Why you won't be so worried about gas prices

A UN report that inventories the earth and finds that two-thirds of the systems that keep the planet alive are failing, is getting all kinds of headlines, and we do mean all kinds. Take a look at the Google News list and see what we mean. Because it's all in the interpretation.

One of the more ominious interpretations feeds into our previous warning about how the Corporate Right could coopt the climate crisis: the forecasted shortage of water. While it's certainly true that the costs of natural resources haven't been taken into account adequately, and it's true that the water most of us get for free isn't really cost-free, the interpretation of this could very well lead to the world's water going to the highest bidder.

Of course most of us in the U.S. pay for our drinking water already, out of bottles or from filters. But even though $3 a gallon gasoline prices are coming soon to your American neighborhood, how would you feel about $10 a gallon water?

As for our Canadian friends, I'd think again about missile defense. You may need it to protect your water reserves. Just make sure the damn things are aimed at the U.S.

Here's a summary from the Guardian (thanks to cuz Lemuel) and another:
Sci-Tech Today - Science - Abuse of Ecosystem Threatens Earth

In other new...

Two books on the mystic chords of memory at Books in Heat.

Essay on the film, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock at Soul of Star Trek.

the emperor of the persistent vegetative states

It's Who You Believe (or, Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Debate Club, Part I)
by Christopher Dash

The Schiavo case and the media feeding tube frenzy have profound relationships to deep currents in American and western politics and culture. Those who see it in terms of the rise of populism (as in John Lukacs'new book) or as an American analogy to Germany between the world wars, or even as a symptom of the implosion of western civilization in a clearly apocalyptic age, all have good evidence here for how this fits into their theories.

But let's talk for a moment on the level of personal experience, in a way that relates this case to the whole faith-based versus reality-based model of where we in the red and blue states of America are today.

These days I have many occasions to recall my thoughts and feelings as a high school student, when I began getting involved in the theory and practice of debating. U.S. high schools participate in a national system of debate competitions, which pit teams from one school against those of another, in debates on the same topic all year. (In my two years of debating, the topics were trade---the proposition would be today couched as an expanded NAFTA---and universal health care.)

Two person debate teams engage teams from other schools in their district just about every week, with a series of "finals" that lead to the national finals in the spring. At least this is how it was in the 1960s, when I moved up from Extemporaneous Speech ("extemp") competition to debate.

In extemp preparation, we learned about sources and facts, and how to use them in a speech. In debate, our sources and facts as well as our arguments were subject to question by the other team. So you had to examine evidence carefully, as your opponent would as well as how it helped you make your case. Since you debated the same proposition all year, using phony information or even an indefensible interpretation of the information, seldom worked for very long. Word got around, and sooner or later the other team would call you out on it.

The best "evidence" was from sources considered objective, arrived at by a legitimate process you could describe. (A study of x thousand people over x years, etc. by prestigious or at least reputable organization.)

In cross-examination and argument against the opponent's case, one basic debate tactic was to question your opponent's information. Was it someone's opinion only, or was it asserted to be fact? In either case, you questioned the source. "What's your source?" became the standard cross-examination question. You asked it when you suspected they didn't have a specific source, or if you already knew something about that source. How effectively you could describe the bias of the source was a key tactic. Was their self-interest involved? Ideology? A pattern of misstating facts, or giving a biased interpretation of their meaning?

The issue was credibility. If the underlying facts supporting the argument weren't credible, or at least questionable, it weakened the argument, often fatally.

If the source was good, you could argue intepretation or relevance. But credibility of the information was essential.

But there was another feature of this high school debate system that I believe pertains. We were expected to be able to debate on both sides of the debate question. As I recall, we learned which side we were to defend at the same time as we learned who and where we were debating on any given day, perhaps just minutes before the debate would start.

I still remember the blizzard of emotions I felt when I first faced this situation. If I truly believed in universal health care, how could I argue against it? That is, if the facts convinced me, how could I use those or other facts to argue against it? How could I be a convincing hypocrite?

I solved this for myself in various ways, but mostly by using a feature of the debate system: you could attack the opponent's plan for universal health care without attacking the need for universal health care, for example. But I'm bringing this up now because of the feelings all of this created.

Part of the impact of this idea stemmed from the insecurity of opening yourself to be convinced by facts and arguments. As a debater, I could not rely on received opinion. I had to argue the merits of a proposition, to convince someone else. We learned that especially in a democracy, the right to argue your case meant the responsibility to take arguments seriously.

So outside of the debate realm, I was face to face with the insecurity of opening myself to be convinced by facts and arguments. There were times I heard or read arguments that were persuasive, even seductive, and also wrong. The facts were inaccurate, or interpreted inaccurately, or just organized in a seductive way to come to a conclusion I knew was wrong. But sometimes I could not articulate what was wrong with the argument. Perhaps the facts were out of my realm of experience---scientific facts, for example, which I had no way of evaluating.

But what if I was fooled by them into some terrible mistake? What if the arguments convinced me because I wasn't smart enough, or didn't know enough, to see their flaws? Or I was seduced by the arguer, by an attractive, witty, overwhelmingly erudite Satan with the power to assume a pleasing shape?

This was a profound question, especially since I was a student in a Catholic High School. We were always being warned about the temptations to fall into "error," and the insidious methods of unbelievers, Communists, secularists and heretics of other religions. They were "devilishly" clever and knew every human weakness. What if I became convinced of something that ran counter to the accepted truth of my Church, as well as my community?

I was more than a little bit of a rebel, and I despised hypocrisy. Though I still considered myself a Catholic then, I had a fairly sophisticated approach to what that meant. But I felt the basic fears: not only for my immortal soul being in the balance (though I believed in the primacy of conscience), or even of further ostracism, but of being misled, and misleading myself. Since I was already questioning authority as the final basis for belief, I was left only with my own devices. What if I was wrong?

We are dealing with a lot of emotions here. When we are presented with an argument, for or against, of any consequence, they all come into play. Let's start with my bottom line: what if I was wrong?

Haven't you ever experienced that fear, of feeling yourself being convinced by an argument or a person, against judgments and commitments you've made already, perhaps all your life? Haven't you felt a little dissociated, like the ground beneath your feet is moving or has disappeared?

Maybe you've had a "conversion experience": after being raised in a particular religion or with particular beliefs, or with particular racial or class views, something stirred you up, and over time, you changed. Can you recall how difficult that was? How confusing, and how threatening it might have felt at some point in the process?

It is most pronounced in the most important issues, which touch upon a conflict of values. I remember wrestling with my feelings and beliefs on nuclear disarmament. Yes, nuclear weapons must be abolished. But is unilateral disarmament the answer, or is it criminal negligence, inviting the very catastrophe we wanted to avoid?

How do we make these decisions? Often in debate and in life, it is based on "who's your source?" The credibility of sources, of the person you believe.

That credibility is not based solely on credentials. It's based at least partly on feelings, and that seems to me to be universal. Even if the fact that your source is a scientist who uses good scientific standards: if you believe in that kind of knowledge, don't you get a good feeling when you see the method, the evidence and hear it from someone you respect because he or she adheres to those standards? You have confidence in those findings, and there is emotion attached.

If someone is credible on one issue, we feel more confident in listening closely to what they say on others, with a predisposition to believe them. How many people who admire Howard Zinn or Arundhati Roy will fact check everything they say? Who has the time, let alone the inclination? You might check trusted journals or blogsites for a critique, but you already trust those places.

If an organization employs standards we believe lead to good facts and conclusions based on them, we don't necessarily examine their evidence and methodology closely on every case. We tend to believe them, until someone else we consider credible calls their assertions into question. We rely on credibility.

But the feelings of being able to rely on credibility also have to do with our lives. We rely on the credibility of our parents during our childhoods, and much of typical teenage outrage and rebelliousness comes from the sudden realization that just because our parents are right about some things, they aren't necessarily right about everything. We feel betrayed. That feeling gets repeated in different contexts.

We all live in contexts, and we depend on our families, churches, schools, workplaces and communities to support our very existence within this society. If we stray too far outside their purview, we risk becoming nonpersons. Few people, especially in an overcrowded society as competitive as this one, can afford to lose their membership in whatever cultural context they find themselves, certainly by adulthood. The people around us have a powerful credibility, because to not believe them is to put our survival in jeopardy.

