to insure that its own industries have the metals they need. Manufacturers are scouring the planet to find alternate sources of raw materials for products that are the growth nexus of the future.

One of the dumbest things Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist ever said was in conjunction with a Chinese company’s bid to purchase an American oil company. He commented that it wasn’t important who owned the company because it was part of a world market so the oil would go to whoever was willing to pay for it.

He was unfortunately blinded by his immersion in American corporate philosophy. Multinational corporations may have their headquarters in the US but they operate everywhere, in vicious totalitarian regimes as well as democracies, and have no allegiance or loyalty to anywhere. A multinational would never voluntarily set aside a product for its home market that was in high demand out of a sense of patriotism or concern for workers or local economies. The only thing that matters in the ethos of a corporation is the bottom line.

China has a much different take on the matter and is smart enough to know that its industries will have a great advantage with access to those metals. Export restrictions only come about because of shortages and that inevitably leads to price differentials; in other words, those metals will always be cheaper in China than outside. China will also have more of the value added jobs of processing the ore inside the country.

With world demand for rare earths set to spike with the move to alternate technologies a serious crunch is in the offing, with China holding nearly all the cards.

China on a Roll

China’s been in the news lately, very little of it benign or promising.

One story of note has to do with illegal logging in Russia’s far east that is being organized by Chinese and fueled by Chinese demand for hardwoods. Century old Oaks and Ashes are being felled to produce flooring and furniture mostly for western markets.


The Chinese, not surprisingly, are good at capitalism and generally don’t call on many scruples in their dealings in the commercial world. They aren’t the world’s only buyers that encourage illegal loggers and hardly the only crooked capitalists vying for filthy lucre, but the same economic philosophy, based on the mania for short term gain, that has driven Western capitalists to produce in Communist China, has given China free reign to exploit its advantage in any way it can.


Enforcement of environmental rules is bad enough in America but the one party state and its fostering of corruption makes its environmental record far worse. Since no demonstrating or protesting or any sort of challenge to the state is allowed, individuals seeking redress for tainted food, as in the melamine scandal, or answers as to why so many schools crumbled in the Sichuan earthquake, are targeted and harassed as enemies of the state.


However, as long as Western consumers get their hardwood products cheaply then there are no complaints from capitalist democracies. If Chinese industry gains a cost advantage by absence of environmental rules then it’s the problem of the Chinese people who suffer from the pollution, not Mall-Wart’s customers. Of course, it isn’t only their problem: environmental degradation anywhere affects everyone, but in the mind of the capitalist; out of sight, out of mind… and, if you can save money by trashing the environment, then you do it until you get caught and then use your high-powered lawyers to try to avoid responsibility.


A second event is the recent prison sentence of 11 years to a prominent dissident for advocating freedom of expression, human rights and democracy. Trade and capitalism automatically brings an open society and democracy, or so we’ve been endlessly told. Obviously, demonstrably there’s no inherent connection between the two.


While China still likes to characterize its system as socialism, it’s really much more akin to fascism or state socialism. It’s economy is designed to benefit its rulers and upper classes. This is perfectly illustrated by the great gulf between the urban and rural in society.


In China you only have citizen rights where you are registered. If you move across a boundary line, even if it’s just a kilometer, you cannot send your kids to school or receive any benefits of citizenship unless you are willing and able to pay a substantial bribe. Even back in the mid-nineties it cost $3000 to purchase citizenship in Kunming where I lived. I thought back then that the registration system was an anachronism, a throwback to the time when Chinese weren’t allowed to leave their home districts without official permission. I’m almost shocked that it’s still around, or would be if I had any faith in the country’s leadership. It’s a convenient way to exploit the peasantry for the benefit of the better classes, so they are clinging to it.


In the Chinese countryside there are near desperate conditions for hundreds of millions of people. There are few jobs and the land cannot support the number of people who live there. (China, with 22% of the world’s people has only 7% of its arable land.) The only option for many is to leave their families behind and seek work in the cities, mostly the booming cities of the East Coast. As a result, there are an estimated 150 million migrant laborers in China. When they do find work they may also find themselves mercilessly exploited. Construction workers, for example, often do not get paid until the project is finished. No Chinese workers have rights, but the migrants are especially looked down upon.


Last year there were a reported 80,000 ‘mass incidents’ - what we would call demonstrations or protests – in the Chinese countryside, some which turned violent. All demonstrating is harshly repressed but rural people know they are getting the shaft and have reached the boiling point. They pay heavy taxes and suffer corrupt officialdom. Until recently they had to pay school fees that were prohibitive for many. Now, with more than $2 trillion dollars of foreign currency in the bank, the country’s rulers are just starting to consider the needs of the rural poor.


