Monday, January 20, 2014

In Remembrance







Now we must develop progress, or rather, a program—and I can't stay on this long—that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in the century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual's abilities and talents. And in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We've come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

That was Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in August 1967. Fast forward to the next century, and we're right back in the dark ages. Rabid right-wingers are right back attacking poor people for a "want of industrious habits" as an explanation for our sputtering economy. Long-term unemployment insurance has been cut off with glee by Republicans and with smarmy resignation by Democrats. The almighty Market, a k a "The Economy" has risen anew to dislocate society for the common good in myriad places, leaving a twitching wreck in its wake. 

King continued:


The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available. In 1879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he wrote in Progress and Poverty:
The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the, that of a taskmaster or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.
Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problem of housing, education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor, transformed into purchasers, will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.

Purchasing power? That equals political power. And the current powers that be are terrified of any such thing in too many common hands.  Moises Velasquez-Manoff spells it all out in an excellent piece in the New York Times. The gist of it is that if you put cash directly into the hands of poor parents, their children will thrive. Struggling families do less well if only piecemeal "services" are provided. So if we can lessen the stress of parents, we automatically lessen the stress on children.You might call it emotional trickle-down. Of course, it was a Democrat named Bill Clinton who ended "welfare as we know it." And a Democrat named Barack Obama continues the deed while ostensibly making income inequality "the defining issue of our time."  (Of course, it depends on what his definition of defining is. Maybe what he meant to say was that inequality is the "deafening issue of our time." Because, all the booming, strident, appeasing "we feel your pain" rhetoric offset by their cynical lack of action just makes you want to cover your ears and turn them all off.) 
King concurred about the need for direct citizen action over listening to pretty political speeches.

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.

Now, our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth. [applause]

King delivered that speech in the heady first days of LBJ's War on Poverty. He wasn't about to take the politicians' word for it that they were on the side of regular people, of course. He wasn't about to be herded into any partisan veal pen. And filling the vacuum of his death came Nixon's Southern Strategy, and Ronald Reagan's mythical Cadillac Welfare Queen, and the New "era of big government is over" Democrats, and the War on Terror, and the Surveillance State, and Citizens United, and the assault on the Occupy movement.... and the rest, of course, is reactionary history. 

We honor King today, but the King we're supposed to celebrate is the bowdlerized version, whom  Barack Obama smarmily thanks for getting him where he is today as he self-righteously declares the Third Monday in January an innocuous "Day of Service" in which comfortable people deign to "give back." Standard photo-op faves for the elites are to pose serving the poor in soup kitchens, or getting down and dirty and painting an inner-city classroom for an hour or two. As of this posting, the White House had not yet announced where the Obamas would be going slumming today. But here they were last year:




 Because they don't want you to get any original ideas like this:



Or this:



One of the first MLK memorials after his 1968 assassination was the Poor People's March on Washington and the building of the Resurrection City shantytown on the National Mall. King's original aim was to shut down Washington entirely while demanding passage of an Economic Bill of Rights. The encampment of his grieving followers lasted for six weeks. Not only was the legislation never passed, but the original Bill of Rights seems to be passing into oblivion as well. MLK Sanitizer-in-Chief Obama did the official deed on the Fourth Amendment just three days ago.


***

Paul Krugman's column today debunked David Brooks and other champions of the obscene rich who are making it their personal business (via cherry-picked "sociology" and mangled numbers) to defend every last untaxed ill-gotten gain of the 21st Century Robber Barons. My response:

While apologists for the rich like David Brooks strain to find ways to blame the poor for every mess the rich ever made, maybe they should take a look at actual Strain Theory. This school of sociological thought holds that extreme wealth inequality is the result of failure of the political class to rein in the greed of the plutocrats. Perversely, the strain this causes only provokes the elites to inflict even more pain on everybody else. Witness their axing of unemployment insurance, slashing of SNAP, de-funding of regulatory agencies protecting both fiscal and physical public health. Witness the parallel bolstering of the war machine and the surveillance/police state. The rulers and the pundits who serve them are getting more paranoid by the day. They just can't quit their addiction to greed, so they're pre-empting blowback.
The recent toxic chemical spill in West Virginia is only one glaring example of what happens when a country veers off the right wing cliff. We Americans are taught early and often to be consumers instead of engaged, thinking, caring citizens. In America, Good is defined as profit, and Evil is defined as loss. And so the American Dream, predicated as it is on the pursuit of wealth at any cost, has already turned into a nightmare.
The solution is to change the culture. Make ethics and civics courses mandatory from K to college. Elect pols who value work more than they value wealth. And above all, tax wealth the same way we now tax work.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Love With the Proper Stalker



 "We don't spy on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security," Barack Obama double-negatively insisted today.

Translation/caveat: Since every man, woman and child on the face of the planet is considered a threat to the security of the United Stasi unless proven otherwise ex post facto, the spying and the cyber-stalking will continue.


Other Orwellian tidbits in the speech: The NSA probably maybe won't continue storing all your communications, but rest assured that all your communications will continue to be stored. The mystery bureaucracy storing all your communications is yet to be determined, and will no doubt be handsomely funded by a black budget free from Congressional oversight.

Oh, and there will be no more secrecy unless "we" determine that there is a need for secrecy.

As I commented on a New York Times preview of the president's speech,


Obama will "propose a new public advocate to represent privacy concerns at a secret intelligence court."
So, is this the new Orwellian definition of "public-private partnership?" Or is Obama simply playing the cynical role of the Gatekeeper in the remake of "Before the Law?" According to this parable by Kafka, the supplicant spends his entire life begging the Gatekeeper for access to the secret court, where he may or may not be on trial.
And just as the Gatekeeper keeps conning the litigant/defendant in Kafka's tale, Obama glibly keeps insisting that the welfare and safety of "the people" is his primary concern. Since he doesn't want you to revolt, he cordially invites you to hang around outside, listening to him wax rhapsodic about how transparent the whole system is. And maybe, someday, if you're really patient, you might be allowed in. Just not now. And anyway, Obama is only the first gatekeeper guarding other, bigger gatekeepers guarding still more gatekeepers guarding the "public advocate."
Obama's job, like any Gatekeeper's job, is to just keep stringing us along until we either give up or conveniently die.

And speaking of cynicism, people noticed that Obama chose to give his speech defending the "patriots" of the NSA on the 54th anniversary of Ike's famous farewell speech warning of the impending Military-Industrial Complex and urging citizens to be vigilant against the anti-democratic machinations of our leaders. It was quite telling that Obama urged no such thing on the citizens whom he  has the privilege of serving. His speech was strident, bellicose, defensive and paternalistic. 

Just as cynical
, in my view, is the fact that Obama delivered his creepy veiled threat of a speech mid-way through what he himself just proclaimed "National Stalking Awareness Month." Wrote the president:
Stalkers seek to intimidate their victims through repeated unwanted contact, including harassing phone calls, text messages, or emails. Cyberstalking is increasingly prevalent, with more than one quarter of stalking victims reporting being harassed through the Internet or electronically monitored. Many victims suffer from anxiety, depression, and insomnia, and some are forced to move or change jobs.....
 NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 2014 as National Stalking Awareness Month. I call upon all Americans to recognize the signs of stalking, acknowledge stalking as a serious crime, and urge those affected not to be afraid to speak out or ask for help. Let us also resolve to support victims and survivors, and to create communities that are secure and supportive for all Americans.
Thanks to Edward Snowden (whom Obama peevishly refused to talk about in his speech, other than to seemingly blame the Snowden revelations for his own inability to quit droning all those brown terrorist people to death), all Americans now recognize the unmistakable signs and evidence of their own government stalking them. (Not to mention the relatively innocuous but nonetheless annoying email spam from the White House Propaganda Shop, the constant intrusion of Barack Obama on our TV screens, the rampant spammy fund-raising appeals from the Organizing for Action Obama Legacy campaign.)