There's no big secret as to why people live and work where others are like-minded. If their views are not culturally acceptable and generally held where they are, they tend to go where they and their way of looking at the world is shared. So the red states are getting redder, the blue places bluer. Why? It's not just comfort level. If we stay where we are not accepted, we are in fear of our survival---both as the persons we think ourselves to be, and as legitimate citizens of this society, that is, not homeless hobos. We fear that our lives are meaningless.

Even if we believe what those around us believe,we might fear that we will give in to temptations and pressures, and we will lose everything. All of this makes the people who support us, or who seem to support us, very credible.

Now place all this in our national context. From my point of view, political leadership has ranged from inadequate to quite wrong and even, I would say, effectively evil, for most of my life. There have been bright spots now and again, and I found champions and exemplars of my ideals, principles and commitments, some of whom of course helped form these ideas and commitments. There were people and sources that as far as I was concerned were reliably credible. When something was asserted that surprised me, coming from a source I didn't know, I could wait until it was vetted by people or institutions I trusted.

For most of my life, I felt that the major news organizations were basically committed to objective reporting, if often wrong on particular subjects, and biased in favor of "establishment" points of view. But I had confidence in their responsibility to check facts, question sources, and report fully on both, and eventually to get it right. In many situations, I found them credible.

So there were two major sources of credibility: people or institutions I found credible because of their record but also because they were on the same side of issues as I was; and news organizations, newspaper, magazines, etc. I found credible in certain situations, especially the day-to-day.

So now I come to my simple points, which may not have required all this preliminary.

The reality-based versus faith-based argument is more complicated than this contrast of descriptions expresses. In a sense, those of us who say we are reality-based, are really saying that we have faith in the truthfulness of certain people and institutions, because of their sources and their methodology. We find them credible.

The faith-based are saying the same.

It's a question of who you believe, and why. What we must face is that the rabid right has created a new national context. From the perspective often identified as fundamentalist Christian, any source that does not share their beliefs in the authority of their religious leaders, is not credible. From the perspective of the rabid right as a whole, the "liberal media" are not credible.

The image of the common national media they have is that what the news media say constitutes not facts but opinions. And tragically, the media is rapidly remaking itself to fit that proposition, though for very different reasons than those supposed by the rabid right. The media, led by cable news, but affecting almost all news media, is engaged in competition for audience and advertising revenue, using rules than no longer value the old standards of fact-gathering and reporting. They are in fact becoming purveyors of opinion, though hardly liberal opinion.

Even in networks and newspaper conglomerates, news bureaus in place that cover what happens in that place, both overseas and domestically, have diminished to the point of disappearance. The news media have less news to report they've gathered themselves, and the standards of reporting are fading, in favor of infotainment.

Cable news now lives on opinion and emotion. The kinds of emotions constitute a whole other topic, but it's part of this topic as well. That cable news latched onto the Schiavo case, which is propelled by emotion, is all the confirmation we need that there is no news there. But we all tend to find credible those who otherwise support us, or agree with us, or even more importantly, represent the foundation of what we believe. Maybe we even learned to believe that way from them, be it the church or the college where we learned critical thinking.

In a sense, what I learned in high school debate was a major factor in my "salvation." I was saved from certain internal conflicts, though the decisions I then made led to a lifetime of external conflicts. So today I will find credible the front page of major newspapers like the New York Times, especially if what they say checks out with the Los Angeles Times or the San Francisco Chronicle, and then is evaluated positively by columnists, journals and bloggers who I trust, or who make sense to me.

Some people feel the same way about rabid right radio talk shows.

Of course I am not arguing that all facts are opinions, or that getting information from climate scientists is the same as getting it from Rush Limbaugh. What I am saying is that there is no mystery as to why the rabid right believes what they believe is factual. What you believe depends on who you believe.

That's partly why you learn to rely on the credibility of some authority, or institution or people.

And what and who you believe tells you---and everybody else-- who you are. When you lose that certainty, you lose yourself, and you lose your place in your community, which can mean losing your livelihood and family.

It's easy enough to say, if your grasp of reality conflicts with your context, go somewhere else, do something else. That's true, and a lot easier to say than to do, especially if you're of an age or a class or a gender or a race that makes mobility difficult, or without skills, training and experience that will get you a livelihood and a life in some new place, assuming you can find it. If your difference is you're gay, the places you can go are likely known to you. If your differences are harder to define, you could feel between the devil and the deep blue sea.

So what do you do? Apart from learning to write dialogue, so you can argue with yourself. Which is about all I did.

You can't handle the truth!
by Morgan Dash

There's a woman making the rounds of cable TV claiming to have had conversations with Terri Schavio during the time this was allegedly impossible, which is anytime in the past 15 years. Shocking! Learn the full truth at your supermarket checkout. This being America, you have your choice of "truths,": the one in the National Enquirer, or the one in the Weekly World News.

Here's tomorrow's revelation today: When Terri's feeding tube was taken away, the liquid that dribbled out on the floor created a portrait of Jesus on the Cross!

In the meantime, join in the international campaign to petition the Florida legislature to officially adopt as the state motto:

FLORIDA---THE PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE!

The Mandate

CBS News latest poll confirms what other surveys have found about public reaction to the feeding tube frenzy of last weekend, except the numbers are even more pronounced: 82% say Congress and the prez should stay out of the Schavio case. Asked why Congress got involved, all of 13% said because they cared about the woman in question; 74% said it was to advance a political agenda.

Lest we now push the liberal media reflex button, 44% of respondents were Republican, only 29% Democrat, with 28% Independent. This disfavors Democrats in proportion to registration and voting numbers. The poll is biased, in favor of the GOPers.

The Republican Congress got an overall approval rating of 34% with 49%---a near majority---disapproving. This is a 7% drop in approval, and 5% jump in disapproval, in one month.

President Bush's fictional mandate slips farther into the realm of GOPer fantasy. His approval also dropped 6% in a month, to 43%. His already dismal approval rating on the economy dropped further, from 38% to 36%. But his approval on Iraq, now that the bloom is off the election, dropped 6% to 39%.

Two Followups

Two followups went into a bar. No, that's not it.

The feeding tube frenzy has lost a lot of hot air very quickly, as polls indicate an overwhelming majority of Americans---yes, even Americans---are opposed to Congressional intervention, and believe it was done for political rather than moral reasons. They also support the court's prior decision to allow the body that once was Terri Schiavo to quietly and painlessly die.

The media however persists in hyping the story, and using inflammatory and inaccurate vocabulary, like "starved." The woman isn't being starved; it implies she feels starvation. She doesn't, at least in any way it can be measured, as compared with other people. It requires a rudimentary consciousness, which likely expired, along with the person called Terri, more than a decade ago.

But also this weekend, though you might not know it, there were hundreds of peace demonstrations all over the world and across the United States---yes, even the United States. Some activists are scratching their heads at the lack of media coverage, and muttering darkly about conspiracy to displace anti-war in Iraq images with feeding tube related photo ops. Though it's likely this weekend's carefully planned frenzy was timed to coincide with the actual withdrawing of the feeding tube and the absense from Washington of most of Congress, the coincidence with the antiwar weekend could not have displeased our Roving reportmaster.

We marched in a driving rain (well, okay the rain let up by the time the march actually started) with more than a thousand protestors, including entire families, and folks who marched with their bicycles, dogs and goats. Two very nice goats they were too. There were the usual signs, some still thought provoking, but our favorite was a bumper sticker on the side of a truck we saw when we marched past: "Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot."

Some activists have since gone online to suggest that the era of the peace protest is over, it is no longer effective, the media doesn't bother covering them, and there is not enough "message discipline" to make the wingnut-dominated news. Some suggest switching to an emphasis on economic issues.

Well, maybe, but...yes, the war protests were underreported, but they always, always were. More so this time? Yes. Why? Not new. The protests to keep a severly brain damaged woman artificially alive were new, and they had striking images. But for all that those images dominated media, there is still a higher percentage of Americans against the Iraq war than in favor of the action taken in the Schiavo case.