Recent events in Thailand provide a possible indicator of what democracy would mean for China. Taksin Shinawatra, Thailand’s richest person and former prime minister, was elected on a populist platform. His government was the first ever to give a damn about the poor. He provided, for example, nearly free health care for everybody and allocated money to the village level for civic improvement. He was hounded out of office by the Bangkok elite but he’d win an election today in a snap because developing countries have disproportionate numbers of subsistence farmers and lower classes in general.


By virtue of having 800 million rural poor, China is still a developing country in spite of its emerging power. In a democracy their numbers would easily counterbalance the country’s 500 million urbanites.


India has largely neglected its poor in spite of being a democracy, but recently a more populist government established a program which guarantees subsistence farmers 100 days of work a year. I’m sure it makes a world of difference for those people to have steady incomes; and unsurprisingly, they are sure to have a strong loyalty to that party for a long time, even if it means supporting a leader who is fundamentally corrupt. And Thailand’s Taksin is a case in point: just before he sold his $2 billion telecommunications company he had the Thai legislature exempt the sale from taxes. Being the richest person in the country was not enough.


It’s hard to say definitively what a Chinese democracy would look like but it’s certain the peasantry would have substantial power and at least some of the money going to fantastically expensive projects like the Olympics and high-speed rail would be redirected to the countryside. Eighty thousand demonstrations in a country that doesn’t allow demonstrating is an indicator of extreme distress and anger. It’s axiomatic that the longer you wait to provide relief from the pressure the greater the explosion when it happens.


Chinese leaders have said that democracy won’t come to China for 100 years. At least among urbanites they have done their job well by creating a compliant population. One man recently quoted on BBC said if the government didn’t want him to know something then he didn’t care to hear about it. They know their news is censored but think the power of the state is more important than their personal freedom.


Nationalism in China is pervasive, but it won’t be able to compete with hardship or exploitation when conditions get bad enough. Time will tell.


China provides a large amount of development money to Cambodia in the form of grants and soft loans and is financing many infrastructure projects so when China pressured Cambodia to return 20 Uighur asylum seekers it almost had to comply. They came to Cambodia because it’s one of the few countries in the area that is signatory to an international treaty on refugees. They are sure to be mistreated in China.


Before the UN had sufficient time to process their refugee claims and just two days before an official Chinese visit in which a large amount of development money was pledged they were sent back. Widespread objections by international NGO’s and Western governments had no effect on the Cambodian government when balanced against a billion dollars of development money. China is not the only large country that likes to throw its diplomatic weight around but as a one party state where just a few people hold almost all the power there are no checks on that power. For sure, the country is going to be increasingly hard to handle as illustrated by the below example.


The cropper of these four news events is China’s trashing of the Copenhagen summit and its humiliation of Obama in the process. While Obama sat with world leaders trying to hammer out an agreement, inadequate and voluntary though it was, China absolutely refused to even allow the mention of any numbers that had to do with targets for CO2 reductions or a minimum temperature rise.


Chinese premier Wen Jinbow did not even deign to attend the meetings, instead sending a second tier official who had to check with his superiors on every minor question while Obama, Brown, Merkel and many other world leaders were left to cool their heels in frustration. China succeeded in having the blame for the failure of the climate talks placed on the West while it deflected any sort of restrictions on its own growth, which is largely based on coal: the country opens a new coal-fired power plant every week. It is also investing heavily in renewables but still expects to increase its CO2 emissions by 60% by 2020.


China’s new power was a gift from the West and will come back to haunt the capitalists and their democratic countries. While it’s true that, as a friend who has spent a long time in China pointed out to me in response to a previous post, the country was always destined to be a great power because of its culture and the energy and determination of its people, the wholesale transfer of industry from the West has tremendously accelerated the process.


There are quite a few developing countries that are also democracies where Western industries could’ve transferred their production but that might have meant slightly less profit and maybe more hassle dealing with authorities and workers. There’s nothing like a repressive authoritarian government to keep workers in line.


With two trillion dollars of foreign assets in the bank, about 75% in dollar assets, the US in particular and the West in general have precious little leverage with China. For America especially, it’s kowtow time to the Middle Kingdom.

Waste

It isn’t just the superwealthy who tend to be mindless about their impact on the environment. It’s also the comparatively wealthy. The one billion people who live in the developed world or enjoy that lifestyle in the developing world are rich enough to not have to think about how much they are spending on energy. They don’t need to conserve to save money but are free to use as much as they want.


