Relief for Housing Debacle Lies Within Reach

We are excellent hand wringers in The United States. If someone points out an issue, we are easily led to fret and stew about it. It seems that far too few of us understand that seeing a problem or realizing that there is an injustice is just the seed of action. most of us have not developed the skills to turn awareness of an issue into positive action to solve the problem. For the media it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Especially in our saturated state, with crisis after crisis vying for our attention, little if anything gets done to solve one crisis before we are led away to the next one. The impetus for creating lasting, positive change gets diluted by each successive crisis. I could list a series of issues that have enamored the public's imagination, some have even had large sums of money and human capital thrown at them, but they are still stewing away on a back burner in their discreet location, out of sight, out of mind, unresolved.

The "housing crisis" was spawned by people without conscience, who had unbridled enthusiasm and shady practices of greedy bankers, underhanded appraisers and some who were just riding the wave of insanity that swept over the financiers and market generally. The extractive approach to the housing market generally, American people, and their pocketbooks specifically led to one of the biggest hits that our economy has taken in our history. Even those who are treading water in homes that are paid off, or those making payments on homes that are losing value are continuing to be hurt by morally bankrupt practices of lending that spurred this crisis. As the homes down the street, or next door continue to lose value, everyone's equity is drying up. They used to say, buy the worst house in the best neighborhood if you want to make money in real estate, the theory being that you would a.) Save money every month due to the fact that you had less debt. b.)Fix it up and reap big rewards down the road for having improved the housing stock of the whole neighborhood. And, c.)Benefit generally from the upscale neighborhood in a variety of ways.

In the better neighborhood, your children would go to school with a "higher class" of people, the parks and green space would be more plentiful, nearby services and goods would be closer and higher quality because of being in a better neighborhood. Over time, driving less and continuing to reap these rewards would have compounding effects. The neighbors would appreciate you fixing up the dog of a house in their neighborhood because you would improve the quality of their investment as well. This was the prevailing wisdom about how to achieve the American Dream on a budget worked, for the better part of our history. The current state we are in is characterized by the exact opposite effect. The whole process has been turned on it's head, but buying the most expensive home you can afford, in the worst neighborhood is not the best course of action in this climate either. Prices are continuing to spiral down, even after the precipitous decline of a few years ago. Homes that have lost thirty percent of their value drag down the worth of their neighbor's homes as well. The schools are hurting because of reduced budgets, the parks are maintained poorly because cities are trying to save money, most of the commercial space nearby is going empty as businesses continue to fail, which in turn requires us to travel further for lesser quality goods and services. Neighbors are now preoccupied with how much they have lost on paper and don't appreciate that your home renovation is on hold until the economy, or market improve.

I believe that there is a good solution to the crisis, one that would gently punish banks and free those who had nothing to do with creating the current crisis from having to deal with the unfair fallout caused by greed and deception in the marketplace of housing. The benefits of this approach will far outweigh the costs and the plan takes but a moment to describe. Imagine a giant recovery force, one that would have the power to transform our culture from the inside out. A volunteer workforce of immense proportion, perhaps millions of people helping to create a better society. What if people could be rewarded for community service by having a reasonably-priced place to live? What if these people absorbed the vacant homes across America? What I propose would be a three-tiered program, allowing people to choose their own level of buy in and their own level of reward. The only thing that would be required is the will, and several problems would be solved simultaneously. We would create a home-buyers program, but unlike the last one that just gave tax credit for purchases, which bails out banks, trickling a pittance to the actual home buyers, this would require more commitment on the part of buyers and reward them substantially, while giving a pittance to the banks. It is time for the banks to pay for the harm that they have created and this would be a small step that we could take to show them what they would stand to lose if they try these shenanigans again.

