Rob and Julia
Rob, being a certain sort of man, took in most of what he wanted to know through his eyes. His male Pleistocene ancestors were confronted with the puzzling fact that human females do not exhibit any physical signals when they're ovulating, unlike other animals. So the early hunters made do with the closest markers of fertility available.
Men everywhere value clear skin, full lips, long lustrous hair, symmetrical features, shorter distances between the mouth and chin and between the nose and chin, and a waist-to-hip ratio of about 0.7.
...there is nothing that so enhances beauty as self-confidence.
...when the tip of the eyebrow dips, that means the smile is genuine not fake.
Women, in general, are less visually aroused than men, a trait that has nearly cut the market for pornography in half... (Women) are compelled to choose a man not only for insemination, but for companionship and continued support. And to this day, when a woman sets her eyes upon a potential mate, her time frame is different from his... There are more lemons in the male population than in the female population, and women have found that it pays to trade off a few points in the first-impression department in exchange for reliability and social intelligence down the road.
People rarely revise their first impression, they just become more confident that they are right.
Despite what you're read about opposites attracting, people usually fall in love with people like themselves... People generally overestimet how distinct their own lives are, so the commonalities seemed to them like a series of miracle... people who are getting to know each other subconsciously measure to see if their vocabularies mesh, and they adapt to the other person's level...90 % of emotional communication is non-verbal.
Words are the fuel of courtship. Other species win their mates through a series of escalating dances, but humans use conversation... the most frequent one hundred words account for 60% of all conversations. The most common 4,000 words account for 98% of conversations... a couple will exchange about a million words before conceiving a child.
...there's plenty of evidence that men fall in love more quickly, and subscribe more to the conviction that true love lasts forever.
...kindness is the most important quality desired in a sexual partner by both men and women.
The richer the man, the younger the woman he is likely to mate with. The more beautiful the woman, the richer the man. A woman's attractiveness is an outstanding predictor of her husband's annual income. (That makes me an outlier... :) )
Human culture exists in lareg measure to restrain the natural desires of our species.
...smell is a powerful way to read emotions.
...lack of emotion leads to self-destrictive and dangerous behavior. People who lack emotion don't lead well-planned logical lives... emotions measure the value of something, and help unconscioulsy guide us as we navigate through life
The brain is not separate from the body— that was Descartes' error. The physical and the mental are connected in complex networks of reaction and counter-reactions, and out of their feedback an emotional value emerges.
The brain states and bodily responses are the fundamental facts of an emotion, and the conscious feelings are the frills that have added icing to the emotional cake.
Reason and emotion are not separate and opposed. Reason is nestled upon the emotion and dependent upon it. Emotion assigns value to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations. The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
David Brooks— The Social Animal: Introduction
This is the happiest story you've ever read. It's about two people who led wonderfully fulfilling lives...because they possessed what economists call noncognitive skills...hidden qualities that cant be easily counted or measured, but which in real life lead to happiness and fulfillment.
The research being done today reminds us of the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ, emergent, organic systems over linear, mechanistic ones, and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self. If you want to put the philosophic implications in simple terms, the French Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, loses; the British Enlightenment, which emphasized sentiments, wins.
...we have become accustomed to a certain constricted way of describing our lives. Plato believed that reason was the civilized part of the brain, and we would be happy so long as reason subdued primitive passions. Rationalist thinkers believed that logic was the acme of intelligence, and mankind was liberated as reason conquered habit and superstition.
A reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature has led to multiple failures of politics and economic policy, nationally and globally.
The Greeks used to say suffer our way to wisdom. The essence of that wisdom is that below our awareness there are viewpoints and emotions that help guide us as we wander through our lives.
Your unconscious, that inner introvert, wants you to reach outward and connect. It wants you to achieve communion with work, friend, family, nation, and cause.
The research being done today reminds us of the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ, emergent, organic systems over linear, mechanistic ones, and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self. If you want to put the philosophic implications in simple terms, the French Enlightenment, which emphasized reason, loses; the British Enlightenment, which emphasized sentiments, wins.
...we have become accustomed to a certain constricted way of describing our lives. Plato believed that reason was the civilized part of the brain, and we would be happy so long as reason subdued primitive passions. Rationalist thinkers believed that logic was the acme of intelligence, and mankind was liberated as reason conquered habit and superstition.
A reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature has led to multiple failures of politics and economic policy, nationally and globally.
The Greeks used to say suffer our way to wisdom. The essence of that wisdom is that below our awareness there are viewpoints and emotions that help guide us as we wander through our lives.
Your unconscious, that inner introvert, wants you to reach outward and connect. It wants you to achieve communion with work, friend, family, nation, and cause.
Malcolm Glawell: Creation Myth— Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation
..the evolution of a concept (Did Steve Jobs steal the idea of the personal computer from Xerox, or did he just revolutionize the idea?)
The difference between direct and indirect manipulation is not trivial. It is the difference between something intended for experts, which is what Xerox PARC had in mind, and something that is appropriate for a mass audience, which is what Apple had in mind. PARC was building a personal computer. Apple wanted to build a popular computer.
The ways armies have transformed themselves with the tools of the digital age— the Soviet Union, the United States, and Israel:
— The Soviets had a strong, centralized military bureaucracy, with a long tradition of theoretical analysis. It made sense that they were the first to understand the military implications of new information systems. But they didn't do anything with it. they didn't connect word with deed.
— The United States, by contrast, has a decentralized, bottom-up entrepreneurial culture, which has historically had a strong orientation toward technological solutions.
— As for the Israelis, their military culture grew out of a background of resource constraint and constant threat.
No one stole the revolution. Each party viewed the problem from a different perspective, and carved off a different piece of the puzzle.
...visionaries can be limited by their visions.
...heaven is not a good place to commercialize a product.
For an actual product, you need threat and constraint— and the improvisation and creativity necessary to turn a gold-plated three-hundred dollar mouse into something that works on Formica and costs fifteen dollars. Apple was Israel.
"You can be one of the most successful makers of enterprise technology products the world has ever known, but that doesn't mean your instincts will carry over to the consumer market...They're really different and few companies have ever been successful in both."
Gary Starkweather:
...the imaginative poverty of Xerox management.
...creativity wasn't on a metric.
...Often difficulties are just opportunities in disguise.
The truth is that Starkweather was a difficult employee. It went hand in hand with what made him such an extraordinary innovator.
He was disruptive and stubborn and independent-minded— and he had a thousand ideas, and sorting out the good ideas from the bad wasn't always easy.
Starkweather and his compatriots at Xerox PARC weren't the source of disciplined startegic insights. They were wild geysers of creative energy.
...this fecundity is often at the heart of what distinguishes the truly gifted.
A genius is a genius because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations, and unexpected connections that he almost inevitably ends up with something great. Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity.
...there is nothing neat and efficient about creativity. The more successes there are, the more failures there are as well— meaning that the person who has far more ideas than the rest of us will have far more bad ideas than the rest of us, too. This is why managing the creative process is so difficult.
Somone was always trying to turn off Starkweather's tap off. But someone had to turn the tap off: the interests of the innovator aren't perfectly aligned with the interests of the corporation. Starkweather saw ideas on their merits. Xerox was a multi-national corporation and it needed to consider every new idea within the context of what it already had.
Without the big idea, Xerox would never have seen the value of the small idea. If you consider innovation to be efficient and ideas precious, that is a tragedy: in the real messy world of creativity, giving away the thing you don't really understand for the thing that you do is an inevitable tradeoff.
Innovation is an unruly thing. There will be some ideas that don't get caught in your cup. But that's not what the game is about. The game is what you catch, not what you spill.
It was ever thus. The innovator says go. The company says stop— and maybe the only lesson of the legend of Xerox PARC is that what happened there happens, in one way or another, everywhere.
The difference between direct and indirect manipulation is not trivial. It is the difference between something intended for experts, which is what Xerox PARC had in mind, and something that is appropriate for a mass audience, which is what Apple had in mind. PARC was building a personal computer. Apple wanted to build a popular computer.
The ways armies have transformed themselves with the tools of the digital age— the Soviet Union, the United States, and Israel:
— The Soviets had a strong, centralized military bureaucracy, with a long tradition of theoretical analysis. It made sense that they were the first to understand the military implications of new information systems. But they didn't do anything with it. they didn't connect word with deed.
— The United States, by contrast, has a decentralized, bottom-up entrepreneurial culture, which has historically had a strong orientation toward technological solutions.
— As for the Israelis, their military culture grew out of a background of resource constraint and constant threat.
No one stole the revolution. Each party viewed the problem from a different perspective, and carved off a different piece of the puzzle.
...visionaries can be limited by their visions.
...heaven is not a good place to commercialize a product.
For an actual product, you need threat and constraint— and the improvisation and creativity necessary to turn a gold-plated three-hundred dollar mouse into something that works on Formica and costs fifteen dollars. Apple was Israel.
"You can be one of the most successful makers of enterprise technology products the world has ever known, but that doesn't mean your instincts will carry over to the consumer market...They're really different and few companies have ever been successful in both."
Gary Starkweather:
...the imaginative poverty of Xerox management.
...creativity wasn't on a metric.
...Often difficulties are just opportunities in disguise.
The truth is that Starkweather was a difficult employee. It went hand in hand with what made him such an extraordinary innovator.
He was disruptive and stubborn and independent-minded— and he had a thousand ideas, and sorting out the good ideas from the bad wasn't always easy.
Starkweather and his compatriots at Xerox PARC weren't the source of disciplined startegic insights. They were wild geysers of creative energy.
...this fecundity is often at the heart of what distinguishes the truly gifted.
A genius is a genius because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations, and unexpected connections that he almost inevitably ends up with something great. Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity.
...there is nothing neat and efficient about creativity. The more successes there are, the more failures there are as well— meaning that the person who has far more ideas than the rest of us will have far more bad ideas than the rest of us, too. This is why managing the creative process is so difficult.
Somone was always trying to turn off Starkweather's tap off. But someone had to turn the tap off: the interests of the innovator aren't perfectly aligned with the interests of the corporation. Starkweather saw ideas on their merits. Xerox was a multi-national corporation and it needed to consider every new idea within the context of what it already had.
Without the big idea, Xerox would never have seen the value of the small idea. If you consider innovation to be efficient and ideas precious, that is a tragedy: in the real messy world of creativity, giving away the thing you don't really understand for the thing that you do is an inevitable tradeoff.
Innovation is an unruly thing. There will be some ideas that don't get caught in your cup. But that's not what the game is about. The game is what you catch, not what you spill.
