The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

“I am dreaming, and I want to do good. For the good you do is never lost. Not even in dreams.”

Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Heeding Invisible Voices

Over the past few days, scientists have figured that there's a lot more oil coming out of that gusher in the Gulf--estimated at about ten times more per day. This oil is gushing a mile below the ocean surface, and now scientists believe not all of it is coming up, at least not right away: "Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. One scientist adds: “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

Oil depletes oxygen in the water, among other toxic effects, and it happens potentially over a long period of time. It kills life, plain and simple. (This Kos diary puts other relevant articles together.)

There are a lot of lessons about this gusher we're going to painfully learn that apply in a shorter time scale to expected Climate Crisis effects: devastating local effects that accumulate over time, and then cause secondary disasters that spread invisibly to the rest of the world, felt perhaps more measurably as economic effects but with other less quantifiable elements subtracted from the world we know, and the world we need.

We already knew that oil coming into wetlands and shores will kill nesting birds and other wildlife, as we knew that oil on the surface will kill endangered species as well as the fish and shellfish that the Gulf supplies as food to the world. Now underwater oil further threatens species we know, like dolphins, whales and turtles. But such vast quantities of oil so deep may erase a world of life we almost never see, a world of immense beauty, and for all we know, as essential to our own lives as the honey bee. This, too, is a metaphor for the Climate Crisis. A warning if we need one, of what is to come. And of course, it's more than a metaphor. It's a spreading, almost inconceivable reality.

But the time scale is part of our perception problem. Though this is a shorter time scale, it is longer that we are accustomed to pay attention, especially in this novelty-driven data age. We didn't even pay attention to Katrina and New Orleans long enough to understand what really has happened there. We have to use a little imagination, and some perseverance in paying attention.

Our attention to this catastrophe is already waning: there are no new pictures. What is happening is happening invisibly, at least for the moment. This catastrophe is exposing realities, and also our weaknesses.

The Climate/Energy Bill Debate

On the Climate 'n Energy bill in the Senate: the Conventional Wisdom says it doesn't have much of a chance, and like everything else these days, it is attacked from the Right and the Left. From the Left, there's Phil Radford of Greenpeace debating Joseph Romm of Climate Progress. I love Greenpeace but Radford didn't make much sense, and Romm was right to call him out on misstatements. Radford did make one cogent claim, though: the carbon costs imposed by this bill aren't high enough to jump-start clean energy and energy conservation. That's an important concern, although I don't necessarily accept that his opinion is correct. I'd like to see this point joined more specifically.

(His other claim--that the bill isn't strong enough to give Europe and the rest of the world the cover to continue their efforts--was also simply an assertion, surrounded by faulty data. So someone else will have to produce evidence to make this claim more credibly.)

Otherwise, Romm is persuasive: the idea is to turn the ship around, get it going in the right direction: towards penalizing the production of heat-trapping gases and incentives for clean energy. Maybe it's not enough. But the alternative, which is pretty clearly not doing anything at all, is definitely not enough.

But issues that need to be clarified: are individual states going to be prevented from establishing stronger rules, and if so why, and how it that going to work anyway? And if they are going to take the only weapon now in the arsenal away--EPA's ability to regulate carbon based on the Clean Air Act--what enforcement with the force of law will substitute?

The First Victims

These are among the first known victims of the Gulf gusher: fish, turtles and brown pelicans (bottom photo) are turning up dead, and yesterday it was reported that six dolphins so far are among the dead. For the dolphins, it appears that the chemicals being spread in huge quantities to disperse the oil are as deadly as the oil itself.

Meanwhile, as quoted by Climate Progress, the Washington Post reported on House hearings: A senior House Democrat said that the blowout preventer that failed to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a “useless” test version of one of the devices that was supposed to close the flow of oil and a cutting tool that wasn’t strong enough to shear through joints that made up 10 percent of the drill pipe."

Climate Progress also quotes a Coast Guard Captain slams industry "self-certification" of BOP: "Manufactured by industry, installed by industry, with no government witnessing oversight of the installation or the construction."

And the rig flew the Marshall Island flag to further escape U.S. oversight.

People to the Power

Joe Rahm and Climate Progress have scooped everyone else with a leaked version and preliminary evaluation of the American Power Act set to be introduced by Senator John Kerry and the other guy later today. The first reviews are good, and thanks to the Gulf oil gush, the chances of passage of some sort of energy bill are better than they've been in a very long time.

The specifics will be explained and debated for awhile, but providing resources and incentives for energy conservation and a clean domestic energy economy are likely to gain plenty of support, especially after all the "listening" (i.e. trading) that Kerry and the other guy have done while crafting this bill.

What's going to be harder to both explain and agree on will be the methods of capping and reducing heat-trapping gases. But the argument that needs to be emphasized, beyond saving the planet's future, is the need to do this in order to accelerate that clean energy economy. And a lot of folks don't think it's possible, at least in the short time that's necessary, without increasing the cost of dirty energy.

And it's necessary not just to head off the worst--the climate cataclysm becoming climate collapse--but to create capacity and competitiveness for clean energy internationally. Or else we'll eventually be buying our windmills and solar panels from China, if we can even afford them by then.

That's the conclusion for example of Europe's climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard, who is now advocating for a 30% cut in heat-trapping gases as Europe's unilateral goal, instead of the current 20%. She said the" 20% cut would not drive the clean energy innovation Europe needed. She said China was investing almost 10 times as much as the EU in plans for a low-carbon economy."

But European industries are resisting that goal, unless and until the U.S. makes the same move, or at least some move, as contemplated in this bill. It may take emphasizing economic self-interest to save the planet, but the argument may be a sound one.

Meanwhile, the Gulf: Amidst the circus of blame in Congress Tuesday, there was this disturbing suggestion about what's happening with the oil: that because of the chemical dispersants being used, it isn't so much that the oil is not coming onshore, but that it's not visible as oil slick, and that the oil is sinking, where it becomes toxic to marine life, but invisible to cameras and satellites. This Kos diary also suggests the possibility that it's headed for the Florida keys.

Political Winds

Apart from the apparently growing anti-incumbent trend--which has been building for at least a decade--there are a few other political wrinkles to note.