Potential buyers would be able to choose a one-year, five year or ten year agreement. During that time, the government would commit to pay their house payment. Because the government would be investing in the people, the program participants would be required to volunteer with a local, non-religious, school or charity, giving service to their community. The one-year plan would produce a benefit that would act as a down-payment. At the end of the year, the purchaser would get a loan from a bank and begin making payments. The five year plan would offset 20% of the cost of the home as well as require no down payment, and the ten year participation level would cut the home's cost by 50% as well as requiring no down-payment. In essence, the government would be on the hook for the total cost of housing for these people, but the real kicker would be that for the massive benefit of stabilizing the housing market, banks would have to sacrifice as well as the American taxpayer. They would not be allowed to charge any interest on these loans until the agreement between the feds and the home buyer expired. Anyone who has purchased a home should have gotten a repayment schedule at closing and, if they looked at it, seen the massive charges for interest, especially in the first years of the loan repayment process. All of these charges would be non-existent and therefore the benefit would be accruing to the homeowner, their neighborhood, their buying power and the local communities that these foreclosed homes are in.

The real benefits would accrue to communities that would have more teacher's aids, after school program assistants, mentors, providers of adult services, people to assist in a variety of ways, making the community stronger. We are deserving of solutions that reward people for doing good, and well, but we must put a stop to systems that exploit others of the gain of a select few. This idea has the power to benefit many millions of people at the expense of just a few. The same few that caused the mess in the first place. As for the taxes that would be spent on housing, I would rather that the government spent no money at all, but that is unreasonable to expect in this age of corporate welfare and bail outs.

Community Center As Close to Ground Zero As Strip Club

This issue was seen as a lightening rod by such political savants as Newt Gingrich. The trumped up public vehemence comes not out of logic or proportion, but of their frustration with the plans for what will happen on those specific 16 acres(Ground Zero.) Before the pile of rubble and body parts had cooled, I voiced the opinion that we should reforest the site. Ten acres would accommodate 3,000 trees, one tree per person would create a massive statement in lower Manhattan. This sort of memorial would leave enough space for 3,000 park benches commemorating the dead. The trees would be the most awesome negation of the efforts of the terrorists. A living testament to those innocent lives that would recreate a woodland in the heart of the city. Nature heals, that is the whole idea of National Parks, we are nurtured by nature in ways that cannot be duplicated any other way.

It figures that rather than keeping discussion about this on a very high level, we use hatred and distrust of our own system to lash out at others who can establish plans and make effective change in the general area. Having been a resident of NYC, I can tell you, there is nowhere in Manhattan that I have found few places that bear any relationship with the community around it. Imagine being able to go underground every ten blocks or so and being magically transported to any other sector. Everything is virtually a subway, and/or bus ride away from every other place. The best way I can describe it is the largest neighborhood in the world. What is really needed in that city is the open space that parkland provides. This too reduces necessary services, while providing space, which is so badly needed, especially in that part of town.

What has instead been allowed to creep back onto the site is a smaller version of what it had been, a place for us to return to business as usual and the politics of greed that made us a target in the first place. The audacity of our corporate keepers is unparalleled in human history. I wish only the best for New Yorkers, but in their hurry to abolish the "free establishment clause within the Bill of Rights because of their unresolved feelings over 9-11 make the rest of us pretty upset.