It was ever thus. The innovator says go. The company says stop— and maybe the only lesson of the legend of Xerox PARC is that what happened there happens, in one way or another, everywhere.
Kuleana minutes— June 13, 2011
Meeting called to order at 4:40pm
Present
Jessica Horiuchi
Rona Fukumoto
Lorene Yap
John Cheever
Kevin Kawahara
Kimberly Horan
Rachel James
Reviewed 1st draft MOU and Partnership Proposal from PGC (drafted by PGC, no edits by Kuleana).
Boilerplate agreement - Kuleana specifics to be reviewed, requested/added
** No action until we draft mentorship model to determine what it is we will commit to doing
Discussed need to start documenting engagement process, both front end (up to delivery of applicant/application) and through the life of a loan.
** Rona to deliver sample engagement doc/program design doc
Still need insurance - no quotes available yet for pricing. Fundraising required to buy insurance once quoted.
** Cheever to follow up on quote
Went around the table to affirm support for the PGC partnership in principle, connecting back to original vision and proposal to IIF. Unanimous support to pursue PGC partnership given their higher lending standards with intent to gain knowledge and understanding. Attempt to include less attractive candidates in the future via Kuleana credibility attached, or via a Kuleana fund (original plan).
** Check dependencies: bandwidth of part time board, commitment to PGC loans in progress
GE Tax/Exemption application question - does sub-contractor payment belong on exemption app? Jessica believes so. Cheever added to income list.
** Cheever to complete GE app
** Cheever to open bank account
Group from Shidler (2 grad students 1 prof) scheduled to come July 11
Students went to India to observe Grameen bank in action. Professor is from Bangladesh(?) and is familiar with Grameen and its impact.
** Cheever confirm switch to July 12 (tuesday) or reschedule meeting back to monday (July 11)
Given conflicting schedules (Morales) and availability (Gendrano), meeting will move to Tuesdays starting 6\28\2011
Meeting adjourned 6:00 pm
Present
Jessica Horiuchi
Rona Fukumoto
Lorene Yap
John Cheever
Kevin Kawahara
Kimberly Horan
Rachel James
Reviewed 1st draft MOU and Partnership Proposal from PGC (drafted by PGC, no edits by Kuleana).
Boilerplate agreement - Kuleana specifics to be reviewed, requested/added
** No action until we draft mentorship model to determine what it is we will commit to doing
Discussed need to start documenting engagement process, both front end (up to delivery of applicant/application) and through the life of a loan.
** Rona to deliver sample engagement doc/program design doc
Still need insurance - no quotes available yet for pricing. Fundraising required to buy insurance once quoted.
** Cheever to follow up on quote
Went around the table to affirm support for the PGC partnership in principle, connecting back to original vision and proposal to IIF. Unanimous support to pursue PGC partnership given their higher lending standards with intent to gain knowledge and understanding. Attempt to include less attractive candidates in the future via Kuleana credibility attached, or via a Kuleana fund (original plan).
** Check dependencies: bandwidth of part time board, commitment to PGC loans in progress
GE Tax/Exemption application question - does sub-contractor payment belong on exemption app? Jessica believes so. Cheever added to income list.
** Cheever to complete GE app
** Cheever to open bank account
Group from Shidler (2 grad students 1 prof) scheduled to come July 11
Students went to India to observe Grameen bank in action. Professor is from Bangladesh(?) and is familiar with Grameen and its impact.
** Cheever confirm switch to July 12 (tuesday) or reschedule meeting back to monday (July 11)
Given conflicting schedules (Morales) and availability (Gendrano), meeting will move to Tuesdays starting 6\28\2011
Meeting adjourned 6:00 pm
Monday, June 6, 2011
Kuleana minutes— May 31, 2011
Kuleana Project MEETING SUMMARY Micro-Lending/Support Team
Date Time Location
Tuesday May 31, 2011 4:40pm – 6:10pm Catholic Charities, 1822 Keeamoku St.
Leads Attendees
▪ Fran Gendrano (Absent)
▪ John Cheever ▪ Rona Fukumoto (Absent)
▪ Jessica Horiuchi
▪ Kevin Kawahara
▪ Rachael ▪ Michael Morales
▪ Ben Ancheta (Absent)
▪ Lorene Yap
▪ Rachel James ▪ Yvette Maskrey (Absent)
▪ Kim Horan (Absent)
▪ Char Dote (Absent)
TODAY’S AGENDA
1. Meeting was called to order at 4:40pm
2. Kuleana Discussion Summary:
a. Potential Partnerships
i. Rachael James is an HPU Grad student and will begin participating in the Kuleana meetings!
1. Jessica provided background that the Kuleana team is struggling with the process of how to support client based and what is the defined objective to align and balance appropriately.
a. Action - Next steps to define the process. (John C.)
ii. Pacific Gateway Center with Rebecca Soon
1. Reviewed proposal from previous meeting.
2. Decision: John C to send an email out to the group. Attendees all thought it would be good to move forward with the PGC partnership.
3. Team agreed that when we do go down this path that the Kuleana’s pursuit of funding once we get our 501c3 will become a lower priority so we can focus on delivering mentoring support and obtain experience on PGC’s loan process. Follow up with team.
a. Action: John C. to speak with Rebecca S. on next steps such as:
i. Need MOU.. (Rebecca S.and Jessica H.)
1. Review PGCs best practices/standards.
2. Utilize and review applications/forms and policies.
b. We need to continue to solidify the up-front mentoring program and choose a lead mentor or mentoring group structure. Discuss with Kim H. (John C.)
i. Lead Mentor support – Identify someone like Kim H. to assist on providing lead support.
OR
ii. Mentoring Group – Crowd sourcing to support client. Also could leverage grad student support. For example, HPU grad students could provide this support. Rachael to find out how much support can be provided from HPU Grad Students. (Rachael)
iii. This could potentially be an internship.
c. Other open questions to PGC (John C.):
i. Most likely need a Non-Disclosure Agreement created. Action: Ask Rebecca S. if they have something for us to sign. (John C. and Jessica H.)
ii. How much would we meet with Rebecca S.? She would be available to answer questions and will be on the loan review committee. Rebecca can help with providing support from a structure.
iii. What is the default rate for PGC? Did not have specific numbers from PGC.
iv. Clarify the type of oversight PGC will provide during the process. It is assumed that PGC will not change their model and will be part of the process to provide mentoring support.
v. How does PGC fund the loans? Not all at once. It is a phased lending successed based approach. Review the PGC lending schedule. (John C.)
b. Funding/Client Discussion
i. Decision: This will be placed on hold as we focus on the PGC partnership.
3. 501(c)3 Application Review
a. John C. called the IRS agent and confirmed they received the updates. Update: 501c3 has been granted!
4. Other/New Kuleana Business
a. Kuleana meetings may be rescheduled to Tuesdays based on conflicts. Discussion to occur.
b. May not focus on transitional shelter folks and pursue people that are in a more stable status.
5. Meeting adjourned at 6:10pm
UPCOMING MEETINGS/KEY EVENTS
• Next meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 13th, 4:30pm at Catholic Charities, 1822 Keeamoku Street, Room TBD.
Date Time Location
Tuesday May 31, 2011 4:40pm – 6:10pm Catholic Charities, 1822 Keeamoku St.
Leads Attendees
▪ Fran Gendrano (Absent)
▪ John Cheever ▪ Rona Fukumoto (Absent)
▪ Jessica Horiuchi
▪ Kevin Kawahara
▪ Rachael ▪ Michael Morales
▪ Ben Ancheta (Absent)
▪ Lorene Yap
▪ Rachel James ▪ Yvette Maskrey (Absent)
▪ Kim Horan (Absent)
▪ Char Dote (Absent)
TODAY’S AGENDA
1. Meeting was called to order at 4:40pm
2. Kuleana Discussion Summary:
a. Potential Partnerships
i. Rachael James is an HPU Grad student and will begin participating in the Kuleana meetings!
1. Jessica provided background that the Kuleana team is struggling with the process of how to support client based and what is the defined objective to align and balance appropriately.
a. Action - Next steps to define the process. (John C.)
ii. Pacific Gateway Center with Rebecca Soon
1. Reviewed proposal from previous meeting.
2. Decision: John C to send an email out to the group. Attendees all thought it would be good to move forward with the PGC partnership.
3. Team agreed that when we do go down this path that the Kuleana’s pursuit of funding once we get our 501c3 will become a lower priority so we can focus on delivering mentoring support and obtain experience on PGC’s loan process. Follow up with team.
a. Action: John C. to speak with Rebecca S. on next steps such as:
i. Need MOU.. (Rebecca S.and Jessica H.)
1. Review PGCs best practices/standards.
2. Utilize and review applications/forms and policies.
b. We need to continue to solidify the up-front mentoring program and choose a lead mentor or mentoring group structure. Discuss with Kim H. (John C.)
i. Lead Mentor support – Identify someone like Kim H. to assist on providing lead support.
OR
ii. Mentoring Group – Crowd sourcing to support client. Also could leverage grad student support. For example, HPU grad students could provide this support. Rachael to find out how much support can be provided from HPU Grad Students. (Rachael)
iii. This could potentially be an internship.
c. Other open questions to PGC (John C.):
i. Most likely need a Non-Disclosure Agreement created. Action: Ask Rebecca S. if they have something for us to sign. (John C. and Jessica H.)
ii. How much would we meet with Rebecca S.? She would be available to answer questions and will be on the loan review committee. Rebecca can help with providing support from a structure.
iii. What is the default rate for PGC? Did not have specific numbers from PGC.
iv. Clarify the type of oversight PGC will provide during the process. It is assumed that PGC will not change their model and will be part of the process to provide mentoring support.
v. How does PGC fund the loans? Not all at once. It is a phased lending successed based approach. Review the PGC lending schedule. (John C.)
b. Funding/Client Discussion
i. Decision: This will be placed on hold as we focus on the PGC partnership.
3. 501(c)3 Application Review
a. John C. called the IRS agent and confirmed they received the updates. Update: 501c3 has been granted!
4. Other/New Kuleana Business
a. Kuleana meetings may be rescheduled to Tuesdays based on conflicts. Discussion to occur.
b. May not focus on transitional shelter folks and pursue people that are in a more stable status.
