Oil Spill: It's Bigger Than the Exxon Valdez

It's not official but there can be no doubt at this point that the oil spill from Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico exceeds what happened in 1989 with the Exxon Valdez. And the oil is still leaking.

No one knows exactly how much oil is flowing into the ocean but it far exceeds the 210,000 gallons a day that has been estimated so far. Here's the first story by way of the Los Angeles Times:

BP's success at drawing oil from a leaking pipe has proved that official estimates of the size of the Gulf of Mexico spill have been too low.

The company effectively admitted as much Thursday when it said that a tube inserted into the broken pipe connected to its blown-out well is collecting as much as 5,000 barrels of oil and 15 million cubic feet of gas a day, even as a live video feed shows large volumes continuing to billow into gulf waters.

The government has underestimated the size of the spill. Then again, BP has done almost nothing to help gauge the size of the disaster it caused. I have personally seen NOAA do a terrific job of handling a small oil spill but that was back in the 1990s, before President George W. Bush watered down some of NOAA's effectiveness (I once sat through a boring speech by a Bush appointee who prattled on about Ronald Reagan who was not exactly a friend of NOAA). Like many agencies, NOAA suffers the same problems as many corporations: people who are competent are overseen by people with an agenda. Maybe this disaster will make it clear to President Obama that real reform cannot occur while bending over backwards to please Republicans who are not interested in reform—or reality.

Here's another story, this one from the Houston Chronicle, which has done a reasonably good job of reporting:

BP said on Thursday it is capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day from a leaking pipe in the Gulf of Mexico — a double-edged progress report that showed that the company and government have been understating the scope of the spill for more than a month.

(snip)

BP would not estimate how much oil is still evading a collection tube inserted into the larger of two breaks on the riser pipe that once connected the Macondo well to the Deepwater Horizon rig a mile above.

BP has said the larger break is believed to be gushing 85 percent of the oil escaping from the ruptured well 40 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The oil spill in the gulf has not happened in a vacuum. Less than two years ago, Republicans like Sarah Palin were shouting: "Drill, baby, drill."

In recent years, there have been three kinds of Republicans: opportunists, pragmatists and know-nothing right-wingers like Sarah Palin. Republican pragmatists used to arrive in Washington in larger numbers but they are having a hard time staying in office because they are under assault by the know-nothings and the opportunists.

The Republicans, of course, have no monopoly on opportunists since Democrats have them too. However, in Congress, Democratic pragmatists far outnumber Republican pragmatists, who seem a bit shy about asserting themselves these days. For once, a little progress in Washington is being made, but not fast enough.

The big problem in Washington and the country is the coalition of Republican opportunists and know-nothings who try every trick in the book—don't hold your breath—to make sure Congress and anyone else in government does as little as possible. Why would they do that? Because they receive a lot of money from companies like BP as well as other oil companies, coal companies, chemical companies and anyone else looking for a favor or an administration willing to look the other way. This, of course, has to change or we will have even more oil spills like the one at Deepwater Horizon. Why? Because oil has become expensive and there are certain people in the world who, despite the risks, cut corners. The bigger the risks and the bigger the profits, the more chance there is that someone will cut corners on a project like Deepwater Horizon. Keep in mind that deep sea oil drilling is high technology. It is expensive and there is little margin for error.

I don't know precisely what kind of Republican Bobby Jindal is. Maybe he's the opportunistic kind. Maybe not. Maybe he's just doing his job. Here's a New York Times article on the oil now coming ashore:

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said Wednesday that sheets of heavy crude oil from the offshore spill had seeped deep into the delicate marshes around the mouth of the Mississippi River. He called on the federal government to approve a plan to build sand berms to protect the bayou country.

“These are not tar balls, this is not sheen, this is heavy oil,” Mr. Jindal told reporters on a pier here, holding up a plastic bag full of sticky brownish liquid, after taking a helicopter and boat tour of the area. “What we are seeing yesterday and today is literally this heavy oil coming into our wetlands.”

Finally, here's a link to pictures of the oil spill and reactions in other places courtesy of The Huffington Post. I have no doubt we will be seeing many more pictures.

If the reader notices that some of these sites seem progressive or at least not conservative, they're right. A number of conservative news outlets are still in denial about what is happening or engage in silly theories as the oil rolls ashore and spreads deeper and deeper into the Gulf of Mexico. Such conservative news outlets are useless as a source of reliable information.

I want to say it one more time: this is not a 'tiny' spill as BP CEO Tony Hayward suggested a few days ago. No one knows how much the oil spill will cost us. But we now know that the oil spill is much larger that we thought just a couple of days ago. For now, it is still growing.

