Cheaters Don't Need To Pay Attention

In our attempts to make the world more and more idiot resistant we have come up against an unintended consequence. I do believe there are ways to recover from this life out of balance, but it will require some sacrifice and diligence on our part. We have innovated our way into a sophisticated system in which capital is thoroughly divorced from things that matter most, the means of production has sucked up into too few hands and with which we can placate the masses with nothing more than streams of electrons and products that can be produced for pennies and sold for dollars. The cheaters are still in charge of the system and they assure themselves that they will always have the upper hand. Their ace in the hole is that they think that we all need them to fake their way to the top and siphon out the lion's share of the wealth that is created from the sweat of the forgotten man's brow.

I started to realize just how much trouble we were in over thirty years ago. I was tired of the two or three guys who sat behind me cheating (copying from my answers) during tests, so I purposely answered the most ridiculous way I could think of. The teacher, noticing all of our tests were identical, called me aside and asked why I had cheated. I knew her and thought she knew me, so I told her of my ruse. I asked her if I could re-take the test in private and she agreed. When I aced the test, she gave the other boys a passing grade, but let my original test score stand. She told me that had I done my best, those cheaters would have found a way to get the best grade possible, instead, I helped them to fail and that was what was wrong. We are in the same position today. Those who have not paid attention to history or economics, mathematics or science are cheating, just like they did in grade school. The problem is that we let them and the bigger lies they tell, the more insane their logic, the more responsibility we trust them with. The recent addition to the slate of "presidential candidates", from Texas, is an excellent case in point. Never mind the economic and environmental facts, just forge ahead spouting outright lies and the news will cover you as if you are their darling. Now, because their weak minds have been titillated by the digital manifestation of his lies, they will parrot back the falsehoods and claim them to be true.

There are not scientists converting daily to the belief that climate changer is a myth. There is actually no better way to reduce pollution and climate destabilization and raising much needed money than from a carbon tax. It is customary to tax things we do not want more of. Perhaps what is needed is a raving lunatic tax or a bold faced lie tax. The slate of candidates would clean itself up if the tax was high enough.

Hardly a word is said in the public sphere that relates to the fact that a large portion of Northern Japan and the ocean around it will be inhospitable for humans for centuries thanks to splitting atoms for power. Even less is said about the fact that the green light that was originally given to nuclear energy was because of the need for weapons grade material that can only be made in nuclear reactors. The facts about nuclear energy are as chilling now as they have always been, but the cheaters never wanted us to know about the truth. Similarly, those who claim that US reserves of fuel will last for centuries are just dead wrong. To "harvest" the oil shale and tar sands that are touted as our energy salvation will require billions of kiloquads of energy being wasted in the fracking and extraction processes. Making energy this way is akin to carrying water from a well miles away in a bucket with a hole in it.


The banks cheated their way into such a deep hole that we all had to bail them out. Now we can see how willing they are to help us. Car companies as well fought tooth and nail to be allowed to continue doing the wrong thing, yet my car, a 1999 model gets fifty miles to the gallon. My intuition tells me that whenever we determine a necessary path to make the future better that we find no shortage of idiots who make themselves cheerleaders for doing nothing, or worse, continuing down the wrong path at full tilt. The very word "conservative" has been twisted and eviscerated by the religious right, their tea party offspring and the gun-totin' nationalists who claim that our paternalistic government will one day limit their freedoms to bear arms. The well-organized militia part of the constitution may as well not even be there. The cheats, liars and true terrorists only pay attention to things that make their quirky claims seem real.

I have seen little good come of commissions, committees and inquiries, focus groups, advisory councils and working groups so I am usually loathe to recommend them, but in this age of stupid people wresting the tiller of public opinion from their factual underpinnings of truth, justice and The American Way, perhaps it is time to have a sort of truth commission that allows public discourse to stay on topic, reflect the best information available and to prevent the public sphere from being contaminated with hearsay and innuendo. We can make some things up as we go along but the truth is not one of them.

