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Conundrums on the Left

6 Apr

John Quiggin has an interesting post at Crooked Timber about problems in formulating a leftist politics that makes sense. It’s mostly about Australia (where Quiggin lives and teaches), but it opens with a statement about things here in the USofA. He observes that “the fact that the base has nowhere to go, and can’t even justify abstention means that Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership can and do kick them (or, thinking more globally, us) with impunity.” He further observes:

The frustration felt on the left at present is (at least at my case) associated with a feeling that we should be doing a lot better. The case for market liberalism is in ruins after the Global Financial Crisis and it’s obvious that the reconstruction of the system has changed nothing, leaving the bankers unscathed and putting all the burden onto ordinary people. Left positions on lots of specific issues have much more public support than is evident from their political representation. The right screwed up massively over Iraq, is delusional on climate change and so on. And Obama won office easily running hard against Bush’s abuses on civil liberties and for a decent health care plan.

Maybe it’s time we make the move to Truth and Tradition. Instead of progressing into a nuclear disaster financed by fat cat bankers we need to conserve the land and our local communities.

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Ten reasons why new nuclear was a mistake

3 Apr

Plus One (1) makes Eleven (11)! Count ’em!

Alexis Rowell tell us why in this post at Transition Culture. Here’s the list:

  1. Nuclear power is too expensive
  2. New nuclear power stations won’t be ready in time
  3. Nuclear does not and will not safeguard our energy security
  4. Nuclear power is not green
  5. Nuclear power will do little to reduce our carbon emissions
  6. Nuclear power stations are inefficient
  7. Plane crashes are a risk to nuclear power stations
  8. Nuclear power kills
  9. It’s a myth that renewables cannot provide baseload
  10. Global expansion could lead to new nuclear security risks
  11. And we still have no idea what to do with nuclear waste

Here’s what we need to do:

  1. Energy efficiency
  2. Renewables (and possibly Combined Heat & Power in urban areas if we can find enough non-fossil fuels to run it)
  3. Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs)

Read the full post to find out more.

IMGP7420rd

Thanks for your attention, your most precious resource . . . and ours.

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We Need a Gift Ecology

3 Apr

“Eternal abundance as the capitalist myth. Peel open a Puritan work ethicist and you’ll find a drifty opium head.”

So says eco-critic Tim Morton. More at his blog, including a TED talk. And the best things in life a free, fellowship, music, poems, paintings, and so forth.

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The Case for a Transition Party USA

31 Mar

By Charlie Keil

A national Transition Party USA would protect the apolitical Transition movement from nearby nuclear disasters, the perpetual wars required by the military-industrial-twoparty-complex that will bleed America dry very soon.

From a local transition and resilience perspective, politics as usual, or politics as we have known it, can only be an interesting distraction at best, or a discouraging and entangling alliance with existing power structures at worst. After attending a day of “transition training,” getting just a taste of the humor, joy and personal passions that can be nurtured when you are following common sense and having a good time building community resilience, I wouldn’t want to pull a single person away from this local process and into national politics. The solutions to the shocks of global peak oil, the shocks of global storming, the shocks of global economic steady declines and sudden collapses, the shocks of desperate populations crossing borders for survival, are going to be almost entirely local.

On the other hand, there may be many people this year and next, who are so alienated by totalitarian big government Republicans and so fed up with the wimpy big government Democrats, that they will want a better choice than the one between the lesser of two evils or the evil of two lessers. In particular, there may be many “teapartiers” who really love the Constitution, truly want to return to traditions, family values, family farms, local autonomy, states’ rights, and 9th Amendment rights to privacy, clean conscience, clear consciousness who will find themselves with no one they can vote for enthusiastically as their Representative in the House or Senate. The Transition Party USA, with citizen candidates advocating for the 7 themes and the 7 principles, could be very persuasive and exciting for the millions of Americans, the vast majority of Americans in fact, who have given up on the so-called “two party system” as corrupt, bought and paid for, unresponsive, irresponsible, a game they no longer want to play.

How could elected Transition Party USA Representatives in the House change anything? They could vote for the very few but very important things that Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich agree upon, i.e. bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan as the beginning of a non-interventionist, non-state-building, anti-empire foreign policy. They could vote against anything and everything that expands the role of the Federal government at the expense of state and local governments. They could lead common sense, rational, science-respecting Democrats and Republicans to close poisonous and dangerous nuclear power plants one by one using appropriate criteria: demographic (too close to major cities), ecological (biggest threat to water supplies), geological (worst earthquake probabilities), past maintenance weaknesses, age of plant, etc. Even a small group of Representatives following “transition to sustainability” values and principles, rather than lobbyist financial incentives, could make a momentous difference in the House of Representatives by voting as if people and the planet mattered!

* * * * *

I could stop right here. A case a for a “fourth party” (paleoconserving decentralist greens to balance the existing left-green “third party”) well made. But it is important to make two more points:

  1. There are at least ten federal income tax refusers on the right for every tax refuser on the left.
  2. When the economic collapse of 2008 happened I noticed an interesting alliance take shape that lost on key votes.