1. The defeat of veteran and very conservative Senator Bob Bennett of the very conservative state of Utah by presumably even more conservative GOPers backed by Tea Partiers was prompted, some say, by Bennett having worked with Democrats on a few legislative items. Is there going to be more of this extreme ideological purity? Yes. I think the theory of absolute oppositionism among GOPers in Congress is based on the idea that (as a NY Times poll indicated) voters identifying themselves as conservatives is the highest ever (38%) but identifying themselves as GOPers is very low (in the 20s%.) The theory is that the self-identified conservatives are Tea Party ideologues, and oppositionism is needed to bring them into the GOP. That's probably not reality-based but it does seem to be the operative GOPer strategy.

How it plays out politically remains to be seen. But if it is successful enough, it is not a trend that permits effective governing, by anybody. The Dems are likely to lose seats in Congress, and if they retain majorities it may not be by much. It might be a good time for voters to use their imaginations, and picture what absolute unyielding gridlock looks like in a time of mounting peril, before the federal government gets locked into it for two years or more. But that requires imagination to trump emotion, projection, denial etc., not usually a good bet. It did work in 2008, though.

To this trend of hardened extremes, there are however a few other interesting counter-developments.

2. President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court has upset ideologues on both sides. Yet a discussion among legal experts who know her on the PBS News Hour suggests she has excellent personal and legal qualifications to be an effective Justice immediately. These folks have no doubt that her views are progressive. But the appointment is yet another indication of Obama's stubborn insistence on effective governance. (And yes, on ideological grounds, I would have preferred Diane Wood.)

And these two odd events, the significance of which remain to be seen, but they have a common element: the unlikely cooperation of opposites.

3. For the first time in the Obama Presidency, a substantive bill passed the Senate with bipartisan unanimity, by 96-0. And whose bill was this? Which Senator from the mushy middle could convince colleagues on both sides? None. The bill was a strong oversight bill to audit the Federal Reserve, force it to divulge the names of banks and other institutions it lended to during the economic emergency. The sponsor was the Senate's only professed Socialist and a party of one: Bernie Sanders. Moreover, a similar bill passed the House, sponsored by one of its most outspoken liberal Dems (Alan Grayson) and the libertarian GOPer Ron Paul.

4. Finally, the UK has a new government, comprised of a Tory (Conservative) Prime Minister and a Liberal Dem #2. Both made statements expressing their determination to put aside differences to work together for the good of the nation, currently in its own fiscal crisis. All I really knew about this election was that people at the BBC were really worried they would face massive cuts if the Tories took over from Labour. How this all plays out remains to be seen, and will be especially interesting in a country where the ideological difference between extremes is far smaller than in the U.S., and the culture of fact-based governance is greater.

But these last two suggest the possibility that effective governance can occur from the extremes, rather than from the middle. A novel concept, to say the least. And hardly a proven one. Stay tuned.

The Dome That Failed--and That's Not All

Things aren't any better in the Gulf, and they may well be getting worse. A growing collection of crippled equipment littered the ocean floor Sunday near a ruptured oil well gushing crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the remnants of a massive rig that exploded weeks ago and the failed efforts since to cap the leak, begins the NPR story on the failed dome attempt, and other weekend details.

Here's an interesting Internet wrinkle: while BP experts seemingly believed the dome might work, its failure and the reason for it was expected, by bloggers.

Yet the worst of it is very likely still to come. The oil continues to gush and to fill the sea, which winds so far have almost eerily kept offshore. The economic impact has begun, but that, too, could get a lot worse--raising oil and food prices potentially everywhere. Though it seems pretty early to speculate, I did hear one experienced observer suggest that this could be bad enough to bankrupt BP. If so, you can bet a lot of other folks are going to feel the pain first.

The environmental threat is apparently prompting voters to take a more serious look at energy policy. A pollster concluded: “not only do voters support a comprehensive clean energy bill by large double-digit margins, they also indicate their Senator’s vote could be an impactful re-election factor."

BP was getting a lot of criticism Monday, not only for being unprepared but for misleading everyone every step of the way during this crisis. There's apt to be more of that as Congress starts holding hearings. A more quietly expressed view (so far) notes the failure of Bush-era regulation and enforcement--the weakening of regs, the depletion of government regulators, the cosy relationship with oil companies (at least one safety mechanism was xed out by the Cheney energy commission) and the overall reliance on privatization. You won't hear the loudmouth GOPers on that one, but I hope the Dems can make that point.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The troubling idea arose...that we are mostly alive in each other's minds and that we're only dead when we're dead to ourselves."

Jim Harrison

"The Summer He Didn't Die"

And R.I.P. Lynn Redgrave, above in Georgy Girl with Alan Bates.

Power to the Future

So the purpose of one set of tasks for the near-term future--edging towards Climate Cataclysm-- is to make things as good as possible for as long as possible.

It's important for the future in general that the life-killing, civilization-ending heat-trapping gases be severely and all but completely curtailed. Clean energy technology and a clean energy economy provide energy to compensate for less fossil fuel burning. But particularly when clean energy is scaled to be locally produced and controlled, it will in itself be vital to making things as good as possible for as long as possible. So every step towards that is worth notice, and there are two today.

The House passed its version of the "Home Star Energy Retrofit Act," and all that needs to happen now is working out differences with the Senate version. It provides incentives to homeowners for energy efficient retrofits. Buildings account for 40% of U.S. energy use, and this program is big enough to create jobs and support businesses engaged in this work. This effort, widely supported by business and labor organizations, is the "low-hanging fruit" of saving energy and cutting heat-trapping gases.

The first big investments in clean energy were part of the Recovery Act, and the Department of Energy reported on progress a year later. Some 5,000 projects have been funded, but since these projects were designed for long-term benefit, most are just beginning to be implemented: conducting research, building wind farms and factories for electric battery.