Musings of a Local Foodie

This week, I was so sick that we had to pay a relative to brave the lush garden beds to bring in a tiny fraction of this year's harvest. He discovered a couple dozen acorn squash, spread over two beds and three walkways, five pounds of red potatoes, a gallon or so of green beans, a giant box of beets and a gallon or two of carrots, a quart of elderberries, various and sundry greens and a flat of super juicy tomatoes. I'm guessing that most of the food came from seeds that we paid no more than five dollars for. The squash alone would have cost more than that at the local market. As much as I would like to say that I was born with farmer blood, the opposite is probably closer to the truth. My wife and I spent less than three days total on the garden this year, most of it pulling waist height weeds and harvesting peas, turnips, broccoli, and various herbs. If I had been healthy I might not have wanted to brave the garden because of the "mosquito problem". The last sixty days brought nearly twenty inches of rain. The last storm alone dropped seven and 1/4 inches on our "neck of the woods". The local meteorologists say that it only rained about three inches,(2.87 to be exact)but that was at the airport on the opposite side of town.
As the local mosquito population has risen, the urge to be out in the garden has decreased, so things were pretty much on their own until this week. We finally got a mosquito control system that we just love. Garlic oil concentrate. We mix up a gallon or two in our sprayer and dose the yard and garden, making it possible to actually get in there and do things. There used to be a veritable cloud of the little blood suckers no matter where you went in the yard and garden, but after two applications in as many days, they seem to be staying away.
I'm just amazed that with no more than a passing interest, the annual removal of mulch and the planting of some tiny seeds, even with virtually no weeding, the earth can be so incredibly productive. I have garlic, a few leeks for seed, two kinds of potatoes, several varieties of tomatoes and a dozen other food crops, all burgeoning from a space not much larger than out kitchen. The acorn squash, perhaps, is the most impressive. It is a rouge survivor of the last winter's compost pile. From that one tiny seed came tendrils that wind up and over the pea trellis, two garden beds and if we had not gotten out there this week, it might just have engulfed the other half of the garden. We've gotten at least a dozen squash plants so far and the vines are still covered with blossoms. Who needs to fret about a percentage or two in the stock, or real estate market when a single discarded seed can come back and feed you through the coming winter? I have access to several garden beds across the street, as well as those in my own back yard, but the simple truth is that I am too lazy to walk the two hundred feet back and forth to those garden beds.
My asparagus tastes as good as that which I can harvest from the plot at our rental, but the whole bed is closer than even the first plant across the street. I could grow a lot more tomatoes if I pressed even a single bed into service over there, but the delicious red fruits taste better when they come from less than fifty feet from my kitchen door, decidedly better than if they were from over two hundred feet away. I would love to have a bit more dirt close at hand and under my authority, but for now, I'm doing my best just to keep up with the harvest as it is. Do I really want more when I can barely handle the surplus that exists already? I would love to write more, but my responsibilities to the harvest are calling.