Continue reading →

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Hoboken takes aim at private cars

29 Mar

In various ways, cars are at the center of our oil dependence. Long term, well, many things are needed – more public transportation, new kinds of propulsion, reorganized cities, towns, and suburbs. Short term, anything that moves in that general direction.

Hoboken, NJ, is a small city across the Hudson River from mid-town Manhattan. Once a port and small-industrial city, now it’s a bedroom community for people working in New York City. Lots of them. And cars infest the streets. In the past couple of years the city has done two things to free its residents of cars: 1) they’ve partnered with Hertz to create a city-wide car-sharing program. According to the City “the first phase of this program is anticipated to remove more than 750 vehicles from Hoboken’s crowded streets.” 2) They’ve established a shuttle service that circumnavigates the city and is no more than a 5-minute walk from any resident. The shuttles are tracked by GPS, which can be followed on the web or through cell phone. Ridership has increased by 50% in the first 6 months of use.

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German Solar Outshines Fukushima's Nukes

29 Mar

Reporting in Grist, Christopher Mims notes, with appropriate qualifications, that “total power output of Germany’s installed solar PV panels hit 12.1 GW — greater than the total power output (10 GW) of Japan’s entire 6-reactor nuclear power plant.” The kicker:

Japan’s facing rolling blackouts until next Winter, and it’s undeniable that if the country had more distributed power generation like Germany’s roof-based solar PV system, the entire country would be much more resilient in the face of catastrophe.

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Manufacturing? Make It Local

28 Mar

Wouldn’t you know it, her Grey Ladyship, The New York Times, has an opinion piece on the localization of manufacturing. Allison Arieff observes that “the monolithic industry model — steel, oil, lumber, cars — has evolved into something more nimble and diversified . . .  as manufacturers see the benefits of being smaller and paying attention to how patterns of consumption, ownership and use are shifting.”  Mark Dwight started SFMade in 2010 to promote local manufacturing in San Francisco: for example, here’s  an upcoming workshop on setting up a manufacturing process. Kate Sofis, executive director of SFMade, observes:

“Manufacturing isn’t dead and doesn’t need to be preserved,” she says. “Let’s stop fixating on what’s lost. Let’s see what we have here, what’s doing well, and let’s help those folks do better.”

Pride of  place helps in the branding and marketing of local manufactures and, of course, it plays into the sustainability pitch, which is sometimes real, and sometimes not (do I hear BP?).

There’s a similar game afoot in New York City, Made in NYC, and her Grey Ladyship has written a number of articles about local manufacturing successes: envelopes, bicycles, brushes, boilers, specialty lights, and mattresses. And, of course, readers list other examples in their comments. Arieff notes that “growing consumer demand for greener, more ethically produced products, along with skyrocketing unemployment and nervousness about globalization all work in the groups’ favor.”

And those demands are all over the place. Local’s the way to go. After all, that’s where everyone is, no? If you aren’t where you are, then where could you possibly be?

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In Transition, the movie

25 Mar

Starring you, and you, and your aunt Maddie and sister Sadie and uncle Willie and all their cats and dogs and peonies.

 

‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour, and setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities. It is positive, solutions focused, viral and fun.

In the film you’ll see stories of communities creating their own local currencies, setting up their own pubs, planting trees, growing food, celebrating localness, caring, sharing. You’ll see neighbours sharing their land with neighbours that have none, local authorities getting behind their local Transition initiatives, schoolchildren making news in 2030, and you’ll get a sense of the scale of this emerging movement. It is a story of hope, and it is a call to action, and we think you will like it very much. It is also quite funny in places.

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Lease Solar Panels for Your Home

22 Mar

Eco-critic and environmentalist Tim Morton has decided to lease solar panels for his home: “You can lease solar panels from Solar City for about $80 a month for 15 with zero down. That gives you about 25 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is enough for my family of four, sometimes with some to spare. In many places you can now sell the extra back to the grid.” Tim Lives in California. Solar City also serves Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington, D.C.

Has anyone had experience with them? With other solar leasing options?

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Unemployment, Barter, and Local Currencies

21 Mar

Over at Marginal Revolution Alex Tabarrok has an interesting post on barter, local currency, and unemployment.

There was a huge increase in barter and exchange associations during the Great Depression with hundreds of spontaneously formed groups across the country such as California’s Unemployed Exchange Association (U.X.A.). These barter groups covered perhaps as many as a million workers at their peak.

In addition, I include with barter the growth of alternative currencies or local currencies such as Ithaca Hours or LETS systems. The monetization of non-traditional assets can alleviate demand shocks which is one reason why it’s good to have flexibility in the definition of and free entry into the field of money …

During the Great Depression there was a marked increase in alternative currencies or scrip, now called depression scrip.

This doesn’t seem to be happening now. Have we forgotten, lost resilience?

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