This last item is a particular emphasis: Currently there are only three battery factories operating in the U.S., he says. Through the Recovery Act and related incentive programs, 30 battery and battery component factories are now being built. This will result in the capacity to build enough batteries for 500,000 electric vehicles a year, “whereas today we can hardly touch the topic,” Rogers says. Meanwhile, the DOE is funding research projects that could increase the performance of batteries threefold to sixfold, while reducing costs by 90 percent or more. All of that is designed to work with other programs with the goal of efficient and affordable electric vehicles.

What concerns me, however, is that so much of the emphasis, at least in what's being publicized, is on battery and wind technology, not so much on solar. Solar seems the most decentralized, and therefore the most adaptable to circumstances. I hope for one thing that people taking advantage of these retrofit programs include home solar. Getting as much power as possible directly from the sun offers a kind of security.

The Daily Babble

It's a complete terrorism law enforcement triumph at every level: federal in particular. Just 53 hours after a terrorist bombing was attempted in Times Square, a suspect was in custody and confessed. Possible confederates in Pakistan were being arrested and questioned.

But America as a whole can't applaud those facts, and be reassured, without GOPers braying about reading him his Miranda rights (he confessed without being tortured! What an outrage!), or even that the Obama administration failed to catch the criminal before he committed the crime (that charge by a former NY governor yet.) President Obama said that we won't be terrorized. But GOPers terrorize based on success.

As toxic as this might be on many levels, when the same kind of politics is played over something like the Gulf oil gusher, we get ridiculously distracted from anticipating what the consequences might be, which could lead--who knows?--to dealing with the consequences better, and even taking preventive action.

It's one thing to utter insane charges, but it's quite another to waste public news time on them. Chris Matthews interviewed disgraced former FEMA chief Michael Brown so he could air his charges that the federal government deliberately delayed its response for political purposes. Matthews told him he thought it was insane, but the real question came from his next guest, Howard Dean, who asked, why did you even have that guy on? Well, it gave Chris a chance to do a "tough interview," and get blog time. But as we're going to learn as this situation develops, sometimes what is wasted is lost forever, and in this case, it's the time to consider the real possible impacts. And there are lots of people who are able and willing to talk about that: the range of possible ecological, economic and societal effects.

I don't know, maybe that's what PBS is for. But it seems to me that we can't head off the worst effects if we never discuss the future in real terms, in real possibilities, contingencies, plans, actions. If all the information is from political blogs and shows, we might never know they even exist. In fact, the only place I heard any of that kind of analysis was on CNBC, where the future is of interest only as far as it affects business. But even that's better than political fights over nonsense.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf on Tuesday, favorable winds kept the oil mostly at bay. But that can't last forever. Dana Milbank writes about the anti-government conservatives who are now crying for federal help, in his Washington Post piece, Through oil-fouled water, big government looks better and better.

Meawhile, NPR contributes a narrative of the oil gush from the start until now.

So I leave you to a happy Cinco de Mayo, which is a bigger deal here in California than the rest of the country--or for that matter, Mexico. Which I will be celebrating with a root canal. Oh how I wish that to be a joke.

How It Started

One of several just released photos of the explosions and resulting fires of the oil rig that killed 11 men and led to the mile-deep gusher now shooting oil into the Gulf. Late Monday, Climate Progress flagged allegations in a Tuesday New York Times story: "At least one worker who was on the oil rig at the time of the explosion on April 20, and who handled company records for BP, said the rig had been drilling deeper than 22,000 feet, even though the company’s federal permit allowed it to go only 18,000 to 20,000 feet deep, the lawyers said.

Another worker familiar with the rig told the lawyers that the company had chosen not to install a deep-water valve that would have been placed about 200 feet under the sea floor. Much like blowout preventers, devices that are meant to seal leaks, this valve could have served as a cutoff of last resort in explosions, the lawyers said. “The company took their chances in not having the valve so they could save money,” said Mike Papantonio, one of the lawyers representing the shrimpers and fishermen."

The Daily Babble: Oil, Water and Media

I was just watching Rachel Maddow reporting from the Gulf, in between peeks at the Boston-Cleveland playoff and going outside to work on my version of the NBA chi-chi shot of the year, the floater, dreaming of the day I get Medicare and can play maybe a pickup game without worrying about getting an injury I can't pay to have treated.

Apart from a pretty useless interview on a fishing boat--probably looked like a good idea when the producers thought of it--it was a reasonably decent look at the situation, with a very strong and articulate commentary from Rachel at the end. But basically she gets big points for being there and focusing on the oil gush story.

There was a failed car bombing attempt--or probably an attempt--in Times Square over the weekend, which was hard to miss if you passed through CNN. With MSNBC running its prisoner weekend shows and the networks doing sports and entertainment, and Fox News doing Fox News, this was not necessarily the most trusted name in news but the only news. And it was totally concentrated on Times Square for hours at a time. Twenty-four people died by official count from storm-related flooding in Tennessee and environs, but CNN's coverage reminded me of the way the networks used to cover a disaster in, say, India--with the same little bit of sensational footage. Because they didn't have correspondents and cameras in that part of India. And this is part and parcel of cable news becoming tabloid TV, either the entire channel that used to be Headline News now covering tawdry celebrity stories and child kidnappings 24/7, or the political tabloid coverage of the other cables.

It's not just that New York City is a big deal, or even that the cable networks are headquartered there. It's that it was the cheapest thing to cover, even though there was no news whatever for most of that time. The correspondents who live there were available, and news divisions spend far less than ever on covering the country let alone the world.

Today was better--the major networks and even CNN are in the Gulf and have at least fresh footage from Nashville, etc. But this is partly why we get such lax and often distorted coverage of real news events with real consequences. I've started reading the Katrina chapters of Rebecca Solnit's book, A Paradise Built in Hell, and so much of the coverage was just plain wrong, and has never been corrected. But more on that another time.

As for the Gulf now, winds and currents apparently are holding back the oil from shore but the amount of oil is growing larger. The inundation is only a matter of time, and also a matter of local efforts to keep it out. It sounds like a Dunkirk-like effort is underway, massing local boats and improvised resources, to hold back the oil. We can only hope it's successful.

