Category: Government

Earth Policy Release

Finding the right solutions for the 21st century and the next generation.

Just before presenting the release from the Earth Policy Institute that came out on the 20th, here’s a reminder about watching the film, Plan B, that I wrote about on the 4th April.  It’s a very good film from an excellent and creditable source.  You can watch it for FREE from PBS, BUT ONLY UNTIL THE END OF APRIL!

Here’s the link – Plan B, the film

Now to the release published in full on Learning from Dogs.

Earth Policy Release
World on the Edge
Book Byte
April 19, 2011

“LET NO MAN SAY IT CANNOT BE DONE”

www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2011/wotech13_ss5

By Lester R. Brown

We need an economy for the twenty-first century, one that is in sync with the earth and its natural support systems, not one that is destroying them. The fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy that evolved in western industrial societies is no longer a viable model—not for the countries that shaped it or for those that are emulating them. In short, we need to build a new economy, one powered with carbon-free sources of energy—wind, solar, and geothermal—one that has a diversified transport system and that reuses and recycles everything. We can change course and move onto a path of sustainable progress, but it will take a massive mobilization—at wartime speed.

Whenever I begin to feel overwhelmed by the scale and urgency of the changes we need to make, I reread the economic history of U.S. involvement in World War II because it is such an inspiring study in rapid mobilization. Initially, the United States resisted involvement in the war and responded only after it was directly attacked at Pearl Harbor. But respond it did. After an all-out commitment, the U.S. engagement helped turn the tide of war, leading the Allied Forces to victory within three-and-a-half years.

In his State of the Union address on January 6, 1942, one month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the country’s arms production goals. The United States, he said, was planning to produce 45,000 tanks, 60,000 planes, and several thousand ships. He added, “Let no man say it cannot be done.”

No one had ever seen such huge arms production numbers. Public skepticism abounded. But Roosevelt and his colleagues realized that the world’s largest concentration of industrial power was in the U.S. automobile industry. Even during the Depression, the United States was producing 3 million or more cars a year.

After his State of the Union address, Roosevelt met with auto industry leaders, indicating that the country would rely heavily on them to reach these arms production goals. Initially they expected to continue making cars and simply add on the production of armaments. What they did not yet know was that the sale of new cars would soon be banned. From early February 1942 through the end of 1944, nearly three years, essentially no cars were produced in the United States.

In addition to a ban on the sale of new cars, residential and highway construction was halted, and driving for pleasure was banned. Suddenly people were recycling and planting victory gardens. Strategic goods—including tires, gasoline, fuel oil, and sugar—were rationed beginning in 1942. Yet 1942 witnessed the greatest expansion of industrial output in the nation’s history—all for military use. Wartime aircraft needs were enormous. They included not only fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance planes, but also the troop and cargo transports needed to fight a war on distant fronts. From the beginning of 1942 through 1944, the United States far exceeded the initial goal of 60,000 planes, turning out a staggering 229,600 aircraft, a fleet so vast it is hard even today to visualize it. Equally impressive, by the end of the war more than 5,000 ships were added to the 1,000 or so that made up the American Merchant Fleet in 1939.

In her book No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes how various firms converted. A sparkplug factory switched to the production of machine guns. A manufacturer of stoves produced lifeboats. A merry-go-round factory made gun mounts; a toy company turned out compasses; a corset manufacturer produced grenade belts; and a pinball machine plant made armor-piercing shells.

In retrospect, the speed of this conversion from a peacetime to a wartime economy is stunning. The harnessing of U.S. industrial power tipped the scales decisively toward the Allied Forces, reversing the tide of war. Germany and Japan, already fully extended, could not counter this effort. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill often quoted his foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey: “The United States is like a giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate.”

The point is that it did not take decades to restructure the U.S. industrial economy. It did not take years. It was done in a matter of months. If we could restructure the U.S. industrial economy in months, then we can restructure the world energy economy during this decade.

With numerous U.S. automobile assembly lines currently idled, it would be a relatively simple matter to retool some of them to produce wind turbines, as the Ford Motor Company did in World War II with B-24 bombers, helping the world to quickly harness its vast wind energy resources. This would help the world see that the economy can be restructured quickly, profitably, and in a way that enhances global security.

The world now has the technologies and financial resources to stabilize climate, eradicate poverty, stabilize population, restore the economy’s natural support systems, and, above all, restore hope. The United States, the wealthiest society that has ever existed, has the resources and leadership to lead this effort.