5. Meeting adjourned at 6:10pm
UPCOMING MEETINGS/KEY EVENTS
• Next meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 13th, 4:30pm at Catholic Charities, 1822 Keeamoku Street, Room TBD.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Sarah Vowell— Assassination Vacation
These are people who have the gall to believe they can fix us — us and our deficit, our fossil fuels, our racism, poverty, our potholes and public schools. The egomania required to be president or a presidential assassin makes the two types brothers of sorts. Presidents and presidential assassins are like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City that way. Even though one city is all about sin and the other is all about salvation, they are identical, one-dimensional company towns built up out of the desert by the sheer will of true believers. The assassins and the presidents invite the same basic question: Just who do you think you are?
There is a lesson here for the terrorists of the world: if they really want to get ahead, they should put less energy into training illiterate ten-year-olds how to fire Kalashnikovs and start recruiting celebrities like George Clooney. I bet nobody’s inspected that man’s luggage since the second season of ER.
However, careful readers who are also symbolism devotees would have noticed that the date in 1861 when the Baltimore mob clashed with the Massachusetts soldiers was April 19 — Patriot’s Day — the anniversary of Lexington and Concord, when the first shots were fired in the Revolutionary War. It is also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he was wearing a T-shirt. On the back of the T-shirt, perhaps as a nod commemorating Patriot’s Day, was the famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” On the front of McVeigh’s shirt was a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Printed under Lincoln’s face was the caption “Sic semper tyrannis.” McVeigh ordered his shirt from a catalog sent out to subscribers of Southern Partisan, the pro-Confederate magazine. As if McVeigh wearing the shirt isn’t disgusting enough, the catalog sold out of most sizes of the shirt after McVeigh made the news. People actually heard that a mass murderer responsible for 168 deaths was wearing clothing celebrating another murder and they wanted to dress up like him. According to media watchdogs Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, by December of that year, the catalog reassured Partisan readers who had ordered the shirt: Due to a surprising demand for our anti-Lincoln T-shirt, our stock has been reduced to odd sizes. If the enclosed shirt will not suffice, we will be glad to refund your money or immediately ship you another equally militant shirt from our catalog. And if the shirts were too big or too small, the readers could have cheered themselves up with one of the fetching, one-size-fits-all bumper stickers like “Clinton’s military: a gay at every porthole, a fag in every foxhole.” If the shirt’s popularity with readers of Southern Partisan, a magazine on the fringes, seems just that — on the fringes — three years after McVeigh inspired the shirt’s commercial success, a Missouri senator would do an interview with the magazine announcing, “Your magazine also helps set the record straight. You’ve got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Confederate President Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I’ve got to do more. We’ve all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we’ll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda.” And if that random senator still seems on the fringe, what with representing Missouri and/or kookily complaining about Jeff Davis’s bad rap, it’s worth noting that three years after saying that, the Missouri senator, John Ashcroft, became the attorney general of the United States, which is to say, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in all the land.
Thankfully, we Americans have evolved, our hearts made larger, our minds more open, welcoming the negligible differences among our fellows with compassion and respect. As a Democrat who voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, an election suspiciously tipped to tragic Republican victory because of a handful of contested ballots in the state of Florida, I, for one, would never dream of complaining about the votes siphoned in that state by my fellow liberal Ralph Nader, who convinced citizens whose hopes for the country differ little from my own to vote for him, even though had those votes gone to Gore, perhaps those citizens might have spent their free time in the years to come more pleasurably pursuing leisure activities, such as researching the sacrifice of Family Garfield, instead of attending rallies and protests against wars they find objectionable, not to mention the money saved on aspirin alone considering they’ll have to pop a couple every time they read the newspaper, wondering if the tap water with which they wash down the pills is safe enough to drink considering the corporate polluter lobbyists now employed at the EPA.
Take, for example, the commencement address he delivered at his alma mater Hiram College in the summer of 1880. Traditionally, these pep talks to college graduates are supposed to shove young people into the future with a briefcase bulging with infinitive verbs: to make, to produce, to do. Mr. Loner McBookworm, on the other hand, stands up and breaks it to his audience, the future achievers of America, that the price of the supposedly fulfilling attainment of one’s personal and professional dream is the irritating way it cuts into one’s free time. He tells them, It has occurred to me that the thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing that you care for the least, and that is your leisure — the leisure you have to think; the leisure you have to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet into your mind, and sound the depth and dive for things below. The only thing stopping this address from turning into a slacker parable is the absence of the word “dude.” Keep in mind that at that moment Garfield was a presidential candidate. The guy who theoretically wants the country’s most demanding, hectic, brain-dive-denying job stands before these potential gross national product producers advising them to treat leisure “as your gold, as your wealth, as your treasure.” As Garfield left the podium, every scared kid in the room could probably hear the sound of the stock market crashing him back to his old room at his parents’ house where he’d have plenty of free time to contemplate hanging himself with his boyhood bedsheets.
You know you’ve reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.
While a nuclear family is capable of low-key but toxic resentment, a commune is Three Mile Island waiting to happen. In Sleeping Where I Fall, his memoir of living on an anarchist collective farm in California in the 1960s, Peter Coyote admits to the way his annoyance with his fellow communards sometimes trumped his laissez-faire ideals, leading him to tape up a list of house rules including, “It’s fine if you want to take speed, just don’t talk to me!” Regarding Mutual Criticism, Valesky proclaims, “It would relate to personality issues, the whole idea being maintaining group stability, group harmony. Resolving conflicts would all be done by the group such that at the end, there would be a feeling that something has been discussed that needed to be.”
One learns more about the Oneida Community by considering Charles Guiteau than the other way around. There are Oneida traits in Guiteau for sure. He always credited the community with inspiring his abstinence from liquor and profanity. He plagiarized Noyes in some of his loony later speeches, especially the bits about the second coming of Christ in 70 A.D. But really, the fact that the commune put up with such an exasperating egomaniac for five full years speaks volumes about the Oneida Community’s capacity for tolerance.
“What might a vigorous thinker do, if he could be allowed to use the opportunities of a Presidential term in vital, useful activity?
In 2003 and 2004, as I was traveling around in the footsteps of McKinley, thinking about his interventionist wars in Cuba and the Philippines, the United States started up an interventionist war in Iraq. It was to be a “preemptive war” whose purpose was to disarm Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, weapons which, as I write this, have yet to be found, and which, like the nonexistent evidence of wrongdoing on the Maine, most likely never will be. At the outset of the war, President Bush proclaimed that “our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure,” just as President McKinley stated, regarding Cuba, “It is not a trust we sought; it is a trust from which we will not flinch.” I downloaded the Platt Amendment’s provisions toward Cuba from the National Archives’ Web site, saw the provision requiring the Cubans to lease land to the United States for a naval base, and then thought about the several hundred Taliban and other prisoners of the War on Terror being held there at Guantánamo Bay. I read a history book describing how McKinley’s secretary of war Elihu Root finally — after press uproar sparked Senate hearings — got around to ordering courts-martial for U.S. officers accused of committing the “water cure” in the Philippines, and, closing the book, turned on a televised Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was grilled about photographs of giddy U.S. soldiers proudly pointing at Iraqi prisoners of war they had just tortured at the Abu Ghraib prison. I went to NYU to hear former vice president Al Gore deliver a speech calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation; Gore asked of the administration’s imploding Iraq policy in general and the Abu Ghraib torture photos in particular, “How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prison?” Then I walked home through Washington Square Park, where Mark Twain used to hang out on the benches in his white flannel suit when he lived around the corner, and sat down in my living room to reread Twain’s accusation that McKinley’s deadly Philippines policy has “debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world.”
As the Cuban revolutionary hero José Martí worried, “Once the United States is in Cuba, who will drive them out?”
After the United States signed a treaty with Spain in 1898, we occupied Cuba for the next five years. Cuba became nominally independent thanks to an American act of Congress signed into law by McKinley in 1901. It was called the Platt Amendment, but a better name for it might have been “Buenos Dias, Fidel.” It kept Cuba under U.S. protection and gave us the right to intervene in Cuban affairs. Which we did for the next half century, reoccupying the country every few years and propping up a series of dictators, crooks, and boobs. The last one, a sergeant named Batista, was one of the monsters created in part by American military aid. When the revolution came in 1959, all American businesses in Cuba were nationalized without compensation. Yankee, said Castro, go home. And, oh, by the way, how do you like them missiles? Which is to say: Our failed postwar policy after the Spanish-American War actually led the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation in 1962. And over a century later, Cuba still isn’t free.
Under the galling yoke of government, ecclesiasticism and the bonds of custom and prejudice it is impossible for the individual to work out his own career as he could wish. Anarchism aims at a new and complete freedom…. We merely desire complete individual liberty and this can never be obtained as long as there is an existing government.
In 1901, at the time of the McKinley assassination, Robert Todd Lincoln had just become president of the Pullman Company, a position he would hold until 1911. So by Emma Goldman’s criteria Robert Todd Lincoln would have made an exceedingly perfect mark for Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo instead of President McKinley. And given his second career as the presidential angel of death, Robert Lincoln was even in town at the time.
“Can idealists be cruel?” It’s thrilling, even though I did want to reach into the page and pat her head, breaking it to her that, Oh my dear, idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.
Roosevelt had bumped into Lincoln here in Buffalo before heading to the Adirondacks. Lincoln had brought his family to town to see the Pan-American Exposition, never suspecting their vacation would see him reprise his cameo role as presidential assassination omen for the third and final time. Lincoln wrote to the new president, “I do not congratulate you for I have seen too much of the seamy side of the Presidential Robe to think of it as a desirable garment, but I do hope that you will have the strength and courage to carry you through a successful administration.” Roosevelt must have wanted to write back to Robert Todd — tod, the German word for death — Lincoln, “Well, since you brought it up, can I interest you in a diplomatic appointment in Katmandu?”
There is a wonderful photograph of a clearly enchanted Robert Todd Lincoln sitting in the audience at the ceremony — sitting with the white people in the audience. Because the Lincoln Memorial dedication ceremony was segregated. Segregated!
The people who visit the memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out “It’s a Small World After All” flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren.
Loving this memorial is a lot like loving this country: I might not have built the place this way; it’s a little too pompous, and if you look underneath the marble, the structure’s a fake and ye olde Parthenon is actually supported by skyscraper steel. But the Lincoln Memorial is still my favorite place in the world and not just in spite of its many stupid flaws. It’s my favorite place partly because of its blankness, because of those columns that are such standard-issue Western civ clichés they don’t so much exist as float. Inside the Lincoln Memorial I know what Frederick Douglass meant when he described what it was like to be invited to Lincoln’s White House: “I felt big there.”