The End of Education

From the time I was young, I wondered what the heck was going on in school. Bullies seemed to either be ignored or to get off scott free. This issue raises it's head from time to time, but I guarantee it is still a part of every school day for a certain segment of each school's population. I know from experience that when simply going to a specific place that represents for you a clear and present danger, it causes enough stress that learning cannot occur.
As teachers have been required to "do" more and more in the classroom, their ability to do anything well has been diminished. One of my best teachers ever, happened to teach American History. He started training us on the very first day. He said, "I'm only going to say this once, each of you will be expected to be here on time and in your seats. I don't have a seating chart, but if you become disruptive, you will be moved. You need to come to class with a plain yellow spiral bound notebook and two sharpened pencils. If you break your pencil a lot, bring more, because I will not allow you to get out of your seats once the door closes and class begins. If you come to class and the door is closed, you will not be given a note or hall pass, nor will I honor any note from another teacher. If you are late, you must report to the Principal. Anything you miss is your responsibility, not mine. If you have any questions, I will answer them as best I can, but no one will be allowed to slow down the group. You will only be responsible for two dates this year, they are..."
He continued to treat us as sponges, whose sole task was to soak up the knowledge that he had to impart. The two dates that he had us write down that day were March, 22, 1765, When the British passed the Stamp Act. As he explained, this was the beginning of the course content and the other date was December 15, 1791, the addition to the U.S. Constitution of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments, would be the effective end of our coursework. The Alpha and Omega as it were of the period that we covered. One might ask, "How could you teach a mere twenty-five years for an entire year?" Well, it was interesting, colorful and detailed to the point of ridiculousness. We learned the truth behind most of the legends that were passed down over the years and found out that our country has a long history of guile and misrepresentation. We are, and have always been a country where a small minority of loud and poorly behaved people can make enough waves to get their way. The majority of Americans didn't want to fight the Revolutionary War, but were left no choice in the end. The majority wanted nothing to do with a Federal Government, but found that State Sovereignty was unworkable, and were eventually shamed into taking their place under one flag.
Similarly today, a small group of individuals who are on the Texas Board of Education dictate effectively the books used in most schools in our fine country. They have the power to question the validity of the scientific method, rewrite history regarding unionism and the New Deal, and call into question the very nature of our democracy. The need for women in the workplace virtually assures that little change will come to required attendance. The few who benefit from our current system have a vested interest in getting future employees who can follow instructions without asking too many questions. Ironically, that teacher I spoke of was from Denver. When I lived there they had but two truant officers for the entire city. If you didn't want to go, you were encouraged to stay home. This allowed schools to function far more effectively and for those who thought that they had a better plan for the day to pursue it.
As we prepare to "send" our children off to school for another year, it seems that the economists are trying to factor in the effect this has on corporate earnings, as if notepads and erasers float the boat of our flagging economy. Rest assured that a small clique will have formed by the end of the first day, whose fashion sense will allow them to feel entitled to all the perks. If your child is lucky, they will accept him or her and things will go on swimmingly. If not, they will be in for a difficult year. Perhaps they can take refuge in the theater or band geek community like I often did. Regardless of whether they "fit in" or not, we need to be aware that they will learn less and less about the most important things and more and more about things that don't matter one whit. Homeschooling may be considered difficult by some who have not tried it, but imagine a school without the dramas of who is "going with" who, the weekly sporting news, whether you are wearing the right names on your clothes, or what teacher has the easiest classes. By the time everyone gets on the same page now-a-days, the first class period is 1/3 gone. If a teacher is lucky and good at their job, they get about one third of the class period to teach. The other third is most likely devoted to working with the special cases and distracted folks in the group. More likely than not, some were coming to class unprepared, so they never really got on the same page as everyone else in the first place. factor in a few bathroom breaks, interruptions and outbursts and you have yourself a recipe for disaster. Is it any wonder that each evening when I ask my son and daughter what they learned in school each day, they look at me as if I'm from another planet? They know that they are being warehoused, why can't we see it?
Troubled by this, I asked my wife, Why? Why don't they teach our children? With the hundreds of thousands of educational research projects that we have done, with the profusion of Doctorates of Education being collected by educators across the country, why can't they seem to teach? I didn't like her answer. It was perhaps, a bit more truth than I wanted to hear right then.
"An uneducated public allows politicians to craft knee-jerk reactions amongst them that can get candidates elected without having to deal with any real issues." Ouch! I always discount conspiracy theories, but this one seemed to gain a bit of traction, especially since the Primaries are under way and the content of most political commercials prove the point. Have we gotten so dumbed-down that all we can deal in is euphemisms? My least favorite ad so far is the one that says "A faith- filled family man", as if single people are not worthy of office, or that any religious belief is preferable to none. This flies in the face of the fact that the most happy people in the world, based on objective measures, are also self-reportedly the least religious. To assure that we are gullible, those who seek to rule by deception must first be sure that we have difficulty thinking for ourselves, that many of us associate comfort with others telling us what to think and the ability to overlook actual facts when we are told something else is happening. Most of these have been accomplished by the time we leave school. Sadly, those who are least likely to fall for this trickery tend to stay in the system longer, allowing the university system to convince them that their own discipline is based on valid claims while virtually all others are based on fiction. Interesting malaise that provides fertile ground for conspiracy theories, misinterpretations of data and the buying in to talking heads politics and bourgeois values, social norms and beliefs.
I saw a great bumper sticker today that referred to "Obama Care" in a negative way. It made me want to follow the guy home and explain to him that our current health care law was based on a Repuplican bill that is already in place and working in New England. This classic trick is often used in politics. You find something that looks a little like what you want, that has been supported by your opposition, then you co-opt it, make it your own and then break the back of your opposition by showing them that this was their idea in the first place. The recent proliferation of fictitious stories about our commander in chief just prove that many Americans don't understand either the Constitution or election law. All I hope for is for all those trash talking folks to turn their energy into productive work. That alone would do more to affect a recovery than all the billions that we have spent on political solutions to our pressing problems.
When I was young, there were t-shirts, bumper stickers, jewelery and posters that said,"It will be a great day when our schools are fully funded and the army has to hold a bake sale to buy it's next bomber."
In this one respect, nothing has changed.

Where Has All Compassion Gone?

For those of us lucky enough to have studied Buddhism, We realize that the natural state of being of enlightened beings is to live in a state of compassion. As long as men choose to ignore the fact that this is a desirable state, they wed themselves to their ego, and must still bear duality and sacrifice. When we give unconditional love to all, realizing that we are all one kaleidoscopic manifestation of Creator's love, we can begin to see things a bit more clearly. Beyond ego is a place that, once you know of it, you never want to leave. Oneness. A state of being so profound as to defy description.