 A growing number of people are daring to acknowledge right out loud that the NSA is a criminal enterprise. Victims are suffering from anxiety as a result -- especially journalists and would-be whistleblowers. Like Snowden, the heroes exposing government crimes will be forced to move, chased and hounded by USA Mega-Stalker to the ends of the earth, till the end of their lives. There are even hit squads of Stalker Helpers who have publicly vowed to put a bullet in Snowden's brain.

So by all means, go ahead and believe Obama as he promises to create secure, supportive communities.... with a CCTV camera on every corner, antennae in every computer and beady little cyber-eyes on every last private email, medical report and bank statement.



The "Just Trust Me" Charm Offensive


And the lying continues right along with the harassment. Obama today once again claimed that the NSA "consistently follows protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people. They’re not abusing authorities in order to listen to your private phone calls or read your emails."

Ummm.... As ProPublica points out in an article, posted only hours before the latest mendacity outbreak,


In fact, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [5] has reprimanded the NSA for abuses both in warrantless surveillance targeting people abroad, and in bulk domestic phone records collection.
In 2011, the FISA Court found [6] that for three years, the NSA had been collecting tens of thousands of domestic emails and other communications [7] in violation of the Fourth Amendment [8]. The court ordered the NSA to do more to filter out those communications. In a footnote, Judge John D. Bates also chastised the NSA for repeatedly misleading the court [9] about the extent of its surveillance. In 2009 – weeks after Obama took office – the court concluded the procedures designed to protect the privacy of American phone records had been “so frequently and systemically violated [10] that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall … regime has never functioned effectively.”
The NSA told the court those violations were unintentional [11] and a result of technological limitations [12]. But the NSA’s own inspector general has also documented some “willful” abuses: About a dozen NSA employees have used government surveillance to spy on their lovers and exes, a practice reportedly called “LOVEINT [13].”
The Stalker-in-Chief must get so damned frustrated trying to drill into our heads that there's any difference between the NSA Stalkers and the Bad Stalkers, who exist only to frighten and harrass the womenfolk on the mean streets of America  and throughout global cyberspace. If a civilian does it, it's a crime. If a spy does it, it's patriotism, with only the occasional, totally unintentional "mistake that was made" in the name of love. For your own good and protection, of course.
If you can't be with the Stalker you love, then love the Stalker you're with. If you like your Stalker, you can keep your Stalker. Sigh. 

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Bill & Emma: What Lies Beneath Them

New York Times columnist Bill Keller and his lovely wife Emma are being rightly castigated for their twin columns castigating a woman suffering from Stage 4 breast cancer. You can read all about it here, here, here and here.... or wherever good journalism is sold without a paywall.

The gist is this: Bill and Emma, as members of the elite ruling class, are miffed that a mere blogger named Lisa Adams  is horning in on the cancer discourse. When Angelina Jolie underwent a bilateral mastectomy and reconstructive surgery (as did Emma Gilbey-Keller) it was golden fodder for a New York Times op-ed and worldwide celebrations of her bravery. It's the bright-siding of cancer, and the miracles of technology usually only available to the very wealthy, the very well-connected, and the very insured.

 When Lisa Adams Tweets about her unrelenting pain and how it feels better to be cuddled by a volunteer therapy dog at Sloan-Kettering, Bill Keller demands to know what it's costing him. Because when it comes to "entitlements" for ordinary people, he gets a real bee in his bonnet, as evidenced by his entire privileged body of work. A prime example is this piece of drivel, in which the entitled jerk calls the lesser people entitled jerks for wanting medical care and a secure retirement.

The snobbery of the Kellers is nothing new. What's new is that they finally crossed the line and aimed their unrelenting disdain at the wrong person. They kicked someone when she was not only down, but dying. They morphed from Marie Antoinette into the Marquis de Sade in one fell swoop.

