Ramblin' with Roger

P is for protecting the environment

“The technology to implement 100% renewables already exists.”

With all the bad ecological news – As Antarctic Melting Accelerates, Worst-Case Scenarios May Come True – it’s good to look for something positive in terms of protecting the environment.

I received a bulk email from Bill McKibben last week. McKibben is author, educator, environmentalist, and Co-founder of the non-profit organization 350.org, whose goal is to build “the global grassroots climate movement that can hold our leaders accountable to science and justice.”

The numerical reference is this: the organization encouraging citizens to publicize the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in order to pressure world leaders to address climate change and to reduce CO2 levels from 400 parts per million to 350 parts per million.

McKibben writes: “The world cannot afford to continue to rely on fossil fuels. Scientists now tell us that at current rates, within a decade we’ll likely have put enough carbon in the atmosphere to warm the earth past the Paris climate targets. We are running out of time.

“However, we also now know what we can do, and we’re increasingly certain it can be done: We have to switch off coal, oil, and gas, and switch on 100% water, wind, and sun.

“Cities and states around America are already moving towards this goal. Countries around the world are outpacing us: transport in the Netherlands is run increasingly on wind power, Santiago’s train system will run entirely on solar power soon, China can power provinces the size of Texas for a week straight.

“The technology to implement 100% renewables already exists and we have public opinion on our side. A majority of Americans favor government action to increase the development of renewable energy.

“Corporate interests and politics stand in our way. I know we can overcome them. We must.

“Learn more about this fight for 100% Renewables by reading my article.” Which you should.
***
Download Climate 101: Renewable Energy
***
Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles
***
Flipping the Script on Fossil Fuels
***
TECH RECYCLING CENTERS in the US. Did you know that recycling one million laptops saves the energy equivalent to the electricity used by 3,657 U.S. homes in a year according to the EPA?
***
Learn about the steps to become a Smithsonian Gardens Green Ambassador
***
From Tuck Sleep: What Do “Green” Certifications Really Mean? and Eco-Friendly Alternatives To Throwing A Mattress Away

For ABC Wednesday

P is for poverty: being poor is expensive

Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Having experienced it occasionally myself, I know that being poor is expensive. But poverty is not the result of a lack of character. Although one might think so: ‘They used to be servants.’ Minimum wage-hating restaurateur rants about his “greedy” employees.

Cash bail reform has gotten some traction because communities understand that bail is not about justice or safety, but wealth and poverty. “Right now, a person charged with a crime can either pay bail and live free until they stand trial or, if they cannot afford it, be jailed until their trial date. Folks with money pay bail while poor folks get jail. And those in jail are far more likely to take pleas deals instead watching the rest of their lives (and finances) fall apart while they wait for a trial.”

Some neighborhoods are now being targeted with new predatory loan offerings, a lawsuit argues. This is the story of that lawsuit, and of the rent-to-own universe in general.

The student loan sharks who prey on veterans and single moms have a friend in Trump’s education secretary, millionaire Betsy DeVos.

It can be a terrible spiral: Oregon woman evicted from senior housing for $328 in late rent freezes to death in parking garage.

The current Federal Communications Commission chair, Ajit Pai, has threatened to cut the Lifeline program, which helps 12.5 million low-income people access internet or phone service.

The regime is considering drug testing plan for food stamp recipients, which has always cost more to administer than the intended savings.

National Public Radio discussed Virginia Eubanks’ book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor.

Kathy Sheehan, who was re-elected mayor of Albany in November 2017, spoke at my church on March 4 about her equality agenda, including the City of Albany Poverty Reduction Initiative (CAPRI) program. Here is the New York State anti-poverty initiative.

Who Do Tax Breaks Benefit? Take a guess. The Weekly Sift guy understands: My taxes are half what I’d pay if I just made wages.

I’ve seen numerous GoFundMe campaigns after people went through extended disaster that have damaged homes, serious illness or injury not covered by insurance. A decade ago, there was a Harvard study that showed that 43,000 Americans were dying each year because they had no health insurance. And we may be heading back in that direction.

As bad as it is in the United States, it’s far worse in developing nations. On the March 21 Daily Show with Trevor Noah Matt Damon and Gary White from water.org discussed how easier access to water transformed people’s lives with the gift of time.

This a global phenomenon: If this goes on… The 1% will own two thirds of the world by 2030, based on the House of Commons Library’s published research projecting the post-2008 growth of inequality.

For ABC Wednesday

Earth Day: the EPA is all but dead

…an increasing sense that their overseers are deeply partisan and ignorant of the issues

The fight to save the EPA – “With environmental regulations under attack and EPA budgets being slashed, can the destruction of the agency be prevented?” As a practical matter, no.

Last year, Fortune did a story about the US before EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency was created under Republican President Richard Nixon in December 1970, months after the first Earth Day.

Under this regime, however, data has been buried, altered, silenced. “Across agency websites [not just EPA’s], documents have disappeared, web pages have vanished and language has shifted in ways that appear to reflect the policies of the new administration.” I am told that staff have been directed to change the titles of some reports so nobody could find them or ask for the correct document, an underhanded ploy to render them un-FOIA-able.

The agency is poised to scrap fuel economy targets that are key to curbing global warming. “The EPA is [stupidly] expected to announce… that it will scrap mileage targets the Obama administration drafted in tandem with California that aim to boost average fuel economy for passenger cars and SUVs… undermining one of the world’s most aggressive programs to confront climate change.”

Most sinister, and somewhat complicated to explain, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is using ‘weaponized transparency’ to destroy public health and block the use of science.