One of the questions I hear most frequently is, What can I do? People often expect me to suggest lifestyle changes, such as recycling newspapers or changing light bulbs. These are essential, but they are not nearly enough. Restructuring the global economy means becoming politically active, working for the needed changes, as the grassroots campaign against coal-fired power plants is doing. Saving civilization is not a spectator sport.

Inform yourself. Read about the issues. Share the Earth Policy Institute’s publications with friends. Pick an issue that’s meaningful to you, such as tax restructuring to create an honest market, phasing out coal-fired power plants, or developing a world class-recycling system in your community. Or join a group that is working to provide family planning services to the 215 million women who want to plan their families but lack the means to do so. You might want to organize a small group of like-minded individuals to work on an issue that is of mutual concern. You can begin by talking with others to help select an issue to work on.

Once your group is informed and has a clearly defined goal, ask to meet with your elected representatives on the city council or the state or national legislature. Write or e-mail your elected representatives about the need to restructure taxes and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. Remind them that leaving environmental costs off the books may offer a sense of prosperity in the short run, but it leads to collapse in the long run.

During World War II, the military draft asked millions of young men to risk the ultimate sacrifice. But we are called on only to be politically active and to make lifestyle changes. During World War II, President Roosevelt frequently asked Americans to adjust their lifestyles and Americans responded, working together for a common goal. What contributions can we each make today, in time, money, or reduced consumption, to help save civilization?

The choice is ours—yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over an economy that continues to destroy its natural support systems until it destroys itself, or we can be the generation that changes direction, moving the world onto a path of sustained progress. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.

Adapted from Chapter 13, “Saving Civilization,” in Lester R. Brown, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011), available online at www.earth-policy.org/books/wote

Additional data and information sources at www.earth-policy.org

Unintended consequences!

Europe’s fishing quotas turning a seemingly good idea into apparent madness.

The European Union formally came into being in 1993 although co-operation in the form of the European Coal and Steel Community and then the European Economic Community went well back before then, back to the 1950’s.

As far back as 1957 when the Treaty of Rome was established, an Article stated that there should be a common policy for fisheries.  That became known as the Common Fisheries Policy.  Fish catches in many European waters were reducing stocks of many species to the point of extinction, so something had to be done.

Now watch this.

If you feel sufficiently perplexed to want to learn more, then Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall,  a food and cookery writer and broadcaster, as well as a campaigner for real food, has a Campaign Website here.  There is a Facebook page here.

How on earth would one explain such actions to, say, these two kids?

 

Ready for a fish meal!

 

 

 

The day after April 1st!

When it all gets real close and personal.

I have been a great fan of the BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, and read his Blog as often as I can.  Recently, the focus has been on Ireland.

A few days ago, before the announcement by the Irish premier and finance minister as to their vision for the future of Ireland’s banks, Robert penned a post that started as follows:

The unbelievable truth about Ireland and its banks
Ireland’s central bank and new government will confirm on Thursday that the hole in the country’s banks is even wider, deeper and darker than seemed to be the case last November, when those bust banks forced the country to go with a begging bowl to the eurozone’s rescue funds and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 67.5bn euros (£59bn) of rescue loans.

That article then led me to Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight’s economics editor, who also writes a Blog.  He wrote on the 30th March,

A short summary of the Euro snafu that’s about to happen:

1) Tomorrow Ireland publishes the results of bank stress tests. It has to find – or the EU has to find – another E18-25bn to shore up its failing banks.

etc., etc.

Again, while the article is interesting, the whole point of this Post was one comment made to that Paul Mason piece.  Here it is,

At 00:47am on 31st Mar 2011, tawse57 wrote:

I am bored with all these posts about the economy now. Can we go back to cheese and crackers and the mysterious case of Paul Mason’s mobo contacts?

I was just talking with a 35 year old young man who is married and has a young child.

His wife, quite rightly, does not wish to move away from the place where she was born and brought up – Cornwall.

But he tells me that, despite almost saving £100,000 by putting in every hour they could in working and saving, that they stand no chance of ever owning their own home.

He says the house that he rents have asking prices of about £450,000 despite most of them just sitting on the market for years because no one, no one local anyhow, can afford them. What does sell goes to rich Londoners.

He is destined to pay out most of his wages in private landlord rents. He can’t get into a Council house or a Housing Association property because they either no longer exist or the waiting lists are measured in decades.

