How to Avoid Oil Wars, Terrorism, and Economic Collapse
By now most well-informed people are aware that global oil production may soon reach its all-time peak, and that the consequences will likely be severe.
Already many important oil-producing nations (such as the United States, Indonesia, and Iran) and some whole regions (such as the North Sea) are past their production maximums. With nearly every passing year another country reaches a production plateau or begins its terminal decline.
Meanwhile global rates of oil discovery have been falling since the early 1960s, as has been confirmed by ExxonMobil. All of the 100 or so supergiant fields that are collectively responsible for about half of current world production were discovered in the 1940s, '50s, '60s, and '70s. No fields of comparable size have been found since then; instead, exploration during recent years has turned up only much smaller fields that deplete relatively quickly. The result is that today only one new barrel of oil is being discovered for every four that are extracted and used.
World leaders are hampered in their ability to assess the situation by a lack of consistent data. Proven petroleum reserve figures look reassuring: the world has roughly a trillion barrels yet to produce, perhaps more; indeed, official reserves figures have never been higher. However, circumstantial evidence suggests that some of the largest producing nations have inflated their reserves figures for political reasons. Meanwhile oil companies routinely (and legitimately) report reserve growth for fields discovered decades ago. In addition, reserves figures are often muddied by the inclusion of non-conventional petroleum resources, such oil sands - which do need to be taken into account, but in a separate category, as their rates of extraction are limited by factors different from those that constrain the production of conventional crude. As a consequence of all of these practices, oil reserves data tend to give an impression of expansion and plenty, while discovery and depletion data do the opposite.
This apparent conflict in the data invites dispute among experts as to when the global oil peak is likely to occur. Some analysts say that the world is virtually at its peak of production now; others contend that the event can be delayed for two decades or more through enhanced investment in exploration, the adoption of new extraction technologies, and the substitution of non-conventional petroleum sources (oil sands, natural gas condensates, and heavy oil) for conventional crude.
However, there is little or no disagreement that a series of production peaks is now within sight - first, for conventional non-OPEC oil; then for conventional oil globally; and finally for all global conventional and non-conventional petroleum sources combined.
Moreover, even though there may be dispute as to the timing of these events, it is becoming widely acknowledged that the world peak in all combined petroleum sources will have significant global economic consequences. Mitigation efforts will require many years of work and trillions of dollars in investment. Even if optimistic forecasts of the timing of the global production peak turn out to be accurate, the world is facing an historic change that is unprecedented in scope and depth of impact.
Due to systemic dependence on oil for transportation, agriculture, and the production of plastics and chemicals, every sector of every society will be affected. Efforts will be needed to create alternative sources of energy, to reduce demand for oil through heightened energy efficiency, and to redesign entire systems (including cities) to operate with less petroleum.
These efforts will be challenging enough in the context of a stable economic environment. However, if prices for oil become extremely volatile, mitigation programs could be undermined. While high but stable prices would encourage conservation and investment in alternatives, prices that repeatedly skyrocket and then plummet could devastate entire economies and discourage long-term investment. Actual shortages of oil - of which price shocks would be only a symptom - would be even more devastating. The worst impacts would be suffered by those nations, and those aspects of national economies, that could not obtain oil at any price affordable to them. Supply interruptions would likely occur with greater frequency and for increasing lengths of time as global oil production gradually waned.
Efforts to plan a long-term energy transition would be frustrated, in both importing and exporting countries. Meanwhile the perception among importers that exporting nations were profiteering would foment animosities and an escalating likelihood of international conflict.
In short, the global peak in oil production is likely to lead to economic chaos and extreme geopolitical tensions, raising the spectres of war, revolution, terrorism, and even famine, unless nations adopt some method of cooperatively reducing their reliance on oil.
A Plan for Global Powerdown
The Oil Depletion Protocol provides a way forward (the text appears at the end of this article). It was drafted by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil; however, the source of the document is of little importance - only its substance is of interest. While it is merely a suggested outline and will require fleshing out and detailed negotiation, the Protocol is inherently simple. As will be clear from the Discussion below, it would be unnecessary for all nations to ratify the Protocol in order for it to have a beneficial effect; if even one nation adopts it, that nation will be benefited. However, if a substantial number of nations sign on this will create a platform for international economic stability and cooperation.
The Protocol will be presented at several important international conferences attended by world leaders in late 2005. Efforts will also be made to publicize and communicate it to the general public. It is hoped that a few courageous politicians in each country will understand its importance and bring it before their governing bodies for consideration and adoption.
How Would It Work?
The idea of the Protocol is inherently straightforward: oil importing nations would agree to reduce their imports by an agreed-upon yearly percentage (the World Oil Depletion Rate), while exporting countries would agree to reduce their rate of exports by their national Depletion Rate.
The concept of the Depletion Rate is perhaps the most challenging technical aspect of the Protocol, yet even it is easy to grasp given a little thought. Clearly, each country has a finite endowment of oil from nature; thus, when the first barrel has been extracted, there is accordingly one less left for the future. What is left for the future consists of two elements: first, how much remains in known oilfields, termed Remaining Reserves; and second, how much remains to be found in the future (termed Yet-to-Find). How much is Yet-to-Find may be reasonably estimated by extrapolating the discovery trend of the past. The Depletion Rate equals the total yet-to-produce divided by the yearly amount currently being extracted.
Let us explore a few examples:
Norway is a country that reports exceptionally accurate reserve estimates. The total produced to-date is 18.5 billion barrels (Gb), and 11.3 Gb remain in known fields, with about 2 left to find, giving a rounded total of 32 Gb. It follows that 13.5 Gb are left to produce. In 2004, 1.07 Gb were extracted, giving a Depletion Rate of 7.4 percent (1.07/13.5). This is a comparatively high rate, typical of an offshore environment.
In the case of the US (considering only the lower 48 states and excluding deepwater), the corresponding numbers are: produced to-date, 173 Gb; Remaining Reserves, 24 Gb; Yet-to-Find, 2 Gb - meaning that there are 27 Gb left. Annual production in 2004 was 1.3 Gb, giving a Depletion Rate of 4.6 percent (1.3/27).
For the world as a whole, 944 Gb have been produced; 772 remain in known fields; and an estimated 134 Gb is Yet-to-Find, meaning that 906 Gb are left. Production of conventional oil in 2004 was 24 Gb, so the Depletion Rate is 2.59 percent (24/906).
These estimates exclude non-conventional oil - oil shales, bitumen (oil sands), extra-heavy oil, heavy oil, deepwater oil, polar oil, and liquids from gasfield plants. Most oil produced to date has been of the conventional variety, which will dominate all supply far into the future, so it makes sense to concentrate on this category.
It must be stressed that current Reserves estimates in the public domain are grossly unreliable, and one of the purposes of the Protocol is to secure better information. The assessed Depletion Rate for each country, and eventually for the World as whole, is subject to revision when better information becomes available, but the resulting correction of the Depletion Rate will not be large, probably causing it to vary by less than one percent.
The Depletion Protocol would require importers to reduce their imports by the World Depletion Rate (i.e., 2.5 percent) each year in order to put demand into balance with world supply. As stated earlier, exporters would reduce their production according to their national Depletion Rate. Thus Norway would reduce its production by 7.4 percent each year (that country's production is already declining at an even higher rate).
The imposition on the producing countries represents no great burden, since few can now increase their rate of production in any case, and many are experiencing declining production for purely geological reasons, as is the case with Norway and the US. Agreeing to produce less oil would not inhibit exploration because new finds would lower the national Depletion Rate, and thus permit a higher rate of export than would otherwise be the case. The main thrust of the Protocol would be to require importers to cut imports, but the inclusion of producers in the provisions would stimulate greater cooperation between the two factions. Any indigenous production in a country that was a net importer would not be likely to provide that country with an unfair advantage, as production within most importing countries is already declining at a rate higher than the World Depletion Rate.
