(Note: This is being sent out late due to an internet connection outage. I hope everyone enjoys it none the less.)
Hey everybody,
The Grinch here. No, not really –I’m certainly not the Grinch, but you might think so after reading this newsletter! There’s not much good news this week, I’m afraid. Hey, I don’t make the news, I just pass it along. I’ve decided that there could just be one headline on every source of news –this, NPR, CNN, newspapers, etc: Thing Are Getting Worse. That pretty much sums it up. Thanks. Now I can have my coffee and go to work. Btw, this will be the last newsletter of the year. I’m going to take next week off. The next Newsletter will go out the first Friday in January.
I also noticed that I forgot to send last week’s newsletter out, so I combined it with this one. My apologies for that. I’m so tired from work lately that I haven’t had the energy to do anything. When I get home from work, I go to bed. When I get up, I go to work. I like this job –in a lot of ways it’s the best job I’ve ever had. There are a lot of things I don’t like however, and I don’t expect I’ll be keeping it long.
For those who are interested in my fight with City Hall, they did approve the layout of that subdivision, but this is the first of three steps so I’ve still got a chance to fight it. I’m working on options right now, including a possible petition. Some of these folks are out of their minds –the guy who owns this land wants to build not just McMansions on the first 50 acres, but Megamansions –bigger than the ones in Governor’s Bend across from the church. (Up to 38,000 sq ft it says on the plans for one lot.) This is completely ridiculous. No one needs a house that size. Furthermore, I find it deeply, completely, and incredibly immoral to own a house like that. I’ll let everyone know how it progresses.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas, Hanukah, and/or Kwanzaa (and a special Happy Solstice to all my fellow pagans out there).
GOOD NEWS
Because I’m Human: Why a straight man insists on writing about gay issues and stands up for gay rights.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1217-22.htmCLIMATE CHANGEI’ve got a couple of things to say on this subject this time, and they are really going to earn me the title of Grinch, but they need to be said so I’m going to say them. This may be the Christmas season, but I don’t see a reason to wait on this.
Climate Change is here. It is not something that is going to wait until you’re dead and gone (for you older folks out there) and something that will only affect your kids and grandkids. It is here, now, in the present, and is only going to get worse
unless we act now to stop it. This doesn’t just mean calling your congressman, recycling, buying a hybrid SUV, or hauling canvas bags to the grocery store with you. All those actions are good and I’m not trying to diminish them, but they are, at best, band-aids. The time has come and past for band aid solutions. It is time to take personal responsibility for how our actions affect the planet and to take decisive personal action to reduce our impact. The time for excuses, for shifting blame and responsibility onto others, for half-measures done only to make ourselves feel good, is over. People are dying. Seas are rising. Bears are no longer hibernating. The Amazon rain forest is in the middle of a drought –and will collapse if it goes on more than another year. Locally the daffodils are trying to bloom. In December!!!! The very future of our planet hangs in the balance. No longer is it a question of how our children and grandchildren will live in the future –but whether they will live at all. Every action we take has an impact on the planet, whether good, bad, or neutral. We each have a decision to make, one that can not be put off any longer. We stand at the crossroads of history, and what we each choose will help determine the future of all the Earth –or even if there is much of a future at all.
Please choose wisely.
At the bottom of the newsletter I have copied an article in full from Sharon Astyk, a Jewish farmer in New York who runs a real good blog at
http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/What happens when a bear doesn’t hibernate? We’re about to find out. It’s been too warm this year for bears to hibernate. Other things also are not following their usual patterns. But global warming isn’t real. Right.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1221-01.htmLet them wear hats! Or sweaters. Put on a warm pair of pants, for crying out loud. Someone else finally said it. Some of the “solutions” really aren’t, like programmable thermostats that are more of a bandaid than a help. I call them the easiest way to waste energy while feeling good about yourself. It’s going to take some real effort and work –gasp! –to save the world instead of just recycling or changing the thermostat. God forbid we have to change our lifestyles so that our grandkids can actually live.
http://www.energybulletin.net/23758.htmlSwift Boat to Hell: Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not too much.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1217-23.htmWe are the solution: It’s time to stop putting the blame on others and start taking personal responsibility for our actions and how they affect the planet.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/45381/Look! The conservative’s solution to global warming! Hey, it could work…Before you email me in anger, yeah, I know that’s not funny. But it got your attention didn’t it? And I wouldn’t put it past the Idiot in Chief either!