He is not prepared to have such a millstone of stress, worry and financial drain around his neck. It would kill him. I don’t blame him.

His story is one of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people in the UK today.

I mention this as the bank stress tests are directly connected with the massive credit bubble, much of it a housing bubble of liar loans, that brought the global economy to its knees, bankrupted banks and still threatens to bankrupt nations.

All of us on here know this. We are an enlightened bunch.

But I think it is worth remembering that the affects of the global credit binge are still directly affecting so many in this country.

The UK is almost alone in the World in not yet seeing a massive housing crash. The Government and the Bank of England have gone out of their way stop it happening in order to protect the banks who so stupidly, but also so greedily, loaned so many liar loans on bricks and mortar not in other countries but here in the UK.

Those UK banks that keep threatening to leave our shores are up to their eyeballs in global liar loans. You name a country in trouble and you can bet your bottom dollar, which might be the only thing most of us have left soon, that British banks are at the heart of it all.

It is long overdue that this giant house of cards came crashing down. It is long over-due that, as a Society, we cut out the cancer of dirty banks and dirty bankers from our lives and from these shores.

They are leeches on the souls of Men. Gosh, I am getting poetic in my anger. It must be that teaspoon of Jack Daniels I put in my midnight cocoa.

So what if the banks fail their stress tests today, next week or next year. It won’t make a squat of difference to that couple in Cornwall. It won’t make a squat of difference to most of us.

The worst thing that can happen is, as Alistair Darling so panicked, that the ATM machines run empty. Well, what would happen then? Would the sky fall in? Would us polite British all sit at home and do nothing.

Or would we take our cue from the Egyptians, the Tunisians and all the rest?

Perhaps what this country needs most of all is for another even bigger banking crisis? If it happens I think I would feel safer being one of the masses instead of one of the banking elite.

I do hope the banks fail the stress tests. I do hope it brings about another crisis. I do hope that, this time, the People say enough is enough and that this rotting cancer within Humanity is lanced with a fiery lancie thingy.

I could murder a bit of cheese on a nice cracker now.

Whoever you are tawse57, I like your style.  Very powerful words.

“It is error alone which needs the support of government.  Truth can stand by itself.”

~Thomas Jefferson (third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809)

Inside job

The shocking documentary film about the global financial crisis.

I’m sure many have already see the film Inside Job but we only watched it a few nights ago.  Here’s the trailer.

The film is also available to watch on Top Documentary Films and is summarised on that website thus:

As he did with the occupation of Iraq in No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson shines a light on the global financial crisis in Inside Job.

Accompanied by narration from Matt Damon, Ferguson begins and ends in Iceland, a flourishing country that gave American-style banking a try – and paid the price.

Then he looks at the spectacular rise and cataclysmic fall of deregulation in the United States. Unlike Alex Gibney’s fiscal films,Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Casino Jack, Ferguson builds his narrative around dozens of players, interviewing authors, bank managers, government ministers, and even a psychotherapist, who speaks to a culture that encourages Gordon Gekko-like behavior, but the number of those who declined to comment, like Alan Greenspan, is even larger.

Though the director isn’t as combative as Michael Moore, he asks tough questions and elicits squirms from several participants, notably former Treasury secretary David McCormick and Columbia dean Glenn Hubbard, George W. Bush’s economic adviser.

Their reactions are understandable, since the borders between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League dissolved years ago; it’s hard to know who to trust when conflicts of interest run rampant.

If Ferguson takes Reagan and Bush to task for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, he criticizes Clinton for encouraging derivatives and Obama for failing to deliver on the promise of reform. And in the category of unlikely heroes: former governor Eliot Spitzer, who fought against fraud as New York’s attorney general (he’s the subject of Gibney’s documentary Client 9).

Sony have available on their website a useful study guide.  It appears to be written with students in mind but there is much valuable background information there for all.  The guide, in pdf, may be seen here.

It would all have been worthwhile, if that’s the correct term, if we had seen effective regulatory responses from strong governments but, as the film points out, the millions of people on the receiving end of harsh, downward adjustment of personal wealth are still waiting.

Meanwhile, Europe continues to bleed, American housing is still trending downwards and the real effect of the Japanese earthquake is far from clear.

We are living in interesting times!

“Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting”

The quote that forms the title of this article is from Alice in Wonderland and is spoken by the Rabbit.

It's getting late!