How importers dealt internally with the import restriction would be up to them (though strategies both to obtain supplies of alternative fuels and to reduce demand for oil would doubtless be required). Some might wish to introduce an energy allowance as a form of tradable ration (as will be discussed in more detail below).
Discussion of the Protocol
Questions and Possible Objections
The Protocol may at first look like merely a good idea with no real chance of implementation. However, closer inspection suggests that its implementation will benefit nearly all important global stakeholders and that objections likely to be raised to it are easily countered.
What if forecasts of a near-term peak in global oil production are wrong? Won't there be a cost to preparing for the oil peak too early? In practical terms, won't this mean voluntarily choking off economic growth?
Because so much is at stake, it is important that these vital questions be addressed not just by partisan participants in the debate over the timing of the oil-production peak (the so-called "oil optimists" and the "oil pessimists"); some independent assessment is required of the costs of preparing too soon versus the costs of preparing too late.
Fortunately, such an assessment has already been undertaken - "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management," a Report prepared by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for the US Department of Energy, released in February 2005, and authored principally by Robert L. Hirsch (hereinafter referred to as "the SAIC Report").
The SAIC Report concludes that substantial mitigation of the economic, social, and political impacts of Peak Oil can come only from efforts both to increase energy supplies from alternative sources and to reduce demand for oil. With regard to the claim that efficiency measures will be enough to forestall dire impacts, Hirsch et al. note that, "While greater end-use efficiency is essential, increased efficiency alone will be neither sufficient nor timely enough to solve the problem. Production of large amounts of substitute liquid fuels will be required." Further, "Mitigation will require a minimum of a decade of intense, expensive effort, because the scale of liquid fuels mitigation is inherently extremely large." Hirsch, et al., also point out that "The problems associated with world oil production peaking will not be temporary, and past 'energy crisis' experience will provide relatively little guidance."
The SAIC Report agrees that mitigation efforts undertaken too soon would exact a cost on society. However, it concludes that, "If peaking is imminent, failure to initiate timely mitigation could be extremely damaging. Prudent risk management requires the planning and implementation of mitigation well before peaking. Early mitigation will almost certainly be less expensive than delayed mitigation."
What if the pessimists are right and the world is at its peak of oil production now? In that case, is it too late to implement the Depletion Protocol?
If the world reaches the peak of production within the next two years there will be too little time to undertake major mitigation efforts prior to the event, and therefore there are likely to be severe economic, social, and political impacts, as outlined in the SAIC Report.
However, in that case the need for the Protocol should quickly and widely become apparent. While all nations will suffer from higher prices and shortages, only a cooperative system of national and international quotas will avert the even more extreme economic and geopolitical crises that would otherwise ensue.
Why can't the market take care of the problem? Won't high prices stimulate more exploration and the development of alternatives? Wouldn't interference with market mechanisms be harmful?
The SAIC Report's authors dismiss the claim that the market will solve any shortage problems arising from global oil production peak, with higher oil prices stimulating investments in alternative energy sources, more efficient cars, and so on. Price signals warn only of immediate scarcity. However, the mitigation efforts needed in order to prepare for the global oil production peak and thus to head off shortages and price spikes must be undertaken many years in advance of the event. Hirsch, et al., maintain that, "Intervention by governments will be required, because the economic and social implications of oil peaking would otherwise be chaotic. The experiences of the 1970s and 1980s offer important guides as to government actions that are desirable and those that are undesirable, but the process will not be easy."
Historically, oil production has often been managed by governments or by cartels. In petroleum's early days, free-market boom-and-bust cycles bankrupted many players (including the "father" of the oil industry, Edwin Drake). Soon John D. Rockefeller brought a certain order to the situation through the creation of the Standard Oil Trust (in doing so he squeezed out many competitors and personally profited to an extraordinary degree). This regime came to an end in 1911, when the US Government broke up Standard Oil after prosecution for violation of anti-trust laws. Starting in the 1930s, with the US in position to control global oil prices, the Texas Railroad Commission capped production levels in order to stabilize the market. After US oil production peaked in 1971 and that nation lost its ability to control global prices, petroleum's center of gravity shifted to the Middle East, and OPEC began mandating production quotas for its members in order to keep prices within a desirable band.
While the management of oil prices globally thus has precedents, the situation in the future will be fundamentally different than heretofore, in that previously the problem was too much oil and collapsing prices that offered little incentive for exploration. The situation the world will soon face is that of insufficient supply leading to extreme price shocks, price volatility, and acute shortages. Thus a new kind of management scheme will be required.
How will adoption of the Protocol affect importers and exporters differently?
Importers: No one doubts that industrial nations will find it difficult to sustain economic growth while using less oil on a yearly basis. Thus the voluntary adoption of the Protocol by importers would seem disadvantageous - a "tough sell."
However, it must be recognized that a decline in the availability of oil is inevitable in any case; only the timing of the onset of decline is uncertain. Without a structured agreement in place to limit imports, nations will be inclined to put off preparations for the energy transition until prices soar, at which time such a transition will become far more difficult because of the ensuing chaotic economic conditions. With the Protocol in place, importers will be able to count on stable prices and can then more easily undertake the difficult but necessary process of planning for a future with less oil.
Poor importing countries may object that by using less petroleum they will have to forego conventional economic development. However, further development that is based on the use of petroleum will merely create structural dependency on a depleting resource. Without the Protocol, these nations will be financially bled by high and volatile prices. With the Protocol in place and with prices stabilized, these nations will be able to afford to import the oil they absolutely need; meanwhile they will have every incentive to develop their economies in a way that is not petroleum-dependent.
Exporters: Economies that are based primarily on income from the extraction and export of natural resources often tend to give rise to governments that are more responsive to the interests of powerful foreign resource buyers than they are to the needs of their own citizens. Thus it is in the interest of resource-exporting countries to develop indigenous industries in order to diversify their economies.
Countries that depend primarily on income from oil exports will need to wean themselves from this dependence eventually in any case, as their oilfields are depleted; the Protocol provides them a means of making the transition in a way that will allow for long-term planning.
Without the Protocol, smaller exporting nations will likely be at the mercy of militarily powerful importers. The Protocol will provide a means of minimizing external political interference in these nations' affairs. As a result, much international tension and conflict, including the threat of terrorism, can be minimized - which will be a help also to the wealthy importers.
How will the oil companies be affected?
Without the Protocol, the oil companies may enjoy record revenues - for a time. But they will be demonized for profiting from the misery of the rest of society; meanwhile, they will be hampered in their operations by the destabilization of national economies resulting from wildly gyrating oil prices. As noted earlier, the Standard Oil Trust, the Texas Railroad Commission, and OPEC all provided production-rationing mechanisms that brought order out of what would otherwise have been chaotic situations. The oil companies (sometimes reluctantly) accepted these mechanisms, recognizing that a stable economic environment was more important to them in the long run than the opportunity to make momentary windfall profits.
With the Protocol, the oil companies will remain profitable, they will have the incentive to undertake further exploration, and they will be able to plan for decades ahead. They will also be motivated to become more generalized energy companies (rather than remaining merely oil companies) and thus to invest in the development of alternative energy sources.
There is already evidence that the oil companies are concerned about a public backlash as gasoline prices soar: ChevronTexaco has initiated an expensive public-relations campaign titled "Will You Join Us?", featuring a web site (www.willyoujoinus.com) and expensive newspaper ads informing readers that "the era of easy oil is over" and asking for public discussion on the issue. The Oil Depletion Protocol will provide more long-term security for the petroleum industry than any PR campaign ever could, and at no cost.
Won't both importers and exporters be tempted to cheat? How would the Protocol be enforced?