My Fat Mary story applies here. When I was just a young child, my Dharma was compassion. My natural state was to think of others and act in ways that might serve their happiness and well-being. I felt the best when I did this. I had heard about Fat Mary and had resolved that, when Mom finally let me go down to that "other end of the block", I would stand in league with her and defend her, telling the other kids to be more kind to her and stop calling her that! My big day finally came. I rode my tricycle down to Fat Mary's house, where all the kids had gathered. I rode right up to Mary, positioning myself between her and the other children and said my piece about how mean they were to call her that. Her response was to poo poo me and my silly idea. "My Mom and Dad both call me that and that's my name, so why shouldn't they call me that?"

I had never considered that she might not have known to feel bad about being called fat. Perhaps she had never had anyone care enough about her to realize that they might not say it if they cared. I still always called her Mary, all the while I lived there, but sometimes she didn't answer. I think it put her on edge or something. I remember her stealing my bicycle and using it to run me over once. The girl was way too big for my high-wheeler trike (Well, it was a fast high wheel for me, I wasn't in kindergarten yet.)I wasn't about to tell her she couldn't ride it because she was fat. I told her that I didn't let anyone ride my bike, which was true. She got on anyway, so I grabbed the handlebars from the front, looking right at her. I said stop it, no one but me rides my bike, not even my sister! She just pushed on the pedals, running me over in the process.

When I fell down, I just remember the front wheel coming up between my legs, climbing up my body and off of my shoulder. I think her one foot and a pedal hit me in the cheek. I had no thought of her. I just knew that there had been an extreme injustice perpetrated against me, not my body, but who I was. I truly believed at this delicate age that, a person who tries to befriend someone should never be punished for it. Upon reflection, I thought that she held some sort of animosity toward me for bringing up the subject. On second thought, I figured that more likely she just wanted to ride my bike and that she was strong enough to ride over me if I tried to stop her.

I may never know what went on in Fat Mary's mind, or how, or if it played a part in the dramas of her life. I wonder from time to time, what ever happened to her, if she has found peace. I wish that I had known better words to say. She always seemed nice enough to me.

I pray for her to be blessed. It may sound odd, but I don't wish harm on anyone, just enlightenment. In my time I have seen millions of individual sequences of events that have led to bad feeling, bad blood, violence and dissolution. Most often the primary source is ignorance. That is why I got trained as a teacher, and why I feel the need to continue to learn things every day. Education is the second most expensive thing in the universe, the most expensive is ignorance.

Compassion is free, abundant and I urge everyone to cultivate a plot with Peace, Love and understanding. Once in a great while people will want to fight with you or harm you for their own reasons, but it can have no negative effect on the truly compassionate person. Please remember, often the most important person to forgive is our own self. You might not believe the level of hedonistic pleasure that can be derived from this ultimate selfishness. You may say,"Thinking of others, before yourself is by definition not selfish."

Oddly enough, it is not so. Anyone who thinks so has not yet tried it. The giver always gets back more than they have given. The best teacher always learns much more than their student and the person expressing their self-less Dharma will always benefit more than those that they help along the way. We always hear stories about those who have "saved" someone's life. Frankly, the way many of those people live, their lives were often not worth saving, instead of feeling that they have a second lease on life and going for it, they tend to be eviscerated with guilt,(the old, "Why me?" syndrome.)poisoned by toxic anger and depressive, wracked with torment and self-abuse. When we truly transcend ego, we qualitatively change our lives, miracles become possible and it opens the door to being able to give someone back their own Dharma. That is the best way I know to get a glimpse behind this fictitious "veil of tears" that many confuse with life.

Fraud, Neglect & Crisis Management

Isn't this what we do best in America? By now, I'm sure that most folks know, that there is a mosque proposed for the good people of New York. It happens to be near "Ground Zero". Those that want to bomb it should look the other way, at least until it is finished. When they prove to us that their hate is as strong as the terrorists, we can find them and put them away for a long time. The fraud that the tiny fraction of uneducated New Yorkers are relying on is that the American people, in their urge to look patriotic, will forget that there are as many types and styles of Islam as there are Jewish sects, Christian flavors and Hindu deities. We have nothing against the vast majority of Muslims, in fact we are the country that was founded on free expression of faith. That means "theirs" as well as "ours". Faith is the antithesis of hate but perhaps I will discuss that in another post. Perhaps, in this case, it cuts a little too close to the bone.