A few years back an expat friend held a house warming for a new place he’d bought in Phnom Penh. He was close to 50, recently married with a one-year-old kid, his first. Home tours are practically required under the circumstances, so he took me to check it out. When he opened the door to the kid’s room I was hit with a blast of cold air.


Gee, why do you have the air-con on full blast, I inquire. It’s on just in case the baby gets hot and needs to cool off, he replies. The kid is Cambodian and as long as she lives in Cambodia she’s going to have to get used to heat. Besides, I would think, the kid might get pneumonia from bouncing back and forth between sweltering and chilly. Besides, it doesn’t take more than a few minutes for an air-conditioner to cool down a hot room.


His thoughts are on providing the best for his child but his actions are wasting the Earth for no good reason. It’s one thing to use energy for things that have value but to waste it mindlessly is just being clueless.


In a similar experience, also here in Cambodia, I was being shown around nice remodeled colonial house in Kampot, when my friend opened a door, announcing this was the bedroom, to a very cold room. What’s with the air-con full-on, I ask. I think my girlfriend might be up for a little nookie today, he answered, so I want the room to be ready, just in case. Hours of costly air-conditioning for an empty room. Why couldn’t he wait until he was sure the great event was going to happen to turn on the air-con and then wait another 3 or 4 minutes for the room to cool down before getting all hot and bothered?


It’s thoughtless consumption that contains no positives for the Earth, although it does have one (sort of) benefit, it adds to Cambodia’s GDP, Gross Domestic Product. So actually they’re doing their part to boost Cambodia’s economy. Hmm, that doesn’t sound right, does it? Can we really think of waste as a good thing? In this case, evidently, yes.


Everybody knows people in America who leave all their lights on or maybe leave the TV on all day even when nobody is watching it. No one could begrudge the use of electricity to provide light in the dark, but at least it should have a purpose. If that light is going to add to the planet’s CO2, it should be used for something. Light to read by? 100% good. Lighting rooms for hours when no one is there? Totally negative.


Back in 1994 I stayed at a small hotel in Amsterdam. As I headed up the stairs for the first time I turned on the light at ground level. As I got near the second floor the light automatically turned on, meanwhile the first floor light had gone out. Wow, it was almost like a revelation. Nobody’s present, the light goes off, what could be more simple?


Energy in America is so cheap that most people can’t be bothered conserving or even thinking about it. The reason why it’s so cheap is that most of the costs have been externalized. Coal makes cheap electricity but its extraction and use also results in pollution that causes many health problems; the cost, however, of treating those maladies is not part of the electricity bill.


People in the Pacific Northwest have very cheap power, the bulk of which comes from the many dams on the Columbia River, but it came at a high cost. There once were between 10 million and 16 million salmon, weighing up to 40 kilos, that returned annually to spawn in the Columbia or its tributaries. Today there are about 50,000 to 100,000 wild salmon spawning in that area. (There are also farmed salmon, but I’ll tell you a secret: they have to add orange coloring to those hatchery fish to make them look like salmon.) Well, what are ten million salmon worth? Shouldn’t that be part of the cost of the power?


There was hand-wringing and consternation in the financial community recently at the news that Japan didn’t grow as fast as predicted. Japan has an aging population; the oldest in the world, I believe. Oldsters generally have accumulated what they want of the material world, and don’t need to buy much. In addition, Japan’s population as a whole is declining, so there are fewer people every year to consume things. So then why do they need to grow? They are already rich. And why is it looked at as such a tragedy when they don’t?


Well, because we are locked into a mindset that promotes, even extols waste. Not everything is purely waste, of course, but the whole idea of contemporary economic thinking is to encourage people to consume. Marketing pervades all aspects of life in the modern world. It’s designed to get people to buy things whether they need them or not. Even sometimes whether they can afford them or not; as in purchasing non-essentials with credit cards and then paying usurious interest on the credit.


You can’t think about tackling climate change without thinking of sustainability first; without redesigning modern lifestyles to reflect values other than material possessions. However, as long as corporations have such a stranglehold over contemporary life, there is no possibility of even discussing sustainability. On the periphery, of course, there are a lot of people looking for more from life than mindless consumption, but sustainability can never replace the mania for growth as long as the corporations hold sway.


In addition to the problem of the waste inherent in developed country lifestyles there’s the desire, on the part of the newly flush in previously poor countries, to catch up with the rich world. Car sales in China this year rose 44% and have now surpassed the US. Chinese have the same rights to the convenience of private vehicles as Americans. As in the US their airwaves are jammed with car ads.


The ads, of course, never show those shiny new wheels stuck in traffic, where, in fact, they’re likely to spend most of their time. There’s no mention of the pollution and congestion they’ll bring to Chinese cities or the drain on the planet’s fossil fuel supplies. As in the US, the Chinese government has provided incentives to purchase new cars.