The Protocol will require a system for monitoring production, exports, and imports - which cannot be hidden to a large degree in any case. Enforcement will require the establishment of a Secretariat for adjudication of disputes and claims, and a system of economic penalties to be negotiated by the agreeing nations.
How can nations adjust internally to having less oil?
Withdrawal from oil dependency will be an immense challenge that will require cooperation and compromise on everyone's part. Efforts will be needed both to create supplies of alternative fuels and to reduce the demand for oil.
The latter task will be much easier if systems are designed to make it in individuals' interest not only to reduce their own oil dependency but also to persuade others to reduce theirs. One such system for creating collective motivation and cooperation consists of Domestic Tradable Quotas, or DTQs.
DTQs can be used to ration all hydrocarbon energy sources (in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) or specific fuels such as oil. For the sake of discussion, let us assume the use of DTQs for petroleum only, as a way of implementing the Depletion Protocol within nations.
First, a national Petroleum Budget would be drawn up, based on the nation's indigenous production and oil imports as mandated by the Oil Depletion Protocol. A segment of the Petroleum Budget would then be issued as an unconditional entitlement to all adults and divided equally among them; the remainder would be auctioned to industry, commercial users, and government. The units could then be bought and sold, so that users unable to cope with their ration could increase it, while others who kept their fuel consumption low could sell and trade their Petro-units on the national market. All transactions would be carried out electronically, using technologies and systems already in place for direct debit systems and credit cards.
When consumers (citizens, businesses, or the government) made purchases of fuel, they would surrender their quota to the energy retailer, accessing their quota account by (for instance) using their Petro-card or direct debit. The retailer would then surrender the carbon units when buying energy from the wholesaler. Finally, the primary energy provider would surrender units back to the National Register when the company pumped or imported the oil. This closes the loop.
All purchases of petroleum would be made with Petro-units, whether the oil were used as fuel or as feedstock for plastics or chemicals. So long as the petroleum remained fuel, Petro-units would have to be passed back up the line, starting with the end user. However, if the petroleum were incorporated as feedstock into the manufacturing of a product (e.g., plastics), the manufacturer would simply add the cost of the Petro-units into the cost of the product. Thus, in the case of feedstocks, the manufacturer of goods would be the presumed end user.
Purchasers not having any Petro-units to offer at point of sale - foreign visitors, people who had forgotten their card or cashed-in all their quota as soon as they received it - would buy a quota at point of purchase, then immediately surrender it in exchange for fuel, but would pay a cost penalty for this (i.e., the bid-and-offer spread quoted by the market).
DTQs place everyone in the same boat: households, industry, and government would have to work together, facing the same Petroleum Budget, and trading on the same market for Petro-units. Everyone would have a stake in the system. All would have the sense that their own efforts at conservation were not being wasted by the energy profligacy of others, and that the system was fair.
Moreover, DTQs are guaranteed to be effective, because the only fuel that could be purchased would be fuel within the Budget. The Budget would set a long time-horizon so that people would have the motivation and information they needed to take action in the present to achieve drastic reductions in oil use over a 20-year timeframe.
What if only a few nations sign on? Won't the Protocol be ineffectual if a few large exporters or importers refuse to do so?
At first it might seem that those nations not adopting the Protocol would achieve an advantage. However, any temporary benefit would be purchased at the expense of later economic calamity. As discussed in the SAIC Report, nations that embark on the energy transition sooner will be much better off than those procrastinating.
What about natural gas and coal - should there be similar protocols for these? Might countries simply burn more coal to make up for having less oil?
The Oil Depletion Protocol will not preclude other agreements aimed at reducing fossil fuel usage in order to avoid impacts to the global climate, but it will be more ambitious in its reduction trajectory than the Kyoto Protocol or the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. If nations' experience with the Oil Depletion Protocol is positive, this will provide motivation for the forging of similar agreements covering these other fossil fuels.
How can the process of adopting the Oil Depletion Protocol begin?
A program to win implementation of the Protocol must focus on educating both the general public and top-level decision-makers.
Adoption of the Protocol will require that a few policy makers champion it and bring it before their national parliament or congress. If even one country adopts the Protocol, this will help to open a global discussion.
At the same time, it is important that citizens understand the issues and what is at stake, as pressure on elected officials from below will help focus the latter's attention on the matter.
In the near future, a program will be underway to obtain endorsements of the Protocol from prominent organizations and individuals. This article is part of a preliminary effort to inform the public of both the Peak Oil issue and the Oil Depletion Protocol. Please help by copying this article and sending it to family, friends, colleagues, the media, and elected officials. This may be our last, best opportunity to avert resource wars, terrorism, and economic collapse as we enter the second half of the Age of Oil.
THE OIL DEPLETION PROTOCOL
WHEREAS the passage of history has recorded an increasing pace of change, such that the demand for energy has grown rapidly in parallel with the world population over the past two hundred years since the Industrial Revolution;
WHEREAS the energy supply required by the population has come mainly from coal and petroleum, having been formed but rarely in the geological past, such resources being inevitably subject to depletion;
WHEREAS oil provides ninety percent of transport fuel, essential to trade, and plays a critical role in agriculture, needed to feed the expanding population;
WHEREAS oil is unevenly distributed on the Planet for well-understood geological reasons, with much being concentrated in five countries, bordering the Persian Gulf;
WHEREAS all the major productive provinces of the World have been identified with the help of advanced technology and growing geological knowledge, it being now evident that discovery reached a peak in the 1960s, despite technological progress, and a diligent search;
WHEREAS the past peak of discovery inevitably leads to a corresponding peak in production during the first decade of the 21st Century, assuming no radical decline in demand;
WHEREAS the onset of the decline of this critical resource affects all aspects of modern life, such having grave political and geopolitical implications;
WHEREAS it is expedient to plan an orderly transition to the new World environment of reduced energy supply, making early provisions to avoid the waste of energy, stimulate the entry of substitute energies, and extend the life of the remaining oil;
WHEREAS it is desirable to meet the challenges so arising in a co-operative and equitable manner, such to address related climate change concerns, economic and financial stability and the threats of conflicts for access to critical resources.
NOW IT IS PROPOSED THAT
1. A convention of nations shall be called to consider the issue with a view to agreeing an Accord with the following objectives:
to avoid profiteering from shortage, such that oil prices may remain in reasonable relationship with production cost;
to allow poor countries to afford their imports;
to avoid destabilising financial flows arising from excessive oil prices;
to encourage consumers to avoid waste;
to stimulate the development of alternative energies.
2. Such an Accord shall have the following outline provisions:
No country shall produce oil at above its current Depletion Rate, such being defined as annual production as a percentage of the estimated amount left to produce;
Each importing country shall reduce its imports to match the current World Depletion Rate, deducting any indigenous production.
3. Detailed provisions shall cover the definition of the several categories of oil, exemptions and qualifications, and the scientific procedures for the estimation of Depletion Rate.
4. The signatory countries shall cooperate in providing information on their reserves, allowing full technical audit, such that the Depletion Rate may be accurately determined.
5. The signatory countries shall have the right to appeal their assessed Depletion Rate in the event of changed circumstances.
(Note: the Oil Depletion Protocol has elsewhere been published as "The Rimini Protocol" and "The Uppsala Protocol." All of these documents are essentially identical.)
Sources of further information
On Oil Depletion:
www.globalpublicmedia.com
www.energybulletin.net
www.peakoil.net
www.odac-info.org
On Domestic Tradable Quotas (DTQs):
www.dtqs.org
On the SAIC Report:
www.cge.uevora.pt/aspo2005/ abscom/Abstract_Lisbon_Hirsch.pdf
www.hilltoplancers.org/stories/hirsch0502.pdf
Richard Heinberg is the author of Powerdown - Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World. He is a journalist, educator, editor, and lecturer, and a Core Faculty member of New College of California, where he teaches courses on "Energy and Society" and "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community."
If you wish to republish any of these essays or post them on a web site, please contact rheinberg@museletter.com for permission.