Making Sure Green Technology Is Green

We already know that it's becoming harder and harder to satisfy the world's thirst for oil. In addition, with the rise of China's economy, the world is rapidly becoming aware that resources for all the new technology being developed, including some parts of green technology, may not be adequate to meet demand in the coming years. Today's technology often requires rare earth metals that are not easy to come by. New sources of such metals, at a reasonable cost, are going to be needed. In some cases, old sources need to be revived.

Now in this post I'm pursuing a slightly odd story that requires a little background. Here's a story from last month in The New York Times:

Chinese officials said on Thursday that they would not entirely ban exports of two minerals vital to manufacturing hybrid cars, cellphones, large wind turbines, missiles and computer monitors, although they would tightly regulate production.

China produces more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of dysprosium and terbium, two rare minerals essential to recent breakthroughs in high-technology industries.

Although it's good that China is not going to tighten restrictions as much as originally thought, it should be noted that they are using their hard cash to acquire all kinds of resources throughout the world, including shares in various mines and oil facilities. The United States, Europe and other countries can hardly afford to be caught flat-footed. Fortunately, for the United States, there is an economically viable source for some of the rare minerals that are needed. Here's a story in the Los Angeles Times about a mine in California:

Fear of a shortage of rare-earth metals used in high-tech military and industrial products has spawned global efforts to reopen abandoned mines, including the formidable Mountain Pass Mine in California's Mojave Desert.

(snip)

...Molycorp Minerals in Colorado, has just begun a two-year effort to restore Mountain Pass to its former role as a leading global producer. Those plans were given a boost recently amid fears that China was poised to ban exports of some of the scarcer rare-earth metals and to sharply limit shipments of others.

Effort to restore? Uh-oh. In such cases, it's best to read the rest of the article. Down further we learn that Mountain Pass Mine was closed in 2002 for environmental reasons. Before we go further, let's stop and think for a moment. If 99% of some of these minerals are mined in China and the price on those minerals is acceptable to various corporations, what are the odds that China's famous mine has environmental problems as well? And what are the odds that at least some companies who buy from the Chinese are aware that the Chinese mine has environmental problems? Ah, but we still, for the most part, live in an era of laissez-faire capitalism. Anything goes.

Fortunately, there are people concerned about the environment in the U.S. (and more so in some states). So what was the problem with Mountain Pass? Here's an informative article from David Danelski in February 2009:

...while the mine was producing vital elements, it also was polluting the soil and groundwater.

Wastewater from processing the rare earths was pumped to unlined evaporation ponds, where nitrates and other salts leached into underground water on both sides of Mountain Pass...

(snip)

Unocal owned the mine from 1976 to 2005. In the 1980s, the company began piping wastewater as far as 14 miles to evaporation ponds on or near Ivanpah Dry Lake, east of Interstate 15 near Nevada.

The pipeline repeatedly ruptured during cleaning operations to remove mineral deposits called scale. The scale is radioactive because of the presence of thorium and radium, which occur naturally in the rare earth ore.

(snip)

In all, about 600,000 gallons of radiological and other hazardous waste flowed onto the desert floor, according to federal authorities.

Again, visualize what is probably happening at that mine in China! But, hey, their prices are good. Now it appears that the previous owner Unocal and the new owners of Mountain Pass decided to clean up the mining operation. They have passed environmental inspections. They have made various improvements, etc., etc. This is all to the good. Rare earth metals have a role to play in green technology and it's that much less embarrassment if Mountain Pass is cleaned up.

But I keep thinking of that radioactive pipeline. Obviously it has to be taken apart and disposed of and that apparently is happening. Pipelines interest me because I had a great-uncle who built a natural gas pipeline from Wichita, Kansas to Chicago back some eighty years ago. A lot of Eurasia politics now revolve around pipelines running from Western Europe to Russia and from Russia to China and along many other routes as well. Who cleans those pipelines? Who cleans the spills? Anyone?

If you're still with me, bear with me a little longer. I know, it's an odd subject today! But I also keep thinking of the British Petroleum pipeline in Alaska that became a major polluter along its route because of improper maintenance. At the time, the news was a bit ironic since the then president of British Petroleum, what's his name, had a major reputation for being green. The green tag turned out to be more hype that reality.

Of course those of us who have noticed ads by the oil companies since the first oil shortages of the 70s have always been skeptical of their claims of how green and environmentally concerned they are. Sometimes, there's some truth to their claims, but most times whatever little good oil companies do for the environment has been more than offset by so many other things they do that are not good. The Exxon Valdez obviously comes to mind. Even if global warming were not a concern, pollution by companies dealing with fossil fuels has been a reality long before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

The oil companies of course are not alone. Over this past weekend, ads have been appearing for Clean Coal. As it happens, there currently is no such thing as clean coal. If one tweaks definitions and ignores how much cleaner natural gas and even light sweet crude are (not to mention solar and wind energy), there is such a thing as cleaner coal—barely. And there is a potential, at considerable expense, for perhaps sequestering the carbon dioxide and other pollutants put out by coal. But coal is the dirtiest fuel there is. Here's what Greenpeace says:

“Clean coal” is the industry’s attempt to “clean up” its dirty image – the industry’s greenwash buzzword. It is not a new type of coal.