Starcher’s inventory includes the important facts that Lincoln was elected in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960; that both their vice presidents were named Johnson, the first Johnson being born in 1808 and the second one in 1908; that John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839 and Lee Harvey Oswald in 1939; that the names Lincoln and Kennedy each have seven letters, the names Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson are thirteen letters each, and there are fifteen letters in the names John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Starcher concludes, “Friends, that these things are verified facts prove that truth really is stranger than fiction and that history does repeat itself.”
While the list points out the fact that both presidential wives witnessed their husbands’ murders and had children who died while their husbands were in the White House, the list daintily ignores the fact that both women spent way too much money on clothes. And then there is the ridiculous detail about how Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and then escaped to a warehouse, while Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and then made haste to a theater. But Booth didn’t run to a warehouse. He ended up in a barn. A barn is the same thing as a warehouse if you think that a puppet is the same thing as a potholder.
There is a lesson here for the terrorists of the world: if they really want to get ahead, they should put less energy into training illiterate ten-year-olds how to fire Kalashnikovs and start recruiting celebrities like George Clooney. I bet nobody’s inspected that man’s luggage since the second season of ER.
However, careful readers who are also symbolism devotees would have noticed that the date in 1861 when the Baltimore mob clashed with the Massachusetts soldiers was April 19 — Patriot’s Day — the anniversary of Lexington and Concord, when the first shots were fired in the Revolutionary War. It is also the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, he was wearing a T-shirt. On the back of the T-shirt, perhaps as a nod commemorating Patriot’s Day, was the famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” On the front of McVeigh’s shirt was a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Printed under Lincoln’s face was the caption “Sic semper tyrannis.” McVeigh ordered his shirt from a catalog sent out to subscribers of Southern Partisan, the pro-Confederate magazine. As if McVeigh wearing the shirt isn’t disgusting enough, the catalog sold out of most sizes of the shirt after McVeigh made the news. People actually heard that a mass murderer responsible for 168 deaths was wearing clothing celebrating another murder and they wanted to dress up like him. According to media watchdogs Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, by December of that year, the catalog reassured Partisan readers who had ordered the shirt: Due to a surprising demand for our anti-Lincoln T-shirt, our stock has been reduced to odd sizes. If the enclosed shirt will not suffice, we will be glad to refund your money or immediately ship you another equally militant shirt from our catalog. And if the shirts were too big or too small, the readers could have cheered themselves up with one of the fetching, one-size-fits-all bumper stickers like “Clinton’s military: a gay at every porthole, a fag in every foxhole.” If the shirt’s popularity with readers of Southern Partisan, a magazine on the fringes, seems just that — on the fringes — three years after McVeigh inspired the shirt’s commercial success, a Missouri senator would do an interview with the magazine announcing, “Your magazine also helps set the record straight. You’ve got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Confederate President Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I’ve got to do more. We’ve all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we’ll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda.” And if that random senator still seems on the fringe, what with representing Missouri and/or kookily complaining about Jeff Davis’s bad rap, it’s worth noting that three years after saying that, the Missouri senator, John Ashcroft, became the attorney general of the United States, which is to say, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in all the land.
Thankfully, we Americans have evolved, our hearts made larger, our minds more open, welcoming the negligible differences among our fellows with compassion and respect. As a Democrat who voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, an election suspiciously tipped to tragic Republican victory because of a handful of contested ballots in the state of Florida, I, for one, would never dream of complaining about the votes siphoned in that state by my fellow liberal Ralph Nader, who convinced citizens whose hopes for the country differ little from my own to vote for him, even though had those votes gone to Gore, perhaps those citizens might have spent their free time in the years to come more pleasurably pursuing leisure activities, such as researching the sacrifice of Family Garfield, instead of attending rallies and protests against wars they find objectionable, not to mention the money saved on aspirin alone considering they’ll have to pop a couple every time they read the newspaper, wondering if the tap water with which they wash down the pills is safe enough to drink considering the corporate polluter lobbyists now employed at the EPA.
Take, for example, the commencement address he delivered at his alma mater Hiram College in the summer of 1880. Traditionally, these pep talks to college graduates are supposed to shove young people into the future with a briefcase bulging with infinitive verbs: to make, to produce, to do. Mr. Loner McBookworm, on the other hand, stands up and breaks it to his audience, the future achievers of America, that the price of the supposedly fulfilling attainment of one’s personal and professional dream is the irritating way it cuts into one’s free time. He tells them, It has occurred to me that the thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing that you care for the least, and that is your leisure — the leisure you have to think; the leisure you have to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet into your mind, and sound the depth and dive for things below. The only thing stopping this address from turning into a slacker parable is the absence of the word “dude.” Keep in mind that at that moment Garfield was a presidential candidate. The guy who theoretically wants the country’s most demanding, hectic, brain-dive-denying job stands before these potential gross national product producers advising them to treat leisure “as your gold, as your wealth, as your treasure.” As Garfield left the podium, every scared kid in the room could probably hear the sound of the stock market crashing him back to his old room at his parents’ house where he’d have plenty of free time to contemplate hanging himself with his boyhood bedsheets.
You know you’ve reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.
While a nuclear family is capable of low-key but toxic resentment, a commune is Three Mile Island waiting to happen. In Sleeping Where I Fall, his memoir of living on an anarchist collective farm in California in the 1960s, Peter Coyote admits to the way his annoyance with his fellow communards sometimes trumped his laissez-faire ideals, leading him to tape up a list of house rules including, “It’s fine if you want to take speed, just don’t talk to me!” Regarding Mutual Criticism, Valesky proclaims, “It would relate to personality issues, the whole idea being maintaining group stability, group harmony. Resolving conflicts would all be done by the group such that at the end, there would be a feeling that something has been discussed that needed to be.”
One learns more about the Oneida Community by considering Charles Guiteau than the other way around. There are Oneida traits in Guiteau for sure. He always credited the community with inspiring his abstinence from liquor and profanity. He plagiarized Noyes in some of his loony later speeches, especially the bits about the second coming of Christ in 70 A.D. But really, the fact that the commune put up with such an exasperating egomaniac for five full years speaks volumes about the Oneida Community’s capacity for tolerance.
“What might a vigorous thinker do, if he could be allowed to use the opportunities of a Presidential term in vital, useful activity?
In 2003 and 2004, as I was traveling around in the footsteps of McKinley, thinking about his interventionist wars in Cuba and the Philippines, the United States started up an interventionist war in Iraq. It was to be a “preemptive war” whose purpose was to disarm Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, weapons which, as I write this, have yet to be found, and which, like the nonexistent evidence of wrongdoing on the Maine, most likely never will be. At the outset of the war, President Bush proclaimed that “our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure,” just as President McKinley stated, regarding Cuba, “It is not a trust we sought; it is a trust from which we will not flinch.” I downloaded the Platt Amendment’s provisions toward Cuba from the National Archives’ Web site, saw the provision requiring the Cubans to lease land to the United States for a naval base, and then thought about the several hundred Taliban and other prisoners of the War on Terror being held there at Guantánamo Bay. I read a history book describing how McKinley’s secretary of war Elihu Root finally — after press uproar sparked Senate hearings — got around to ordering courts-martial for U.S. officers accused of committing the “water cure” in the Philippines, and, closing the book, turned on a televised Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was grilled about photographs of giddy U.S. soldiers proudly pointing at Iraqi prisoners of war they had just tortured at the Abu Ghraib prison. I went to NYU to hear former vice president Al Gore deliver a speech calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation; Gore asked of the administration’s imploding Iraq policy in general and the Abu Ghraib torture photos in particular, “How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein’s torture prison?” Then I walked home through Washington Square Park, where Mark Twain used to hang out on the benches in his white flannel suit when he lived around the corner, and sat down in my living room to reread Twain’s accusation that McKinley’s deadly Philippines policy has “debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world.”
As the Cuban revolutionary hero José Martí worried, “Once the United States is in Cuba, who will drive them out?”
After the United States signed a treaty with Spain in 1898, we occupied Cuba for the next five years. Cuba became nominally independent thanks to an American act of Congress signed into law by McKinley in 1901. It was called the Platt Amendment, but a better name for it might have been “Buenos Dias, Fidel.” It kept Cuba under U.S. protection and gave us the right to intervene in Cuban affairs. Which we did for the next half century, reoccupying the country every few years and propping up a series of dictators, crooks, and boobs. The last one, a sergeant named Batista, was one of the monsters created in part by American military aid. When the revolution came in 1959, all American businesses in Cuba were nationalized without compensation. Yankee, said Castro, go home. And, oh, by the way, how do you like them missiles? Which is to say: Our failed postwar policy after the Spanish-American War actually led the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation in 1962. And over a century later, Cuba still isn’t free.
Under the galling yoke of government, ecclesiasticism and the bonds of custom and prejudice it is impossible for the individual to work out his own career as he could wish. Anarchism aims at a new and complete freedom…. We merely desire complete individual liberty and this can never be obtained as long as there is an existing government.
In 1901, at the time of the McKinley assassination, Robert Todd Lincoln had just become president of the Pullman Company, a position he would hold until 1911. So by Emma Goldman’s criteria Robert Todd Lincoln would have made an exceedingly perfect mark for Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo instead of President McKinley. And given his second career as the presidential angel of death, Robert Lincoln was even in town at the time.
“Can idealists be cruel?” It’s thrilling, even though I did want to reach into the page and pat her head, breaking it to her that, Oh my dear, idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.
Roosevelt had bumped into Lincoln here in Buffalo before heading to the Adirondacks. Lincoln had brought his family to town to see the Pan-American Exposition, never suspecting their vacation would see him reprise his cameo role as presidential assassination omen for the third and final time. Lincoln wrote to the new president, “I do not congratulate you for I have seen too much of the seamy side of the Presidential Robe to think of it as a desirable garment, but I do hope that you will have the strength and courage to carry you through a successful administration.” Roosevelt must have wanted to write back to Robert Todd — tod, the German word for death — Lincoln, “Well, since you brought it up, can I interest you in a diplomatic appointment in Katmandu?”
There is a wonderful photograph of a clearly enchanted Robert Todd Lincoln sitting in the audience at the ceremony — sitting with the white people in the audience. Because the Lincoln Memorial dedication ceremony was segregated. Segregated!
The people who visit the memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out “It’s a Small World After All” flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren.