Imperial Entropy
Collapse of the American Empire
By KIRKPATRICK SALE

It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were actually able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue. And indeed it is now possible to contemplate, and openly speculate about, its collapse.

The neocons in power in Washington these days, those who were delighted to talk about America as the sole empire in the world following the Soviet disintegration, will of course refuse to believe in any such collapse, just as they ignore the realities of the imperial war in Iraq. But I think it behooves us to examine seriously the ways in which the U.S. system is so drastically imperiling itself that it will cause not only the collapse of its worldwide empire but drastically alter the nation itself on the domestic front.

All empires collapse eventually: Akkad, Sumeria, Babylonia, Ninevah, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Mali, Songhai, Mongonl, Tokugawaw, Gupta, Khmer, Hapbsburg, Inca, Aztec, Spanish, Dutch, Ottoman, Austrian, French, British, Soviet, you name them, they all fell, and most within a few hundred years. The reasons are not really complex. An empire is a kind of state system that inevitably makes the same mistakes simply by the nature of its imperial structure and inevitably fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, stratification, heterogeneity, domination, hierarchy, and inequalities.

In my reading of the history of empires, I have come up with four reasons that almost always explain their collapse. (Jared Diamond's new book Collapse also has a list of reasons for societal collapse, slightly overlapping, but he is talking about systems other than empires.) Let me set them out, largely in reference to the present American empire.

First, environmental degradation. Empires always end by destroying the lands and waters they depend upon for survival, largely because they build and farm and grow without limits, and ours is no exception, even if we have yet to experience the worst of our assault on nature. Science is in agreement that all important ecological indicators are in decline and have been for decades: erosion of topsoils and beaches, overfishing, deforestation, freshwater and aquifer depletion, pollution of water, soil, air, and food, soil salinization, overpopulation , overconsumption, depletion of oil and minerals, introduction of new diseases and invigoration of old ones, extreme weather, melting icecaps and rising sealevels, species extinctions, and excessive human overuse of the earth's photosynthetic capacity. As the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson has said, after lengthy examination of human impact on the earth, our "ecological footprint is already too large for the planet to sustain, and it is getting larger." A Defense Department study last year predicted "abrupt climate change," likely to occur within a decade, will lead to "catastrophic" shortages of water and energy, endemic "disruption and conflict," warfare that "would define human life," and a "significant drop" in the planet's ability to sustain its present population. End of empire for sure, maybe end of civilization.