Bill and Emma are a power couple of the New Gilded Age. He is the multimillionaire son of the former CEO of Chevron. Emma is no slouch either. A member in good standing of the British Peerage, she hails from the Gilbey Gin family and used to date Secretary of State John Kerry, himself a Boston Brahmin descendent of the Forbes Family of Chinese opium traders. Emma's cousin was a paramour of Princess Diana, whom he notoriously called Squidgy in a hacked and hilarious phone conversation.

Getting the surreal picture yet? To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald --  Bill and Emma Keller are different from you and me. They are very, very rich, and very, very weird.

Julian Fellowes might even use CancerGate as inspiration for an episode of Downton Abbey. When the scullery maid gets run over by a truck and writes a best-selling memoir of her ordeal, Lord and Lady Grantham peevishly react by self-publishing a piece in The London Review of Books. They are veddy veddy miffed, because M'Lady  had self- published her own literary account of that mishap in her Bentley only last year. And it just languished in the bargain bin at Selfridge's!  This.... Cannot.... Be. It is a slap in the face to the whole established order of things.

So let Lisa Adams rest assured. She is just the latest victim of the serial rampant concern-trolling of the Keller Family. She devalued the Keller Family Values without even realizing it. And for that, she had to be punished by The Keller Family.

Back when he was still executive editor of the Gray Lady, Bill Keller would engage in the occasional noblesse-obliging with the hoi polloi. But when one hapless reader had the effrontery to ask him about his personal life, he let all his carefully-tempered disdain burst right out of his coddled thin skin:


Q. I think a lot of young journalists and editors, myself included, are curious about what a day in the shoes of Bill Keller is like. Can you walk us through a normal work day for The Times's executive editor?
— Devin Banerjee, Stanford, Calif.
A. Really? You'd be interested in that? Well, I think my life is pretty much what you would imagine it to be.
I wake up most mornings to the telephone, invariably some world leader or international celebrity seeking my counsel. Lately it's been a lot of President Obama — again with the damn puppy? — but sometimes it's Richard Holbrooke to pick my brain about Afghanistan, or Bruce Springsteen asking if it isn't time for another Arts and Leisure cover story about Bruce Springsteen. The valet brings breakfast with the handful of newspapers that have not gone out of business. In the limo on the way to the office, I help Warren Buffett sort out his portfolio and give trading advice to George Steinbrenner, not that he ever listens.
At the office, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and I have our morning conference call with Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — plus Fidel Castro when he's compos mentis. Dictating the world's agenda entails a lot of conference calls. I've been encouraging the cabal to save some money by using iChat, but first we have to persuade Putin to wear a shirt.
Lunch at the Four Seasons is always a high point. Today it's my weekly tête-à-tête with Bill O'Reilly. He's really not the Neanderthal blowhard he plays on TV. He's totally in on the joke. After a couple of cosmopolitans, he does a wicked impression of Ann Coulter. We usually spend the lunch working up outlandish things he can say about The New York Times and making fun of Fox executives. (Once Rupert Murdoch showed up for a lunch date, and O'Reilly had to hide under the table for half an hour.)
I spend most of the afternoon writing all the stories for the front page. (You knew those were all pseudonyms, right?) I write Tom Friedman's column, too, but, I swear, Bill Kristol wrote all his own stuff.
By then it's time for drinks and dinner. If you're reading this, Julian, I think the duck tonight. I had the foie gras for lunch. And no time for dessert. The Secretary of State is coming by to give me a back rub.
That Bill Keller sure is one funny guy. His humor never fails to deliver a jab at the lesser people under the guise of satiric self-deprecating repartee.

Or, as Dean Baker put it, "The New York Times can't find credible columnists, so they hired Bill Keller."

Bill & Emma Keller Named Fun Couple of 2014

Monday, January 13, 2014

Will Nature, Young People and Future Generations Forgive Us?



   By Jay - Ottawa


 Earth scientists have documented five mass extinctions.  In simple terms extinction works like this: A new world blooms, life flourishes for a while, a fatal problem develops and most of that epoch’s creatures are wiped out.  Forever.  Sometimes the die off is swift, sometimes slow but relentless.