Loving this memorial is a lot like loving this country: I might not have built the place this way; it’s a little too pompous, and if you look underneath the marble, the structure’s a fake and ye olde Parthenon is actually supported by skyscraper steel. But the Lincoln Memorial is still my favorite place in the world and not just in spite of its many stupid flaws. It’s my favorite place partly because of its blankness, because of those columns that are such standard-issue Western civ clichés they don’t so much exist as float. Inside the Lincoln Memorial I know what Frederick Douglass meant when he described what it was like to be invited to Lincoln’s White House: “I felt big there.”
Starcher’s inventory includes the important facts that Lincoln was elected in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960; that both their vice presidents were named Johnson, the first Johnson being born in 1808 and the second one in 1908; that John Wilkes Booth was born in 1839 and Lee Harvey Oswald in 1939; that the names Lincoln and Kennedy each have seven letters, the names Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Johnson are thirteen letters each, and there are fifteen letters in the names John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Starcher concludes, “Friends, that these things are verified facts prove that truth really is stranger than fiction and that history does repeat itself.”
While the list points out the fact that both presidential wives witnessed their husbands’ murders and had children who died while their husbands were in the White House, the list daintily ignores the fact that both women spent way too much money on clothes. And then there is the ridiculous detail about how Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and then escaped to a warehouse, while Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and then made haste to a theater. But Booth didn’t run to a warehouse. He ended up in a barn. A barn is the same thing as a warehouse if you think that a puppet is the same thing as a potholder.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Thomas Friedman— Hot Flat and Crowded
Core argument: America has a problem and the world has a problem. America’s problem is that it has lost its way in recent years— partly because of 9/11 and partly because of the bad habits that we have let build up over the last three decades, bad habits that have weakened our society’s ability and willingness to take on big challenges.
The world also has a problem: It is getting hot, flat and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable.
— tightening energy supplies
— intensifying the extinction of plants and animals
— deepening energy poverty
— strengthening petro-dictatorships
— accelerating climate change
The best way for America to solve its big problem is for us to take the lead in solving the world’s big problems. (5)
America is always at its most powerful and most influential when it is combining innovation and inspiration, wealth-building and dignity-building, the quest for big profits and the tackling of big problems.
Just coasting along and doing the same old things is not an option any longer. (6)
America has shifted from a country that always exported its hopes (and so imported the hopes of millions of others) to one that is seen as exporting its fears.
“dumb as we wanna be”, “
We’ll get to it when we feel like getting to it and it will never catch up with us, because we’re America.”
We’ve become a sub-prime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity. (8)
When you’re afraid you’re not yourself. (10)
France gets 78% of its electricity from nuclear plants and much of the waste is reprocessed and turned into energy again. Today, between Brazil’s domestic oil production and its ethanol industry, it doesn’t need to import crude oil. (14)
While the Reagan administration was instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union, it as also instrumental in building our dependence on Saudi Arabia. (15)
— slashed environmental regulation
— moved back fuel efficiency and appliance standards
o In 2003, even China leaped ahead of the United States.
According to Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, if the US had continued to conserve oil into the 1990s the way it did between 1976 and 1985, thanks in large part due to increased fuel efficiency standards, we would no longer have needed Persian Gulf Oil after 1985. (17)
With Democrats supporting the auto companies and their unions and Republicans supporting the oil companies= no fuel efficiency standards.
George W. Bush came to office bound and determined not to ask the American people to do anything hard when it came to energy. (21)
Green is not simply a new form of generating electric power, it’s a new form of generating national power. (23)
When the wind changes direction, there are those who build walls and those who build sails.
—Chinese proverb
Flat:
— a combination of technological, market, and geopolitical events at the end of the 20th century had leveled the global economic playing field in a way that was enabling more people than ever, from more places than ever, to take part in the global economy— and in the best of cases, to enter the middle class.
— personal computer
— the Internet
— software and transmission protocols (“work flow revolution”)
— collapse of Soviet Union, Berlin Wall, Communism
= seamless, unobstructed global marketplace
— 200 million people lifted out of abject poverty in the 1980s and 1990s in China and India alone
— tens of millions of others moved into the middle class (30)
= huge demand for “things”, all of which devour lots of energy, natural resources, land, water and emit lots of climate-changing greenhouse gases from the time they are produced to when they are discarded.
Hot:
—“fuels from heaven”: wind, hydroelectric, tidal, solar, biomass
vs.
— “fuels from hell”: coal, oil, natural gas (32)
• deforestation in places like Indonesia and Brazil is responsible for more CO2 than all the world’s cars, trucks, airplanes, ships, and trains combined (34)
• methane released by livestock is one of the chief global sources of the gas (35)
• the global consumption of all forms of all forms of energy will double between 2008 and 2050 due to population growth and greater wealth driven by globalization
—2004: world’s first demand-led energy shock due to China sudden leap in consumption (39)
In 2007, according to the World Bank, the governments of India, China, and the Middle East alone spent $50 billion subsidizing gasoline for their motorists, and cooking and heating oil and electricity for homes and factories; Indonesia spent 30% of its budget on energy subsidies and only 6% on education; at the same time, Western nations spent roughly $270 billion subsidizing agriculture, so their farmers got rich, their consumers got cheap food, and Third wrodl farmers had a hard time competing. (41)
Petrodictatorship: massive transfer of wealth— hundreds of billions of dollars— from energy-consuming countries to energy producing countries; strengthening non-democratic actors. (42)
Energy Poverty: If you don’t have electricity you cannot go online and you cannot compete, connect, and collaborate globally, and increasingly, even locally. Those who have electricity, and whose aspirations have increased with every kilowatt, suddenly losing it could become politically explosive. (45)
Biodiversity Loss: As a result of climate change,
—one acre per second of rainforest is lost
— 90% of large predator fish are gone
— 20% of corals are gone
— species are disappearing at rates about a thousand times faster than normal. (46)
Growth is not negotiable especially in a flat world where everyone can see how everyone else is living. To tell people they can’t grow is to tell them they have to remain poor forever. (55)
Both Europe and Japan have demonstrated that is possible to live a middle-class lifestyle with much less consumption. (55)
It took all of human history to build a seven-trillion dollar world economy of 1950; today economic activity grows by that amount every decade. At current rates of growth, the world economy will double in size in fourteen years. (56)
Our prosperity is now threatened by the very foundation of that prosperity— the nature of American capitalism. (57)
Chinese developers are laying more than 52,700 miles of new highways; some 14,000 cars hit China’s roads each day; by 2040 or 2050, China is expected to have even more cars than the U.S. (59) After China, the Arab nations and Iran have the highest rate of growth in energy usage in the developing world. China uses 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks a year, or 1.66 million cubic meters of timber= millions of full-grown trees.
However, for all the talk about their rising energy usages, the U.S. is still the world’s greatest energy hogs by far. The average American consumes:
— enough energy to meet the biological needs of 100 people
— China and India consume approx. 9-30 times less energy per person than the U.S.(72)
If all the world lived like Americans, it would be a climate and biodiversity disaster.
Every previous economic spurt and takeoff in history by one country or a region was nurtured by an unexploited commons… the bad news for today’s rising powers and new capitalists is that there are few virgin commons left to fuel their takeoff into capitalism. (69)
All it takes is knowledge. Innovation around sustainable energy and resource productivity is our only way out of this problem…”Cradle to cradle”— close all the cycles so we don’t send things to landfills and incinerators, we put them into closed cycles so that we can use them over and over again. (70)
Europe has managed to rein in iol consumption through a combination of high gasoline taxes, small cars and efficient public transportation, but American have not. (73)
Petropolitics: Our energy policy is not just changing the climate system, it is also changing the international system in fundamental ways:
— 1) our energy purchases are helping to strengthen the most intolerant, antimodern, anti-western, anti-women’s rights, and anti-pluralistic strain of Islam— that which is propagated by Saudi Arabia
o S.A. has set out to evangelize the entire Islamic world; it constitutes only 1% of the world’s Muslims but it supports 90% of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions of Islam. (82) [compared to Three Cups of Tea, 86]
• Wahhabi teachings and al Qaeda are essentially the same (hostility to Shiites, Jews, homosexuals, apostates, and non-traditional women); what separates them is their means of achieving their objectives (86)
• Saudi citizens provided the majority of financing for al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, in order to prevent Shiites from dominating the Baghdad government (90)
o In addition, Muslim youth are pushing back against globalization and Westernization— 2/3 of the Middle East’s population in under 25 and than ¼ of them are unemployed.
— 2) our oil addiction is helping to finance a reversal of the democratic trends in Russia, Latin America, and elsewhere that were set in motion by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism.
o the First Law of Petropolitics: as the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down (and vice versa ?)
o “Dutch disease“ —abundance of resources is bad for a country’s economy (98)
• 1) value of currency rises because of all the investment pouring into the country
• 2) imports become cheaper, exports more expensive on world markets
• 3) citizens, flush with petro-cash start buying up cheaper imported goods
• 4) domestic manufacturing sector gets wiped out = deindustrialization (99)
o resource curse impedes the growth of democracy (101)
• ‘taxation effect’ = “no taxation, so no representation either”
• everything revolves around those resources; ‘patronage spending’ = dependence on the state
• ‘group formation effect’ = intentional prevention of groups forming that are independent of the state
• ‘repression effect’ = police, internal security
• women are underrepresented in the workforce because jobs women traditionally attain at the entry level— garment and textile work— disappear from pertodictatorships because people spend money on cheaper imports rather than domestically produced goods — reduced political influence(103)
— 3) our growing dependence on oil is fueling an ugly global energy scramble that brings out the worst in nations
o of the 23 nations which derive a clear majority of their export income from oil and gas, not a single one is a democracy (105)
o warping diplomacy— forcing China and India to go into remote places to find the supply for their oil needs (eg. Darfur)
— 4) through our energy purchases we are funding both sides of the war on terror (our military and the enemies they must fight with weapons purchased with oil proceeds)
“American energy policy can be summed up as ‘Maximize demand, minimize supply, and make up the difference by buying as much as we can from the people who hate us the most.’” (80)
—When money can be extracted from the ground, people simply don’t develop the DNA of innovation and entrepreneurship.
— there is not a single world-class university or scientific research center in the entire Arab world or Iran today. (104)
Fall of the Soviet Union: Reagan or $10 a barrel oil?
