Brad Bonham

James Howard Kunstler (see BLOGROLL) was on the Colbert Report on May 1, 2008. Worth a watch.

I know two blog updates in a night is a major FO PAH in blogland, but I couldn’t resist posting this…
Even if you don’t use Photoshop, you might just after watching these.

I have compiled the worst songs I can remember from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. They represent the shame of humanity. I hope you won’t enjoy them. Note: Some of the lyrics are explicit (see Lil Jon, for instance), as some of these soulless hoodlums haven’t learned propriety, but I do not endorse their vocal horrors; I document here for historical purposes only.

Lawrence Lessig, digital rights activist and visionary Stanford Law professor, dropped a bomb on the technology world recently by predicting that within the next 10 years there will be an internet equivalent of 911 that will “inspire” the government to forever change how the internet works. He points out that The Patriot Act was passed just a few weeks after 911, and that it was so huge and comprehensive that it was obviously sitting on a shelf already just waiting for the right time to be brought to life. This suspicion was confirmed by a conversation he had with counter-terrorist czar, Richard Clarke. Listen to Lessig:

There is also a Fortune article on the prediction.

I have some proposals for how we can regulate the wild-and-anarchic internet. I have not yet had time to draft them, but given the ever-evolving and collaborative speed-of-light changes that take place online, I’m sure I can provide some needed assistance to the bureaucrats in Washington who might not be in tune with the digerati, Web 2.0, and so forth. I’ll get to my proposals soon.

A friend of mine pointed out this TED talk with Paul Stamets, who claims there are six revolutionary ways mushrooms can save the world. Mushrooms can restore soil, break down hydrocarbon waste (plastics, oil, etc.), function as antibiotics and pesticides, and even create ecologically sustainable sources of fuel.

The soil is our friend and this is good stuff.

Stamets also has a book, Mycellium Running, that is high on my reading list.

Remember when Anthrax was just an extra-noisy and nettlesome heavy metal band? Remember when it became a Post-911 biological horror linked to Iraq? McCain discussed it back in October of 2001:

Here’s an interesting article about a government biologist linked to Anthrax who, apparently, committed suicide.

A couple of more surreptitious bank failures tonight. Nothing to see here, move along.

• Good analysis of the current state of affairs in Wall-Street banking. Unfortunately it affects us all. I recommend gold, silver, and Spam.
  

• Gardening is almost always a good choice. Here’s a great source for planning your garden.

• The future belongs to those who can renew more than consume. A steep challenge, I know! I enjoy frozen pizza.

• WALL-E is what would happen if we had unlimited energy.

• Go see The Dark Knight.
• Sappy, sentimental, yet addictive song:
  

This week, Al Gore delivered a stunning challenge to America: transition 100% of our energy needs to renewable resources within 10 years. Evoking Kennedy Moon Shots, The Marshall Plan, the interstate highway system, Social Security, and other far-reaching (some would say over-reaching!) endeavors, Gore stated:

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans - in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.

To be sure, this is a mind-boggling goal. Given the industrial countries’ miserable failure at even adhering to the Kyoto Protocol, an international program that called for a mere single digit reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from a 1990 baseline among industrialized economies, one has to wonder, what makes this guy think we can do something so ambitious? Sure, he recently won the Nobel Prize for his stirring Global Warming PowerPoints, but at no point has any self-respecting Capitalist urged the citizenry to do away with all fossil fuel use within 10 years.

And this bold challenge has been greeted with sloppy man hugs by environmentalists. Ben Block at Worldchanging proclaims

On Thursday, politician-turned-activist Al Gore called for the United States to rely 100 percent on zero-carbon sources of electricity by 2018. Regardless of the logistical practicality of the goal or of the existence of political will to achieve this target in a single decade, Gore’s statements made it clear: the U.S. environmental movement finally has a leader.

Actually, in October of ‘07, Alex Steffan at Worldchanging had already embraced his leader, but there’s never too much of a good thing, right?

Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize symbolizes more than just a head-nod towards some eco-fad — it shows that sustainability has finally moved from the outskirts of activism to the most central halls of authority. Concern for the planetary future is now as credible as it is possible to get. The beginning of the struggle to save ourselves from ecological catastrophe has come to an end and we can begin to see the outlines of the next stage of the struggle.