“How could ‘more transparency’ actually mean less information and worse decisions? Many of the studies that the EPA and other agencies [conduct] that address the health and safety of Americans depend on [and] require access to health records. Those health records can be used only if the information is kept carefully anonymous and if some parts of the information are shielded from public scrutiny. Many of these studies include agreements that portions of the data will not be released to the public. Otherwise, these studies risk revealing private information about the health and activities of individuals.

“Under the new proposed guidelines, many of these studies would be either forced to violate privacy rules, or their data could not be used. By filtering this information out, Pruitt hopes to make EPA decisions without being confronted with information that would counter his desire to allow companies to release unlimited toxins.”

So why are Scott Pruitt and other Cabinet-level heads creating a work environment in which employees at agencies say they have seen their core missions changed or even demolished overnight? Some “described living in constant fear that… budget proposals would end in them being laid off en masse. And given the constantly mercurial state of … policies changing at the drop of a hat, leadership hired and fired on a whim, political appointees undermining existing management, and an increasing sense that their overseers are deeply partisan and ignorant of the issues—their workplace environment has reportedly grown worse than toxic.”

It’s because Scott Pruitt says he’s doing God’s work by ignoring climate change and repealing Clean Power Act. Or just maybe it’s that Pruitt has been living in an energy lobbyist’s condo since he moved to D.C. The current challenges to his tenure brings me little comfort, considering the damage already done.

In any case, the United States pulling out of the Paris Accord while the Arctic is melting down and the Antarctic food chain is breaking seems counter-intuitive. Stop blaming ‘both sides’ for America’s climate failures.

We’re going to have to rely on other countries, the states, business, non-governmental organizations, and ourselves to carry on the fight because the current EPA appears to be fighting for environmental perfidy.

Note: similar topic, more optimism in a couple days.

Music throwback: Magnet and Steel

“I happened to be behind a metal flake blue Continental with ground effects and a diamond window in back.”

Blasting from someone’s car radio last summer, I heard the familiar strains of Magnet and Steel by Walter Egan, a song from his Not Shy album. It reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 (US) and #9 in Canada. “It spent 22 weeks on the American charts.” It was featured in the movies Boogie Nights (1997), Overnight Delivery (1998) and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999).

I’m a sucker for tracks that serve as the title of the album but only via the lyrics. For instance, the Nirvana album Nevermind contains the hit Smells Like Teen Spirit, which features the word Nevermind.”

Likewise, Magnet and Steel has the lyric:
With you I’m not shy, to show the way I feel
With you I might try, my secrets to reveal
For you are a magnet and I am steel…

As is true of a lot of Fleetwood Mac-related songs, this has a complex story. From Songfacts, Egan explains:

“In 1976 I was living in Pomona, California and I had a notion to write a song with the ‘stroll’ beat… and so began the rough outline of what was tentatively called ‘Don’t Turn Away Now.’ Now, this was also at the time of putting together my first album, Fundamental Roll, and my two new friends and producers, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and I were starting the recording process.

“On the night when Stevie did the background vocals for my song ‘Tunnel o’ Love,’ my nascent amorous feelings toward her came into a sharper focus – I was smitten by the kitten, as they say. It was on my drive home at 3 AM from Van Nuys to Pomona that I happened to be behind a metal flake blue Continental with ground effects and a diamond window in back. I was inspired by the car’s license plate: “Not Shy.”

“By the time I pulled into my driveway I had formulated the lyrics and come up with the magnet metaphor. From there the song was finished in 15 minutes.

Egan and Nicks dated briefly when Nicks and Buckingham had broken up.

“It was especially satisfying to have Stevie sing on ‘Magnet,’ since it was about her (and me).”

Listen to Magnet and Steel:

Walter Egan here or here

Matthew Sweet here with Buckingham on guitar

Third World here

Columbine plus 19 – school walkout

They’d rather go to class than get shot.

There were school shootings before April 20, 1999, when two high school students opened fire at Columbine High School in Colorado, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20.

In 1927, the Bath School disaster in Michigan took place, when 38 elementary schoolchildren and six adults were killed by Andrew Kehoe, the 55-year-old school board treasurer.

The University of Texas tower shooting in 1966, which I wrote about in this blog, as one of the earliest events of pure horror I remember quite vividly. Yes, there was the JFK assassination in 1963, but that was one man killed, and another wounded. This saw 13 dead and 31 wounded before police killed Charles Whitman.

It wasn’t until Columbine that there were double digit fatalities again. It was followed by Virginia Tech April 16, 2007, with 32 killed, 17 wounded. At Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, December 2012, 26 plus the shooter ended up dead, including 20 young children, with two wounded. And that doesn’t count the many “lesser” horrors.

It’s the Parkland High School survivors who have mourned the 17 dead, and want to support the 17 physically wounded, and a far greater number wounded emotionally, who have changed the narrative from “thoughts and prayers.”

Today, on the 19th anniversary of Columbine, students will walk out of classrooms in an estimated 2600 schools across the United States to protest for gun reform. The organizers for the National School Walkout intend to call attention to the broken promise of “never again,” yet the mass shootings continue.

Students are encouraged to leave their classrooms and gather at 10 a.m. to hold a moment of silence for the victims of gun violence, setting aside 13 seconds to honor those killed at Columbine.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve read pieces suggesting that the students are partying under the guise of protest. I’ve even seen articles that equate the action with the unofficial cannabis holiday today, that the kids are just slackers that would rather get out of math than go to school.

It is the incorrect pairing. They’d rather go to class than get shot. Some action, notably in Florida, has taken place, but more needs to be done.