Second, economic meltdown. Empires always depend on excessive resource exploitation, usually derived from colonies farther and farther away from the center, and eventually fall when the resources are exhausted or become too expensive for all but the elite. This is exactly the path we are on-peak oil extraction, for example, is widely predicted to come in the next year or two-and our economy is built entirely on a fragile system in which the world produces and we, by and large, consume (U.S. manufacturing is just 13 per cent of our GDP). At the moment we sustain a nearly $630 billion trade deficit with the rest of the world-it has leapt by an incredible $500 billion since 1993, and $180 billion since Bush took office in 2001-and in order to pay for that we have to have an inflow of cash from the rest of the world of about $1 billion every day to pay for it, which was down by half late last year. That kind of excess is simply unsustainable, especially when you think that it is the other world empire, China, that is crucial for supporting it, at the tune of some $83 billion on loan to the U.S. treasury.

Add to that an economy resting on a nearly $500 billion Federal budget deficit, making up part of a total national debt of $7.4 trillion as of last fall, and the continual drain on the economy by the military of at least $530 billion a year (not counting military intelligence, whose figure we never know). Nobody thinks that is sustainable either, which is why the dollar has lost value everywhere-down by 30 per cent against the euro since 2000-and the world begins to lose faith in investment here. I foresee that in just a few years the dollar will be so battered that the oil states will no longer want to operate in that currency and will turn to the euro instead, and China will let the yuan float against the dollar, effectively making this nation bankrupt and powerless, unable to control economic life within its borders much less abroad.

Third, military overstretch. Empires, because they are by definition colonizers, are always forced to extend their military reach farther and farther, and enlarge it against unwilling colonies more and more, until coffers are exhausted, communication lines are overextended, troops are unreliable, and the periphery resists and ultimately revolts. The American empire, which began its worldwide reach well before Bush II, now has some 446,000 active troops at more than 725 acknowledged (and any number secret) bases in at least 38 countries around the world, plus a formal "military presence" in no less than 153 countries, on every continent but Antarctica-and nearly a dozen fully armed courier fleets on all the oceans. Talk about overstretch: the U.S. is less than 5 per cent of the world's population. And now that Bush has declared a "war on terror," instead of the more doable war on Al Quada we should have waged, our armies and agents will be on a battlefield universal and permanent that cannot possibly be controlled or contained.

So far that military network has not collapsed, but as Iraq indicates it is mightily tested and quite incapable of establishing client states to do our bidding and protect resources we need. And as anti-American sentiment continues to spread and darken-in all the Muslim countries, in much of Europe, in much of Asia-and as more countries refuse the "structural adjustments" that our IMF-led globalization requires, it is quite likely that the periphery of our empire will begin resisting our dominance, militarily if necessary. And far from having a capacity to fight two wars simultaneously, as the Pentagon once hoped, we are proving that we can't even fight one.

Finally, domestic dissent and upheaval. Traditional empires end up collapsing from within as well as often being attacked from without, and so far the level of dissent within the U.S. has not reached the point of rebellion or secession-thanks both to the increasing repression of dissent and escalation of fear in the name of "homeland security" and to the success of our modern version of bread and circuses, a unique combination of entertainment, sports, television, internet sex and games, consumption, drugs, liquor, and religion that effectively deadens the general public into stupor. But the tactics of the Bush II administration show that it is so fearful of an expression of popular dissent that it is willing to defy and ignore environmental, civil-rights, and progressive groups, to bribe commentators to put out its propaganda, to expand surveillance and data-base invasions of privacy, to use party superiority and backroom tactics to ride roughshod over Congressional opposition, to use lies and deceptions as a normal part of government operations, to break international laws and treaties for short-term ends, and to use religion to cloak its every policy.

It's hard to believe that the great mass of the American public would ever bestir itself to challenge the empire at home until things get much, much worse. It is a public, after all, of which, as a Gallup poll in 2004 found, 61 per cent believe that "religion can answer all or most of today's problems," and according to a Time/CNN poll in 2002 59 per cent believe in the imminent apocalypse foretold in the Book of Revelation and take every threat and disaster as evidence of God's will. And yet, it's also hard to believe that a nation so thoroughly corrupt as this-in all its fundamental institutions, its boughten parties, academies, corporations, brokerages, accountants, governments-and resting on a social and economic base of intolerably unequal incomes and property, getting increasingly unequal, will be able to sustain itself for long. The upsurge in talk about secession after the last election, some of which was deadly serious and led on to organizations throughout most of the blue states, indicates that at least a minority is willing to think about drastic steps to "alter or abolish" a regime it finds itself fundamentally at odds with.

Those four processes by which empires always eventually fall seem to me to be inescapably operative, in varying degrees, in this latest empire. And I think a combination of several or all of them will bring about its collapse within the next 15 years or so.

Jared Diamond's recent book detailing the ways societies collapse suggests that American society, or industrial civilization as a whole, once it is aware of the dangers of its current course, can learn from the failures of the past and avoid their fates. But it will never happen, and for a reason Diamond himself understands.

As he says, in his analysis of the doomed Norse society on Greenland that collapsed in the early 15th century: "The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity." If this is so, and his examples would seem to prove it, then we can isolate the values of American society that have been responsible for its greatest triumphs and know that we will cling to them no matter what. They are, in one rough mixture, capitalism, individualism, nationalism, technophilia, and humanism (as the dominance of humans over nature). There is no chance whatever, no matter how grave and obvious the threat, that as a society that we will abandon those.

Hence no chance to escape the collapse of empire.