Florida's Cold, California's Rains and East Coast Snow Records Fall Nationwide

The most common argument that folks use against the case for Global Climate Change is that we have only been keeping records about weather and climate for a hundred and fifty years or so. This is only partially true. Ancient literature and artwork may not have been done by meteorologists, but they did depict or detail conditions as far back as recorded history. 17th century prints clearly show the extent of glaciers in Europe, agricultural records from Egypt and Mesopotamia detail both floods and drought. People have always known that the environment directly effects our quality of life and noted the extremes and conditions that were either bucolic or harsh. Since the development of the thermometer we have been able to put numbers to paper that represent conditions, but saying that high blood pressure didn't exist until we had blood pressure cuffs would be an obvious misrepresentation of fact.

The ignorance that fuels the "anti global-warming" crowd would be quaint if it did not jeopardize our children's future quality of life. As we see records fall, in ever more rapid succession and in larger and larger areas, it should give pause and call us to question why. When I studied meteorology as a child, and again in college, prevailing wisdom said that relatively high and low pressure cells alternated with one another. The size of these cells rarely measured more than a few hundred miles across, and the affect of "steering" winds of the jet stream on ground level conditions usually changed on a seasonal frequency. The atmosphere was relatively stable compared to what we see today.

Another myth that the anti-climate change folks cling to is the belief that, "The atmosphere is so vast that human activity couldn't possibly affect it." The weather producing atmosphere, depending on how you measure it is roughly five miles thick. To give a sense of scale, shrink the earth down to the size of an apple. At this scale, the atmosphere would be about as thick as the skin. We can document the "Brown Cloud" that wafts off China. We can see the perma-smog over more and more urban areas. We can document human health effects from fly ash piles that result from burning coal. To say that we couldn't possibly cause change in the atmosphere again flies in the face of fact. Climate destabilization seems to be the rule rather than a series of isolated events.

Dependent as we are on conditions in far away places like Florida and California, it is time that we begin to see the climate as a unifying force in understanding of and commitment to addressing this issue. Rather than just hearing on the news that orange juice or strawberries will be more expensive at the grocery stores, or that vegetables will be more expensive next year, we need to understand our part in throwing climate out of whack. It can be hard to fathom, but imagine giant columns of air rising over the landscape. Heated air, full of particulates and hazardous substances tend to rise. I live along a fifty-mile stretch of urban development. The invisible ridge that develops along the Fox River Valley can often be "seen" on radar, like a mountain range forcing the air up and over the ridge results in higher precipitation and warmer conditions as we continue to burn fuel close to the ground.

In the Winter, we have an added problem when the warm air, full of it's hazardous chemicals tries to dissipate, but encounters very cold dense air in the area. We can plainly see our emissions build up under the "ceiling". worse yet, in winter we often get alternating winds from the Southwest during the daytime hours and from the Northeast at night. As the air moves back and forth over the urban area, the same bolus of air gets filled with more and more particulates and hazardous compounds. When you think of Green Bay, Wisconsin most folks don't think of smog. Each time I get a chance to get out of town, as I come back into the urban area, I see the smog and wonder why I have to be subjected to hazardous air daily. Most urban areas are near river mouths or in river valleys because they were accessible by water when that was the primary transportation method. It was a plus that those locations were somewhat protected from major storms, but the same morphology that protected us in the pre-industrial era acts to hold in the toxins that we spew today.

I come down on the side of independent thought, looking at facts and making up my own mind on these issues. The commitment that I have made to living a conservative lifestyle is based on the research that I have done, not the catch phrases of any organization or movement. Back in the day, someone coined the idea of "thinking globally but acting locally". It is my firm belief that this is an impossible task, designed to inspire inaction rather than change. I like the opposite concept. Think and act locally. When we look closely enough at our local environment, we can see the heavy hand of man and the destructive capacity of ignorant actions. When we walk more, talk to our neighbors more and plant more of the food that sustains us in our own yards, we can live better for less, saving money and impacting the environment far less than if we rely on others to provide our every need. When we discover the art of pre-cycling, (choosing to purchase products that can be repaired, reused or recycled rather than ones that need to be discarded after a single use.) understand the joys of walking and riding bike, learn to cultivate the soil rather than hate the dirt we walk on, and learn to live in harmony with the planet rather than fearing it, we can make positive changes on scales that are unimaginable. While thinking globally might sound nice in a sound bite, it has stifled change rather than facilitating it. Future generations will depend on having clean air, water and healthy food and soil. The way most of us are living our lives has degraded the quality of all of these resources. That is why I prefer to call "resources" gifts of Creator. We have been given Eden, but we have transformed it into the world that we see reported on the news nightly. The good news is that infinitesimally small changes implemented by the billions of earth's residents have the power to create miraculous changes virtually overnight.