“Clean coal” technology (CCT) refers to technologies intended to reduce pollution. But no coal-fired power plants are truly ‘clean’.

“Clean coal” methods only move pollutants from one waste stream to another which are then still released into the environment. Any time coal is burnt, contaminants are released and they have to go somewhere. They can be released via the fly ash, the gaseous air emissions, water outflow or the ash left at the bottom after burning. Ultimately, they still end up polluting the environment.

The article continues on making other points against clean coal. Ah, yes, Greenpeace is that leftist whale-hugging environmental group. So, what does a moderate-conservative magazine like Time magazine say?

If you paid any attention to last year's Presidential campaign, you'll remember ads touting the benefits of "clean coal" power, sponsored by the industry group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. (The ads featured lumps of coal plugged into an electrical cord.) Designed in part to respond to the growing green campaign against coal power — which accounts for about 30% of U.S. carbon emissions — the ads promised high-tech and eventually carbon-free power, emphasizing coal's low cost compared to alternatives, its abundance in America and its cleanliness.

The "clean coal" campaign was always more PR than reality — currently there's no economical way to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal, and many experts doubt there ever will be. But now the idea of clean coal might be truly dead, buried beneath the 1.1 billion gallons of water mixed with toxic coal ash that on Dec. 22 burst through a dike next to the Kingston coal plant in the Tennessee Valley and blanketed several hundred acres of land, destroying nearby houses. The accident — which released 100 times more waste than the Exxon Valdez disaster — has polluted the waterways of Harriman, Tenn., with potentially dangerous levels of toxic metals like arsenic and mercury, and left much of the town uninhabitable.

I guess the coal industry didn't place enough ads in Time. I shouldn't be sarcastic though. Coal has a friend in oil and it might not be much to ask for Exxon or Aramco to buy a major share of Time Warner.

I started this post by mentioning China. When people talk about limiting coal by turning to alternative energy, the cynics point to China. How will China's use of coal be limited? The statistics, in fact, are grim. According to Worldwatch, China's consumption of coal has more than doubled in the last nine years and now exceeds that of the United States.

I suspect, however, that the more the U.S. switches to green technology, the more China and other developing economies will follow. There are signs that this may already be happening. Unlike many members of Congress, the Chinese leadership seems aware that the age of abundant fossil fuels is coming to an end sooner than expected. We will continue to use fossil fuels for some years to come. It's unavoidable because of the time it will take to build an infrastructure based on alternative energies. But, if we're smart, healthy change will come, though not without troubles that we have already set in motion. If we continue to blunder and put off what needs to be done, we will undoubtedly face catastrophes we cannot fully appreciate at this time.

In the end, much will depends on the American people and how much they're truly paying attention. For now, I keep thinking of those pipelines and how much work it takes to keep them functional. I saw a program recently on the Monterey Aquarium in California. The aquarium brings in sea water by pipeline from Monterey Bay. It takes work to keep things from growing at the entrance to the pipeline as well as inside its walls. Is this relevant? It depends. The world's population exceeds 6.6 billion people and water is another resource that is getting scarce as populations increase and as many areas of the world turn into desert from overuse. Where will future water come from? From the sea through desalination?

In California, such a desalination facility has opened in Carlsbad, a city a few miles north of San Diego. Such facilities will need pipelines and they too will have to take environmental concerns into consideration if we are to avoid even further problems. Even green technology is going to require careful environmental thinking—but the promise of green technology is real.

And the alternative, as we are finding, has probably already set in motion catastrophes that will take enormous resilience and resourcefulness to overcome. It is only the year 2009 and the tasks for the rest of the 21st century are already difficult. Today, the task immediately at hand is to avoid making the problems insurmountable. A small step in that direction is making sure green technology is green.

Oil Spills in the Wake of Hurricane Ike

My local newspaper carried a story on the oil spills caused by Hurricane Ike. Unfortunately, the story appeared on page 11; that's not exactly prominently displayed news (it was preceded by a major story on a new hotel being built and several human interest stories, including one on owners of exotic pets). Like Hurricane Katrina, the news coverage of oil spills caused by the latest hurricane has been minimal. Here's the AP story from the Austin American-Statesman:

Hurricane Ike's winds and waves caused at least a half-million gallons of crude oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Texas and Louisiana, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.

Days before and after the storm, which destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines, companies and residents reported at least 448 releases of oil, gasoline and dozens of other substances into the air and water and onto the ground in Texas and Louisiana.