Two more TV notes to end this babble session--VoteVets.org is running an ad linking oil dependence to Iran's making money to fund its development of explosives used against U.S. troops, using this to urge the switch to a clean domestic energy economy--it's one of the best ads of its kind I've seen it a long time. Worth paying to see it more. And I heard Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, on Rachel, and there were a couple of words he pronounced ...well, I knew he was from Pittsburgh. And sure enough... (The tip0ff was Prince William Sound, which in Pittsburghese comes out Prince William Sawnd. Interesting that this was nearly the only clear instance of the Pittsburgh dialect though.)

"Catastrophic"

It keeps getting worse. Huge amounts of oil continue to gush into the Gulf--maybe tens of thousands of gallons a day--and the wells will not be contained for at least a week, and may not be successfully capped for three months. That's more than enough time and oil to spread the destruction beyond the Gulf and up the East Coast.

Interior Secretary Salazar called the situation "catastrophic." A catastrophe is a disaster with lasting effects, that spreads destructive effects beyond its local origin and for a long time. Homeland Security Chief Napalitano answered charges that the government hasn't responded quickly enough."The physical response on the ground has been from day one as if this could be a catastrophic failure," she said. "Every possible resource was being lined up on shore."

Viewing the situation on the ground, President Obama called it "a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster." He vowed to do "whatever it takes and as long as it takes" to contain the spill. But he warned: "BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill."

The oil inundation threatens to play havoc with the Gulf region economy and the livelihoods of people there, as well as the destructive economic ripples through the country and the world. That normally takes attention away from the threats to the survival of other species, and below the photo of President Obama with Louisiana governor Jindal, are several more threatened species: the Pantropical spotted dolphin in Gulf waters, and the Great Blue Heron and Black Skimmer who nest in bird sanctuaries that could well be destroyed. These photos are from a Kos diary by Haole in Hawaii.

Worse Than Valdez?

What makes an oil spill really bad? the AP story asks, and answers: Most of the ingredients for it are now blending in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts tick off the essentials: A relentless flow of oil from under the sea; a type of crude that mixes easily with water; a resultant gooey mixture that is hard to burn and even harder to clean; water that's home to vulnerable spawning grounds for new life; and a coastline with difficult-to-scrub marshlands.

Gulf Coast experts have always talked about "the potential for a bad one," said Wes Tunnell, coastal ecology and oil spill expert at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "And this is the bad one. This is just a biggie that finally happened."

And so Think Progress adds: The catastrophic gusher of oil unleashed by the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig last week is on track to quickly exceed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, an independent expert warns."

The story notes that the spill is already larger than 31 nations of the world. And the oil may continue gushing from these wells (apparently there are now two) into the sea for months. So far, no one knows how to stop it.

As the destructive effects begin to become obvious, the questions also begin: did the company involved use the correct safety mechanism to cap the well? Did the explosion happen because of a Halliburton operation? Did BP do enough to contain the oil? To the last question, the White House says no. (See this other Think Progress story on the reality behind BP's "Beyond Petroleum" green energy advertising campaign.)

But note this: the attempts to shift blame to the federal government have already begun--not just party politics, but in the service of the corporate giants who are actually responsible. Will the questions about them fade in the corporate media? (Though this Halliburton connection was made by the Wall Street Journal.)

The U.S. government is responding, including with troops. Several relevant cabinet secretaries are at command centers in the region, and President Obama may visit the area Sunday. Meanwhile, new offshore oil drilling is suspended.

Preview

All species of sea turtles are currently endangered. Several species are in direct danger from the Gulf oil disaster. But unusual numbers of one species have already been washing up on Texas shores, with most appearing to be victims of other human/industrial activities. These scenes however are likely to be repeated in the coming days and weeks, as victims of the oil disaster mount.

Arizxenophobia

Can you spell Arizxenophobia? The overtly racist "show me your papers" law--something that more than echoes Nazi profiling of Jews--is exposing and inflaming a racial divide, especially as several other states are clamoring to pass similar laws, and polls suggest the Arizona law is widely popular.

But let's parse this for a moment. First of all, racism by whites and by police against browns in Arizona is not in any way new. Writer Leslie Marmon Silko has been exposing harassment and terrorizing since the 1980s (it's a particular problem for Native Americans whose tribal lands are on both sides of the Mexican border--but then, a Native American with Spanish blood pretty much defines "Mexican.") So when they say they know an illegal immigrant when they see one, they mean brown and poor. This story corroborates that impression in the Phoenix area, where the Sheriff and most popular white political figure in the state has been employing it for years. (Whereas the strongest opposition to the law is coming from the Sheriff in the Tucson area, and law enforcement there.)

But it's not all racism, just as the racially tinged innuendo and outrageous charges leveled at President Obama is not because he's black, exactly. It's because black people are Democrats. If black people or Latinos were Republicans, most of the GOPers in national politics at least would accept them without batting an eye. But Republicans have made themselves into the White People's Party, and they need to limit the political power of non-whites, including the number of voters. This may be intuitively obvious, but here's a story specifically about Arizona with numbers.

Since sending black people back to Africa didn't work, the best they can do about keeping the numbers down is prevent efforts to register blacks (so they demonized and effectively destroyed Acorn) and keep the Census from counting them. They can do the same for Latinos, but they can also prevent more of them from becoming citizens and voters, by keeping them out or even sending them back.

Of course, they find a ready tool in the residual racism among whites, in using the grievances (real and imagined) of poorer whites, and stoking everybody's fears on every level--personal, neighborhood, city, nation, society. It's the fear that greeted and oppressed every immigrant group, except perhaps the first whites to arrive and take the place over. But in this obviously crowded and troubled country, it's worse now in a number of ways. So, in the end, it is the political use of racism, for whatever reason, and so it is racism after all.

It's there in the virulence of the opposition to health care reform: it's because some white people are persuaded that the beneficiaries are going to be black and brown; that, like government programs for the poor, they are going to be taxed to pay for the medical care of blacks and browns, violating their Freedom and Liberty to spend that money on what they want. They know this because the President is black, so he's engineering everything to take away from whites and give to fellow blacks, not to Americans. They know this because the biggest white mouths on radio, Fox News and in various legislatures and governor's mansions are telling them so.