Message discipline? Diversity is part of the message. It's the big progressive tent, and all who are peaceful are welcome. Peace demos, like civil rights, always had several functions: promoting the cause, promoting solidarity among the protestors, building a community, giving people heart because they see others willing to march for what they believe in. This is the support activists were trying to build in the 60s---you know, Another family for peace. These are the constituents, the voters and the contributors. And the Next Generation. On all counts except direct political effect, the peace demos did fine. Frankly after the election we were surprised that so many people turned out.

Do we rely on these demos for political impact? No. Do we switch the emphasis to economics? Maybe, but that's not the whole answer, even though that's becoming conventional progressive wisdom. The rabid right has proven that economics is not always the main concern.
(Wouldn't hurt to check the reviews of a couple of pertinent books over at Books in Heat.)

So what do we do? Add specific protests to the calendar on justice in the economic and social realms. Be creative. But be appropriate. This weekend was the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, and of the global demonstrations against it, before and during that war. It was appropriate to emphasize anti-war, pro-peace messages.

Sometimes preaching to the congregation is appropriate. It's what preachers do. Most of the people we know of who marched or attended vigils wanted simply to bear witness, to stand for light in a dark time. These were often family oriented events. There's a place for that. And there's a place for more specific political protests designed and carried out by committed activists.

She's Ready for Her Close-up Mr. Demille
by Theron Dash

Thank God we have St. George Bush in the White House to leave orders to be awakened from a sound sleep just so he can sign that bill to save that woman's life! The woman the Democrats wanted to kill! Sayeth the multitude.

Thank God we have that woman in a vegetative state (namely Florida) and all those pious prolife demonstrators on Palm Sunday and above all the spectacle of our elected sheep slinking back to Washington for a dramatic vote to pass an unconstitutional law so we have a story that we can flog for days, sayeth CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. As NBC, CBS and ABC cryeth out, halleluiah!

And sayeth not this woman is but a tragic remnant of a consciousness, of a person, that no longer exists, with profound brain damage for more than a decade, for that would detract from the drama. Nay! Speaketh only of saving her life, sayeth the News Director. And hearing this, the network Executive smiles upon him, and sayeth this is my News Director in whom I am well pleased.

But just to be certain, the Executive from his seat upon the burning Bush pronounces these Commandments unto the media prostrate before him:

Thou shalt not refer to this woman as a political football with eyes that seem to see but seeth not.

Thou shalt not mention that by law passed in the Time of Bush and signed by him, verily just this past week a baby in Texas was torn asunder from his mother and caused to die, while his mother weepeth, because that mother had not the riches nor the health insurance to pay for heroic measures.

Thou shalt not bear true witness that this baby was black, and in the district of the Most Sanctimonious Felon, Tom DeLay. Nor that this child's name was Sun.

Thou shalt not call the Lord thy President obscene.

Thou shalt not bear true witness to the fact that the same Republicans who standeth grand , would slay the the malpractice suits of such kind as the one that is paying for this poor soul's care in Florida.

And pointeth not out that these same righteous also oppose Medicaid to pay for feeding tubes for other really poor souls, and cry out against any sane and humane health care system that profiteth them not, nor their corporate brethren and faithful lobbyists in the land of milk and honey, the land of flowing Campaign Contributions. For these truths helpeth not the ratings, they cause the lords of the ringtones to weep and gnash their portfolios. Neither do they please the priesthood of the Temple on the Hill, where they pay for the sacrifice of heathens to the lord their president and his White House.

And lo the cringing media cry out, thou are most wise! Of all the Executives, thou must be the Chief!

Now let's showeth her photo one more time, the one wherein she seemeth to smile! Heed not the pagan doctors, and their evil anti-life talk of brain damage, and the propensity to project emotion onto the now blank slate. We all love a puppet show! This horrific spectacle in Washington and the dignity of a human being now desecrated is a small price to pay for our demented righteousness, and all the sound and fury and tinkling symbols we can beam around God's sad earth.

Get It While It's Hot

Another couple of studies support those issued in the past month or so, concluding that global heating is underway, it will be consequential, and it cannot be stopped, possibly for a century.

At the risk of remaining too far ahead on this subject, I see a new political danger. Until now, the GOPers have refused the validity of the evidence, deny the climate crisis will happen, and refuse to take steps to control greenhouse gases, let alone convert to sustainable non-harmful energy.

But now scientists are beating the drum of an oncoming crisis that can't be stopped, but must be dealt with. The emphasis is on preparing, mitigating, preventing the most harmful consequences. This is a huge change of emphasis and a huge danger.

Of course this needs to be done, as I've written earlier. But the danger is that the efforts to control emissions and switch to sustainable energy will be abandoned, because they will only make things better beyond the end of this century.

As it stands now, things will be bad. If nothing is done to stop the source of harm, in the future things are likely to be much worse. A sane policy would be to do both, and I've outlined how to approach it. For example, here. But progressives better wake up to this rapidly changing situations before GOPers realize what an opportunity they've got.

Because right now, there is an enormous opportunity for Republicans to suddenly adopt a global heating crisis is here mentality, in order to fund dikes, pipelines, chemicals and other emergency and mitigation projects, which will require even more fossil fuel energy. They will give the job to their energy corporation buddies, along with Halliburton. In a war on climate change. And we can forget about the future, and the health benefits as well as many other benefits of clean sustainable energy.

At the moment, progressives and environmentalists are stuck wholly in the mode of Kyoto greenhouse gases treaties and warning of the crisis that is already here. It's much too tempting a situation for GOPers, especially if Democrats, still in denial, are caught flatfooted.

Global warming inevitable, stopping gas emission won?t help

Comedy is Too Easy

Jon Stewart is a smart and talented guy, but his job is way too easy. Make fun of the news? How do you avoid it?

For comedians every news day is a holiday, but some are more St. Patricks than others. Thursday gave us the 51-49 Senate vote in favor of drilling for oil in the Alaska wilderness preserve. Besides the expected gaggle of GOPers, the measure passed thanks to two Democrats: both Senators from that other state of wilderness and beauty and non-continguity: Hawaii. Can you even imagine the outrage of a proposal for off-shore drilling in Hawaii? But it might be worth it, just for those two guys.

It also gave us a provocative new study purporting to figure that all these obese kids aren't going to live so long, and therefore the U.S. life expectancy will decline for the first time since, maybe, Fox News. But the way that some papers slugged this story was as the solution to the Social Security crisis. Because people will die five years earlier, think of all the money Social Security will save. Oh happy day! (For a more balanced view, the link below.)

Jon?

Obesity will cut American life span by 2 to 5 years: report

In other New...

A review of Democracy and Populism by John Lukacs at Books in Heat.

"Heroes" behind Trek at Soul of Star Trek.

we're everywhere (peace sign at Antarctica)

Weekend for Peace

It's not too late to plan to attend--- or even to plan to hold---a peace vigil or demonstration next weekend, March 18-20, which marks the beginning of the third year of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, begun with an unprovoked bombing attack two years ago. (You can find information on scheduled events plus tips on how to organize your own vigil here:
Sojourners : Meet-ups.)

One of the more insidious attacks by the cynical right has been on the very concept of peace vigils or peaceful demonstrations for human rights, civil rights and racial justice. These rich and pretend- rich yuppie GOPers like to swill their cocktails in their Washington hotel lobbies and make fun of those liberal fools who "sit around in circles holding candles and singing Kumbaya." They've been pretty successful in making the Kumbaya line a standard part of their repertoire, to show how impractical and out of touch these dopey hippie liberals are, with the additional touch of insulting the feminine, African culture and the African American religious roots of the non-violent civil rights movement.

The idea is that these phony folk singing liberals are too soft and too wimpy, not like these steely warmongers who bravely send the sons and daughters of Latinos, American Indians, African Americans and poor people in general to fight and die for their simplistic self-serving theories and grand delusions. You'll never catch one of these chicken hawks at a peace demo, nor will you find one on the front lines in Iraq or Afghanistan. They do their fighting by intimidating voters here at home, or launching guerilla warfare on the truth.