— actually, it was $70 a barrel oil followed by $10 a barrel oil (108)
— 1973 Arab oil embargo propped up Soviet economy in the short term
— 1985—Saudi Arabia stops protecting oil prices, production increases fourfold, oil price collapses, Soviet Union’s economy becomes insolvent (parallel to modern day Iran)
“Going green is no longer simply a hobby for high-minded environmentalists or some personal virtue, as Vice President Dick Cheney once sneered. It is now a national security imperative. Any American strategy for promoting democracy in an oil-rich region that does not include a plan for developing renewable energy alternatives that can eventually bring down the price of oil is doomed to fail.” (110)
• Climate change:
— deniers come in three varieties:
o 1) those paid by the fossil fuel companies
o 2) those scientists, small minority, who look at the same data and conclude for different reasons that global warming is not a major threat to the planet’s livability
• 6° C change in global temperatures cannot be accounted for simply changes in sunlight due to variability in the Earth’s orbit
• IPCC reports with 90% confidence that climate change caused by CO2, other greenhouse gases, and deforestation (120)
o 3) those conservatives who simply refuse to accept reality of climate change because they hate the solution— more government regulation and intervention. (114)
— You’re wrong. Okay, you’re right, but it doesn’t matter. Okay, it matters, but it’s too late to do anything about it.”
• Biodiversity loss:
— Conservation International
o Loss of one species every twenty minutes
o Loss of 1,200 acres of forests in same amount of time
— loss of ecosystem services (143) [especially crucial for people in poor communities]
o supply fresh water
o filter pollutants from streams
o provide breeding grounds for fisheries
o control erosion
o buffer human communities from natural disasters
o harbor insects
o take CO2 out of the atmosphere
We are the only species in this vast web of life that no animal or plant in nature depends on for its survival— yet we depend on this whole web of life for our survival (and we are destroying it). (152)
The upside of globalization is that it’s bringing more and more people out of poverty faster than ever before in the history of the world. The downside is that rising standards of living are making much higher levels of production and consumption by many more people. (147)
• Energy poverty:
— at the village level:
o can’t pump water regularly
o no communications
o minimal education opportunities
o no computers
o substandard health care
o minimal economic expansion
We need to create an ecosystem of sustainable energy plus education plus connectivity plus investment. (168)
— maintain traditions, dress, food, family ties rather than moving into a city
Green opportunity:
—eventually everyone is going to be forced to pay the true cost of the energy they are using, the true cost of the climate change they are causing, the true cost of the biodiversity
“a series of great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.” (170)
countries, communities, and companies that invent and deploy clean power technologies most effectively will have a dominant place in tomorrow’s global economy.
everybody, in time, is going to be forced to pay the true cost of the energy they are using, the true cost of the climate change they are causing, the true cost of the biodiversity loss they are triggering, the true cost of the petrodictatorship they are funding, and the true cost of the energy poverty they are sustaining.
It is not pay now or pay later. It is pay now or there will be no later. (171)
…in the Energy-Climate Era, “green” is no longer a fad, green is no longer a boutique statement, green is no longer something you do to be good and hope that is pays off in ten years. Green is the way you grow, build, design, manufacture, work, and live…Green becomes the smartest, most efficient, lowest-cost way— when all the true costs are included— to do things. (172)
We also have a moral responsibility— because we consume the greatest portion per capita of the world’s resources, because we have more resources for innovation than any other country, b/c we have the standing to affect more people on the planet than any other country, and b/c giving more people around the world the clean power tools they need is totally consistent with America’s mission to expand the frontiers of freedom for everyone. (175)
Emulation is always more effective than compulsion. (176)
We need American capitalism applied to this problem. If the Americans are going green, the whole rest of the world is going green. (177)
The goal is also to use American power to bring the world’s most disadvantaged populations the energy to improve their lives and realize more of their aspirations as well. (178)
Believing this doesn't mean we should give up acting in our own self-interest— never. But it is precisely in our self-interest, at times, to behave more selflessly— to let people know that there are some problems we will approach as Americans and others that we can only address together as a species, and that we want to do both. (180)
Plan A: A Code Green
Dirty Fuels System: based on three key elements:
1) fossil fuels that were dirty, cheap, and abundant
2) wasteful use of those fuels for many years as if they could never run out
3) unbridled exploitation of out other natural resources— air, water, land, rivers, forests, and ocean fisheries— as if they too were infinite
As long as we are trying to
—protect biodiversity, promote Middle East democracy, combat pverty within a system that is encouraging people to use food to power cars rather than to drive less— we are never going to be successful within a Dirty Fuels System. (182-3)
The first rules of systems is that everything is interconnected…If you don't scrap the old system and put a new system in place, ultimately everything you do will be constrained. But if you put in a new system, and you do it right, everything starts to get better. (185)
If you don’t have a system, you don't have a solution. (186)
Clean Electrons
We as a global society need more growth because without it there is no human development and those in poverty will never escape it. (186)
Job number one of a Clean energy System is to stimulate innovation. (187)
— generous tax incentives, regulatory incentives, renewable energy mandates, and other market shaping mechanisms that create durable demand for these existing clean power technologies
An Ethic of Conservation
One thing we know from a dirty Fuels System is that when things are free or cheap— air, water, land, forests, fisheries, gasoline, electrons— people abuse and overuse them. (192)
‘even at $100 a barrel, oil is cheaper than imported bottled water (which would cost $180 a barrel) or milk ($150 a barrel)’ (245)
An ethic of conservation requires both stewardship and trusteeship— habits of restraint that express respect for the earth that we inhabit and respect for future generations. (192)
We have to develop new habits and attitudes toward consumption.
Conservation is not the opposite of consumption…We need to consume to live and grow our economies. But we can consume more and conserve more at the same time…Too many environmentalists oppose any growth, a position that locks the poor into poverty. (194)
We need a Clean Energy System that is always trying to optimize three things:
1) innovation and generation of the cleanest and cheapest electrons
2) the mostn efficient and productive use of those electrons and other natural resources
3) constant attention to protecting and conserving our natural systems and educating people about their material, spiritual, and aesthetic value. (195)
a renewable energy ecosystem for innovating, generating, and deploying clean power, energy, efficiency, resource productivity, and conservation < the true cost of burning coal, oil and gas (198) We need to look at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking at the margins (208)…to really make a difference there are three issues: 1) there is the scale of demand 2) the scale of the investment needed to produce alternatives at scale 3) the scale of time it takes to produce alternatives (210) meeting the energy challenge will require shared sacrifice and political will… ‘you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it.’ (215) The Energy Internet: When It Meets ET What we need most now are integrated government policies— laws and standards, taxes and credits, incentives and mandates, minimums and maximums— to guide and stimulate the marketplace to drive the innovations further, to commercialize these new ideas faster, and to bring this revolution to life sooner. (217) Roughly 40% of America’s total CO2 emissions come from the production of electricity used in homes, offices, and factories. Another 30% of American emissions come from the transportation sector— primarily cars, trucks, boats, trains, and airplanes… supply this whole 70% with clean, abundant, cheap, reliable electrons through a smart grid— that would be a revolution. (224) 224-236— smart grid of the future The Stone Age Didn’t End Because We Ran Out of Stones Clean power is going to be the global standard over the next decade, and clean power tools are going to be the next great global industry, and the countries whi make more of them and sell more of them will have a competitive advantage. (242) Incremental breakthroughs are all we’ve had, but exponential is what we desperately need. …a coordinated set of policies, tax incentives and disincentives, and regulations that would stimulate the marketplace to produce an Energy Internet, to move the clean power technologies we already have— like wind and solar— down the learning curve much faster, and to spur the massive, no-holds-barred-everybody-in-their-garage-or-laboratory innovation we need for new sources of clean electrons. (243) There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit. We need a market for clean energy. Only the market can generate and allocate enough capital fast enough and efficiently enough to inventors and companies working in garages and laboratories to drive transformational breakthroughs, only the market can then commercialize the best of them and improve on the existing ones at the scope, speed, and scale we need. (244) The American pet food industry spends more money on R & D than the American utilities do. (247) ‘disruptive technologies”: that new technologies replace existing ones because they are cheaper and more consumer-friendly. (249) No matter how much you tell the market what you want it to do, it is the price signal that markets respond to… you have to have a price signal. (250) The market will give us what we want, but only if we give the market the signals it needs: a carbon tax, a gasoline tax increase, a renewable energy mandate, or a cap-and-trade system that indirectly taxes carbon emitters— or some combination of all these. (251) …if we want to get both forms of innovation at a large scale— breakthroughs that lead to a whole new way of generating clean electrons and breakthroughs that come by getting the clean power technologies we already have down the learning curve faster— we need the government to level the playing field by taxing what we don’t want (electricity from carbon-emitting sources) and subsidizing what we do want (clean power innovation). (252) If inventors and venture capitalists believe that the price of their new clean energy invention can always be undercut by the dirty old alternative, we are not going to get new innovation at the scale we need… the lingering uncertainty about the long-term price of oil is why some of our biggest energy companies, the kind you want to be “all in” on clean-tech innovation, are not all-in. (254) What will make them go all-in would be a floor price on crude oil or carbon content that would tell them and their investors that the price of these fossil fuels will never again fall below a certain level. (255) Bottom line: America needs an energy technology bubble just like the information technology bubble. In order to get that the government needs to make it an absolute no-brainer to invest in renewable energy. (258) This bubble is going to attract so much new capital…that it is going to drive innovation faster and faster. (258) “Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.” (259) an externality is any cost or benefit resulting from a commercial transaction that is borne by or received by parties not directly involved in the transaction. That which is not priced is not valued, and if our open lands, clean air, clean water, and healthy forests are not valued, the earth, when it is this flat and this crowded, will become a very hot, no-cost landfill very fast. (260) Roughly 30% of our greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector…American actually produces twice as much nuclear power as France but with our much bigger economy it represents a smaller share of our total. (290) Electrifying transportation… an electricity-powered system has far fewer energy losses along the way than a gasoline-fueled system, when you include all the losses in the gasoline system from oil extraction, transportation, refining, and distribution of the gas— plus the lower efficiency of an internal combustion energy. (291) Change or die— only if government uses its power to set prices, regulations, and standards to reshape the energy market and force utilities and other big players to either innovate or die. (294) Indonesia is now losing rain forests the size of Maryland every year…a forest area the size of three hundred soccer fields is cut down in Indonesia every hour. (299) Ninety percent of the people living in extreme poverty around the world today are directly dependent upon forests for their food, fuel, shelter, freshwater, and fiber…(313) REDD— Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation— wealthy developed countries would pay poor developing countries to keep their forests intact. (313) It takes an ecosystem of the right government policies, the right investments, and the right actors to save an ecosystem of plants, animals, and forests. (302) All conservation is local. (303) Conservation is also about dealing with people. (309) An ethic of conservation declares that maintaining our natural world is a value that is impossible to quantify but also impossible to ignore, because of the sheer beauty, wonder, joy, and magic that nature brings to being alive. (314) ‘outgreening’ is going to be a competitive advantage…grean as a value will increasingly be something everyone (young people especially) will want to associate with, and therefore the greenest companies, countries, schools, and cities will attract the most talent. (326) Most corporate responsibility is defensive…you could make a lot more money by being more corporately responsible. (334) The people who likely will be most affected by energy and natural resource supply/demand, climate change, petrodictatorship, biodiversity loss, energy poverty don’t get to vote— because they haven’t been born yet. (403) Machiavelli, The Prince: “It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilously to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents— who have the laws on their side— and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in the new things until they have had a long experience on them.” (264)
The world also has a problem: It is getting hot, flat and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable.