But about those polls. While the answers to some questions are pretty troubling, some others indicate the general impatience with ineffective immigration policy and rules. Those involved in governing rather than political grandstanding for fun and profit pretty much know the current mixed bag of contradictory policies and rules don't work, even on the level of fairness.

Barack Obama talked a lot about bipartisan solutions to big problems, and in office he's tried to walk that talk, and here's yet another obvious reason: it's an issue so charged and so easy to exploit for political and monetary gain (ask Sarah) and yet so important to deal with for the health and basic functioning of this society that only responsible people of all political persuasions willing to work together sincerely to come to a real solution will be able to fix this.

It's hard to see the Republican strategy of inflaming this as working in the long term. It's a mid-term strategy, and then for as many elections as it proves successful. But the demographic trends are unlikely to change in favor of a white majority. Then throw the Climate Crisis into the mix--the permanent drought in Arizona to the point--and things get really roiled. One thing I'm willing to bet on--if Arizona registers a population gain in the 2010 Census, it will be the last Census it does so. I haven't yet seen anyone write about any possible connection between the ongoing drought and this resurgent racism. But there's been a connection elsewhere. In a place called Darfur.

"Of National Significance"

The importance of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico jumped during the day Thursday, as officials stared at possible consequences ranging from species extinctions(the reddish egret, pictured above) to massive killing of shrimp and other shellfish that supply the world. The danger is not only to the sea and shore but to the marshes, where oil may arrive as early as tonight. Once in the marshes, there is little that can be done to prevent severe damage. There is even some danger to the Mississippi River.

So earlier today, according to the LA Times:

"I have been receiving frequent briefings from my Cabinet and White House staff," Obama said. "While BP is ultimately responsible for funding the cost of response and cleanup operations, my administration will continue to use every single available resource at our disposal including potentially the Department of Defense to address the incident."

"This is a spill of national significance," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters at an earlier White House briefing. The designation means that assets from around the country and especially from other coastal areas can be used to fight the spill.

Officials said the government would open a federal command center in Mobile, Ala., joining another center in Robert, La., to oversee the response to the spill.

The New York Times added: Cleanup efforts, however, suffered a setback on Thursday when sea and wind conditions prevented officials from executing a controlled burn of some of the floating oil, said Rear Adm. Sally Brice O’Hare of the Coast Guard, who also took part in the briefing.

“We are being very aggressive, and we are prepared for the worst case," Rear Adm. O’Hare said. The United States Navy sent equipment and several vessels on Thursday to lend a hand, according to The Associated Press.

The Pentagon said on Thursday that “there is a full-blown effort” to determine how it best can help the cleanup efforts, said spokesman Geoff Morrell, but that no conclusions have been made about what that help would be."

Among the many species threatened by the oil well disaster in the Gulf, gushing oil at five times the rate first estimated and still growing, are the sperm whale and the snowy plover. The deep ocean well is still not capped, and desperate clean-up efforts include oil burns on the water. What's clear by now is that the industry that claims to have everything under control, doesn't have a clue. Quote for the day comes from Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry:"It's premature to say this is catastrophic. I will say that this is very serious." The first oil could hit the Louisiana shore by Friday. Then it might not be premature anymore.

Hubble Hubble!

The official 20th birthday photo for the Hubble space telescope: the Eagle Nebula.

Look Ma, I'm Blogging!

The Unpronounceable Volcano of Iceland is quieter, at least for now, but its eruption inspired a couple of volcano-related web gems, one about the role of such ice-covered volcanoes in the study of climate change, and another about how a really big eruption is potentially as much a doomsday scenario as any wandering asteroid.

While the Senate climate bill has been dead, crappy anyway, alive, dead again and maybe not so dead, the effects of climate change that scientists predicted continue to accumulate, though noted in separate little stories. Apart from the weird weather, tornadoes and storms last week and this, the effects on the birds and the bees of spring coming early, not to mention the pollen count, and the spread of a fungal disease south of its usual range. Update: And this story about present and future loss of beaches on the U.S. East Coast, due mostly to climate change.

Meanwhile, Governor Ed Rendell of PA said on Rachel last week: " the Tea Parties get tremendous coverage. And think about it—week before the health care vote, they had a rally in Washington, got 1,000 people, maybe not even that. The tax day rally, the big rally to protest federal taxes got less than 1,500 people showing up, according to their own organizer. Other people thought it was in the 400 or 500 range...And yet, the media, including the so-called liberal and progressive media, have given the tea party-ites elevation in terms of the impact they‘re having on the national debate and discussion—way above what they deserve."

And as if the point needed proving, there is a rumor that there were between 100,000 and 200,000 people on the Washington mall Sunday demonstrating about something called Earth Day. If true, this would be a gathering of about a hundred times more people than the Tea Party tax rally which got endless coverage and discussion.

Sure, the Tea Parties are newer, whereas the first Earth Day crowds were forty years ago, and the wingnuts set off alarms the nice green tea-sipping enviros don't. They probably sat around singing you know what. I fault the environmental movement for part of the invisibility--this was no coalition effort, its political content was tepid, its form unimaginative. But the corporate media is also culpable. To cover the Tea Party people to such an extent, and ignore a much larger show of support for what the wingers deride, is inexcusably biased. Even, as Rendell notes, on the part of the so-called progressive media, just as locked into hot-button political issues of the moment over the ones that ultimately count so much more.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Call it preaching to the choir if you will, but I've always thought the choir a good place to direct one's efforts. Presumably they know something about music; and, whatever their doubts, they have at least made it to church."

--Jonathan Lear

And Happy Birthday to the Hubble telescope, author of the image above

Eaarth Day

Besides the deafening silence today versus the two million shouting voices forty years ago, this Earth Day has some significant differences from the first. For example, there is 40% less sea ice in the world, and much of what remains is melting. There are 8.5 million square miles more that must deal with a tropical climate; half of Australia and much of the American Southwest are in permanent drought. River water has shrunk by a volume equivalent to the Mississippi. Glaciers worldwide are shrinking, and some are virtually gone.