 Despite a handful of extinctions, Earth hasn’t turned into a Moon or a Mars.  The vital spark has survived –– so far –– through a few small, base creatures who survive one epoch to reanimate another world full of life –– but always a new world that never quite replicates the flora and fauna of the previous epoch.  Humans should take note: after a mass extinction, millions of years go by in recovery before the Earth is inherited by different plant specimens and a different zoo of creatures.  For most vertebrates –– and that would include the complex, high maintenance human race –– there is no second chance of a comeback post extinction, anymore than there was for the dinosaurs.  If the number of a species is reduced to zero by a mass extinction, too bad.  One chance per species per epoch seems to be the rule.

 In geological circles the most profound mass extinction was the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, also known as “The Great Dying.”  It began a little over 250 million years ago and unwound very slowly over the course of 80,000 years.  By the time it bottomed out, 95% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate species were gone.1

The trigger for the Great Dying was not the impact of a big comet but rising global temperatures.  It took about ten million years after Permian for the Earth to recover its healthy equilibrium for the evolution of new life in abundance. 

Ancestors of the human race emerged around 1.8 million years ago in the Pleistocene Era of the Quaternary Period.  Around 200,000 years ago, evolution gave rise to homo sapiens and, today, we humans number 7 billion.  Since the Industrial Revolution, the human race has rapidly developed the means to speed up its own encounter with extinction –– either through the exchange of nuclear blasts in a war to end all wars or through the insatiable pursuit of abundance during times of peace.  Nuclear winter or global warming, take your pick.  Either calamity would set up another Great Dying, our own.

Earth scientists have begun sounding alarms in their journals.  Our immediate descendants, they say, are at risk of a lifetime of hardship followed by the extinction of our species.  Once the buildup to extinction approaches a tipping point, there will be too little time to take radical corrective action on a global scale.  Furthermore, the environment is so complex it is impossible to know at exactly what level of environmental stress runaway cascades will take over and bring us to the point of “game over.” 

What do we care about the past five extinction events?  Well, it seems “[w]e are currently in the midst of what most scientists consider the sixth mass extinction in planetary history, with between 150 and 200 species going extinct daily, a pace 1,000 times greater than the ‘natural’ or ‘background’ extinction rate.”2  This time our human race and the other creatures of our garden world are on the line.  Nevertheless, denial statements abound.  A sampling:


“Climate change is a hoax.”

“The market place will make necessary adjustments in time.”

“It’s absurd to think the human race will be included along with                          the extinction off lesser creatures.”

“Fossil fuels are indispensable: they create jobs and support
 our standard of living.”

 “Maybe we should do something, but nothing too radical and abrupt."



  If you suppose people who dismiss climate change are misinformed and short sighted, you’re right.  It may come as no surprise to learn that political leaders are often beholden to special interests, not the long-term interests of the larger society.  Governments around the globe are presently doing tepid little things, or nothing, in response to alarms about environmental disaster.  In fact, most advanced countries are doing worse than nothing by implementing policies that are totally in agreement with climate change deniers.  It is time we hold our political class accountable to insure that government does not become the enemy of society.

 As NASA’s James Hansen reminds us, nations are aggressively facilitating activity that will intensify catastrophic climate change and hasten the next generation’s encounter with extinction scenarios:
 “Humans are now the main cause of changes of Earth’s atmospheric composition and thus the drive for future climate change….   More than 170 nations have agreed on the need to limit fossil fuel emissions to avoid dangerous human-made climate change, as formalized in the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.  However, the stark reality is that global emissions have accelerated and new efforts are underway to massively expand fossil fuel extraction by drilling to increasing ocean depths and into the Arctic, squeezing oil from tar sands and tar shale, hydro-fracking to expand extraction of natural gas, developing exploitation of methane hydrates, and mining of coal via mountaintop removal….  The growth rate of fossil fuel emissions increased from 1.5%/year during 1980–2000 to 3%/year in 2000–2012, mainly because of increased coal use.”3