But we can't let them intimidate us, and separate us from an important and powerful expression. The peace vigil is a strong statement, because it enacts in a symbolic way the peace that it advocates. The candles and the singing are part of that symbolism and a great part of that power.

Here in the midst of a growing Dark Age, each of us holding that sliver of light and warmth is an individual statement for the future. Singing together and marching together is our collective statement for the future.

The power of these acts may not be felt immediately, as they manifestly were not when millions upon millions of people around the world demonstrated for peace and against Bushwhacker aggression before the first bombs fell two years ago. No, the circles and the candles and the singing and the marching did not prevent those bombs from falling. It may be a long while before they do. That doesn't make it as useless gesture. It works on different levels, and in different ways at different historical moments.

Even if no one sees or hears or feels the power of these acts except the children who will come together and light these lights when we are gone, then we are doing our job. We stand together for all to see, for all to hear. At the very least, we're saying we're still here.

No, peace vigils alone will not change the world. But they can help, and they help change us. People who have participated in a peace vigil do not automatically create peace, nor do they even become automatically peaceful, but they are never the same. We all need to take more steps. But we must not abandon this one.

Don't let this cynical age stop you. Maybe some people did this sort of thing in the past because it was fashionable. People do all kinds of things for all kinds of crazy reasons. But that doesn't detract from the power in this ritual, in these symbols, that we share. They may laugh at us. But these are our lights, and our songs, and this our circle, and we believe in what it says.

In other new...

"Weather or Not" at This North Coast Place.

The Dan Rather Story

Dan Rather' s retirement from the big news show was a big news story. Part of the big news story was about the big news story he got wrong. But nearly all of those big news story about the big news story he got wrong were themselves wrong.

Bad news all around.

Dan Rather and CBS did not broadcast a false story about GW Bush's National Guard non-service. They made a technical error in one part of the story, by accepting the authenticity of a piece of paper. It was the wrong piece of paper, evidently. But what was written on the piece of paper, as far as it said anything about Bush's service, was correct and factual. The same woman who said she didn't type that particular piece of paper said she typed a piece of paper that said essentially the same thing.

The facts are correct. The story is not false. And so this become yet another politically motivated lie which the news media perpetuates until it becomes the conventional wisdom.

So the lie becomes the accepted truth. Really bad news.

Now the rightist liars have succeeded in creating contempt for the name of Dan Rather. I'm not a fan, I haven't watched the CBS Evening News for years, nor do I watch 60 Minutes. But I hope that when this subject comes up he insistently corrects the record.

Al Gore's name became a one liner of contempt, thanks to such often repeated lies as his claim that he invented the Internet. He did not ever make that claim. Have you ever seen a piece of tape of him saying it? Seen it in print? It doesn't exist. But such is politics today that even Gore jokes about this, as if he had made that claim. This is wrong. It is playing into the conscious strategy of the rabid right to create contempt for everyone and everything they oppose.

Stand your ground, Dan. Courage.

In Other New...

There's a new series of old previously web- unavailable articles, where you can stroll down the memory lane of the arts in the 1980s (Dash Brothers hint: it's still the 1980s) over at kowincidence.

Blood

So bloodthirsty are our appalling leaders in Washington that the Bushworlders have taken this entire country out of International Court agreements because groups here opposed to the death penalty are using these agreements against it, since few other civilized countries on the face of the planet still insist on legal killing.

The death penalty matters more to them than international relatons and international justice, which protects Americans abroad and the rights of foreigners here. They are scared to death of actual justice for their atrocities on foreign soil, and so willing to let the atrocities of others continue without international standards or sanctions. Another predictably shameless and shameful day for the rich thugs that run our government.

Top News Article Reuters.com

Progressively Lost

From "No More Mr. Nice Blog":

"We simply don't have the Right's message machine. A bit of what happens on the Right is purely grassroots -- I'm thinking of the work of Christian conservatives -- but right-wing activism packs a punch only because of big money, from self-interested corporations and scheming think-tank-funding billionaires. Big money shapes the message and gets it out there. That, in turn, keeps a much larger percentage of ordinary conservative Americans pumped up and versed on talking points than we can muster on the other side."

But it's more than this. The Reds have access to more money, but there is money on the Blue side as well---it just isn't being spent in the same way. The rabid right recruits early and keeps people on their payroll. Kids with talent get scholarships, fellowships, jobs with real influence, and access to the right's political leaders. They take care of their own.

But it's one of the unpleasant ironies that while the rightists carry on about individualism, they are better at supporting each other, while the left with all its solidarity rhetoric, has little or no consciousness about making sure its people are supported, and that means with jobs, fellowships, institutes, etc. Even the rightist bloggers are better at supporting each other.

Back when they were big enough to do so, labor unions performed this function of spotting talent and finding a place for it for the Democratic party. But it seems that left leaning think tanks etc. have remained exclusive and elitist. The left would rather discuss their minute differences and plug their narrow issues than take care of their own.

When told that a program under consideration for the New Deal would benefit people in the long term, FDR advisor Harry Hopkins retorted, "People don't eat in the long term. They eat every day." While we work for a better future for all, we had better be aware of what's needed in the present.

Faith Based Minimum Wage

More people with more money to spend creates more economic activity. But enough of that reality based nonsense. Listen to the faith-based answer:

"When you raise the minimum wage, you price workers out of the market," said Senator John E. Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican. "That's the economic reality."

You need to have faith in this economic reality because Republicans have been saying it at least since they opposed raising the minimum wage to $1.25 in 1961, and they have always been wrong.

But to believe that providing a floor of seven bucks an hour instead of five for the people who do the shit work nobody else wants to do will ruin the economy requires a lot less faith than what is needed to give huge tax cuts to the extremely wealthy, believing it will benefit the economy even as it raises the deficit beyond the stratosphere, thus already impoverishing the grandchildren some of you youngins have faith you'll have.

Read it and weep: the Dark Lord Santorum leads the sanctimonius GOPers in maintaining virtual slavery.

Boston.com / News / Nation / Washington / Minimum wage hikes die in Senate

In other new...

"Sell the Children" at Shopopolis. A review of Homeland , a portrait of post-9/11 America by Dale Maharidge at Books in Heat.
Photo portfolio on North Coast arts at North Coast Texts.


And today's outrage, while some want to push the definition of human life back to the pre-embryonic, there seems to be a whole lot of difficulty taking care of millions of children already born, even when it could be done at a fraction of the cost of their political action committees' budgets...

New Scientist Breaking News - Push to save three million babies every year

What happens when warm becomes hot?

Reframing the Climate Crisis 1: Don't Call It Global Warming

Since this is now an archival matter, I've changed the order of the three parts of this series as it initially appeared. Now it follows one, two, three, from the top down.

The climate changed dramatically last week.

While most nations solemnly bound themselves to the Kyoto Accords, scientists announced the most definitive proof yet that global heating is well underway, caused by human-sent CO2. "The debate is over," said one scientist, "at least for rational people."

It is now clearer than ever that the climate crisis has begun. Eventually it will dominate world politics for the next fifty years. It is already moving quickly to the forefront of European concerns. Two-thirds of British Parliament members polled believe it is more important than terrorism.

But though Americans are more conscious of it than politicians seem to realize, there is no national sense of urgency. Now is the time to think very carefully about how to frame the issue constructively. This is the first in a short series exploring approaches to that question.

Doubters say the world isn't heating up significantly, and even if it is, it's a transitory natural phenomenon, and the models predicting climate change because of fossil fuels are alarmist speculation.

But evidence was piled upon evidence at the American Association of Scientists annual meeting last week that global heating is having alarming effects on ocean water temperature, vegetation and wildlife, and human life.

And then the final word: a study of ocean temperatures in the last 40 years showed a rise that only greenhouse gas emissions can explain.

"We were stunned by the similarities between the observations that have been recorded at sea worldwide and the models that climatologists made," said Tim Barnett of the University of California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "The debate is over, at least for rational people."

Of course, the debate is not over politically. In many ways it has not really begun. But the problem of how to move this issue up on the list of political priorities has also changed. It's gotten more complicated.