There are tens of thousands--probably hundreds of thousands--fewer species of life. There are fewer edible fish in the sea, and life there is dying out fast. There is less water in many places on land, and partly as a consequence the world produces 40 million fewer tons of wheat, corn and barley per year. There are more storms, more heat waves, more diseases in more lifeforms, more forest fires and other destruction, not only in the U.S. but in the Amazon. "We're seeing the end of some forests as we know them," says a U.S. forester.

At the foot of a melting glacier in northern Tibet, a young man from a small village there was asked to explain the reason for the change. His answer was neither ethereal nor complicated. "Global warming," he said. "Too many factories." A simple and much more than an inconvenient truth. The Climate Crisis is not some vision of the future--it's been with us these forty years, it's gotten worse, and now it's having effects that only the self-blinded and deluded can deny. But still...we can stop it, right? We may be able to prevent the very worst-- runaway climate change in the far future, although what governments around the world are so far willing to do won't be enough. In any case, for the foreseeable future, it's only going to get worse. And then at the very least it is going to stay that way, for thousands of years.

That was the message of David Orr's book, Down to the Wire, last year. This year it is no longer a new message-- not among climate scientists and those who follow their work. It is the starting point for Bill McKibben's new book (all the facts above are from it.) We no longer live on the same planet as existed on the first Earth Day. He gives the planet we will be living on from now on a new name: Eaarth. So in a sense, this is the first Eaarth Day.

McKibben's book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (Times Books) uses only about a quarter of its 200+ pages to describe the current situation and trend lines, but is no less devastating for that. "The vast inland glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas, and the giant snowpack of the American West, are melting very fast, and within decades the supply of water to the billions of people living downstream may dwindle. The great rain forests of the Amazon is drying on its margins and threatened at its core. The great boreal forest of North America is dying in a matter of years. The great storehouses of oil beneath the earth's crust are now more empty than full. Every one of these things is completely unprecedented in the ten thousand years of human civilization."

He counters the assertion of some on Earth Day that it isn't the earth but humanity that's threatened. It's an understandable attempt to create urgency through self-interest, but it's deceptive and ultimately counterproductive. Yes, McKibben says, the planet will survive, "but it won't be anything like the planet we've known. We're hard at work transforming it--hard at work sabotaging its biology, draining its diversity, affecting every other kind of life that we were born onto this planet with. We're running Genesis backward, de-creating."

The rise in heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere is leading to a rise in global temperature unprecedented in millions of years. McKibben devotes another quarter of his book to explaining the inadequacy of the proposed responses to the Climate Crisis, and the extreme unlikelihood that large-scale changes in policy, energy generation etc. can be made in time to head off very major changes in how human life on this planet is to be lived. "And if our societies start to tank, we'll be in worse shape than those who came before. For one thing, our crisis is global, so there's no place to flee. For another, most of us don't know how to do very much--in your standard collapse scenario, it's nice to know how to grow wheat."

McKibben comes right up against the logical conclusions, the doomsday scenarios of nuclear wars over oil and water, mass migrations from islands going underwater, the world's coastal cities and increasing areas of unlivable heat; eventually a dieback of half or 3/4 or more of humanity, leading to the day-to-day life for the survivors imagined for us in a host of grim movies, from Mad Max to The Road. Instead he backs off, partly because (I imagine) it's as David Orr wrote--if this is indeed the future, there's not much point in writing a book about it. Instead, he writes: "The rest of this book will be devoted to another possibility--that we might choose instead to try to manage our descent. That we might aim for a relatively graceful decline." [Emphasis is his.]

So the second half of the book is about how to do that. It emphasizes local and small-scale solutions--living "lightly, carefully, gracefully." Locally generated clean power, focus on maintenance instead of growth, no more consumer culture or the world it represents. Except for the Internet. Because local utopias are likely to get stifling without contact. "Which is why, if I had my finger on the switch, I'd keep the juice flowing to the Internet even if I had to turn off everything else."

McKibben makes his case for all this being well within the possible, sometimes persuasively ( although I'm dubious about the Internet surviving.) He notes that part of the problem is that "We lack the vocabulary and the metaphors we need for life on a different scale." He offers his "candidates for words that may help us think usefully about the future." They are: durable, sturdy, stable, hardy, robust.
Good words, and useful for the kind of society he foresees. McKibben made a choice in both the language and content of this book: not much philosophy or generalizing, a lot of practical specifics and common sense. But I doubt that this vocabulary is going to be enough. For one thing, there are some slightly higher-order words that will be very important, like courage, compassion, attention, dedication, fairness. But even beyond that, people need a larger vision, to guide and inspire them. And if it's going to really work, it has to be the right vision.

There were good words and visions at the first Earth Day, that helped inspire the effort leading to most of the environmental progress that was institutionalized in the first decade of the environmental movement, and has continued on that momentum. But mostly, environmentalists have been terrible at vision, and especially at "good words." With the switch from the soft-sounding and not even accurate "greenhouse effect" to the vaguely pleasant sounding "global warming" and "climate change," the response to global heating has especially suffered. As for the titanic struggle ahead between those who want to use resources to stop the cause of global heating to those who insist we can only afford to fix the effects, what environmentalists offer us is the mind-numbing choice of mitigation versus adaptation. Which more or less guarantees that a sensible discussion of these issues won't occur in enough time to have clear policies before the panic and politics combine to drive the situation out of control.

But in the past thirty years there is one word, one concept and one vision that has the proven power to move human souls: Gaia. The sense of our planet as a living organism, prefigured in myth and science, proposed as a hypothesis by James Lovelock and refined by him and others into a real scientific theory, it has also proven to be an inspiration and a possible focus.

The breadth and depth of what Gaia can mean for the future is brilliantly suggested in the new compendium of essays, Gaia in Turmoil ( the MIT Press), edited by Eileen Crist and H. Bruce Rinkler (with an introduction, by the way, by Bill McKibben.) This volume includes various views of the science (including its relationship to systems theory and cybernetics), the historical resonance of the ideas, the applications to policy and how people relate to their planet in their moment to moment lives. There are trenchant essays on Gaia and evolution, forest systems, water, biodiversity, and on its relationship to ethics, education and governance. Particularly striking are the essays by Martin Ogle on Gaia as model and metaphor, and David Abram on Gaia and the transformation of personal experience of the everyday world. I don't think I am exaggerating when I suggest that an entire curriculum could be built around this book, producing a very valuable education for the future.