Those of us who’ve spent our careers advocating a saner approach to the future can be forgiven a few moments of smugness, for these are sweet days. There is no longer any reasonable debate about whether or not we need to move with all possible speed towards a different way of living on this planet. To argue the contrary is now to prove oneself morally bankrupt.

The problem I have with anointing Al Gore as Savior of the Free Earth is that his record just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. That Gore has dubious political and financial ties to the Occidental oil company is one potential source of worry, but that’s not really gets me…what gets me is the obvious stuff that anyone could see without any speculative research.

After Gore published a seminal environmental book, Earth in Balance, in 1992, the Clinton/Gore administration presided over one of the most ruinous and environmentally destructive global political machines the world has ever seen. Indeed, Gore argued vehemently for the merits of NAFTA, a trade agreement that has resulted in the lowering of standards of living for Mexican and American workers (in the cases where jobs didn’t leave altogether), and this was an agreement that was signed by Bush Senior. To get a taste of what the debate was about, check out this 1993 Larry King Live debate between Gore and Ross Perot:

Fast forward to 2008, and not only does America have little in the way of any sort of manufacturing to fall back on, one can hardly argue that Mexico has raised its standard of living through these trade agreements. What has happened, however, is that multinational corporations have had a field day in chasing new labor markets to produce more stuff at a lower quality to be shipped much further distances, all to lower labor expenses and consumer prices, and all for what? Certainly not the environment.

Under Gore’s watch, globalization was sent into hyper-drive through the plumbing of the WTO (World Trade Organization), World Bank, and IMF (International Monetary Fund). These organizations were nothing less than parasitic mechanisms to exploit the human and natural resources of developing countries through debt and enlarge cheap labor markets for multinational corporations. A pretty thorough yet succinct critique of these organizations can be found at Share the World’s Resources, but I’ll quickly give you an idea of how the scam works.

Say an economist from the thriving United States heads over to an impoverished third world country — let’s use Argentina as an example. The economist talks to the top political leaders and makes a persuasive presentation (no doubt with PowerPoint) that Argentina, too, can be like the United States, if only it allows the World Bank to give it a developmental loan and allows multinational companies such as Bechtel or Haliburton to develop key pieces of infrastructure — think hydro-electric dams, coal-fired plants (neither of which are particularly environmentally friendly, by the way), highways, and so forth. The Argentinian politicians no doubt think, “hey, this is a great deal, we too can be prosperous like America!” 20 years later, Argentina finds itself drowning in debt, the majority of its citizens impoverished, and the multinational corporations that created the infrastructure have since been greatly enriched and have moved on to the next wannabe American third world country.

To make matters worse, now that the country has been impoverished and loaded with debt, it has to meet demands, known as “austerity measures,” of the IMF. Can’t pay back that original loan? Here’s some more money, and oh, you have to privatize more of your country’s resources (oil, minerals, water, etc.) and allow us to station troops on your soil. This anti-development pattern has been well documented and can be seen in the recent history of country after country.

None of this is to say that America or its citizens are to blame for exploiting other countries. No, this is sheer economic manipulation coming straight from the private sector. It could have just as easily been Russia or China calling the shots, but after WWII, American industrialists were in the drivers seat of globalization, and political leaders were easily called upon to do their bidding.

Upon reflection, most Americans probably would not have wanted NAFTA, nor would we have wanted our manufacturing and labor markets sold out to the lowest bidder at the expense of our own taxpayers, because, yes, taxpayers helped fund these shenanigans, even though we didn’t get a vote. How the environment benefits from lowering standards of labor conditions, increasingly long supply chains, and the hyper-exploitation of third world natural resources after ours has been exhausted is beyond me. Maybe it’s just that America seems cleaner after all that nasty factory work gets shipped somewhere else. Out of sight, out of mind.

Gore may very well care about the environment, or he may just see another profit opportunity (carbon cap and trade, anyone?), but I’m not sure we’ll ever know. He doesn’t seem to be running for office, so at least we won’t have to scratch our heads in bewilderment when he says one thing and then administers another. But that may not stop environmentalists from believing every little word he says.

And to those of you who may think the Vice President doesn’t wield that much power in the global politics of sustainability, I ask, have you seen the current one in action?