I totally understand the desire to own a car. I have one here in Cambodia and would feel really burdened not to have it. In Portland I’d feel positively deprived without a car. On the other hand, when I’m in Kampot, the small town, I always ride my bicycle. I always felt uncomfortable riding a bike in Portland and Phnom Penh is much worse, I’d never ride there. However, if you make biking convenient and comfortable, as in Amsterdam or Copenhagen, a much greater percentage of people will opt for that healthiest of transport.


China, in fact, was once a model of sustainability. When I first got to Kunming, in Southwest China, in 1992, private cars were banned and more than 80% of all movement was on bicycle. Every major street had a very wide bike path, as much as 3 to 4 meters wide. You could be out on the street with hundreds of people going by and it was so quiet the loudest sound would be conversations between people. Many of those boulevards had very wide sidewalks that were graced with one, two, sometimes even three rows of stately trees. It was heavenly, especially for an urban planner type.


However, even before I left at the end of 1996 the city, in order to provide more space for motor vehicles, had felled thousands of those great old trees and narrowed both the sidewalks and bike paths. On one main thoroughfare, after they contracted the bikelane, it was so crowded at times I would have to wait for two green lights to get through.


All to make room for the small number of elite who could afford to own private vehicles. Today, of course, lots of Chinese can afford cars and the country wants nothing more than to emulate the US and its car culture. And bordering on the absurd: some streets in Beijing have been made off-limits to bicycles to make them more convenient for cars.


So how do you promote sustainability and voluntary simplicity for the sake of the world when the masses are inundated with slick advertising encouraging them to buy what they really don’t need? Where are the ads to encourage people to ride bicycles?


Well, you don’t, at least not with any chance of actually making a difference. As long as the world is focused on endless growth and the manic pursuit of wealth, the relatively small number of people who consciously reject the push to consume cannot possibly save the planet.


If the mindset doesn’t change, the world cannot meet its challenges.

Tidbits

I’ve been having a hard time thinking about what to write lately. I started out with a Copenhagen summit global warming rant but then it seemed like I was repeating the same tired old lines. Anyway, nothing of substance, at least nothing that could preserve the world as we know it, is going to come out of the summit because most of the worst polluters are concerned that considering the needs of the Earth might hamper their economic growth. It doesn’t seem to penetrate their thick skulls that accumulating wealth is not going to mean much in a world that’s no longer viable or functional but that’s where we are today: everything revolves around immediate profits or wealth accumulation and the future be damned.

Obama’s Health Care Plan, more aptly described as a Health Care Industry Guaranteed Profits Plan? Almost worse than nothing since it does a little tweaking around the edges but leaves the rotten core to fester and create conditions that will demand revisiting the whole issue a few years down the line.

Too-big-to-fail big-bank record profits and bonuses generously subsidized by US taxpayers while unemployment grows and record numbers of people are forced out of their homes? You’ve heard it all before. Sensible bank regulation, separation of retail banking from purely speculative investment banking, consumer protection from financial scamming, taxation of financial transactions? Bwaa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Like the prospects of a young doe in the clutches of a hungry tiger.

Afghanistan, Obama’s personal quagmire? Truly a lost cause. People who know the country will tell you Obama’s nation building project will take around a decade, not the year-and-a-half that the president is talking about; the year-and-a-half he says he needs to start bringing the troops home again.

Meanwhile here are a few political tidbits to chew on that appeared in recent news.

Most Seniors Get the Shaft from the Obama Administration

The government recently announced that there’d be no cost-of-living increase for Social Security recipients. Instead there’ll be a one time payment of $250 for each pensioner. I’ve been getting a pension for six years during which my monthly pension has gone from $522 to $636. Averaged out it comes to about $19 per month per year. For me the one time $250 payment will be a wash, about the same as I would receive from a cost-of-living increase.

But I never earned more than $11,000 in one year in my life, so most seniors are getting more than me and loosing out. Half the people on Social Security depend on it exclusively so to take even a small portion of their due for other purposes – wars, bank bailouts – is borderline criminal, not to mention reneging on a firm commitment. For decades young people have been told that the money was not going to be there for them when they retired. That was to prepare them for the kind of raid on SS that we’re now witnessing.

In fact, Social Security is doing great, it has nearly $3 trillion in savings in the bank. The problem is the US government: it’s been using that money as if it were part of the general budget instead of a dedicated fund. The real crunch will come soon, in just a couple years, when a $200 billion dollar annual surplus from Social Security taxes changes to a $200 billion shortfall and SS starts dipping into its $3 trillion dollar trust fund to pay current recipients.