Liberals Are So Intolerant! The Right loves to sling this smug accusation at critics from the Left. Mark Morford has a reply
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, August 10, 2005

I get this a lot: Hey Mark, you nefarious and perverted liberal commie tofu-hugging sex-drunk San Francisco medical experiment gone wrong from the land of fruits and nuts (or some iteration thereof -- so cute, my hate mail can be), hey, I notice you love to ridicule those creepy Christian megachurches and you enjoy spanking wide-eyed Mormons and tweaking the litigious nipples of the cult of Scientology and you recoil from toxic Bush policy like a vegetarian recoils from undercooked veal ...
And I can tell you think Dick Cheney is pretty much the devil in a defibrillator and that America is so desperately on the wrong track it might as well be North Korea, and you clearly tend to wince in savage karmic pain when looking down the rusty barrel of a welfare-happy red state and I just have one slightly nasty and pointed and cliched question for you --
Here it is: Where is your supposed progressive openness? Your liberal generosity of spirit? I thought you Lefties were all mushy and passive and live-and-let-live?
In other words, where is that famous so-called tolerance I thought all you libs were supposed to possess like some sort of gentle polyamorous smiling hug for the world?
To which I reply: You cannot be serious. Does the answer really need to be articulated? Is it not painfully obvious? Can I have a shot of Patrón and a long nap before I answer? Here goes ...
You, hate-mailers from the sanctimonious Right and even some of you morally paralyzed middle-grounders from the Left, are correct. I am, in fact, deeply intolerant. It is true. I can hide my deep biases and predispositions no longer.
I cannot, for example, tolerate the dark and violent road down which this nation seems intent on careening like an Escalade on meth. I cannot tolerate brutal never-ending unnecessary wars and I cannot allow gay rights to be bashed and I truly loathe watching women's rights be slammed back to 1952. Or 1852.
I really have little patience for the gutting of our school system and the decimation of science and mysticism and the human mind for the sake of a handful of militant Christian zealots who truly believe the Second Coming will be arriving really soon but hopefully not before the next episode of HBO's "Cathouse: The Series," which they watch in secret with the lights off while clutching a Bible in one hand and a big tub of Country Crock margarine in the other.
I cannot tolerate an American president, ostensibly meant to be one of the most articulate and intellectually sophisticated leaders on the planet, mumbling his semicoherent support of the embarrassing nontheory of "Intelligent Design," to the detriment of about 300 years of confirmed science and 10 million years of common sense to the point where America's armies of dumbed-down Ritalin-drunk children look at him and sigh and secretly wish they could have a future devoid of such imbecilic thought but who realize, deep down, they are merely another doomed and fraught generation who will face an increasingly steep uphill battle, who will actually have to fight for fact and intellectual growth and spiritual progress against a rising tide of ignorance and religious hegemony and sanitized revisionist textbooks that insult their understanding and sucker punch their sexuality and bleed their minds dry.
I have surpassed my allowable limit for how much environmental devastation I can willingly swallow or how many billion-dollar tax subsidies our cowardly CEO president gives his cronies in Big Energy while doing nothing to ease our gluttony for foreign oil, all the while trying to tell us how many undereducated misguided American teenage soldiers we have to sacrifice at the bloody altar of oil and empire before we can call ourselves king of the bone pile again.
But I am perhaps most intolerant, not of Christians per se, not of faith, certainly not of radiant self-defined spirituality, not even of organized religion, though I do fully believe more independent spirits and raw human souls and moist sexual licks have been lost to its often narrow-minded and cosmically rigid brainwashing techniques than have ever been saved. But hey, that's just me.
I am most intolerant of, well, of those who allow such intolerance. Of those who would, based on their narrow views of sex, God, love, hope, war, the mind, the Earth, soil and animals and air and water and fire and love and spirit and drugs and guns and dildos, work to legislate those neoconservative beliefs, codify them, make them the law of the land, force their regressive beliefs on everyone else under punishment of violence and beatings and prison. I am, in short, intolerant of intolerance.
Oh, let us be clear. I love diversity, religious pluralism, peace and love and pacifism and good drugs and open-mouthed sensuality, happy to let you believe in any god you like and marry any gender you like and let you love how you will and be in full control of your sex and your body and your mind.
This, to me, is the America worth fighting for. These are the laws I support. Don't believe in abortion? Don't understand gay people? Sexuality make you rashy? Think Harry Potter teaches kids evil and witchcraft? Don't marry a sexy gay witch abortionist. But don't you dare, based on your limited understanding of God and life, make laws declaring that I can't.
But maybe this is the problem, especially here in San Francisco, the World Headquarters of Tolerance, where liberals tend to be so PC and open-minded they merely sigh and shrug when our government and half of the nation move to outlaw everything they stand for, when they openly loathe human rights and try to codify homophobia in the U.S. Constitution and slowly annihilate Roe v. Wade and treat any display of resistance or questioning of the norm the way a dog treats a fire hydrant.
Enough. Basta. Let's refashion the old, stagnant definition of tolerance and make it less about merely enduring, merely putting up with the existence of other narrow-minded beliefs no matter how devastating and embarrassing they obviously are to the nation's health.
Rather, let's flip that sucker over and baste it with raw goat butter and sear it on the open flames of divine justice and bliss and intellectual fire and white-hot orgasm and burn it new.
Let us take the rather flaccid word tolerance and pump it full of Ecstasy and medical marijuana and sake and real divine love and fancy book learnin', turn it on its head and spin it like a bottle and reclaim it from the neocon Right and turn it into, say, giddy outrage. Or radical reconsideration. Or ecstatic rebellion. Or wet conscious electric pointed awareness. Is this not a better way?
Let us explode those dead meanings, correct the mistaken neocon dictionary. Let us hurl that dying and mealy and abused term back at their powerful and often bigoted scowl. Here is your weak, ineffectual tolerance. We cannot swallow it anymore. In fact, we are choking on it.

Crash National's reputation continues unhindered....

Cleanup Continues in Wabamun, AB

The CN main rail line through Wabamun, AB, reopened Friday evening after residents unhappy with cleanup operations following Wednesday's train crash ended a five-hour human blockade. Of the 45 cars that derailed, 12 cars carrying petroleum products ruptured, spilling their contents onto the ground and into Wabamun Lake. CN officials said that at the time they were loaded, those cars were carrying 918,000 litres of oil, about the volume needed to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool. The railway said it has recovered fewer than 200,000 litres of oil from the crash site, leaving almost half a million litres still in the lake and on the ground. The blockade began after CN officials failed to appear at a scheduled morning meeting with local residents. More than 50 residents crowded the crossing for almost five hours, waiting for some response from CN while RCMP officers looked on. But residents left an evening meeting with CN officials with a single hope - and promise from the company - on their minds. "We're confident that we're making the best of a bad situation...to see the parts of the lake not yet affected protected," resident Doug Goss said. CN spokesman Jim Feeny characterized the nearly two-hour-long meeting as "very productive."