I place this book at the top of my indispensable Eaarth Day books, along with
McKibben and Orr, and one other: A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit (Viking). Solnit's book explores responses to recent disasters to pose the key questions "Who are you? Who are we? In times of crisis, these are life-and-death questions." This is another component of how we realistically face this tougher future. I'll probably be writing more here and elsewhere about these last two books.

The Quiet Crisis

Between last Earth Day and today--in fact, in March, during the final healthcare votes--Stewart Udall died. He was appointed by President Kennedy to serve as Secretary of Interior in 1961, and stayed under President Johnson until 1969, just before the first Earth Day. He was an environmental pioneer, part of the transition from conservation to environmental activism. The first environmental laws were passed, or were proposed (and passed soon after the first Earth Day, in the Nixon administration) on his watch.

Udall also wrote one of the pioneer books on the environment, though The Quiet Crisis is not much remembered. It followed by a year the first environmental classic and best-seller, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Udall's book took a more historical view, chronicling American conservation efforts. But crucially it also took a wider view, beyond chemical pollution to the total environmental effects of the growth-at-any-cost economy: "In a great surge toward 'progress,' our congestion increasingly has befouled water and air and growth has created new problems on every hand. Schools, housing, and roads are inadequate and ill-planned; noise and confusion have mounted with the rising tempo of technology; and as our cities have sprawled outward, new forms of abundance and new forms of blight have oftentimes marched hand in hand."
Although it preserves signs of hasty writing, The Quiet Crisis remains remarkable in the appropriate breadth of its content. He dealt not only with facts but the underlying and overarching philosophy. He elevated the work of Aldo Leopold and his "land ethic", now acknowledged as a central figure in even contemporary environmentalism, into public policy discussion. He went after examples of air, water and soil pollution--and assembled the first official endangered species list--but he also looked to the historical and spiritual sources that support and sustain attention to the natural world. He could be eloquent on this topic. "To pursue his vision more intently, Emerson steeped himself in Plato, Goethe, and fresh air. The easiest way to develop Olympian insights was to turn the mind into an aeolian harp and attune it to the winds and sounds and rhythms of nature."

In this book, he also dealt with urban environments as well as wilderness, with needed legislation and individual action. That the book has an introduction by President Kennedy shows that the environment was on the agenda almost a decade before Earth Day.

Stewart Udall was also one of the voices heard throughout this year's American Experience documentary, Earth Days. He was part of the mass movement before and just after Earth Day in 1970 that led to the laws that saved the United States--from erasing more wilderness, from poisoning more water, earth and air and therefore poisoning itself. But as this documentary notes, expanding effective environmental change to the world, and applying it to the most deadly threat human civilization has ever faced, climate change (which, the documentary documents, was talked about in a national news broadcast on the first Earth Day) has failed.

Udall called it the Quiet Crisis in 1963. It became pretty noisy on Earth Day 1970, when 2 million Americans participated, and soon after, when the fledgling movement targeted and defeated anti-environment legislators. But on its 40th anniversary, it has gone quiet again. Seemingly because it is so accepted, but let's face it, there's an awful lot of denial involved. Earth Day was utterly invisible in the media today. We'll see if there's real coverage of the Sunday demo in Washington, and the climate bill scheduled to be introduced next week, but I wouldn't count on it. I get emails from several different enviro organization, and nobody is talking about the Sunday demo. There still is no collective, focused action by environmentalists. Too much separate noise can also add up to a quiet crisis.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"One of the penalties of an ecological education is

that one lives alone in a world of wounds."

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature. And I think we are challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery not of nature, but of ourselves."

Rachel Carson
quoted in Earth Days

Dunkirk II?

Update: From Tuesday morning's NY Times:"European transport ministers announced a plan to begin easing the six-day ban on aviation traffic around the Continent, but a new ash cloud spreading south from the erupting volcano in Iceland on Tuesday raised fresh concerns about arrangements to restore anything resembling normal schedules."

The UK government, said the Guardian, has "launched an unprecedented plan to bring home an estimated 200,000 people stranded abroad by the volcanic ash cloud – including possible deployment of the Royal Navy – as European airlines staged a series of successful test flights and urged governments to reassess flying restrictions."

Though airlines were pressuring governments to lift restrictions, they are expected to remain in force through midweek. Ryanair, Europe's largest short-haul carrier, cancelled all flights in northern Europe until Wednesday afternoon with BA and BMI scrapping schedules for tomorrow after Nats, the national air traffic controller, maintained a no-fly zone until at least 7pm [Monday]evening.

There are airlines that fear bankruptcy because of this, and the Prime Minister warned ground transportation and ferry companies not to profiteer. But with thousands of UK citizens stranded in Europe, including school children on holiday, the government is considering using Navy vessels to bring them home. If they do, it could be this generation's version of Dunkirk--the flotilla of boats that rescued what was left of British forces in France against the advancing German army early in World War II. But this time, it's not a mighty military force, but the atmosphere, and tiny particles in the air from a volcano in distant Iceland.

Meanwhile, the ripple effect continues--and it ripples out to the farm fields of Kenya.

It Takes a Volcano

This volcano in Iceland erupted, sending tons of smoke, steam and tiny particles into the air, which has paralyzed air travel in Europe for days. Almost two-thirds of all transatlantic flights into European airports were cancelled and authorities shut down airspace over France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Slovakia, Croatia and Hungary. As the cloud moved east, flights were halted at Frankfurt, Europe's third-busiest airport, and at 10 other German airports.

There are expected to be few if any flights in the UK and western Europe over the weekend, "placing yet more strain on road, rail and ferry networks already struggling to cope with thousands of stranded passengers." The ripple effect is being felt in the U.S., causing delays and cancelled flights. European airlines are losing billions. And there is still some danger of new eruptions--perhaps even of a larger volcano nearby, which historically erupts soon after the current one does.

Update: A NY Times story on the volcano effects, calculating the problems and speculating on what happens if it goes on for weeks rather than days.