Until recently, the idea was to get people motivated to demand change that would lessen the probability that the climate crisis would cause serious problems in the future. But now we are pretty sure they are going to be serious problems in the near future, no matter what we do to try and stop them. For example, those same scientists from Scripps said last week that no matter what we do, some parts of the world---including the western U.S., China and South America---will experience water shortages and other crises over the next 20 years.

So now there are two sets of actions that need to be taken simultaneously. One is to prepare for dealing with crises that result from global heating. The other is to create change that will lessen the impact of global heating in the future---a future that few of us will see, but our children and grandchildren may.

Still, the first task remains: generating a sense of urgency, especially among Americans and their political representatives. How the issue is framed must reflect the twin nature of the necessary actions, of anticipating emergencies in the near future, and of preventive action for the farther future.

Most polls have consistently shown that around two-thirds of Americans believe in "global warming" and support efforts to address it. Why is this then not an issue every ambitious politician seizes?

I'd love to hear Al Gore answer that question, even on deep background. It's clear from past experience that leadership is essential. But because the necessary actions involve a different way of thinking, and some apparent sacrifice, it is difficult to sustain leadership when opponents can exploit yearnings for the ecological free lunch. During the energy crisis of the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter was successful in urging Americans to cut back on wasteful uses of energy, and the growth in CO2 levels actually declined for years afterwards. But high inflation and the Iran hostages added to his woes, and Republicans under Reagan were able to offer a more self-indulgent vision, which it took eight years of a Democrat in the White House to pay for.

Americans are willing to pay for what they consider an urgent threat. Violent threat countered by warfare is the easiest to understand, hence the budget-busting wars on terror and in Iraq. They are however accompanied by the illusion of no new taxes, and therefore no apparent sacrifice.

So the first task in reframing I believe is still to encourage a sense of urgency, of what someone called an "emotional consensus" on the climate crisis.

Don't Call It Global Warming

The simplest way to begin this reframing is with nomenclature. It has been driven by the vocabulary of science, which was initially appropriate, because scientists have been working on the problem since some first anticipated the effects of fossil fuels on our atmosphere back at least as far as the 1960s.

At first it was called "the Greenhouse Effect," which is the kind of metaphor scientists employ: familiar and relatively accurate to what they theorize is happening. Later the description "global warming" became the media term. More recently, "climate change" has joined or replaced this term in the media. All of these terms are reasonably descriptive, while they reflect the precision of science. But none of them expresses urgency.

Not only are these words non-threatening, they have comforting connotations.W arming conveys really nice things. It's warm and cuddly. Happiness is a warm puppy. Listen to the warm. Can I warm up that coffee? Let's give a warm welcome to...

It is counter-intuitive to think of "warming" as a bad thing. Even as a negative it is, at best, lukewarm. So who can afraid of global warming?

Nothing about it is urgent. You may urgently desire a warm coat on a cold day, but people don't feel too warm. They feel too hot. Then it's urgent.

In fact all of the terms commonly used have more good connotations than bad. "Climate change" is neutral: change can be good or bad. When you're cold or it's stormy, a change in the climate is welcome. People get on airplanes to go find climate change.

The greenhouse effect was scientifically elegant, but again it is at best abstract and definitely not scary. To most people, greenhouses are good. Flowers grow in them. Flowers are pretty. The greenhouse effect sounds like it could make the world prettier.

It is time to turn up the heat on the terminology. Instead of "climate change," it would be helpful to refer to it as THE CLIMATE CRISIS. Ross Gelbspan used it as the subtitle of his book, "The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-up, the Prescription. Crisis projects urgency.

Gelbspan also uses "heat" rather than "warming." Don't say global warming, say GLOBAL HEATING. As a word, heating is at least potentially threatening in a way that warming isn't.

These may not be the best terms, but they seem to be the easiest, since they are variations on terms that everyone already knows. They will gain power only by repetition. They carry more of a sense of urgency, and that is a necessary precondition to other reframing. The first task is to get attention and focus.

I don't want to oversell this suggestion. It isn't a panacea. It is a possible beginning. It may turn out to be important, because politicians may try to isolate catastrophes and threats that are products of the climate crisis, and so the greater problem is not addressed with the necessary comprehensiveness and urgency. The recent scary weather in Los Angeles can be positioned as Mother Nature acting up again, or God's wrath on Hollywood, but think of the difference in response if it is said to be a result of global heating, versus global warming.

Polls show that Americans are disposed to believe that weather phenomenon they can't help but notice are products of the climate crisis. But the nomenclature gives them no sense of urgency. It's not that these small changes in nomenclature are absolutely necessary. But they could be powerful.

In other New...

Account of a talk by Star Trek visual effects director Dan Curry (illustrated!)
is now at Soul of Star Trek.

Account of the 2005 Indian Island Vigil in Eureka CA is at This North Coast Place.

tipped point

We Are All In This Together: Reframing the Climate Crisis 2

The premise of this post, as the previous one, is that the climate crisis is likely to dominate world politics for the next 50 years, beginning quite soon. It is moving very quickly towards becoming the dominant issue in the United Kingdom and in Europe as a whole. Japan and other nations in Asia and Africa are taking it very seriously, as is the UN.

The United States and its major media, and much of its alternative media, including blogs blue and red, are virtually alone in their ignorance and denial.

In that first part, I outlined the difficulty of reframing an issue with such unique properties. I suggested first steps in reframing in order to encourage a sense of urgency. In this part, I'll try to point out how to reframe the climate crisis in ways that simultaneously reframe the purpose of the Democratic Party and the progressive or liberal agenda.

The climate crisis could conceivably go on being unrecognized for some time, as we try to cope with its individual manifestations, from weather-related emergencies to disease infestations and epidemics. It is even possible that global heating droughts will lead to severe fresh water shortages, which will lead to severe conflicts and even war, without the ultimate cause ever being made clear. In fact, this is pretty likely, as long as we continue with politics as usual.

However, there will likely be weather-related manifestations that people will understand as related to the climate crisis. Polls show that a large majority of Americans-up to 70%---believe that global heating is real. Once they believe that the climate is an urgent crisis, they are going to need to know what to do about it.

It is imperative that our political leaders begin talking about the climate crisis in terms of how to deal with it. Not just in terms of programs or funding, but first of all in terms of what it means, and what it challenges us to do.

The facts can be outlined very simply. The climate crisis will create serious problems very soon, and there is nothing we can do to stop these effects. We must address the consequences, hopefully in the more predictable cases by anticipating them and taking preventive action. Admit that there will be problems, try to anticipate them, but act quickly and with a sure hand when and where they occur. That's the first set of challenges.

What ideas will help us cope with the effects of the climate crisis in our lifetime? Certainly the renewed attention to science and to our international partners that John Kerry talked about in his campaign will be essential. But the climate crisis also provides the opportunity to re-state in suddenly very meaningful terms the basis of our political beliefs. In fact, the climate crisis demands that we respond at this level, because it's going to take a broad emotional consensus for us to manage this perilous time.

The climate crisis will manifest in different ways in different places in the world, at different times. Problems common to several manifestations will emerge---the lack of fresh water, for instance. There will be likely be food shortages in some places, catastrophic weather events, a severe change in climate resulting in many more heat or cold related deaths, and so on. And there will be less quantifiable but no less devastating changes, as local ecologies change, and the vegetation and wildlife, the landscape itself becomes unfamiliar. We are seeing this already in the Arctic and northern Alaska, where hotter oceans devastate the polar bear and whale population, ice is melting and the cultures as well as the livelihood of Native peoples there are under extreme stress. It is happening with rapidity that surprises even climate scientists.

What does all this mean? Basically, that we are all vulnerable. Although some places will feel direct effects as catastrophes, our planet is so interdependent at virtually all levels, that we will all be affected. Moreover, the whole web of interrelationships will be affected.

That is the message of life we've been missing. Our individual liberties and prosperity depend on the indulgence of the whole, and on the basic social bargain that since everybody may need help at some time, everybody needs to be ready and willing to lend a hand.

This relationship of individual freedom to a sense that we are all in this together is basic to progressive and liberal thought, and to the Democratic party. Equality before the law, regardless of race, gender or class, is one expression of this. Economic and environmental justice are other expressions. Compassion is the ethic that emerges from it, but compassion and empathy are basic to human survival, because none of us survives alone. It's been that way for a very long time.