Critics are outraged heavy oil continued to leak into the lake Sunday and wind pushed an oil plume beyond a containment boom into the once oil-free eastern side of the lake. "What I want to see is a disaster-response car on every train. I want CN to have a response unit ready to go at the ring of a phone in Edmonton and every major centre," cottager Gordon Soneff told the crowd of about 200 gathered at a public information meeting hosted by CN yesterday. Officials from Alberta Environment, Capital Health and environmental experts were also available at the public meeting. After the meeting, CN evp Ed Harris said moving rail lines away from the shores of Wabamun Lake would be physically impossible. "We have not given any more thought to moving the rail lines. We will look at the railroad a few weeks down the road, but there are no immediate plans to change the location of the railroad. That is physically impossible." Cottagers and local residents grilled Harris over the size and speed of freight trains that operate along the stretch of rail that passes Wabamun Lake. Since resuming operation on Friday, Harris said trains along the corridor had reduced their speed, but said that was done solely as a precaution due to the number of people now crossing the tracks and there is no need to permanently reduce the size or speed of trains in the area.

CN has said it suspects a defective piece of rail could be the cause of the accident, but the Transportation Safety Board's Art Nordholm, said problems with the rail cars have not been ruled out. "We do not have a cause as of yet," he said Sunday. "We still have not ruled out rail failure, nor have we ruled out car failure." Harris told the meeting that Transport Canada requires the rail company to electronically inspect the track once a year, and CN does this four times a year. The last inspection was in May. The track is also physically inspected four times a week, and that was done the day before the derailment. He also claimed CN's emergency response plan went into effect within hours of the derailment. Concerns were also raised regarding a rail crossing near the site of the derailment. Feeny confirmed that wooden crossing planks as well as railway ties and a section of rail were replaced at there about six weeks ago. He said there was no reason to believe there was any problem with the work. Company officials handed out information bulletins and instructions for residents on how they can claim expenses they may have incurred as a result of the derailment. CN has agreed to cover all reasonable costs and damages. Doug Goss, a spokesman for the townspeople, said CN has also agreed to pay for the residents to hire consultants to ensure that their issues are addressed. "We do need our own people working for us as our consultants so that we are all satisfied that we have the right environmental consultants giving us our advice. We intend to get some communications people so you have a point of contact as well. I have a job to get back to like the rest of you. We'll need our own legal counsel as well." Goss said the town had not hired a lawyer, but individual residents with specific claims might seek their own legal counsel.

Meanwhile, more than 150 people are now working on cleaning up the spill. Cleanup crews continue their containment efforts and thousands of metres of new containment boom have been deployed after arriving from Montreal and Texas. More than a dozen vacuum trucks are working at the shore. Norman Fok, executive director of environmental health for Capital Health, said the health authority has been taking air, water and soil samples from areas around the lake for testing and expects to have the results from those tests today or Tuesday. Ron Goodman, who oversaw the Exxon Valdez oil spill cleanup and has been hired to advise Alberta Environment at the Wabamun site, said about 10 to 15% of the oil evaporated when the fuel was dislodged and came into contact with the air. Another 30 to 40% of the oil will be skimmed from the top of the lake and vacuumed away from shorelines, while the remainder of the material will biodegrade or sink to the bottom of the lake. CN has also brought in specialists to help supervise the cleanup and veterinarians and wildlife experts to help tend to injured wildlife. “They've stepped up their efforts,” said Brad Ledig, an Alberta Environment spokesman. CN has not set a timeline for complete remediation, said Ledig, citing wind and other weather conditions that can set back cleanup efforts. Alberta Environment, which issued an environmental protection order on Friday to hasten cleanup of the site, has also dispatched inspectors to the area. CN could face fines or other penalties if it fails to clean up the site quickly or adequately.

By yesterday, 243 oil-covered birds and a few animals had been brought in to a makeshift cleanup centre. Although the material isn't toxic, at least 77 of the birds have choked to death after being doused in the sticky black substance. World renowned experts in the rescue and rehabilitation of oil-covered birds have been brought in from California by CN. Hugh Wollis, a wildlife biologist for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, said birds and animals collected were being shipped to a warehouse site in Spruce Grove. Vast amounts of water are needed to properly clean the birds and water supplies locally are at a premium. CN has agreed to fund a shuttle service from Wabamun to the cleaning station in Stony Plain where the birds will be kept for five to six weeks before being released back into the wild. CN has not set a price tag for this outside help to residents. Alberta Environment also has not figured out costs to taxpayers. And TransAlta reported that one of its three power plants that draws cooling water from the lake has been shut down because of concern that the oil would foul its cooling system.

Finally, an Edmonton Journal editorial suggests that CN should have been better prepared to galvanize efforts to contain the spill. Both the railway and the Alberta government need to make every effort to clean up the mess and to learn from it. The editorial hopes that the spill will lead to new and better protocols on how to respond to such train wrecks. And a Calgary Herald editorial suggests it's hard to fault CN for its clean-up efforts. The editorial points out it made sense to repair the rail line first to stop the leakage and prevent further damage. By clearing the scene, several evacuated families were able to get home again. CN had booms in place quickly and skimmers were on the water within a day.
(Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, Canadian Press 050805, 050806, 050807, 050808, Globe and Mail 050608, 050808, CanWest News Service 050807, Calgary Herald 050808)

Can Catholicism be Good for Gays?

by Michelangelo Signorile

As the Vatican becomes even more homophobic under the new pope – it recently condemned the country of Spain for legalizing same sex-marriage while news reports have claimed that the Vatican any day will release a paper calling for a ban of gays in the priesthood worldwide – there’s been a lot of anxiety about what direction Catholicism will take globally and how it will affect gay rights. But the impact of the church’s crusade actually might not be so negative in the long run. Catholic culture might in fact do more to nurture gay relationships than many people think.

Is it really a coincidence that many of the gay rights victories globally, large and small, are happening in countries that overwhelmingly Catholic? Spain this year passed the most far-reaching marriage rights law for gays of any country – allowing for full adoption rights. And in many traditionally Catholic South American countries gays in recent years are gaining more visibility and benefits than many people believed possible, particularly on the municipal level. Meanwhile, a new poll from Poland shows that in a few short years people in the predominantly Catholic country – and birthplace of Pope John Paul II – have become much more supportive of gay rights, with 46% now in favor of civil unions.

There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed in the West and which is reflected upon in the long piece I wrote in the mid-90s, “Murder Among the Ruins” (all about homosexuality – and a series of antigay murders -- in Italy), which is also included in my new book, Hitting Hard . Here’s what it is: Generally speaking, in devoutly Catholic countries – think of Italy and France – interestingly there have historically been few or no laws against homosexuality, and often, though not always, the gay movement in these countries is disorganized. In Italy, for example, there has never been any law banning sodomy, nor is there a specific law keeping gays out of the military. But activists have had an enormously difficult time getting gay men and lesbians to turn out for demonstrations or even pride events, so afraid are they to come out of the closet even though homosexuality hasn’t been criminally penalized.