At first, that quote seems quite mundane. However, most find ‘Alice’ quotes are rich in truisms and life’s great philosophies.  How about this?

Alice: “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”

So what drew me to these two illustrations from Lewis Carroll’s magical pen?  Just this sample of a few days of stuff coming into my email box!

1. Our environment.

From a recent piece on the BBC website.

Ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland has accelerated over the last 20 years, research shows, and will soon become the biggest driver of sea level rise.

From satellite data and climate models, scientists calculate that the two polar ice sheets are losing enough ice to raise sea levels by 1.3mm each year.

Overall, sea levels are rising by about 3mm (0.12 inches) per year.

2. Running on Oil

A recent email in my in-box from John Maudlin was all about Japan and oil.  But there were some stark messages about our use of oil across the planet.  Try this:

There are multiple sources for many of the metals Japan imports, so that if supplies stop flowing from one place it can get them from other places. The geography of oil is more limited. In order to access the amount of oil Japan needs, the only place to get it is the Persian Gulf. There are other places to get some of what Japan needs, but it cannot do without the Persian Gulf for its oil.

This past week, we saw that this was a potentially vulnerable source. The unrest that swept the western littoral of the Arabian Peninsula and the ongoing tension between the Saudis and Iranians, as well as the tension between Iran and the United States, raised the possibility of disruptions. The geography of the Persian Gulf is extraordinary. It is a narrow body of water opening into a narrow channel through the Strait of Hormuz. Any diminution of the flow from any source in the region, let alone the complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz, would have profound implications for the global economy. [My italics.]

3. Energy rethink

From Rob Dietz of CASSE, Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

As if we really required more prompting, the unfolding nuclear accidents in Japan are confirming what we must do.  When a disaster strikes, the most urgent response is to help those who are suffering, prevent further calamities, and clean up the messes—it’s a time to get busy.  But the next critical step is to figure out what we might do differently—it’s a time to take a step back and contemplate how we got where we are and where we might go from here.  With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to rethink where and how we get our energy supplies.

And later in this article:

A New York Times article provides an astonishing description of what happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant where the backup generators failed to cool the overheating reactor:

The central problem arises from a series of failures that began after the tsunami. It easily overcame the sea walls surrounding the Fukushima plant. It swamped the diesel generators, which were placed in a low-lying area, apparently because of misplaced confidence that the sea walls would protect them.

The key phrase in that description is “misplaced confidence.”  Misplaced confidence sums up how we got to this point in history when it comes to selecting sources of energy to power our ever-expanding economy.  Regardless of what smooth-talking P.R. professionals say, a nuclear power facility has been the site of a serious accident about every 10 years: witness Three Mile Island in the U.S. in 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986, Tokaimura in Japan in 1999, and now Fukushima in 2011.  “Safe nuclear power” is an offensive oxymoron.

Misplaced confidence also describes our failure to take big strides on phasing out fossil fuels.  We have misplaced confidence that we’ll find a technological solution to climate destabilization, that the market will take care of the problem, and that Mother Nature will continue to warehouse the emissions from our economy with no consequences.

Maybe millions of us should be adopting the same query as Alice; “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”  Because continuing as we are without understanding the urgent need to make ‘sense’, to take heed, of the living, conscious planet that is our only home is utter nonsense!

Back to Mr Rabbit, “Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!”

Yes, Mr Rabbit, how late it’s getting!

Where are we off to?

More musings on how this present civilisation is going to change, as change it must.

I have a sense that this article is going to spread across a number of posts.  Regular readers of Learning from Dogs will be aware that I am summarising Lester Brown’s excellent book, World on the Edge.  If you have missed those summaries, the last one, Part 4, was here. (Part 3 here, Part 2 here, Part 1 here.)

Details of this excellent book are on the Earth Policy Institute website including the opportunity to download the book for free.

OK, back to the theme of this article, very much connected with the mission of the EPI.

Jean and I watched a video last night from the website Top Documentary Films; great site by the way.  It was called 2210: The Collapse.  This was how the film was described on that website.

Imagine if hundreds of years from now, scientists excavated the abandoned ruins of some of our largest cities, what conclusions would they come to?

It happened to the Romans, the Anasazi, and the Mayans and, inevitably, one day our own modern civilization will also fall. In this two hour special discover how a future civilization might be baffled as to why the population of these once-great cities would suddenly abandon their technology and architecture, and turn their homes into ghost towns.