Have we forgotten the very premise that our country was founded on? I believe we have and it makes me sick. I cannot abide an educational system that allows bigots to get up in front of children each day and spout hatred and lies, nor one that allows their own self-fulfilling prophesy to keep millions of minorities from getting a leg up on the American Dream. It disgusts me that the Texas Board of "Education" has the power to determine what truths are ignored, glossed over and twisted in textbooks for the entire nation. For far too long, rich white men made all the decisions. As the tables turn, and they become a minority, change will come one way or another. By neglecting our birthright as Americans, or fraudulently claiming it has something to do with "Christian Values", which it most certainly does not, we endanger democracy worldwide. If we can't find our way clear to make our system work in our own country, we better not foist it on another.

Our founding fathers were inspired. They valued Truth, Compassion and the strength that comes from standing together. They knew too well, the problems that would arise if the church gained too much power. Now the Baptists and "Moral Majority" crowd (which by the way are neither moral or a majority) want to stop the "dissolution" of our nation's character, saving it for the saved and returning to fundamental beliefs. Have we not learned anything? Fundament, the root of fundamentalism, means shit. The same fundamentalist beliefs are the basis of tribal law that we hear about in Afghanistan and Pakistan, referred to, I might add, to obfuscate the truth and fuel the fires of hatred for all Muslims. A tiny fraction of the Islamic adherents believe in stoning being the punishment for adultery, just as in our country a tiny fraction believe in an eye for an eye, or vigilante justice. Lies, hate and deception, as far as I can see, are pretty much all that religious leaders have been spewing for millennia. Fraudulent claims about the "end times" are as eternal as the procession of the equinoxes. The more things change, the more they remain the same... Even the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus was plagiarized from earlier cultures, so whatever faith tradition you subscribe to requires belief in one myth or another.

Expecting different outcomes from the same actions is one of the definitions of insanity. In Merry Olde England, the punishment for pickpockets was hanging. Oddly enough, the most likely place to be relieved of one's purse was at the square on hanging day. Redistribution of wealth and the slow rise in standards of living have been the only things that reduced the rate of this sort of theft. With the terrible burden of our current economic hardship falling especially hard on the middle classes, we need to start thinking more pro-actively about where we want to be in the next decade. Waiting for the fundament to hit the fan is unlikely to work out well for anyone. The lower classes have found ways to survive, no matter how harsh the conditions. Now that taxpayers have spent their fair share in funding our nation's recovery, it is time for the non-financial S&P 500 companies to invest their cash on hand in the recovery as well. The amount of cash and liquid assets that they hold is equal to the government's recent bailout, but we are told that even business is having a hard time. Now that is patently untrue. They are holding about $10,000 for every man, woman and child in America, for what, to create jobs after the next election? Are they waiting for the commercial real estate bubble to burst? Do they forget that without jobs or money flowing into the economy, they have nothing to skim for their own profit? I swear, these folks who like to tell us that they are smarter, better educated and more deserving of their positions seem to be the dumbest and most ignorant among us.

Without something to trump up, they are lost. As long as they can afford Harvard for their own children, they could care less about school funding. As long as there is something to get the public whipped into a frenzy about, as long as it doesn't require them to change, they are fine with it. I ask you, when was the last time you confronted truth on the airwaves, or in print? Why do you think the smart money is on continued deception? Where did everyone go who heard John F. Kennedy say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."? They can't all be dead or suffering from Alzheimer's. We need to put a lot more thought into what we are for than what we are against. We need to work for the common good. If that means standing shoulder to shoulder with people who are different, then we must do it. Truth stands alone and needs no support while lies need constant propping up. Caring for another is often the first step toward caring for oneself and being pro-active rather than anti-active is the only way to head off crises before they grow out of control.

Climate Change

Granted, this is what climate does. Change. But is certainly doesn't change at the rate which we have pushed it to. In a myriad of ways, we accelerate the speed at which air moves. over-riding some and perturbing most of the natural flows and cycles that were formerly responsible for climate. Not weather, which we all recognize, but climate, long term trends that lead to ecological regions, ecology and individual niches. Most of our activities speed the air, creating impingement on natural flows and movements of air. Energy laden air tends to move upward, carrying particles with it into higher levels within the atmosphere.