If we made just one resolution for the coming year, to live as if the Earth mattered, considering the next seven generations as the Native Americans called it, the change that would flow from that one change would reverse the trends toward global catastrophe. Gaia has the power to heal herself, we just need to decide whether our species will help to recreate Eden and be around to enjoy it once it has been reestablished, or whether we will fall into the group of organisms who will never exist on the planet again. Extinction is truly forever. When we begin to live as if the Earth matters, it unleashes abundance unimaginable to those who remain under the bondage of "survival of the fittest" thinking. When I realized that survival of the luckiest is the actual fact, it allowed me to rethink many of the other lies that have been perpetrated in defense of the Power and Control model. The good old boys are on the ropes, what is needed is for us to stop beating a dead horse. Walk away from the fight, and put our energies into creating the New world Order that allows competitive and short sighted power mongers no quarter. Their "reality" is flawed and we can find myriad examples of cooperative systems that affirm life rather than tearing it down. Like Ghandi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

Northeast Wisconsin Apples Beyond Ready for Picking

Earlier this summer, I was flabbergasted when the broccoli bolted two weeks ahead of time, before we even had a chance to enjoy it. I was amazed that, even before the first bloom normally hits the day lilies, they had faded and their bloom spikes had browned off. I was amazed at how early everything was happening in the gardens. I had to tie up the asters, the peonies and daisies about two weeks early, mostly because of the record breaking rain. I saw my first pile of deer apples on the curb today. Fall still seems far away, but the harvest is definitely coming in early. I don't know how much more destabilized the global climate will have to get before we realize that mankind is acting like a bull in a china shop.

My first seven years or so were spent in Southern Illinois, as well as seven summers after that. The summertime heat and humidity that we had there in the sixties and seventies is here in Green Bay now. People tend not to notice trends that occur on this scale, but the weathermen will tell you a tiny bit about what is going on, as much as they might deny it, fact is that when a series of records that were set over 100 years ago fall in a period of weeks, something big is going on. When records across several different parameters are set, that is even more of an indication that something is up with our climate. This summer we set a three-month precipitation record where I am from. Simultaneously, there was that issue of it being the hottest summer on record as well. The last major storm that passed by included hail and high winds, but the airport, which is outside the city, on the windward side received just under three inches of rain in the short three hours that the storm took to dump on us. I live within a mile or two of center city and our rain gauge captured seven and three sixteenths inches! I'm almost certain that if you were keeping records here that would have beaten any and all storms, ever.

Living lightly on the planet requires a weaning off of fossil fuel, we know that, but the insidiousness of fossil fuel use is that it creeps into nearly every purchase we make. Think about the truck driver bringing food from California, Florida or Texas, the only way to stop that fuel from being burned is to buy local produce, ultra local. In my case, I choose to buy seed and just walk the food into the kitchen. Even the water we use is most often brought to us through pumping, again using coal energy turned into electricity. Rain barrels have allowed me to significantly reduce my water use and still keep my garden productive through dry spells. Even the packaging on most items has the blessing and curse of fossil fuel use upon it. Buying unpackaged items as opposed to packaged ones can cut petrochemical and fossil fuel use by up to 60%.

For a little perspective, the fossil fuels (Carbon)that nature took millions of years to lay down and store (sequester)are being consumed by our modern culture at a rate that will be on the order of hundreds of years. All of it, the Coal, oil and natural gas have stored solar energy, conveniently yes, but we cannot sustain the planet and use it all up. We need to step across the threshold that confronts us now. We need to use the sunlight that hits the earth today, or that which hit the earth yesterday, The Sun and the Wind have the potential to power everything we do now, in a more benign way, the challenge for us now is to put them to use as quickly and efficiently as possible. corporate interests will fight like there is no tomorrow, but when the people come together on this issue, they will have no choice. The fossil fuel industries have been the most profitable undertakings that humans have ever participated in, bar none. Asking, begging or cajoling corporate interests to walk away from them will not be easy. Human beings with conscience must stand shoulder to shoulder and demand that practices change. We have come to a place that is full of danger and risk for our children and life as we know it, we cannot stand idly by and fail to reclaim our right to a cleaner. safer and more sustainable way of life. The future is now and there are apples to pick, almost a month early!