Update2: The volcanic ash over Europe has forced President Obama to cancel his planned trip to Poland to attend the funeral of the president of Poland, killed in an air crash along with his wife and many senior members of the Polish government.

All of this is an object lesson in systematic vulnerability: the vulnerability of interconnected vital systems to the cascading effects of relatively small disruptions. Given the likelihood that "natural disasters" like storms, floods and droughts are going to increase as the Climate Crisis phases into Climate Cataclysm, responsible parties--namely governments--need to be looking into these fragile systems we've come to depend on so completely, in so short a time.

Those who are thinking about dealing with such problems in the future--intense and local ones, but eventually several simultaneously--talk a lot about "resilience." But our infrastructures are not resilient. If they aren't too old, they are too new and without sufficient redundancy. And there is shrinking capacity in secondary systems to use as alternatives if the main systems fail.

Europe is actually in better shape that we are to cope with a crisis like this--they have a better rail system, in terms of capacity and reach, and also in speed: they have more high speed trains and routes than we even currently dream of. If air travel is curtailed for longer than a few days, they are in better position to cope.
This is an issue beyond climate-related emergencies. What happens if for some reason the Internet goes down, or communication with GPS satellites? At least we know our electrical grids are dangerously old and fragile, even if we haven't done much about it.

Through climate data, we are learning how vulnerable our planet is to certain changes (especially in the atmosphere), as resilient as it otherwise is. What will it take to convince us how vulnerable this civilization has become, when our food and even our water comes from far away? When our livelihoods, our economies depend on interconnected energy, transportation and information systems? Put these two areas of vulnerability together--in a crash in the ocean food chain, or the disappearance of honey bees--and face just how fragile this is, the life we take stupidly for granted. And maybe pay attention to doing something about it, before it becomes way too obvious.

Encouraging Terrorists by Calling Them Patriots

In some ways it's becoming an old story, but we can't approach it that way: the continuing escalation of violent language, along with systematic lying--of asserting pretty much the opposite of what's true--is becoming the most prominent feature of Republican rhetoric. The GOP is becoming little more than the party of of decadent and dangerous demagogues.

Republicans in Congress are flat-out lying about the financial reform bill, both in terms of process and in what it proposes to do. This kind of Nineteen Eighty-Four politics, besides being lethal to democratic decision-making, tends to lend credibility to the extreme rhetoric, which continues to escalate.

It was striking that for a few minutes today, two cable channels (CNN & MSNBC) were covering the explosion in extremism, while two others (FOX & CNBC) were providing living examples of it.

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer was interviewing President Clinton, who talked about parallels between now and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which is the subject of a revealing documentary on Timothy McVeigh by Rachel Maddow that has been excerpted all week and airs in full on Monday. In terms of threats against President Obama specifically, the former President said "I worry about it." This is the most explicit statement at the highest level of experience indicating we should all be paying attention to it.

Of the anti-government Rabid Right Clinton said: "Some are serious, some are delirious. Some are connected and some are unhinged...We need to be intellectually honest about what some words might do to people who are unstable."

The systematic process now underway encourages domestic terrorists and potential assassins by suggesting they would be patriots--fighting for freedom, "taking out" the "gangsters" of the "totalitarian" federal government, using the guns they are encouraged to proudly carry and display.

The most decadent element of this is that nothing that happens is likely to change it. Even if there is a dramatic violent event--another Oklahoma City or an assassination attempt--this echo chamber of profit-making liars will turn it on its head, and will continue. They will never admit to their responsibility, but now is the time to mark it: if violence happens, they are responsible for fueling it and suggesting that people who engage in it are patriots, and will be praised. Turning terrorists into patriots, after all, is consistent with the GOPer policy of lying outrageously, and asserting the opposite of what is true.

Maybe the only thing that stops or slows it down is electoral rejection, or reflection in the polls. Unfortunately this extremist violent and often racist rhetoric and the systematic lying are apparently being rewarded by poll numbers. It's like the runup to the Iraq war. You know people are going to be sorry after it happens. But they get helplessly fooled, and they do get fooled again.

Those Were the Days

To Seek A Safer World

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and President of the United States Barack Obama took forceful and successful steps in the past week to control a major threat to human civilization: nuclear weapons.

These accomplishments, resulting from quiet diplomacy over the past months, were completed and announced in quick succession. Though any one of them would be of great importance, the combination is an amazing culmination, with more to come.

Momentous in itself, the signing of the arms reduction treaty with Russia that cut another third from both nuclear arsenals was a necessary prelude to actions on controlling nuclear weapons and the material needed to make them, worldwide.

As a result of an international meeting President Obama convened in Washington this week, today The leaders of almost 50 countries have pledged to secure all vulnerable nuclear material within four years. Some other deals were announced, including an agreement by the United States, Canada and Mexico agreed to work to convert the fuel at Mexico's nuclear research reactor to a lower grade of uranium unsuitable for nuclear weapons...[this] would eliminate all highly enriched uranium in Mexico.

There are two goals of the Obama policy: to secure existing nuclear material and prevent it from being used by terrorists, and to move expeditiously towards a non-nuclear world. That second goal is addressed dramatically in an agreement between the U.S. and Russia to eliminate weapons-grade plutonium in their military, commiting each country to "irreversibly and transparently" dispose of at least 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium... enough for 17,000 nuclear weapons... the agreement prevents any future military use of the plutonium."

The dangers posed by nuclear weapons are still substantial. Apparently there is not yet a formal agreement by the U.S., Russia and China on how to deal with Iran's possible nuclear weapons program, although news stories the other day said that China had agreed to stronger sanctions. Besides the possibility of terrorists or rogue states obtaining and using such weapons, there is the always-present danger of states that have these weapons using them against their neighbors. This is particularly acute involving Pakistan, India and Israel. The simmering conflicts in those regions are only going to be pushed further by effects of the climate crisis.

But President Obama has provided the international leadership to get trends moving in the right direction, fulfilling the promise recognized by his Nobel Prize. Despite the domestic insanity that U.S. media prefers to emphasize, this is solid achievement towards a less dangerous world. This is change I believe in.