That is the frame: we are all in this together. It is recognized in indigenous and ancient cultures all over the world, which have evolved systems and customs of exchange, of helping neighbors, of hospitality to strangers. We see its resurgence when something dramatic catches our attention, like the Asian tsunami or some particular kidnapped child---something that momentarily seizes imagination and cuts through the numb busyness of our lives. It awakens the empathy genes, or stimulates the empathy circuits, however you want to explain it.

In order for each of us to pursue our differences and our destinies, we have to be able to depend on each other. It's as elemental as the family. It's as profound as what binds the most cohesive military unit.

In our individualist culture, it requires a little imagination. Someday I will be old. I was once young. I am well-fed, but someday I could be hungry and desperate. I am healthy but someday I will be sick. I was born in a privileged race in a privileged place, but it could have been otherwise and I would not be less worthy. I am old and weak, but I know things; they are young and strong, but they don't know what would make things better. We can help each other.

We are all in this together. It was the basis for FDR's response to the Great Depression, and the Marshall Plan and the GI Bill of Rights after World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement, Medicare and the War on Poverty in the 1960s. Certainly they all had other less noble political objectives, and messiness in the details. But we evolved some greater recognition of common self-interest: that we are all in this together.

We will need leaders who will stand up and re-state this fundamental truth, to make it central to our national purpose again. The United States can use its vast economic power, its science and technology, to help the rest of the world through the short term crises they may face. The science and technology of wringing fresh water from seawater and wastewater is one example.

We can learn much from what Europeans have learned from the different paths they've taken. We can learn much from ancient cultures, some of which we are usually in the process of destroying.

We will need to apply these old lessons and expand their purview. The definition of "we" must expand. In a sense we might call social, with political implications, we will need to evolve some more.

We are all in this together. There will be states and regions in the U.S. that are harder hit than others, and the kind of callousness we now exhibit in our failure to have a decent health care system will not do much for our ability to get through the climate crisis, even in our own country, as well as our own continent and our hemisphere.

Of course none of this tells us specifically what we must do. It doesn't automatically illuminate the best policies, and it certainly doesn't predict exactly what manifestations we will face. But people are working on those subjects. They are figuring, quantifying, extrapolating and designing solutions. They are experimenting, advocating, producing. They are testing and stockpiling the knowledge we will require to choose from, as events call forth the need.

But we have to be ready to consider and choose, and know why we are choosing. I believe we need a framework. Maybe this isn't exactly it, but it seems close enough to restate: we are all in this together.

The second set of challenges will be to do what needs to be done to restore the earth's climate and its self-regulating systems so that human civilization can continue after our generations are gone, and the world belongs to our grandchildren and the generations that follow. Suggestions for reframing the climate crisis issue for that purpose will be the subject of the next part in this series.

remember the future

Remember the Future: Reframing the Climate Crisis 3

To work together to protect against inevitable effects of the climate crisis requires an expansion of the concept of "we" to include everyone on the planet, and the planet itself. But to dedicate ourselves to changes that may not benefit us, that may make things better for generations who will live after we are gone, requires another expansion of "we." That's why the climate crisis is such a test of human capacities, and the capacities of our societies. We are going to have to think and feel more comprehensively, taking into account not only the whole world now, but the whole world in the future.

A crisis caused by climate is not in itself unprecedented, at least in specific localities, but our situation may well be. Because we know more or less what is coming, and more or less what we could conceivably do, even what we should do, to reverse the process that we unthinkingly began: killing the ability of our planet to sustain our lives.

The possible outcomes of the climate crisis are of course complex, but they come down to a few basic alternatives: Human civilization may weather the crisis with comparatively minor catastrophes, while much of the rest of life on earth reshuffles: some species die off, others expand, and eventually the ecosphere rebounds and continues to flourish.

Another possibility is that human civilization may not survive, either at all or in a continuously evolving way. This is likely to be coterminous with a vastly changed flora and fauna, and very probably a marked and dangerous decrease in biological diversity.

At the end of these possibilities is the end of civilization, the end of human beings on the planet, and the end of "life as we know it", although some forms of life may continue. Even a totally dead planet as a result of the continuing alteration of the atmosphere, though that might take many many years, is not outside the realm of possibility either.

The predictions based on data and trends are not conclusive, and may never be. But the best case scenario is for imminent changes that will adversely affect portions of the planet, very probably to an extent we have not experienced in many centuries. And there are climate models that predict conditions that would mean the end of planetary life as we know it, by the end of the next century.

So what do we do about all of that? Won't we have our hands full just coping with each catastrophe as it happens?

Our society is biased towards not only the individual and the nation-state, but towards the present. Still, we are complex beings, with complex cultures, that have the equivalent of recessive traits. Much of our present-centeredness is the result of this historically unusual period of prosperity in this place, together with the persuasive mechanisms our most powerful institutions and media use on us. But we also have half-buried traditions and untried potentials. And sometimes when we remember the past, we remember the future.

This is the frame I suggest: responsibility for the future. It is deep in American history, and expressed most eloquently in the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee (Mohawk and Iroquois peoples): "In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation to come."

We have a responsibility to the future, which means that we must find ways to alter our behavior today, including how we get and use our energy. We may not live to see the ultimate impact of these efforts on the climate crisis itself, but we do it for generations to come.

Our leaders will have to explain that for us, we passed the tipping point years ago, and we must deal with the effects of global heating. But the time lag between cause and effect can benefit future generations, if we work hard to change our behavior now. We will be doing what all good parents do, sacrificing for their children and grandchildren, unto the seventh generation to come.

But let's bring it back to today's political terms. The future used to be a concept the Democrats owned. FDR's New Deal, Truman and the Marshall Plan, JFK's New Frontier and the Apollo space program, and LBJ's Great Society, Clinton's bridge to the 21st century, defined future-oriented ideas and policies.

But now, there is only one book on the best-seller list that emphasizes the future: Winning the Future by Newt Gingrich. The Bushoids' proposals for new manned lunar and Mars programs, as insidious as they might be, are further evidence that Republicans not only own the Apocalypse and the Rapture, they are taking possession of the future.

But the greatest challenge to the future is the Climate Crisis, which the Bushwhackers deny is real. It will be one of the great challenges humankind has ever faced, and it's time for Democrats to step up and take back the future.

At this time, when we are still prosperous and still feel basically safe, if a little uneasy about the weather, it requires imagination to grasp how powerful these simple messages can be in times of stress and chaos. It is important that we concentrate on them, because there are other equally simple and powerful messages that will only destroy us. After 9-11, our leaders could have guided us in a different and better direction. Instead they guided us into a morass of illusion, fear and nationalistic xenophobia. If that happens again in response to the climate crisis, we will be lost. We may not survive the climate crisis, as a civilization, no matter what we do. But if we take the wrong course, we will make certain that civilization does not survive.

(There's a longer version of this essay here.)

Watching the Watchers Watch

We got one of those invisible counters, that lets us know how many visitors there are to the site, and generally where they are. We've had visitors here over the past few weeks from Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia and the Netherlands as well as the U.S.

We also had one visitor whose address indicated the U.S. Justice Department, linked to American Dash from a "No to Gonzales" site which lists the "Indy 500" blogs that signed a petition saying, well, no to Gonzales as Attorney General.

While we welcome readers from wherever they are, we want anyone watching officially to know that we are watching them watching us. And we'll be telling others about it.

Feedback

We posted a version of our post here concerning the CA single payer universal health care plan on Daily Kos, which just won a Koufax Award (for leftie blogs; Sandy Koufax, get it?) as best blog.

There were nearly 40 comments and the post made the Reccomended List for part of the afternoon. (Unless a "diary" post makes the Rec list, it is apt to slip off the front page list of new posts, and hence the attention of browsers, after fifteen minutes or so.)

But of the 40 comments, there were a bunch that constituted a kind of chat room dialogue on California politics and bilingual education. Yeah, I don't get it either.