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/12/MNGE5MTRI31.DTLAnd slowly the land slid beneath the waves: Rising sea levels due to global warming are inundating low-lying islands and atolls. How long will it be before people start moving to higher ground?
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-lean261206.htmPOLITICS
Welcome to Gattaca: This cop wants to create a database of the DNA of everyone –including newborns. This sounds like something from 1984, but it’s real.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006570242,00.htmlThey Came for the Immigrants: A stinging indictment of the recent actions taken by the INS.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1220-22.htmTSA, or Grand Theater for Free: This is an op-ed, but he’s right: airport shenanigans under the TSA are more entertaining than most Broadway plays!
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/business/yourmoney/17digi.html?ex=1324011600&en=db7ab439c0c47253&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssPOLLUTIONPollution = Infertility: An outright scary story on the reproductive problems brought on by all the stuff we are wantonly dumping into the environment.
http://www.alternet.org/story/45684/ENVIRONMENTOTHER
All of us are Children: A cool piece, and written by a UU.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1215-22.htm 100 Ways to Prepare for Peak Oil: I realize that some of my readers are skeptical about the whole PO thing, but I am sending this out as a public service. Plus, since oil usage and climate change are intimately connected –and I haven’t yet heard anyone here argue about the reality of climate change –then living more lightly on the earth can never be a bad thing. Furthermore, as long as we keep using a finite resource such as oil, there will come a day when half of it is gone, the very essence of Peak Oil “theory”. I consider this a major Social Justice issue, because we all know who massive price hikes will hit hardest and first. In addition, if major oil industry analysts like Deffeyes and Brown are correct, peak oil was reached on December 16th -2005. No one is arguing that worldwide oil production has gone down for a full year now, and even OPEC is admitting that there is a day when oil will peak, and that we are nearing it or past it. If OPEC, that master of duplicity and lies, is finally admitting to something like this, we’re in for a bumpy ride. The second link and the quote are to and from the latest OPEC report, where you’ll find the quote below (emphasis mine).
http://www.energybulletin.net/23645.html"Furthermore, under any of these scenarios, and since peak oil output is not about the time at which oil will run out, but the time at which production can no longer be increased to cope with increased demand, it seems the only way the oil price can go is up.
This conclusion seems to be in line with the view held by the peak oil output advocates who argue that the ongoing oil price rises are mainly due to supply-demand imbalances. This is because we are at, or near, the production peak of world oil, if not on the downward slope of Hubbert’s peak curve. This is not to deny the role of other factors (such as geopolitical), but only to stress the importance of supply and demand for crude oil as the prime factor in determining the price of the commodity."
http://www.opec.org/library/OPEC%20Bulletin/2006/OB11122006.htmThe U.S. is Bankrupt: Another real shocker. Anyone who has to borrow money every single day to keep the lights on isn’t in the best financial shape. Why am I putting this in a SJ Newsletter? Partly because it’s urgent. When the GAO admits things are bad, they’re ten times worse then they look. Partly as a warning –get your finances in order NOW in case things hit the fan soon, which they probably will. And partly because it is a SJ issue –who do you think this will hit the hardest? Not the CEOs with their private jets and twenty million dollar summer cottages!
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/martenson/2006/1217.htmlAnd the money goes to –the rich, of course! This article lays out in amazing detail just how bad and ugly the wealth transfer from poor to rich has been in the U.S. over the past several years. This is the last thing I expected to find in a magazine like Rolling Stone, but I’m glad it’s there!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12699486/paul_krugman_on_the_great_wealth_transfer/printFilthy Rich versus Merely Rich: These two groups, the top .001% of all humanity are now fighting because one group thinks they should be as rich as the other. Unbelievable.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/30/opinion/meyer/main2218369.shtmlLeft Behind, the Game: Scary. Enough said.
http://www.alternet.org/story/45767/Website of the Week: Interesting.
http://www.healthanddna.com/genealogy.htmlUU Joke of the Week: Have you heard the latest UU miracle?
Someone saw the face of Ralph Waldo Emerson on a tortilla.
Have a good weekend everybody!
-Rebecca
So, how much do you care if your kids, or someone else's live or die?