Some experts believe that there is a very real risk this could happen, and the collapse of the world as we know it is closer than we think.

Examining the parallels between cultures separated by hundreds of years, explore whether the key to preventing such a global collapse today could lie in finding renewable alternatives to our dwindling energy supplies and sustainable resources. Can we learn from the mistakes of the past before it’s too late?

Jared Diamond

In some ways the film didn’t cover any new ground despite it being an interesting way of approaching the subject of the future of our present civilisation.  But what was really worthwhile were the clips from three experts in their various fields.  They were the author Jared Diamond, Daniel Gilbert who is Professor of Psychology at Havard, and Joseph Tainter also an author.  There is much material around from these three gentlemen.

So I am going to start with Jared Diamond.  WikiPedia has Jared’s details.  The following is a video going back to 2003 which is no less relevant in terms of where we are in 2011.  (If you want more of Jared’s ideas, just let me know and they will be included in a future Post.)

“I’ve set myself the modest task of trying to explain the broad pattern of human history, on all the continents, for the last 13,000 years. Why did history take such different evolutionary courses for peoples of different continents? This problem has fascinated me for a long time, but it’s now ripe for a new synthesis because of recent advances in many fields seemingly remote from history, including molecular biology, plant and animal genetics and biogeography, archaeology, and linguistics.”

JARED DIAMOND is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Until recently he was Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is the author of the recently published Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies, which also is the winner of Britain’s 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize.  (From here)

Truth, myth and meaning

A musing on Chief Seattle’s famous speech.

I came across this recently following a bit of a prowl through YouTube.   The YouTube video, although deeply moving, is more myth than factual record; as one finds out if even a small amount of probing is undertaken.

But does it matter?  Maybe those ideas that reach out to us in a spiritual sense are as powerful as myths, perhaps even more so, than as ‘facts’.

Here’s that YouTube video.

Did you watch it all?  I hope so. Did it disturb you to know that this wasn’t a factual rendition?  Probably not.

WikiPedia has a comprehensive account of Chief Seattle and in terms of the speech here’s an extract:

There is a controversy about a speech by Si’ahl concerning the concession of native lands to the settlers.

Even the date and location of the speech has been disputed,[8] but the most common version is that on March 11, 1854, Si’ahl gave a speech at a large outdoor gathering in Seattle. The meeting had been called by Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens to discuss the surrender or sale of native land to white settlers.Doc Maynard introduced Stevens, who then briefly explained his mission, which was already well understood by all present.[3]

Si’ahl then rose to speak. He rested his hand upon the head of the much smaller Stevens, and declaimed with great dignity for an extended period. No one alive today knows what he said; he spoke in the Lushootseed language, and someone translated his words into Chinook jargon, and a third person translated that into English.

So in terms of looking for the truth, forget it.

But in terms of being inspired to regard the land, and all that depends on it, as sacred then the myth of Chief Seattle’s words is beautiful and powerful, a myth that modern man has just about rejected.

If you want to read the words that are supposed to be the most authentic recording of what the noble Chief said, then these follow.  They are taken from here and the introduction and footnotes are valuable background information.  You may also want to read this account of the speech from the Washington State Library.

The only known photograph of Chief Seattle, taken 1864.

 

Scraps from a Diary:
Chief Seattle—A gentleman by Instinct
His Native Eloquence, etc., etc.

by Henry A. Smith
10th article in the series “Early Reminiscences”
Seattle Sunday Star, October 29, 1887

Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume — good, White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country.  

There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.

Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.

Our good father in Washington—for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north—our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward — the Haidas and Tsimshians — will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. The in reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man’s God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.

To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors — the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.

Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.

Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.

It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian’s night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man’s trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.

A few more moon, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.

We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Ever part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.

 

Amen to that.

Government Taxation Departments, don’t you just love them!

Sent in by John Lewis, an old (English) friend of this Blog.

Apparently this is a real reply from the (UK) Inland Revenue. The Guardian newspaper had to ask for special permission to print it.

Dear Mr Addison,

I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise.   I will address them, as ever, in order.

Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a “begging letter”.    It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a “tax demand”.    This is how we at the Inland Revenue have always,  for reasons of accuracy,  traditionally referred to such documents.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the “endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat” has been noted.    However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from “pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers”  might indicate that your decision to  “file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies”  is at best a little ill-advised.    In common with my own organisation,  it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a “lackwit bumpkin” or, come to that, a “sodding charity”.    More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain , with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.