When a house burns, air coming out has six times the volume than when it was at room temperature. Consequently, the weight of the air mass is considerably less, causing the bolus of air to rise, like an invisible balloon. Similarly, the air that flows through our internal combustion engines does the same, expanding greatly and carrying particles up and out in all directions. People may say, "My engine only displaces a small volume of air." which is true until you multiply it by a thousand or more revolutions per minute. I drive a small, efficient auto, getting 50MPG hwy. 45MPG city. I think it has a displacement of 1.2 liters per revolution of the engine. The engine inhales that much about fifteen hundred to twenty two hundred times per minute. That translates to emissions of at least 300 to 440 gallons of air every minute which "wants" to rise up, carrying dust, hazardous chemicals, carbon and debris with it.

Most people have heard of inversions, created when cold dense air lies atop a warmer level, preventing the dirty bolus of air from rising. In this case the energy embedded in the air changes from potential energy to kinetic energy as the upwelling spreads out and creates vortices along the horizontal boundary where the rising air meets much colder, dense air.

We have a winter weather pattern that persists over the Fox Valley in Northeast Wisconsin that is a giant oscillation. During the day, the Bay of Green Bay warms the air above it, and combining with the prevailing winds, slowly carry a contaminated bolus of air out over the Bay. At night, the winds reverse sucking the same air back over the city of Green Bay, the Fox Cities, Lake Winnebago, it's pool lakes and along the Niagra Escarpment beyond Fond du Lac. I have seen this daily cycle go on for over a week, creating a toxic soup of air that contains vast quantities of carbon, dust, debris and toxic compounds. The air is held down by extremely cold dense air. This single interaction between natural cycles and the human factor should prove that we are having a devastating effect on climate. This air, normally would have had a tiny fraction of the carbon added that it has today.Ignoring for a moment the toxic compounds, this thick air that we create actually captures more energy from the sun than it did just a few generations ago. Remember, as well, climate normally operates on a time scale of many many years, perhaps being stable for 1,000 years or more. Think of the 10,000 years that it took after the last glaciation to achieve climax forests that covered Wisconsin in trees. We pretty nearly eliminated forest cover in two generations and have expanded from under one million residents in the entire state, to over one million in just the Fox River Valley.

The combined impacts of our lifestyles have the ability to create catastrophic inversions as well as giant mushroom clouds of warm air from our communities. The destabilization of the atmosphere occurs any time that conditions are not right for inversions. As we burn fossil fuels that took millions of years to form, we release not only all of their stored energy, but hazardous chemicals as well. Because we will burn in hundreds of years, what it took thousands to lay down in the earth's crust, it has an effect equivalent to ten suns, just not all neatly spaced at regular intervals across the planet. Most are focused on cement kilns, cities, industry, mines, agri-business land and transportation corridors. These unevenly heated areas, especially like where I live in the Fox River Valley, give rise to rivers of rising air that act as giant walls of upwelling. If the source is small enough, it will take the form of a single mushroom cloud, but a million people strung out over 100 miles, blend into a giant high pressure ridge that can't help but influence climate in negative ways.

We are causing change. The change is several orders of magnitude greater than the Earth changes by itself. This effect can be documented worldwide, especially in developed and developing nations. It is happening now, so the time to curtail the bad habits we have learned in the last several generations must end. Multiply even a tiny number by a very large number and you will get an immense number. Our nation alone is 1/3 Billion people, using the majority of the Earth's resources. There is enough of everything to sustain us all but there are limits to what we can expect the planet to abide. The greed that it takes to justify the sense of entitlement that we have is the only thing that I can imagine motivating the naysayers. We cannot wait until every ignorant person becomes enlightened. We must act. We must require investment in proven technologies that decrease or carbon footprint. We must not be mislead by massive corporate interests who benefit most from our current trajectory. We must begin to look more critically at our way of life that taxes people around the globe for our opulence and comfort. We certainly can't allow developing nations to make all the same mistakes that we have. Many billions are looking to us for guidance in reaching their own better futures. If we want to remain an influential participant on the world stage, we need to be able to come to terms with the fact that what we tried worked for a while, but it has come back to bite us in the ass. We are dying off at higher rates from more diseases that stem from our affluent lifestyle than ever before. Change is afoot, let's not ignore it until it becomes too late!