Then there were several saying flatly that the bill has no chance of passing, or getting past Arnold's veto. As if that was supposed to end the discussion. Others quibbled over provisions, though some of these showed evidence of skimming the text, which is hard to fault because we do it all the time.

One of the few relevant comments, and the one that got the most attention (highest ratings from most people) was this one, from "Wu Ming"

this is an opportunity to accomplish a lot of things:
divide businesses, who do not want to pay skyrocketing rates for their employees' insurance, from insurance companies who benefit from the status quo.

force ahnold and the republicans to come out against health care for everyone, and use it to paint them as enemies of real family values and the common good.

start to make a case in the public eye for how rediculously wasteful the current system is, and how much more affordable a single-payer plan would be. the controversy offers a window to make a counter-case, but only to those with a clear plan that could cut through the rhetoric of a hostile media.

it grabs the political momentum, and makes the passage of even a watered-down plan after negotiation (which would be a hell of an improvement over the current disaster of a health-care system) much more likely.

if successful, it not only provides us with a successful model to take to the national level in 2006 or 2008 or whenever we take congress back, but would also go a long way towards insuring a large chunk of the nation's uninsured here in california.

there is no downside to this plan if fought for with intensity and smart rhetoric, and we ought to think seriously about taking it to a ballot initiative if ahnold tries to shoot it down.

Reading and writing on Daily Kos and My DD sites is educational in many ways. On the positive side, comments contribute links to new relevant information, offer good criticism and alternatives, and personal experiences pertinent to the topic. But on the less positive side, there are fairly narrow views, rampant cynicism and negativity. Hardly a surprise, but a reminder of how hard it is to get things done, even when people are supposedly on the same side.

In the next few days we will post a series on Reframing the Climate Crisis. Several installments have been posted on Kos to massive indifference so far. But then we are dealing in some sense with prophesy, and you know what they say about prophets in their own time.

As for these two issues, if the Dash Brothers happened to win the lottery and we could spend a couple of days a week say on our "causes," we would select universal health care and the climate crisis. And the skills of peace.

We would specifically work for universal health care plans on the state level, where they have a chance to be openly debated and even enacted. Nothing like that will happen on the federal level until 2009.

We would specifically work within the Apollo Alliance on climate change issues. Apollo is the best program we've seen for combining new energy infrastructure with new technological and manufacturing industries in the U.S. It's at least a place where environmentalists and labor can meet.

This would be when we weren't exploring for the best espresso and pastries in Torino.

In Other New...

"Mall Captain and the World of Tomorrow" at Shopopolis.

It's that time again...

Lobby Days and the March March

Peace groups are asking constituents to contact their members of Congress this week, as most come home during the current recess, to advocate ending the Iraq war and bring the troops home. More information here:
Iraq Next Steps: Building Unity on U.S. Policy - FCNL

Efforts are also well underway to organize marches and peace vigils on or around the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. There's information on various efforts from United for Peace.

Sojourner's magazine provides a couple of useful services: you can search for a scheduled demonstration near you at this site, where you will also find ideas on organizing a peace vigil where you live.

Failing Health: California Prescription


This Wednesday, February 23, California state Senator Sheila James Kuehl will introduce a bill to make California the first state in the U.S. to offer universal health care through a single-payer system.

This is the third time she has introduced similar legislation, and this time it has a fighting chance. California has often been in the forefront of changes that soon swept the nation. Help Senator Kuehl set a precedent, to address the single greatest humanitarian crisis in America, with the greatest economic and social consequences.

For those near enough to Sacramento, there will be a rally beginning at noon on Wednesday, February 23, on the south steps outside the Capitol.

Californians, contact your state senator and representative to let them know that you support SB 921, California Health Insurance Reliability Act of 2005.

Everyone can write a letter of support to Senator Kuehl. Her address:
Senator Sheila Kuehl
State Capitol, Room 4032
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: (916) 324-4823

Everyone can contribute money and join the organization Health Care for All which supports the bill, through the website.

The Need

Health care in America is in terminal condition. Most people need only to look at their own lives and experiences to know this. How many have seen loved ones languishing on a gurney in the halls of overcrowded hospitals, where the bills are thousands of dollars a day? How many have had treatments disallowed by corporate HMOs, who moan about low revenues while they make billion dollar acquisitions? How many patients have seen their physicians quit taking insurance because of low payments or excessive bureaucracy, or even get out of medicine altogether? How many are paying more for less coverage, or have been brutally cut off by their HMOs?

How many businesses are struggling because of high health care costs for employees? How many have lost everything to pay medical bills their insurance didn't cover? And how many face pain and death because health care providers won't even treat them because they are uninsured or have inadequate insurance?

Anecdotal evidence and personal stories are backed up by facts. As noted here earlier, a Harvard University study found that illness and medical bills cause about half of all bankruptcies in the United States, an increase of more than 23 times the rate in 1981. Most of the 2.2 million Americans who file for bankruptcy for these reasons start out with health insurance. Most were middle class workers who simply got sick.

"I think it's a societal failure to have people facing bankruptcy over health care," said Dr. Alan Glaseroff, chief medical officer for the Humboldt-Del Norte Independent Practice Association in CA. "No other developed nation has that."

A Boston University study that finds fully half of the nearly $1.9 trillion spent on health care is unnecessary waste, paying for nothing more than excessively high profits, over-the-top drug and hospital prices, unnecessary administrative costs mandated by insurance companies, plus a healthy dollop of fraud and theft.

The fact is that health care and health insurance costs are dragging down businesses, crippling state and local governments, and ruining families---and still millions go without needed health care in the richest nation in world history.

THE BILL

Highlights of the plan, quoting from the Kuehl fact sheet:

"The Health Care for All Californians Act would provide health insurance coverage to all Californians through a single insurance plan offered by the State of California and would control the growth of health care spending through a simplified administrative structure, consolidated purchasing and statewide health planning."

This is universal coverage in every sense of the word: every California resident is covered--- for everything (except elective cosmetic surgeries.) Patients choose their primary care physicians, and every health care provider participates.

So how is this paid for?
"THE PLAN INVOLVES NO NEW SPENDING ON HEALTH CARE. The system will be financed by combining all federal, state and county monies already spent on health care with affordable, broad-based, earmarked state health care taxes that would replace insurance premiums. There are no co-pays or deductibles for at least the first two years. All monies to be spent on health care would be consolidated into a State Health Fund that is established in the California Treasury."

Administrative costs will be limited to 5%, and "Reimbursements will be risk adjusted to ensure that budgets cover the true costs of care." This is very important. Administrative costs of insurers and health care providers are skyrocketing. In particular they are much higher in the U.S. than other industrialized nations. That's ADMINISTRATIVE costs, not the cost of delivering care or new technology. Similarly, the costs of the same prescription drugs are higher in the U.S. than elsewhere.

"The system would be governed by a state elected health care commissioner who would head the California Health Care Agency. This agency would be assembled through the consolidation of the existing healthcare agencies." So: less private insurance bureaucracy, and no net increase in state bureaucracy.

How can universal health care possibly be affordable? Here's what this plan says:

By using state bulk purchasing power, "we anticipate a 40% to 50% decrease" in prices of prescription drugs. Bulk purchasing could save the state $4 billion, and patients will still have no co-pays. By extending primary and preventive care to everyone, some $3.5 billion to $6 billion a year could be saved from the costs of unnecessary emergency room visits and hospital stays made unnecessary by preventive care.

WHY THIS BILL WILL WORK

A study already exists showing this approach will work. The Lewin Report finds that this program will reduce total health spending in California by $8 billion in the first year, and will save some $344 billion that would otherwise be spent without this plan by 2015. The Lewin Report is viewable at Health Care For All.

A good summary of the bill, the study and the bill's prospects by SF Chronicle business columnist David Lazurus.

WHY THIS BILL HAS A CHANCE

The idea of universal health care coverage was very popular when President Clinton proposed it, and his bill was widely expected to pass, until the opposition funded by health insurers kicked in. But today, after nearly a decade of corporate HMO dominance, there is much wider recognition among physicians and even some insurers that the health care system is failing. The argument that gob'ment health care will create immense bureaucracies can elicit only horselaughs today, when doctors and hospitals are swamped with paperwork and constantly deal with interference from insurance companies in their decisions on care.