In California, even a 50,000 gallon oil spill is usually big news, at least in the bigger papers. The damage from an oil spill of that size can be documented. So the total of a half million gallons spilled in the wake of Hurricane Ike should be big news anywhere in addition to stories on all of the other damage. I give credit to AP for specifically focusing on the oil spill but I noticed the figure of 448 releases. That's curious. In the following story, the Houston Chronicle notes almost five times the number of spills or 'releases':

While state and federal authorities have reported 2,221 spills of oil and other hazardous materials from Houston to Lake Charles, La., none of them is considered major.

Maybe some reporter in Texas will take the trouble to explain the differences in the amounts and the characterizations. Certainly, given the failed oil executive currently occupying the White House, we are unlikely to get a clear answer from the federal government, though I suspect a few honest federal emplyees would love nothing more than to explain what happened.

Some Thoughts on the American Crisis, Part Two

I saw a graph this morning of this year's third quarter showing the daily close of the Dow Jones. The stock market took a major dip in August but is now almost back to the highest point reached in July. I can't help feeling that the recovery of the stock market is either an illusion or is seriously disconnected from the economy that most Americans are experiencing. Everyone, myself included, wants the economy to do well. Recessions, economic malaise, higher monthly mortgage payments, lower real wages, higher health insurance premiums and other economic twists and turns are not fun. Of course, some of these things have been happening for some time.

In general, I am unable to ignore the growing sense that we are in a period of illusion. One illusion is that everything is going well. The other illusion is that we have to attack others out of fear of another 9/11. It is a schizoid time.

Let me mention briefly one illusion. I keep hearing that American industry is getting a handle on pollution of various kinds. But this is not really the case. I grew up in Southern California at a time when heavy industry still existed in the greater LA area. Smog was bad because of the area's geography, weather and prevailing winds. Slowly, the industries that were the heaviest polluters began to move out of the area. Although cars were one of the primary culprits behind smog and were dealt with to some extent over time, there's no question that when the heavier industries left the area, cleaner air was left behind. But those heavy industries were still polluting. They were just doing it elsewhere, though I have to admit I'm not certain where they were doing it. We weren't paying close attention in those days.

Of course, today, there's no question that much of America's pollution has been exported overseas, sometimes by our own corporations, sometimes by foreign corporations who, by proxy, handle much of the pollution once generated by our own companies. Now there's a point here that gets overlooked as other countries are getting a reputation for pollution. A significant portion of that pollution is being driven by the needs of 300 million Americans, not just by the new economies that are emerging. So what's going to happen if another 1 or 2 or 3 billion people around the world start living like Americans and generate the same amount of pollution? It's been a practice of conservatives for the last thirty to forty to fifty years to ignore issues like this. But in the last fifty years the world has been changing. Sometimes we forget just how much the world has been changing.

I was born in 1950; the world population at that time was roughly 2.5 billion people (there are different estimates and here's a table of some of those estimates). The world population today is about 6.6 billion. That's more than double the number in 1950. I realize those numbers are almost incomprehensible but it's important to get our arms around them. Since 1950, the world has added roughly 4.1 billion people; that's almost 14 times the current population of the United States. Does the world have the resources for 14 new economies the size of the United States? Can the world safely absorb the pollution from 14 such new economies?

I'm an American and I like living where I am. To a large extent, I like the modern world. I like computers and eating out. I like borrowing books from the library and turning on the heater in the winter. I know perfectly well that I would not have survived childhood in the 19th century. I very much appreciate penicillin. I have no desire, in general, to go backwards, but I'm not so sure anymore how much we're going forward when we add up all the factors. Now it's in my temperament to be optimistic about the future, but reality is coming up fast on us. As things now stand, it's probably a fact that we cannot sustain the population growth of the last century. There's growing concern that a world population of 6.6 billion people is simply not sustainable.

Let's back up a moment and look at the world population for 1900. By 1900, the Industrial Age was more or less a century old. But there was enormous disparity of wealth in the world. Most of the wealth was in Europe and the United States. The Industrial Age was still decades away from reaching much of the rest of the world. Despite the abuses of the 19th century, there were still enormous resources in the world. Resources like petroleum had barely been touched by then. In 1900, there were 1.6 billion people spread around the globe.

Again, we have a number: 1.6 billion. It's abstract. It's even from a long time ago. But in reality, a hundred years isn't all that much time in human history. I have a great aunt who was born in 1901; at 106, she's still alive. My aunt's older sister, my grandmother, used to tell stories about their father; their father was born in the middle of the 19th century but I retain numerous stories about his life and the wilderness he came to when he arrived in California in the 1860s. In California, then, there seemed to be a lot of room, and plenty of resources. In 1860, there were almost 380,000 people in California. In that era, there was a lot of room per person. Today, there are over 37,000,000 people. California has achieved one of the fastest growth rates in the world. In 147 years, California grew nearly 10,000 per cent!