 Extreme global weather events are becoming more common and contributing to major problems.  Climate change  is severely stressing plant and animal life today.  Fresh water is more scarce today.  The health of the oceans is declining as they become more acid, anoxic and polluted and, because of rapid ice melt at the poles and higher elevations, the oceans are rising to levels endangering hundreds of millions of people living in coastal zones.  At this pace of environmental destruction, crop failures, displacement, famine and social chaos on a global scale could be upon us within decades.
 “Arctic sea ice end-of-summer minimum area, although variable from year to year, has plummeted by more than a third in the past few decades, at a faster rate than in most models, with the sea ice thickness declining a factor of four faster than simulated in … climate models.  The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets began to shed ice at a rate, now several hundred cubic kilometers per year, which is continuing to accelerate.  Mountain glaciers are receding rapidly all around the world with effects on seasonal freshwater availability of major rivers.
 The hot dry subtropical climate belts have expanded as the troposphere has warmed and the stratosphere cooled, contributing to increases in the area and intensity of drought and wildfires. The abundance of reef-building corals is decreasing at a rate of 0.5–2%/year, at least in part due to ocean warming and possibly ocean acidification caused by rising dissolved CO2. More than half of all wild species have shown significant changes in where they live and in the timing of major life events. Mega-heatwaves, such as those in Europe in 2003, the Moscow area in 2010, Texas and Oklahoma in 2011, Greenland in 2012, and Australia in 2013 have become more widespread with the increase demonstrably linked to global warming….  These growing climate impacts, many more rapid than anticipated and occurring while global warming is less than 1°C, imply that society should reassess what constitutes a ‘dangerous level’ of global warming.”4.
 Those of us who are old may not be stung too badly by climate change.  But a growing number of scientific papers indicate that young people –– the younger generation walking around now, our children and their children –– will be severely affected throughout their lives unless the massive contribution to global warming by the human race is reversed –– not slowed, not stopped, but reversed –– very soon.  Reversed before key indicators reach “tipping points,” which by definition are irreversible on the human timescale.  

To date, big corporations have not begun to reduce their contributions to plumes of CO2 and methane, which are being released into the already saturated atmosphere. “[C]arbon stays in the climate system for hundreds of thousands of years.  Thus fossil fuel carbon is the crucial human input that must be limited.”5

Dare we interrupt corporate CEOs busy in further saturating the environment with toxins and waste for the short-term benefit of their stockholders?  Dare we insist that political leaders work in the interests of society, and not so much in the interests of their backdoor paymasters in the corporate and financial world?  How much longer can we afford to stand on the sidelines waiting for someone else to take life-saving initiatives to protect the coming generation, not to mention the animal, plant and insect life on which we all depend?

 Now is the time to begin your “planet saving” lifestyle.  Plant fruit trees, recycle all you can, compost, install low wattage bulbs, use water twice: the water that washed your salad greens can then water your indoor plants; install rain barrels to catch rain water to water your garden; purchase local produce and avoid produce that requires shipping from other countries. 

It has been well documented that if all families around the world were to consume like a “frugal” American family, we would need the resources of three earths. If all the families of the world were to consume like a “typical” American family, we would need the resources six earths.6  Can there be any question that current levels of consumption in advanced economies are excessive and unsustainable?

Don‘t stand by waiting for Washington,  Peking or Paris to do the right thing.  It’s up to you to act with your neighbors.  Organizations near you are working responsibly to reverse suicidal corporate and government policies that are herding civilization down the path to extinction.  Get involved with an environmental effort,  like the anti-fracking movement,  and take responsible action to save what’s left of the Good Earth.  The human race is facing nothing less than an existential threat.  Intergenerational justice calls you to get involved now to save our young people, the children of their children and Nature itself.        


 FOOTNOTES








2 Dahr Jamail, “The Climate Change Score Card.”  Italics added.

3 Hansen J. et al., “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of carbon emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature”

4 Hansen, “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’”             

5 Hansen, “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’”

6 The number of worlds needed to sustain consumption varies from source to source, depending on methodologies and timeframes.  A good place to begin comparing national footprints is here:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/world_footprint/