Business owners who might otherwise be skeptical can't help but notice that health care insurance costs are becoming a heavy burden. Small businesses struggle to stay afloat because of these costs, while large companies find they can't compete internationally because of the income they must devote to health insurance. This plan, says the Lewin study, is likely to save virtually all California businesses money.

Meanwhile, this bill has some carrots. It claims that the pharmaceutical industry won't lose money on it; the revenue lost by bulk purchasing will be made up with sheer numbers of patients, for 10 million Californians who have no prescription drug benefits now will be covered.
Hospitals are well aware of the drain on their income in the emergency room, where people without insurance show up for all their health care. The plan offers at least the possibility of a way out of the chaos of inpatient care in overcrowded, understaffed hospitals (the subject of this column by Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle.

As for the argument that government can't afford this, the truth is that government is paying billions without bulk savings or cost containment. All levels of government face the consequences of more than 6 million Californians who lacked health care coverage at some point in 2001. The burden that doesn't fall on the state, often falls on local governments. Ruehl estimates state and local governments would save $43 billion in the first ten years under her plan.

Ruehl argues that California can't afford NOT to enact universal health care. Others who are disgusted and frazzled with the current system may be willing to take a chance even if they aren't so sure this plan will work. The fears over rationing of care, or inadequate quality,become problems to address within the single payer system, not reasons to vote against it. Give health a chance! For millions of Californians must ask, how can single-payer universal health care be worse than the current system?

Californians are looking for a solution. A ballot measure mandating employers to provide health care coverage failed only narrowly, despite well-funded opposition. But had it passed, it would not be the solution. Even worse is a bill currently being offered that requires that every employee in the state buy health insurance in the current system, which would only transform chaos into punitive madness.

This single payer system is much fairer, and will save Californians money. Families with under $150,000 in annual income would, on average, see savings ranging between $600 and $3,000 per family under the program in 2006. Seniors could save an average of $1100 a year per household.

It's no wonder that this bill is endorsed by the American Medical Student Association, American Nurses Association, California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, the
California Nurses Association and California Mental Health Association, as well as the League of Women Voters, many Democratic and Green Party organizations, labor unions, and organizations representing women and elders.

Clearly the issue of universal health care is not going to be debated in the U.S. Congress anytime soon. In California there is a chance to get the issues aired, perhaps even to force the Governor to take a stand and sign or veto this bill, and who knows? If the people are clear about what they want, a single payer plan for health care covering everyone in California could actually happen. And if it happens in California...

In Other New...

New posts at This North Coast Place and Soul of Star Trek.

Morgan's story "Blue States Highways/Red States Run" headlines his blog at Morgan Dash Unbound.

On their "non-partisan" tsunami relief tour, that's George Bush in RED and Bill Clinton in BLUE...

Sunday Sermon: The Next Fifty Years

by Phineas Dash

I was asked for my views on what I believe are the most important issues in science and technology. Here they are. Because I define importance in terms of the future, I offer a very broad outline of science and technology of the next 50 years.

The next 50 years will be critical years for humanity. Throughout the twentieth century, industrial nations created monstrous technologies of destruction. Many of these were deliberately destructive, to be used in war, and most of them were so used. The culmination of these resulted in thermonuclear arsenals (which still exist). But at points of highest tension, these few nations succeeded in not destroying civilization. The next 50 years will amount to at least as great a challenge as that, but the choices and their consequences will be less clear, and will require more sustained and varied efforts by many more nations.

Science and technology of the next 50 years, as well as international relations and most everything else, will be dominated by the climate crisis, which is beginning as the world nears the end of oil reserves. The future of civilizations will depend on how humanity responds.

The climate crisis is a result of industrial technologies not meant to be destructive, but which were, and will continue to be. Their effects on health as well as climate will be an acknowledged or unacknowledged challenge that will be part of the climate crisis era.

If advanced nations work on clean energy technology, new technologies to ease the pain and to mitigate what will inevitably happen, these technologies will dominate. But clean energy will not in itself affect the climate crisis for several generations, perhaps not for a century, although they are likely to have immediate positive effects in health. Going ahead with these technologies anyway (even if spurred by the disappearance of oil) will be a measure of humanity's maturity as a thinking species.

No one knows if new technologies can help lessen the severity of the climate crisis, but it seems certain that new attitudes towards the use of existing technologies will be necessary, and will require some economic and social restructuring. But the economic benefits of clean energy technologies should help the societal comfort level, both in terms of individual and community savings, and the new jobs and economic activity that would result from clean renewable energy technologies. The Apollo Alliance has broad labor as well as environmental support for this reason.

However, because the climate crisis will be felt more acutely in some areas of the world than others, and one of the major consequences is likely to be competition over fresh water resources, an era of highly destructive conflicts could occur, with concentration on the technology of war not seen since WorldWar II and the early Cold War.

It's likely that over the next 50 years, both kinds of technology will be developed, and the proportion of peace technology versus war technology will spell the fate of human civilization. Even if the peace technologies predominate, they might not be enough, if the climate crisis becomes too severe.

The dominant technology story of the past 20 years was computer/information systems. These technologies developed very quickly and prospered in the U.S. because this is now a consumer economy, and this technology led quickly to consumer products and services, including new ways of selling consumer products. At the end of the 90s, the investment speculation bubble burst, and with consumption growth slowing, so did investment. But though development may be slower because fewer resources and bright minds are in it now, it is still a dominant area of technology.

But the major battles involving these technologies in the next 5 to 20 years will be resisting attempts by governments and corporations to control the flow of information, by controlling the Internet or whatever the Internet evolves into, as well as aspects of the Internet (like blogs and email), and by mandating various controls and monitoring systems in communications technologies, in the guise of "fighting terrorism" (especially aimed at the Internet) or some other more specific enemy, or in efforts to enforce "morality."

Biotechnology will also be a primary area of controversy and conflict, from the future of cloning to the present of corporate control of food by monopoly of bioengineered seeds that, through law and biology, replace natural seeds. It is this area of food that is most likely to be the source of major conflict as the climate crisis changes regional agricultural patterns.

The sources of these problems are in policy, society, politics, culture etc. and they will test humanity's maturity. But in science and technology themselves, there are far more reasons to hope than to despair. Though the technology of destruction gets ever more powerful, with ever more deadly unintended consequences, the technology of hope also improves. Though obscured by propaganda and inattention, many clean energy technologies are already practical, efficient and cost-effective, or soon will be. If resources are devoted to them, and other socially beneficial uses of computer technology, then humanity has a fighting chance. But as usual, it is not the technology or the science that is the chief problem. It's what society does and doesn't do, which is a much more complex problem than any in rocket science.

Science itself is poised to develop a virtual theory of everything in the next fifty years, bringing together physics and cosmology, "brain science," biology, psychology, ecology, systems theory, etc. as well as less currently reputable areas of conjecture, such as ESP. This will be due not only to advances within sciences, but to increasing cross-fertilization among sciences (and those brave individuals who produce books for the general reader that attempt synthesis), and to increasing acceptance by scientists of data from sources and categories previously scorned as non-scientific, such as the investigations into mind that Tibetan Buddhists have been conducting for centuries, the myths and stories and approach to life of indigenous cultures, and the so-called psychic phenomena. Even in the past twenty years, previously out-of-bounds ideas have become accepted, such as relationships of mind and body.

But a period of chaos and societal breakdowns could slow or end such a quest. Or it may come too late, like the woman in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," who suddenly comes up with the perfect workable formula for world peace, but a moment later the Earth is destroyed by a spaceship, paving the way for an interstellar highway.

Political activity to oppose destructive use of technologies and encourage positive uses and development will be important, but its effectiveness is likely to be limited without major shifts in how individuals and polities view themselves and the world. Science, together with other modes of thought, can provide those insights, which would include (it seems to me) concepts from Jungian psychology, Gregory Bateson and systems theory, and Buckminster Fuller's anticipatory design science, as well as a broader, deeper and more thorough ecological ethic.

We must reconnect and recommit ourselves to the future. We must enact hope where hope must exist: in the present.