To be honest, California had a lot of room to absorb people. But for those willing to observe, California has changed enormously, and not always for the better. One change alone should give pause for thought for rest of the world. For 147 years, the water table in California has been getting lower and lower. And more polluted. In some areas, ground water is not usable without expensive treatment. California is constantly on the search for new sources of water but new water is not cheap. Sometimes there are unpleasant surprises. A few miles north of San Francisco is a body of water called Tomales Bay; until fifteen to twenty years ago, it was considered one of the most pristine bodies of water in the world. Then the algae and bacteria count started going up because of fertilizer and other chemicals used by ranchers in the surrounding hills that were being flushed by rain into the bay. A nastier surprise was the appearance of mercury in the water from an old mercury mine up in the hills that everyone thought had been properly contained and sealed after being mined out. These may seem minor incidents but they are canaries in a mine in a state that pays close attention to limiting environmental damage.

If California can handle its water and smog problems, it will probably continue to grow. It is not among the most densely populated places in the world (though it's getting closer). And of course if one flies over the US, it's hard not to notice all the empty land as well as sparsely populated agricultural areas. But if one looks at a map of China showing population densities, there are large areas of China that have low populations per square mile, particularly in Tibet and the Gobi Desert. Looks, however, can be deceptive. Some years ago, a single building in Hong Kong was famous for having some 10,000 residents who entered through the basement by using the produce elevators situated in the sidewalk. We need to remember that agricultural lands have to be matched to the large populations they support elsewhere.

Let's go back to that figure in 1900 of 1.6 billion people in the world. How much land was available in that era per person? The estimates for the land surface of the earth vary somewhat but don't differ by significant amounts. Let's settle on the figure of 57,393,000 square miles. We're talking about the amount of land available to humans. Immediately, since nobody is going to live there in large numbers anytime soon, we better subtract the 5,100,000 square miles of Antarctica. That leaves 52,293,000 squares miles. Let's convert that into acres; an acre is something that can be seen easily with the naked eye (when I was a kid, we lived on a quarter acre lot; four of those lots made an acre). Rounded off, there are roughly (we're being generous here) 33.5 billion acres of usable land in the world for humans. That means in 1900 there were about 21 acres per person available in the world. A family of four, on average, had 84 acres available to them (of course it rarely worked out that way). It was far short, though, of the acreage available per person just two centuries ealier but by 1900 the industrial age was in full bloom. Still, 84 acres for a family of four was not bad.

Let's jump to the year I was born, 1950, when the earth's population had grown to 2.6 billion people. There were billboards in that era that showed a happy family of four driving a brand new American car. The modern world was in full swing. It was the age of oil and the automobile. A few years earlier, major oil reserves were found in Saudi Arabia, and the United States itself seemed awash in oil. Oil was expected to last a long time. In 1950, there were almost 12.9 acres of usable land per person available in the world (remember, the definition of usable land is generous at this point). For a family of four, there were more than 50 acres available in resources. Actually, there was real concern at the time whether agriculture could keep up with the world's growing population. Fortunately, the green revolution would soon arrive and there were still food sources in the ocean to be exploited. The green revolution, however, was to a large extent driven by tools and chemicals that oil and natural gas made possible.

Now we come to the year 2007. The picture is not quite as rosy. There are 6.6 billion people in the world. The world is still growing and there is no immediate prospect that the growth will end anytime soon. But still, there are troubling signs. There are now a little more than 5 acres available per person in the world. And a little more than 20 acres for a family of four. From a little more than 80 acres for a family of four in 1900, we have dropped to 20 acres for a family of four. And that's if we continue with the generous definition of usable land.

Some areas of the world are harsh and yet they are able to sustain low numbers of people. How many more people can the following areas sustain?

Sahara: 3,500,000 square miles (or 2,240,000,000 acres)
Australian Deserts: 1,300,000 square miles
Gobi Desert: 1,295,000 square miles
Greenland: 831,109 square miles
Tibetan Plateau: 604,000 square miles
Canadian Tundra: 300,000 square miles
Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter: 225,000 square miles

This is far from an exhaustive list though it covers some of the largest areas. Notice that I omitted Siberia only because I couldn't find a consistent number, but any population density map shows, for the most part, the vast emptiness of the northern part of Siberia. Also, I omitted considering the hodgepodge of deserts in the western United States. Subtract all these areas from the Sahara to the Gobi Desert to Greenland that are unlikely anytime soon to have large populations and the land available per person drops significantly. One should also point out that large areas are being turned into deserts by poor agricultural and grazing methods.