Reagan raised SS taxes to put money away for the eventuality that’s about to happen and it’s worth noting that SS taxes are very regressive; that is, earnings are taxed at a single rate up to $90,000 per year so the lower classes, including the lower middle class pay the full rate but the upper middle class and wealthy pay a smaller percentage of their income.

Back when Bush pushed through his tax cuts for the wealthy, Alan Greenspan, then head of the US Federal Reserve, thought it was a great idea. Just a few months later he was wringing his hands in worry about Social Security and how seniors were going to have to take a hit. Take back those tax cuts for the wealthy to meet long-time commitments to seniors? That’d be class warfare, can’t do that. Much easier to shaft the geezers.

US Government Pressures International Energy Agency to Falsify Crude Oil Supply and Demand Estimates

The IEA was created back in the 70’s in response to crude oil shortages that disrupted markets. Its purpose was to provide accurate figures for future supply and demand to protect from excessive price fluctuations. The US government, however, has not been interested in accurate numbers but rather feel-good numbers that would give everybody confidence that there’d be plenty of oil to last for decades so they could continue to consume to their heart’s content. Their rationale for fudging the numbers was they didn’t want to cause unnecessary price surges.

For their purposes they predicted that future demand and supply numbers would rise to levels that no rational impartial observer would consider achievable, let alone sustainable: in simplest terms, wishful thinking. But, reality doesn’t hinge on wishful thinking so falsifying the numbers to stave off price surges can only put off those surges to the future and make them a lot worse when they do happen. But at least Americans’ god given right to drive monster SUV’s in the interim was given a green light. Why worry about tomorrow when you can own a gas guzzler today?

Surge in Billionaires

A recent news article stated that the number of billionaires in India doubled in the past year. About a month ago it was the number of billionaires in China that had doubled. In contrast to their growing numbers of mega-rich both countries have hundreds of millions of desperately poor people. So I start to ponder, in terms of carbon footprint, how many poor Indians it takes to equal one Indian billionaire. Ten thousand? One hundred thousand? I imagine that one trans-oceanic trip in a personal jet produces as much carbon as the total emissions coming from thousands of poor Indians or Chinese all year.

And I got to wondering if those at the top ever think about the amount of pollution they’re responsible for, or if they ever extend even one iota’s thought to being good global citizens. You know, maybe change the thermostat in their climate controlled mansions by one degree to do their little bit for the planet. But then I thought, impossible: putting the planet’s needs first is for peons and commoners and left-wing radical environmentalists.

Tiger Woods’s Cadillac SUV has been in the news lately. Do you think it ever occurred to him that he really didn’t need one of the largest personal vehicles ever created just to bop around town? Naa, no way, I can’t imagine that it ever entered his mind. Billionaires are exempt from those kinds of mundane considerations. They are privileged, they have a special dispensation from the creator that encourages them to satisfy their every whim.

Bill Gates, one of the people in this world I most love to hate, build a $55 million house a few years back. It’s a modern technological marvel full of electronic gadgetry and wizardry but not one second’s thought went into making it energy efficient or in tune with the planet. If he had spent another $5 or $10 million more, literally pocket change for someone worth $50 billion, he could have built a great example of advanced ecological design. He couldn’t be bothered.

The world is stuck in a conundrum. On the one hand is the very real and pressing need to reduce consumption and corollary greenhouse gas emissions, which can only be done by the world’s people adopting a more sustainable lifestyle. On the other hand is the widespread, nearly ubiquitous desire to get rich and consume extravagantly and thoughtlessly. Wealth is applauded, pushed and extolled as what everyone’s ultimate goal should be and encouraged through tax laws that favor the moneyed classes.

You can’t have both. You can’t save the planet at the same time you encourage the accumulation of wealth. The vast majority of the wealthy have no social consciousness and certainly would not give up the least trifle of their comfort or prerogatives for any measure of global citizenship.

Obama and a lot of other leaders are looking at climate change as just another political problem where you negotiate here and compromise there and… well, you come up with an agreement which looks like you are doing something, but utterly fails to take into account the seriousness of the situation.

At this point I can almost sympathize with Obama: he’s the ultimate practical politician (at this point he seems to believe in nothing except compromise) so he knows how impossible it would be to actually do something meaningful to combat global warming. The US Senate, which has to ratify any international treaty, will never agree to do the right thing regarding climate change. The last time the issue came up in the Senate in 1998 they voted 98-1 against ratifying the Kyoto Treaty.

A true leader, through force of will and power of oration, could facilitate great changes but that’s not Obama.