— tightening energy supplies
— intensifying the extinction of plants and animals
— deepening energy poverty
— strengthening petro-dictatorships
— accelerating climate change
The best way for America to solve its big problem is for us to take the lead in solving the world’s big problems. (5)
America is always at its most powerful and most influential when it is combining innovation and inspiration, wealth-building and dignity-building, the quest for big profits and the tackling of big problems.
Just coasting along and doing the same old things is not an option any longer. (6)
America has shifted from a country that always exported its hopes (and so imported the hopes of millions of others) to one that is seen as exporting its fears.
“dumb as we wanna be”, “
We’ll get to it when we feel like getting to it and it will never catch up with us, because we’re America.”
We’ve become a sub-prime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity. (8)
When you’re afraid you’re not yourself. (10)
France gets 78% of its electricity from nuclear plants and much of the waste is reprocessed and turned into energy again. Today, between Brazil’s domestic oil production and its ethanol industry, it doesn’t need to import crude oil. (14)
While the Reagan administration was instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union, it as also instrumental in building our dependence on Saudi Arabia. (15)
— slashed environmental regulation
— moved back fuel efficiency and appliance standards
o In 2003, even China leaped ahead of the United States.
According to Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, if the US had continued to conserve oil into the 1990s the way it did between 1976 and 1985, thanks in large part due to increased fuel efficiency standards, we would no longer have needed Persian Gulf Oil after 1985. (17)
With Democrats supporting the auto companies and their unions and Republicans supporting the oil companies= no fuel efficiency standards.
George W. Bush came to office bound and determined not to ask the American people to do anything hard when it came to energy. (21)
Green is not simply a new form of generating electric power, it’s a new form of generating national power. (23)
When the wind changes direction, there are those who build walls and those who build sails.
—Chinese proverb
Flat:
— a combination of technological, market, and geopolitical events at the end of the 20th century had leveled the global economic playing field in a way that was enabling more people than ever, from more places than ever, to take part in the global economy— and in the best of cases, to enter the middle class.
— personal computer
— the Internet
— software and transmission protocols (“work flow revolution”)
— collapse of Soviet Union, Berlin Wall, Communism
= seamless, unobstructed global marketplace
— 200 million people lifted out of abject poverty in the 1980s and 1990s in China and India alone
— tens of millions of others moved into the middle class (30)
= huge demand for “things”, all of which devour lots of energy, natural resources, land, water and emit lots of climate-changing greenhouse gases from the time they are produced to when they are discarded.
Hot:
—“fuels from heaven”: wind, hydroelectric, tidal, solar, biomass
vs.
— “fuels from hell”: coal, oil, natural gas (32)
• deforestation in places like Indonesia and Brazil is responsible for more CO2 than all the world’s cars, trucks, airplanes, ships, and trains combined (34)
• methane released by livestock is one of the chief global sources of the gas (35)
• the global consumption of all forms of all forms of energy will double between 2008 and 2050 due to population growth and greater wealth driven by globalization
—2004: world’s first demand-led energy shock due to China sudden leap in consumption (39)
In 2007, according to the World Bank, the governments of India, China, and the Middle East alone spent $50 billion subsidizing gasoline for their motorists, and cooking and heating oil and electricity for homes and factories; Indonesia spent 30% of its budget on energy subsidies and only 6% on education; at the same time, Western nations spent roughly $270 billion subsidizing agriculture, so their farmers got rich, their consumers got cheap food, and Third wrodl farmers had a hard time competing. (41)
Petrodictatorship: massive transfer of wealth— hundreds of billions of dollars— from energy-consuming countries to energy producing countries; strengthening non-democratic actors. (42)
Energy Poverty: If you don’t have electricity you cannot go online and you cannot compete, connect, and collaborate globally, and increasingly, even locally. Those who have electricity, and whose aspirations have increased with every kilowatt, suddenly losing it could become politically explosive. (45)
Biodiversity Loss: As a result of climate change,
—one acre per second of rainforest is lost
— 90% of large predator fish are gone
— 20% of corals are gone
— species are disappearing at rates about a thousand times faster than normal. (46)
Growth is not negotiable especially in a flat world where everyone can see how everyone else is living. To tell people they can’t grow is to tell them they have to remain poor forever. (55)
Both Europe and Japan have demonstrated that is possible to live a middle-class lifestyle with much less consumption. (55)
It took all of human history to build a seven-trillion dollar world economy of 1950; today economic activity grows by that amount every decade. At current rates of growth, the world economy will double in size in fourteen years. (56)
Our prosperity is now threatened by the very foundation of that prosperity— the nature of American capitalism. (57)
Chinese developers are laying more than 52,700 miles of new highways; some 14,000 cars hit China’s roads each day; by 2040 or 2050, China is expected to have even more cars than the U.S. (59) After China, the Arab nations and Iran have the highest rate of growth in energy usage in the developing world. China uses 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks a year, or 1.66 million cubic meters of timber= millions of full-grown trees.
However, for all the talk about their rising energy usages, the U.S. is still the world’s greatest energy hogs by far. The average American consumes:
— enough energy to meet the biological needs of 100 people
— China and India consume approx. 9-30 times less energy per person than the U.S.(72)
If all the world lived like Americans, it would be a climate and biodiversity disaster.
Every previous economic spurt and takeoff in history by one country or a region was nurtured by an unexploited commons… the bad news for today’s rising powers and new capitalists is that there are few virgin commons left to fuel their takeoff into capitalism. (69)
All it takes is knowledge. Innovation around sustainable energy and resource productivity is our only way out of this problem…”Cradle to cradle”— close all the cycles so we don’t send things to landfills and incinerators, we put them into closed cycles so that we can use them over and over again. (70)
Europe has managed to rein in iol consumption through a combination of high gasoline taxes, small cars and efficient public transportation, but American have not. (73)
Petropolitics: Our energy policy is not just changing the climate system, it is also changing the international system in fundamental ways:
— 1) our energy purchases are helping to strengthen the most intolerant, antimodern, anti-western, anti-women’s rights, and anti-pluralistic strain of Islam— that which is propagated by Saudi Arabia
o S.A. has set out to evangelize the entire Islamic world; it constitutes only 1% of the world’s Muslims but it supports 90% of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other traditions of Islam. (82) [compared to Three Cups of Tea, 86]
• Wahhabi teachings and al Qaeda are essentially the same (hostility to Shiites, Jews, homosexuals, apostates, and non-traditional women); what separates them is their means of achieving their objectives (86)
• Saudi citizens provided the majority of financing for al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, in order to prevent Shiites from dominating the Baghdad government (90)
o In addition, Muslim youth are pushing back against globalization and Westernization— 2/3 of the Middle East’s population in under 25 and than ¼ of them are unemployed.
— 2) our oil addiction is helping to finance a reversal of the democratic trends in Russia, Latin America, and elsewhere that were set in motion by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism.
o the First Law of Petropolitics: as the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down (and vice versa ?)
o “Dutch disease“ —abundance of resources is bad for a country’s economy (98)
• 1) value of currency rises because of all the investment pouring into the country
• 2) imports become cheaper, exports more expensive on world markets
• 3) citizens, flush with petro-cash start buying up cheaper imported goods
• 4) domestic manufacturing sector gets wiped out = deindustrialization (99)
o resource curse impedes the growth of democracy (101)
• ‘taxation effect’ = “no taxation, so no representation either”
• everything revolves around those resources; ‘patronage spending’ = dependence on the state
• ‘group formation effect’ = intentional prevention of groups forming that are independent of the state
• ‘repression effect’ = police, internal security
• women are underrepresented in the workforce because jobs women traditionally attain at the entry level— garment and textile work— disappear from pertodictatorships because people spend money on cheaper imports rather than domestically produced goods — reduced political influence(103)
— 3) our growing dependence on oil is fueling an ugly global energy scramble that brings out the worst in nations
o of the 23 nations which derive a clear majority of their export income from oil and gas, not a single one is a democracy (105)
o warping diplomacy— forcing China and India to go into remote places to find the supply for their oil needs (eg. Darfur)
— 4) through our energy purchases we are funding both sides of the war on terror (our military and the enemies they must fight with weapons purchased with oil proceeds)
“American energy policy can be summed up as ‘Maximize demand, minimize supply, and make up the difference by buying as much as we can from the people who hate us the most.’” (80)
—When money can be extracted from the ground, people simply don’t develop the DNA of innovation and entrepreneurship.
— there is not a single world-class university or scientific research center in the entire Arab world or Iran today. (104)
Fall of the Soviet Union: Reagan or $10 a barrel oil?
— actually, it was $70 a barrel oil followed by $10 a barrel oil (108)
— 1973 Arab oil embargo propped up Soviet economy in the short term
— 1985—Saudi Arabia stops protecting oil prices, production increases fourfold, oil price collapses, Soviet Union’s economy becomes insolvent (parallel to modern day Iran)
“Going green is no longer simply a hobby for high-minded environmentalists or some personal virtue, as Vice President Dick Cheney once sneered. It is now a national security imperative. Any American strategy for promoting democracy in an oil-rich region that does not include a plan for developing renewable energy alternatives that can eventually bring down the price of oil is doomed to fail.” (110)
• Climate change:
— deniers come in three varieties:
o 1) those paid by the fossil fuel companies
o 2) those scientists, small minority, who look at the same data and conclude for different reasons that global warming is not a major threat to the planet’s livability
• 6° C change in global temperatures cannot be accounted for simply changes in sunlight due to variability in the Earth’s orbit
• IPCC reports with 90% confidence that climate change caused by CO2, other greenhouse gases, and deforestation (120)
o 3) those conservatives who simply refuse to accept reality of climate change because they hate the solution— more government regulation and intervention. (114)
— You’re wrong. Okay, you’re right, but it doesn’t matter. Okay, it matters, but it’s too late to do anything about it.”