What about the ocean? Can the ocean be a source of future growth? Perhaps. But the sad truth we've been discovering for the last few decades is that the ocean's natural supply of food is not inexhaustible. Just as we have overgrazed large areas of the earth, we have also overgrazed the oceans and there are now restrictions in many areas of the world on what can be harvested by the fishing industry.

Population alone is a problem. The earth's ability to absorb the pollution of the last hundred years, and particularly the last fifty or so, is limited. The damaged ozone layer was proof that there are sufficient numbers of humans to affect the environment on a global scale. When it comes to carbon dioxide alone, the earth is simply unable to handle the excessive load put out by human behavior. And now a problem is clearly on the horizon that has been ignored, for the most part, by the United States for the last thirty years: there may not be enough oil or alternative energy to sustain our current way of living.

I'm optimistic that some kind of modern living can still exist but not if we continue to ignore the abyss that lays before us. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is famous for wanting massive federal funding to build a 'bridge to nowhere.' That is a perfect metaphor for the way business in our country is being conducted these days. But we in the United States are not the only ones facing the abyss. Fortunately, the Europeans and the Chinese are far more aware of some of these problems than we are, though the Europeans are the ones who seem to be the most forward thinking.

US leadership is needed on a growing list of issues facing the world. Rather than face these problems, we have an incompetent president and an ideologically rigid political party caught up in a war, and possibly a series of wars, that our country and the world do not need. Time is becoming critical. Our economy at this time is not capable of turning on a dime though that is nearly what happened during World War Two. We forget that change takes time. It took decades to build the railroads. It took years to get an interstate highway system built. It will take years to make changes simply to survive the next twenty years with our economy reasonably intact.

We are entering an era that will still have its billionaires and multimillionaires who don't see what the problem is and who will fund ridiculous campaigns for whatever nonsense they seem driven by, but average Americans are the ones who will lose the most if our country doesn't find a way to take more responsibility for its future. Responsibility cuts many ways and perhaps the most important area for responsibility is the individual and family and local level. I'm going to admit something terrible: I don't have the answers and I don't really know anyone who does. But there are hundreds of small answers that may help all of us get through the coming years. Many of us, including myself, are going to have to change habits. We're going to have to think about what we're doing and learn new tricks for survival and new tricks for simply being a human being.

The US economy has enormous momentum. Metaphorically speaking, if someone turned off the locomotive that drives the US economy, the economy would go on for miles before anyone would likely notice something was wrong. But something has been wrong for many years. Is there really hope for the future? Maybe. But the terrible truth is that no one really knows. But if there is hope, we're already on the wrong track. And that has to change. Maybe we're not so much on the bridge to nowhere as on the bridge to the exhausting turmoil of some past era like the 17th century. If so, there are already many Americans who want to get off and find a way, if possible, to build a bridge to the 22nd century.

This is not an abstract situation. It is real. Almost everyone knows a child or people who know a child who is in grammar school. The children of those children will live to the 22nd century. If there's a way, we need to give them a chance. But it's not a certain thing. That's how close we are to the abyss. That's how much things have changed in the last fifty years.

Humans have always thrived when they help one another. This doesn't mean the powerful scratching each other's backs while ignoring millions of people. It's clear that there are some Americans and people elsewhere who would choose a much harsher course for the future; such a course would mean losing the best of what we are; it would mean ignoring the valuable lessons since the founding of our country. In World War Two, the American people won the war. Roosevelt may have been the president but he is one who unlocked the genius of our people. That genius was found everywhere from assembly line workers to army engineers to decent business people who discovered their companies could do far more than they had ever dreamed. The kind of largely incompetent wheeler-dealers who whine about taxes or buttonhole politicians for favors or try to fatten their wallets at the expense of flawed products that kill our soldiers or our workers or our children did not win that war. And yet, today, more and more of these self-centered cavaliers are in charge of our country. There will be no future with such people in charge. We need reform. Our future requires reform. We are in crisis and it's time we admit it.

The Environment: If We Value It, the Jobs Will Come

Given how much our economy depends on energy, the more energy we buy from other countries, particularly in the form of oil, the less good it does our country. Of course, our economy is so large, we can't completely avoid buying energy for some time to come (from Canada, for example), but we need to understand that the more energy we buy from others, the more jobs it takes away from Americans.

And it adds an additional burden to us when a considerable amount of the money we spend on energy goes overseas and eventually ends up being spent by others for things that are not in our interest. Finally, the more oil we buy, the more it puts our environment at risk.

The greatest opportunity for creating our own energy is right here at home. We can create a considerable amount of energy through such things as windpower and solar cells. But the biggest improvement in our energy situation will eventually come from greater efficiency and conservation; in the long run, efficiency and conservation are worth several Saudi Arabias. And they will create jobs. They will also go a long ways towards improving our environment.