Which brings me to my next point.   Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay  “go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services”,  a moment’s rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to “stump up for the whole damned party”  yourself.    The estimates you provide for the Chancellor’s disbursement of the funds levied by taxation,  whilst colourful,  are,  in fairness,  a little off the mark.     Less than you seem to imagine is spent on “junkets for Bunterish lickspittles”  and  “dancing whores”  whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to,  for example,  “that box-ticking facade of a university system.”

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:

1. The reason we don’t simply write  “Muggins” on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;

2. You can rest assured that  “sucking the very marrow of those with nothing else to give”  has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn’t render it irrelevant,  the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.

I trust this has helped.   In the meantime,  whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other,  I ought to point out that even if you did choose to  “give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India ”  you would still owe us the money.

Please send it to us by Friday.

Yours sincerely,
H J Lee
Customer Relations
Inland Revenue

Total, utter madness, Pt 2.

More on the way we are most likely treating Planet Earth.

At the start of the week the first of a shortish series of articles was published, reflecting my support of the book, World on the Edge.  Here’s what I wrote then:

I have mentioned before the Earth Policy Institute and Lester Brown’s latest book, World on the Edge.  Details of the book are here.

At the time of writing this Post (10am US Mountain Time on the 4th Feb.) I have read through to the end of Chapter 5 of the book and will have it completed soon.  It’s opening my eyes hugely!

I have decided over the next week or so to summarise each chapter, hoping that this encourages many readers of Learning from Dogs to reflect, go to the EPI website, buy the book or think about making a difference in any way that you can.

So today, I move on to the next chapter.

Chapter two, Falling Water Tables and Shrinking Harvests.

  • The term ‘fossil aquifer’ demonstrated that not all aquifers are the same.  Let me quote, “There are two sources of irrigation water: underground water and surface water.  Most underground water comes from aquifers that are regularly replenished with rainfall; these can be pumped indefinitely as long as water extraction does not exceed recharge.  But a distinct minority of aquifers are fossil aquifers – containing water put down eons ago.  Since these do not recharge, irrigation ends whenever they are pumped dry.“
  • The big fossil aquifers are the Ogallala underlying the US Great Plains, the major aquifer in Saudi Arabia , and the deep aquifer under the North China Plain.
  • Saudi Arabia started drilling for water from their underground fossil aquifer when after the Arab oil-export in the 1970s, the Saudis realised that they were dependent on imported grain and set out to create self-sufficiency in grain by way of irrigation.
  • In January 2008 the Saudis announced that this huge aquifer was largely depleted!
  • From 2007 to 2010 the Saudi wheat harvest dropped from nearly 3 million tons to around 1 million tons.
  • The likelihood is that the last Saudi harvest will be around 2012.

One can’t imagine how the management of a fine and proud country such as Saudi Arabia could be so foolish!  But slightly closer to home …..

  • In most of the leading U.S. irrigation states, the amount of irrigated area has peaked and begun to decline.
  • California, historically the irrigation leader, has seen irrigated areas fall from nearly 9 million acres in 1997 to an estimated 7.5 million acres in 2010, that’s a 16% drop!  Why?
  • Aquifer depletion and diversion of water to fast-growing cities!
  • Then there’s Texas.  Their irrigated area peaked in 1978 at 7 million acres, now down to 5 million acres, a loss of 29%, as the Ogallala fossil aquifer under the Texas panhandle becomes depleted.
  • Colorado has seen its irrigated are shrink by 15%
  • Arizona’s irrigated area is shrinking.
  • Florida’s irrigated area is shrinking.

Then there’s India.  Then there’s Mexico.  And on and on.  I could quote so much more from this single chapter but – you get the message!

Here’s how the chapter ends.

Today more than half the world’s peoples live in countries with food bubbles.  The question for each of these countries is not whether the bubble will burst, but when – and how the government will cope with it. [Read that last sentence again, folks. Ed]

Will governments be able to import grain to offset production losses?  For some countries, the bursting of the bubble may well be catastrophic.  For the world as a whole, the near-simultaneous bursting of several national food bubbles, as aquifers are depleted could create unmanageable food shortages.

This situation poses an imminent threat to food security and political stability.  We have a choice to make.  We can continue with over-pumping as usual and suffer the consequences.  Or we can launch a worldwide effort to stabilise aquifers by raising water productivity – patterning the campaign on the highly successful effort to raise grainland productivity that was launched a half-century ago.