• Biodiversity loss:
— Conservation International
o Loss of one species every twenty minutes
o Loss of 1,200 acres of forests in same amount of time
— loss of ecosystem services (143) [especially crucial for people in poor communities]
o supply fresh water
o filter pollutants from streams
o provide breeding grounds for fisheries
o control erosion
o buffer human communities from natural disasters
o harbor insects
o take CO2 out of the atmosphere
We are the only species in this vast web of life that no animal or plant in nature depends on for its survival— yet we depend on this whole web of life for our survival (and we are destroying it). (152)
The upside of globalization is that it’s bringing more and more people out of poverty faster than ever before in the history of the world. The downside is that rising standards of living are making much higher levels of production and consumption by many more people. (147)
• Energy poverty:
— at the village level:
o can’t pump water regularly
o no communications
o minimal education opportunities
o no computers
o substandard health care
o minimal economic expansion
We need to create an ecosystem of sustainable energy plus education plus connectivity plus investment. (168)
— maintain traditions, dress, food, family ties rather than moving into a city
Green opportunity:
—eventually everyone is going to be forced to pay the true cost of the energy they are using, the true cost of the climate change they are causing, the true cost of the biodiversity
“a series of great opportunities disguised as insoluble problems.” (170)
countries, communities, and companies that invent and deploy clean power technologies most effectively will have a dominant place in tomorrow’s global economy.
everybody, in time, is going to be forced to pay the true cost of the energy they are using, the true cost of the climate change they are causing, the true cost of the biodiversity loss they are triggering, the true cost of the petrodictatorship they are funding, and the true cost of the energy poverty they are sustaining.
It is not pay now or pay later. It is pay now or there will be no later. (171)
…in the Energy-Climate Era, “green” is no longer a fad, green is no longer a boutique statement, green is no longer something you do to be good and hope that is pays off in ten years. Green is the way you grow, build, design, manufacture, work, and live…Green becomes the smartest, most efficient, lowest-cost way— when all the true costs are included— to do things. (172)
We also have a moral responsibility— because we consume the greatest portion per capita of the world’s resources, because we have more resources for innovation than any other country, b/c we have the standing to affect more people on the planet than any other country, and b/c giving more people around the world the clean power tools they need is totally consistent with America’s mission to expand the frontiers of freedom for everyone. (175)
Emulation is always more effective than compulsion. (176)
We need American capitalism applied to this problem. If the Americans are going green, the whole rest of the world is going green. (177)
The goal is also to use American power to bring the world’s most disadvantaged populations the energy to improve their lives and realize more of their aspirations as well. (178)
Believing this doesn't mean we should give up acting in our own self-interest— never. But it is precisely in our self-interest, at times, to behave more selflessly— to let people know that there are some problems we will approach as Americans and others that we can only address together as a species, and that we want to do both. (180)
Plan A: A Code Green
Dirty Fuels System: based on three key elements:
1) fossil fuels that were dirty, cheap, and abundant
2) wasteful use of those fuels for many years as if they could never run out
3) unbridled exploitation of out other natural resources— air, water, land, rivers, forests, and ocean fisheries— as if they too were infinite
As long as we are trying to
—protect biodiversity, promote Middle East democracy, combat pverty within a system that is encouraging people to use food to power cars rather than to drive less— we are never going to be successful within a Dirty Fuels System. (182-3)
The first rules of systems is that everything is interconnected…If you don't scrap the old system and put a new system in place, ultimately everything you do will be constrained. But if you put in a new system, and you do it right, everything starts to get better. (185)
If you don’t have a system, you don't have a solution. (186)
Clean Electrons
We as a global society need more growth because without it there is no human development and those in poverty will never escape it. (186)
Job number one of a Clean energy System is to stimulate innovation. (187)
— generous tax incentives, regulatory incentives, renewable energy mandates, and other market shaping mechanisms that create durable demand for these existing clean power technologies
An Ethic of Conservation
One thing we know from a dirty Fuels System is that when things are free or cheap— air, water, land, forests, fisheries, gasoline, electrons— people abuse and overuse them. (192)
‘even at $100 a barrel, oil is cheaper than imported bottled water (which would cost $180 a barrel) or milk ($150 a barrel)’ (245)
An ethic of conservation requires both stewardship and trusteeship— habits of restraint that express respect for the earth that we inhabit and respect for future generations. (192)
We have to develop new habits and attitudes toward consumption.
Conservation is not the opposite of consumption…We need to consume to live and grow our economies. But we can consume more and conserve more at the same time…Too many environmentalists oppose any growth, a position that locks the poor into poverty. (194)
We need a Clean Energy System that is always trying to optimize three things:
1) innovation and generation of the cleanest and cheapest electrons
2) the mostn efficient and productive use of those electrons and other natural resources
3) constant attention to protecting and conserving our natural systems and educating people about their material, spiritual, and aesthetic value. (195)
a renewable energy ecosystem for innovating, generating, and deploying clean power, energy, efficiency, resource productivity, and conservation < the true cost of burning coal, oil and gas (198) We need to look at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking at the margins (208)…to really make a difference there are three issues: 1) there is the scale of demand 2) the scale of the investment needed to produce alternatives at scale 3) the scale of time it takes to produce alternatives (210) meeting the energy challenge will require shared sacrifice and political will… ‘you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it.’ (215) The Energy Internet: When It Meets ET What we need most now are integrated government policies— laws and standards, taxes and credits, incentives and mandates, minimums and maximums— to guide and stimulate the marketplace to drive the innovations further, to commercialize these new ideas faster, and to bring this revolution to life sooner. (217) Roughly 40% of America’s total CO2 emissions come from the production of electricity used in homes, offices, and factories. Another 30% of American emissions come from the transportation sector— primarily cars, trucks, boats, trains, and airplanes… supply this whole 70% with clean, abundant, cheap, reliable electrons through a smart grid— that would be a revolution. (224) 224-236— smart grid of the future The Stone Age Didn’t End Because We Ran Out of Stones Clean power is going to be the global standard over the next decade, and clean power tools are going to be the next great global industry, and the countries whi make more of them and sell more of them will have a competitive advantage. (242) Incremental breakthroughs are all we’ve had, but exponential is what we desperately need. …a coordinated set of policies, tax incentives and disincentives, and regulations that would stimulate the marketplace to produce an Energy Internet, to move the clean power technologies we already have— like wind and solar— down the learning curve much faster, and to spur the massive, no-holds-barred-everybody-in-their-garage-or-laboratory innovation we need for new sources of clean electrons. (243) There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit. We need a market for clean energy. Only the market can generate and allocate enough capital fast enough and efficiently enough to inventors and companies working in garages and laboratories to drive transformational breakthroughs, only the market can then commercialize the best of them and improve on the existing ones at the scope, speed, and scale we need. (244) The American pet food industry spends more money on R & D than the American utilities do. (247) ‘disruptive technologies”: that new technologies replace existing ones because they are cheaper and more consumer-friendly. (249) No matter how much you tell the market what you want it to do, it is the price signal that markets respond to… you have to have a price signal. (250) The market will give us what we want, but only if we give the market the signals it needs: a carbon tax, a gasoline tax increase, a renewable energy mandate, or a cap-and-trade system that indirectly taxes carbon emitters— or some combination of all these. (251) …if we want to get both forms of innovation at a large scale— breakthroughs that lead to a whole new way of generating clean electrons and breakthroughs that come by getting the clean power technologies we already have down the learning curve faster— we need the government to level the playing field by taxing what we don’t want (electricity from carbon-emitting sources) and subsidizing what we do want (clean power innovation). (252) If inventors and venture capitalists believe that the price of their new clean energy invention can always be undercut by the dirty old alternative, we are not going to get new innovation at the scale we need… the lingering uncertainty about the long-term price of oil is why some of our biggest energy companies, the kind you want to be “all in” on clean-tech innovation, are not all-in. (254) What will make them go all-in would be a floor price on crude oil or carbon content that would tell them and their investors that the price of these fossil fuels will never again fall below a certain level. (255) Bottom line: America needs an energy technology bubble just like the information technology bubble. In order to get that the government needs to make it an absolute no-brainer to invest in renewable energy. (258) This bubble is going to attract so much new capital…that it is going to drive innovation faster and faster. (258) “Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.” (259) an externality is any cost or benefit resulting from a commercial transaction that is borne by or received by parties not directly involved in the transaction. That which is not priced is not valued, and if our open lands, clean air, clean water, and healthy forests are not valued, the earth, when it is this flat and this crowded, will become a very hot, no-cost landfill very fast. (260) Roughly 30% of our greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector…American actually produces twice as much nuclear power as France but with our much bigger economy it represents a smaller share of our total. (290) Electrifying transportation… an electricity-powered system has far fewer energy losses along the way than a gasoline-fueled system, when you include all the losses in the gasoline system from oil extraction, transportation, refining, and distribution of the gas— plus the lower efficiency of an internal combustion energy. (291) Change or die— only if government uses its power to set prices, regulations, and standards to reshape the energy market and force utilities and other big players to either innovate or die. (294) Indonesia is now losing rain forests the size of Maryland every year…a forest area the size of three hundred soccer fields is cut down in Indonesia every hour. (299) Ninety percent of the people living in extreme poverty around the world today are directly dependent upon forests for their food, fuel, shelter, freshwater, and fiber…(313) REDD— Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation— wealthy developed countries would pay poor developing countries to keep their forests intact. (313) It takes an ecosystem of the right government policies, the right investments, and the right actors to save an ecosystem of plants, animals, and forests. (302) All conservation is local. (303) Conservation is also about dealing with people. (309) An ethic of conservation declares that maintaining our natural world is a value that is impossible to quantify but also impossible to ignore, because of the sheer beauty, wonder, joy, and magic that nature brings to being alive. (314) ‘outgreening’ is going to be a competitive advantage…grean as a value will increasingly be something everyone (young people especially) will want to associate with, and therefore the greenest companies, countries, schools, and cities will attract the most talent. (326) Most corporate responsibility is defensive…you could make a lot more money by being more corporately responsible. (334) The people who likely will be most affected by energy and natural resource supply/demand, climate change, petrodictatorship, biodiversity loss, energy poverty don’t get to vote— because they haven’t been born yet. (403) Machiavelli, The Prince: “It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilously to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents— who have the laws on their side— and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in the new things until they have had a long experience on them.” (264)
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