Now I'm not a great fan of Wal-Mart, but Frank Greve of the McClatchy Washington Bureau uses Wal-Mart to introduce his story on the green movement that's gaining momentum in the construction field:

In addition to the Wal-Mart's legion of skylights, for example, the store's foundation is made of ground-up chunks of runway recycled from Denver's old Stapleton International Airport. Porous paving in its parking lot soaks up and filters polluted storm-water runoff. Huge north-facing windows provide most of the store's interior light. Used motor oil from the tire and lube shop helps heat the store, as does old vegetable oil from the deli.

According to Don Moseley, senior Wal-Mart engineer for environmental innovation, these and other efforts "are good for the environment and good for our business."

That's the mantra of the so-called green building movement that's sweeping the nation.

Kudos to Wal-Mart if their green movement continues. Otherwise, I'm sure Greve's story will please Wal-Mart during this busy shopping season and McClatchy will be more than happy to receive all those Wal-Mart ads. Greve's story goes on to talk in general about how the construction of large buildings are going green—and creating jobs:

Scores of colleges and universities - including Emory, Pennsylvania State, the University of Florida, the University of South Carolina and the University of California-Merced - also have taken the pledge. Harvard University alone has 12 green buildings.

Scads of students at architecture and interior design schools share the green zeal. "It's hugely, hugely, unbelievably popular," said Sylvie Sugg, 21, an interior design student at the Art Institute of Colorado in Denver. "Green is so big now that people shouldn't go into design if they don't like it."

The job market for grads with green credentials varies widely from city to city, reflecting the trend's ongoing spread from West to East. In general, green grads do well, according to Kira Gould, the incoming chair of the American Institute of Architects' environment committee. "I see a lot of firms looking for expertise in green buildings at all levels," she said.

The key to the movement is a new set of standards that's far more demanding, environmentally speaking, than local building codes. The movement invites innovation because it's based on environment-protecting performance standards, not rules. That leaves it up to architects, builders and designers to decide how best to reduce energy and water consumption, for example, or workers' dependence on cars.

Flexibility, whether it's the construction of buildings or putting in place windmills, ethanol plants, solar panels or any other of a wide range of innovations, is going to be the key. As an example, it might make sense to emphasize wind power in North Dakota, solar farms in Arizona and retrofitting Chicago with better insulation in its buildings. States and local communities will have to work out what combinations work best and the federal government can help most with research, resources, networking, red tape cutting and flexible nonbinding guidelines. Whether at the local, state or federal level, this will all create jobs and much of it, if not all, will be paid for by the savings from not sending our dollars chasing increasingly scarcer resources overseas.

Senator Boxer Takes on Environmental Issues

In poll after poll, most Americans care about protecting the environment. One of the ironies is that a large percentage of Republican voters care about the environment as well. But Republican politicians in Washington see things differently, particularly when it concerns what to do after receiving their campaign contributions (of course, some Democrats are no better).

Things need to change.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) will soon be heading a committee on the environment in January; David Whitney of the McClatchy Washington Bureau has the story:

Sen. Barbara Boxer, the liberal California Democrat who'll head the leading Senate committee on the environment next year, declared Tuesday that "the days of rollbacks" on environmental protection are over.

"The way you stop these rollbacks is to shine a light on them," said Boxer, the incoming chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who pledged that oversight hearings on controversial topics will be the staple of her tenure as committee head.

Boxer said her first act would be to convene a series of hearings on global warming and climate change, as early as January.

That's an issue that's been forbidden by the current chairman of the panel, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who discounts science suggesting that gases from fossil fuel consumption are warming the Earth like a greenhouse and changing its climate.

"There is going to be a sea change on the committee," Boxer said of the polar shift in committee leadership.

I hope Senator Boxer does well. In recent years, America has been living off the environment the way rich kids sometimes run through a fortune. It's time for our country to begin rebuilding our national wealth instead of letting special interests make a quick buck at the expense of our future.

It's also important that we be honest about what we're doing. I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1950s before serious air pollution laws went into effect. I can remember the particularly bad days, usually in the late summer or early fall, when the smog actually stung the eyes.

Around Los Angeles, many things were done to cut down on smog. Some methods were straightforward and honest. Some were not so honest but were eventually addressed. Some methods fell in a gray area, though it was understandable at the time. The heaviest polluters around the greater Los Angeles area are cars but beyond smog control devices they weren't about to be touched.

What happened is that a number of heavy industries that happened to be the worst polluters were essentially forced to move out of California. At first, they moved to other parts of the country. But that simply shifted the pollution elsewhere as far as tightening environmental laws at the national level were concerned. Eventually, instead of developing the technology to deal with the pollution, a number of heavy industries started being shipped, more or less, overseas. Aside from the ethical issue of dumping our pollution on others, the irony is that we're discovering that the pollution from industries doing work for us is now crossing oceans—affecting Americans once again. Of course, CO2 emissions are also entering the atmosphere in ways that apparently are affecting the entire world.