That's pretty much the question, isn't it? How much do you actually care whether you children, or grandchildren, and the children of others get to live decent lives, or if they die horribly of starvation and disease? Because we say we care very much about the future, about sustainability, and the environment, that we worry a lot about climate change and energy issues. But most of us mostly act like we don't care.Don't misunderstand me, I'm not belittling the changes you've made. Those compact flourescent lightbulbs, the recycling, the moving closer to your job, those are important things. But they aren't enough, and we all know it. In order to stabilize climate change, we in the west need to make a 60-70% reduction in our energy consumption. Really, it is probably more, because those figures represent an overall reduction, but we can't ask people who just starting to use coal fired energy to get running water to make a 60% reduction, while we're switching to CFs and hybrid cars. But let's call it 70%. And we need to do it *NOW.* Check out this BBC interview transcript.
http://tinyurl.com/5hyoq. It does not quite translate to "we're all gonna die" but it does mean that climate change is much more disastrous than even we've thought. That means within this century, while my kids and grandkids are trying to live most of the coastal cities in the world may well be underwater. There will probably be widespread drought and hunger. And, if the cascade effect of melting the permafrost does release enormous stores of methane, the planet may become uninhabitable.We cannot wait while each of us gets personally more comfortable with reducing our footprint - we have to do it big, and we have to do it today. We can't wait for cheap solar technology, we can't wait for biofuel algae to gas up our pluggable hybrids, we can't wait. The question becomes, what are you willing to do, what sacrifices are you willing to make from your own comfort and happiness in order to make sure that your kids, and millions or billions of other children in the world are not dead and dying in the future.Now I know parents and grandparents. In the short term, we'd all hurl ourselves in front of oncoming buses in order to protect the kids we love, and enable them to have good lives. So, I ask you all, why in hell are we destroying their chances of life and security right now? Why are we consuming the remaining fossil fuels, the ones that may ensure that they can have minimal things like insulin for diabetics and lighting, so that we can have air conditioning and cold beer? Whether or not you have children, I'm going to bet you have an investment in the future - the idea that someday someone will put a stone on your grave, or tell their children about Grandma Leah or Uncle Daniel. Or perhaps just the investment in the idea that the planet was not yours to waste, or in the idea that someday, someone will read Shakespeare like you did, or listen to a piece of music you loved or laugh at the same joke. So why in hell are we throwing that away.When I visited my family recently (burning a good bit of energy to get there), I was talking with my mother and step-mother, who are making real and meaningful changes in their lives. We were talking about paper consumption, and I mentioned that the next step in reducing paper consumption was probably handkerchiefs rather than tissues, and they both instinctively reacted with "ugh." Now I know what they mean, but let's be honest. For centuries, people used cloth handkerchiefs without dying. Is one's personal "ugh" reaction to handkerchiefs, or using your urine to fertilize your garden, or getting to know and butcher the animals you eat, or using a composting toilet really enough to justify the cost that we may be inflicting upon others? Remember, all of that stuff we react to with such hostility *belongs* to us - our wastes and the things we eat are part of us. We can try to pretend they don't really have anything to do with us, that we don't shit or pee, are never dirty or snotty, that the animal corpse on the plate was never a chicken or a cow, but no matter how hard we pretend, we're still killing, we're still shitting, and it is still our responsibility, no matter how hard we try to pass it off on others.The same thing has to do with our instinctive aesthetic assumptions, which are also hard for all of us (me too) to overcome - the fear of looking poor, or cheap leads us in all sorts of dangerous directions. But again, is it so terrible to imagine giving up your car and going to the bicycle, or giving up meat, or replacing that front lawn with edible plants, if the rewards are that someday, your grandkids, or the grandkids of someone who loves them just as much as you do, have enough to eat, home and shelter.Let's be honest, most of us who are adults now have had a lot. We're the wealthiest, most priveleged, most secure, luckiest people in human history. We haven't had to work hard for much. And we're in the odd position of probably being able to maintain our privelege for much of the rest of our lives, if we really work at it. But the cost comes in human lives. And not the lives of people who live out of sight, or downstream or in other countries - we've been doing them harm for decades and it hasn't bothered us much. But now the damage is coming home to roost. Do you want to keep your toaster and your hair dryer, or do you want your kids and grandkids to have food? And if you want them to have food, you have to be willing to give up your priveleges right now, to overcome your instinctive reactions, and also our instinctive urge to protect ourselves and what we have, no matter what the cost to others, and choose differently. We are going to have to give up things that we like and we love and we feel we need.I only hope that we find that what we really like and love and need most is for our kids, and our children's kids, to survive and flourish.Shalom,Sharon