H’mmm.  Tough reading.

Amazon Drought in 2005.

The above photograph was taken from this website; here’s an extract from the accompanying article.

Food inflation is here and it’s here to stay.  We can see it getting worse every time we buy groceries. Basic food commodities like wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice have been skyrocketing since July, 2010 to record highs.  These sustained price increases are only expected to continue as food production shortfalls really begin to take their toll this year and beyond.

This summer Russia banned exports of wheat to ensure their nation’s supply, which sparked complaints of protectionism.  The U.S. agriculture community is already talking about rationing corn over ethanol mandates versus supply concerns. We’ve seen nothing yet in terms of food protectionism.

But as I wrote in the previous article, “Be worried, be concerned but don’t panic – you and I, all of us, have the collective power to sort this all out.”  Lester Brown’s book sets out some strong advice on the way forward.

To be continued, as they say.

Total, utter madness, Pt 1.

The way we are most likely treating Planet Earth is almost beyond comprehension.

I have mentioned before the Earth Policy Institute and Lester Brown’s latest book, World on the Edge.  Details of the book are here.

At the time of writing this Post (10am US Mountain Time on the 4th Feb.) I have read through to the end of Chapter 5 of the book and will have it completed soon.  It’s opening my eyes hugely!

I have decided over the next week or so to summarise each chapter, hoping that this encourages many readers of Learning from Dogs to reflect, go to the EPI website, buy the book or think about making a difference in any way that you can.

Chapter One, On the Edge, sets the background:

  • Summer of 2010 sees record-high temperates in Moscow, Russia’s grain harvest shrank by 40 million tons (40%) to 60 million tons.
  • Record high temperatures in south-central Pakistan were recorded. Snow and glaciers in the Himalayas melted fast, 20 million Pakistanis were affected by the resultant flooding, 2,000 died, 6 million acres of crops damaged.
  • A 2002 study by Mathis Wackernagel concluded that, “humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980.  By 1999, global demand’s on the earth’s natural systems exceeded sustainable yields by 20 percent.  Ongoing calculations show it at 50 percent in 2007.  Stated otherwise, it would take 1.5 Earths to sustain our current consumption.” [my emphasis]
  • “No previous civilisation has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural supports.  Nor will ours.”

Let’s turn to NOAA.  A few salient points from there State of the Climate – Global Review for 2010.

  • For 2010, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature tied with 2005 as the warmest such period on record, at 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). 1998 is the third warmest year-to-date on record, at 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average.
  • The 2010 Northern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest year on record, at 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20th century average. The 2010 Southern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the sixth warmest year on record, at 0.51°C (0.92°F) above the 20th century average.
  • The global land surface temperature for 2010 tied with 2005 as the second warmest on record, at 0.96°C (1.73°F) above the 20th century average. The warmest such period on record occurred in 2007, at 0.99°C (1.78°F) above the 20th century average.

 

Russian forest fires.

 

 

From the UK Guardian newspaper.

2010 is becoming the year of the heatwave, with record temperatures set in 17 countries.

Record highs have occurred in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine – the three nations at the centre of the eastern European heatwave which has lasted for more than three weeks – but also African, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries.

Temperatures in Moscow, which have been consistently 20C above normal, today fell to 31C (86F), and President Dmitry Medvedev cancelled a state of emergency in three out of seven Russian regions affected by forest fires.

Thousand of hectares of forest burned in the fires, killing 54 people and leaving thousands homeless. For days, Moscow was shrouded in smog, and environmentalists raised fears that the blaze could release radioactive particles from areas contaminated in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Wildfires have also swept through northern Portugal, killing two firefighters and destroying 18,000 hectares (44,500 acres) of forests and bushland since late July. Some 600 firefighters were today struggling to contain 29 separate fires.

But the extreme heat experienced in Europe would barely have registered in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Niger, Pakistan and Sudan, all of which have recorded temperatures of more than 47C (115F) since June. The number of record highs is itself a record – the previous record was for 14 new high temperatures in 2007.

The freak weather conditions, which have devastated crops and wildlife, are believed to have killed thousands of elderly people, especially in Russia and northern India. The 2003 European heatwave killed about 15,000 people.

Be worried, be concerned but don’t panic – you and I, all of us, have the collective power to sort this all out.  More about this soon.