For a long time, America has been exporting its pollution, along with jobs. We need to change that. We need to create jobs to clean up the pollution and we need to start talking to other countries about cleaning up the pollution that comes back our way. And we need to find cleaner ways to do all kinds of business. If we value something, it creates demand, it creates jobs. If we value a clean environment, it will benefit us in the long run in more ways than one. We're not exactly a leader in environmental technology but we ought to be. Big companies sometimes do ads talking about the need to change the way we think. I agree and it applies to all of us, including companies that have been putting off changes they know they need to make.

Oil Companies Launch $100 Million Campaign

The December issue of Scientific American has sixteen pages of ads about a cleaner environment or alternative energy that various companies are apparently providing or promising to provide. Chevron has seven pages alone. Perhaps these companies mean it this time but that's not the record of the last 30 years which has led to sluggish improvements. In recent years, there have been some areas of the country where things have been going backwards. Texas is the nation's energy state and the news is not good. The pollution around the greater Houston area, particulary on the southeast side, is a scandal but it's not the only story in Texas. Daniel Mottola of the Austin Chronicle News has the story on the dirtiest secret in America—coal is back:

Though plans by various Texas utilities to build 19 new coal-fired power plants have drawn widespread criticism for increases in smog, ozone, fine particle, and mercury pollution they'll pump into the air, most acrimonious is the plants' contribution to climate change – the impending catastrophe caused by fossil-fuel combustion gasses (namely carbon dioxide) building up atmospherically and keeping heat from radiating into space. Texas is the nation's foremost CO2 emitter (If we were a country, we'd rank seventh globally, according to an Environmental Defense study), and the new plants would double our output. The good news is that there are viable alternatives to meet the state's growing energy needs. The bad news is that our state honchos, awash in utility cash, lack the leadership to pursue them.

As George W. Bush has taught us in the negative sense, leadership is doing, not talking. But the oil companies are set to give us a $100 million campaign that resembles the talk of 30 years ago; here's one story from Potomac Flacks (hat tip to Think Progress):

With congressional Dems looking to take on the oil industry next year, the industry's lead trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, is planning a $100 million PR "image and education effort," National Journal reports.

Here's a more oil-friendly version from CNN:

Facing mounting public pressure over high gasoline prices and now a potentially less-friendly Democrat-controlled Congress, the oil industry is mounting its first-ever major ad campaign, according to a report Thursday.

The ads will attempt to convince Americans that high energy prices are not the result of some industry conspiracy but rather an effect of tight supply and high demand, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The goal, according to the paper, will be to avoid higher taxes on energy companies and make it easier for them to drill in areas like the Rocky Mountains or off the coasts.

But that message will be softened by calls for greater conservation and investments in alternative technologies, the paper said.

"I know and you all know that you're in the oil and gas business," the Journal quoted Jean Statler, head of the public relations agency working on the campaign, saying at a recent oil industry conference in Dallas. "But the fact of the matter is there is just a driving, overwhelming desire" by Americans "for the industry to start diversifying" beyond fossil fuels.

For the record, I'm not clear about what the 'first-ever ad campaign' line is all about. In the 1970s, we were treated to a barrage of ads about alternative energy and a clean environment by the oil companies, whether they were coordinated or not. There were some important improvements in the 1970s and then the oil companies lost interest during the Reagan years, particulary when the federal government, thanks to conservative politicians, backed off from further improvements and sometimes looked the other way.

The oil companies could help themselves by explaining honestly how it was that oil and gasoline prices dropped sharply in the two months before the election and have since bounced back up (oil reached $63.50 a barrel yesterday, a gain of $5 since the election). Failure by Bush to add oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the lessening chance of war with Iran had something to do with the price drops and yet that doesn't seem to explain the whole picture. Also, the trends over the last thirty-five years have been plain for all to see in oil reserves and oil production and yet for years the oil companies insisted on turning a blind eye to the longterm picture. Whether they like it or not, the oil companies have some explaining to do.

Our country will continue to need oil and it makes sense for the oil companies to be involved to some extent in ethanol, hydrogen, coal to oil, or coal to hydrogen methodologies since a lot of that involves their technologies. But the monopolies in other countries suggest it would be in the interest of all Americans to see real energy diversification this time. And a much more consistent commitment to clean technology, including reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Many small to medium companies can handle various alternative energies, energy efficiency methodologies and environmental technology if they get the nod and some help from the government. Part of that help might involve keeping the oil companies from getting their hands on some of these companies until the oil CEOs show they mean it this time (I'm sure some already do mean it, but they need to show a real track record). As for the $100 million ad campaign, Americans are catching on to public relations. This time Americans want to see proof through action rather than words. Words have become very cheap during the Bush years.