Good Bye Oz, There's No Place Like Home

When our perception of perfection is warped by Disney and the future that we have been led to believe in consists of everything being made of either stainless steel or chrome, it becomes harder and harder to sell a vision of human proportions and meeting the needs of more people with less negative impact on the planet. The tenets of those who believe in Servoglobe, a land of hyper futuristic elegance, technodrome, immaculately planned urban oasies without smog or smoke and Emerald Cities upon Emerald Cities at regular intervals across the vast plane of Eden-like silvaculture, and punctuated by hundred story greenhouses full of aquaculture and hydroponic veggies, require us all to participate in a culture that cannot be created through any of the social systems that we have available to us.

To make their visions come true, we will need to cooperate rather than compete, give unconditionally and truly love one another. Considering recent trends this seems highly unlikely. Not to be a naysayer, hey, I'm for peace love and understanding as much as the next guy. However, I cannot foresee a time or place that relegates cities of today to the waste bin of history. I cannot fathom who might finance these crystal cities that are efficient and clean. The guys with all the money are dirty to the core. Coal, oil, gas and all the infrastructural tools and materials are born in the heart of a beast. The beast of fossil fuel exploitation, corporate welfare, incalculable throughput and externalities that bite us all in the proverbial hinder.

Getting things right involves several critical steps toward enlightenment that may just win the day. Women reclaiming their power and the corresponding rebirth of the
Goddess will be a great first step. Doing this in a culture that virtually worships Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga will be a bit like finding a needle in a haystack the size of The Moon, without using a magnet. we can however make inroads to this end by teaching our young girls that they are worthy of love, respect and admiration simply for being themselves, not for being what they think men want. I recently came across a great list of things that only women can do and it made me think, how is it that men have bamboozled everyone into thinking that they should be in charge of our world and that they are worth more per hour than their female counterparts.

I place my bets on a different sort of future, one that is real and rough around the edges. One that adapts to environment rather than subjugating it further. Evey home that I have owned got what I call my home energy makeover. It involves upgrading basic services to be both energy efficient and conservative in as many ways as possible. Each home that I have owned used between thirty and fifty percent less energy and resources when I sold it than it did when I bought it. The savings would be even more dramatic if I were not living right at the poverty line. We need to turn our imaginations and reverence back to the Sun. If we could just teach the "majority" that the Christ myth was plagiarized from previous cultures, pointing out the fact that the Christ child is just a stand-in for the Sun, perhaps we could dispose of all the baggage that comes from the Christian religions. Politics aside, there are very few reasons for the myth to continue. I'm sure the time will come when we will understand the heinous beliefs that spawned the Christian sects, but for now we just need to realize that they were imposed on all of our pagan ancestors. It is our birthright to reconnect with all of our gods and godesses, to feel them in our lives and to recognize them in the cleft of a ridge, or the forking streams that lead to high ground.

The yellow brick road leads to Oz on one end, and Munchkin Land on the other, but to truly learn, grow, and progress we need to take what the Munchkins and Oz can teach us and make it real in our lives. We all have the power of innocence that we can wield against our oppressors. Some will, in their own way use their intellect to question the obvious holes in the logic of capitalists and "consumers" We are all capable of loving one another, doing not only what may be deemed right or good but what is best. In my vision of the future, human needs will be met by humans, not robots or gleaming structures. We will still need to warm food, gather at the hearth for warmth, comfort and find a place in our community, active and participating. Transforming culture may be the hardest work we will ever do, but we are currently unable to understand the benefits that will flow from changing a basic premise that our current culture is based on, that is the theory of lack. In truth, nature is endlessly abundant if we just learn how to see it. As long as we perpetrate our human understanding on all that we see, instead of being open to the wonder of it all, we will continue to constrain reality into an unreal facsimile loosely based on the real thing.