Conversely, in largely Protestant countries – Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Northern Europe (Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands ) – there have historically been laws on the books criminalizing gay sex, or outlawing some aspect of homosexual identity, and in those places the gay movement has been very organized. The Scandinavian countries have been at the forefront of gay rights, the Stonewall rights that kicked off the modern gay rights movement happened in the U.S., and Canada has been a progressive bastion of gay activism for decades.

What you come to realize is that this is an outgrowth of the cultures created by the two different versions of Christianity (and it doesn’t matter how devout people within these countries may now be about their faith; religions shape cultures over time in ways that we often don’t realize). Catholicism is about the collective, the group, the family, and adhering to the church principles as handed down to the minions from a sole authority. The religious culture thus has always had a built-in dynamic that discourages individuality and personal pronouncements – such as “coming out” as gay -- even as people secretly engage in gay sex. Historically, there was no need for the state in such countries to ban homosexuality, because Catholicism and religion did enough to discourage gay people from going public. The paradox is that, with no laws actually criminalizing homosexuality – and no discussion of it at all – there is often a disorganized gay movement in such places. It all stays vastly underground, along with all other types of transgressions, like heterosexual marital infidelity, which is common and winked at in Italy, France and Spain , even though it is never, ever acknowledged or publicly accepted. The rule of thumb is: Do whatever you want, just don’t talk about it, and just keep upholding “the family” as primary.

In Protestantism, however, the focus is on individualism – having a relationship to God in your own unique way – and thus the entire culture embraces a “do your own thing” mentality and encourages people to speak publicly about their personal struggles. This ultimately fosters self-empowerment movements such as feminism and gay rights in countries that are largely Protestant – and it fosters the idea of coming out of the closet. The state in such countries often responded, long before such movements could even congeal, by crafting laws to control sexual behavior. This, in turn, has had people organizing fiercely and publicly to fight for their rights, and stressing the importance of “gay visibility.”

But there is, perhaps, an upside to how homosexuality plays out in Catholic culture. Because the family is paramount, when and if people do come out in such countries -- and that is a big if – families may react with anger, but often in the end they accept and love the gay family member, as the family and keeping it together, as per what Catholic culture espouses, is more important than anything. In Spain, same-sex marriage became increasingly more acceptable to the public largely because its promoters appealed to people’s Catholic sense of “family” and their desire to include their gay brothers and sisters in their lives, even if homosexuality itself is "sinful". Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who spearheaded the same-sex marriage legislation, often talked about “family” and the people we all “love” when he discussed the issue. In his speech to Parliament in June he said: “We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members.”

Surely those are Catholic values – the kind of values about family and community that the Church has fostered for centuries – and Zapatero was using them in the service of promoting same-sex marriage, which is of course the Vatican’s worst nightmare. It may be surprising to many people that Spain became the first nation to pass such a sweeping marriage law for gays in such a short period, and without the massive, decades-long protests that it took the gay movement in the U.S. to get as far as it has – which is far short of Spain . But maybe it’s actually because of Catholicism itself, and maybe that means that no matter how much Pope Benedict tries to ban homosexuality worldwide, the very promotion of the values of his faith in fact may be helping gays in the long run, which is a wickedly delicious irony.

Collapse of Antarctic ice shelf could have global effects
Last Updated Wed, 03 Aug 2005 20:25:54 EDT
CBC News

The unprecedented collapse of an ice-shelf in Antarctica could indirectly lead to a significant rise in global sea levels, researchers say.

The Larsen B ice shelf covered more than 3,000 square kilometres and was 200 metres thick until its northern part disintegrated in the 1990s. Three years ago, the central part also broke up.

An international team of researchers used data collected from six sediment cores near the former ice shelf to show the shelf had been relatively intact for at least 10,000 years or since the last ice age.

The collapse therefore goes beyond what would be expected naturally at the time. Rather, the demise is likely the result of long-term thinning due to melting from underneath, as well as short-term surface melting from global climate change, the researchers suggest.

Then in five years, the shelf shrunk by 5,700 square kilometres, say scientists who found the break up caused changes in currents and species in the area.

"As the ice shelves are disintegrating, the glaciers that are feeding them from the land are surging forward," said Robert Gilbert, a geography professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

Glaciers are no longer being held back from the ice shelf, and are pushing ice bergs into the sea, said Gilbert, one of the co-authors of the study in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

As the glaciers melt, global sea levels could change more than predicted, he said. Flooding could result in low-lying areas.

Scientists are now watching to see if the most southern part of the Larsen ice shelf, the coldest part of Antarctica, is going to break up.

Ahh the Beautiful South -- such a shining example of tolerance and Christian love....

Slur Painted On Gay Fla. Couple's Home, Then Torched
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

Posted: July 29, 2005 3:00 pm ET

(Orlando, Florida) Police in Polk County, in central Florida, are searching for the person who torched the home of a gay couple after spray painting "Die Fag" on the front steps.

Paul Day and Christopher Robertson returned home from shopping to find their mobile home in ruins.

The couple said that it is the latest in a series of attacks - mostly verbal abuse by a group of teens and young adults hurled at them when they checked their mail.

Police say that a number of items appear to have been stolen from the home. An arson investigation is underway and a spokesperson for the Lakeland Fire Department said it appears the fire had been set in several areas of the trailer.

But, neighbors at the Kings Manor Mobile Home Park where the units sit side by side in rows claim they saw nothing.

Day and Robertson had recently done extensive renovations of the mobile home. The fire has devastated them both emotionally and financially.

The couple, in their mid 20s, have lived in the Orlando area most of their lives and say that homophobia appears to be on the rise.

State statistics confirm that. In 2003, the most recent year for which data has been released, 20 percent of all hate crimes were against gays and lesbians.

This summer has seen a number of arson attacks across the country attributed to homophobia.

Last week a gay club in Brownsville, Texas was gutted by arson. The week before, fire destroyed the only gay club in Fayetteville, Arkansas in what police there also are calling arson.

On July 9, fire damaged a gay-positive church in Middlebrook, Virginia. Police said the arsonist had scrawled a message on the exterior of St. John's Reformed United Church of Christ saying that UCC members were sinners.

The United Church of Christ endorsed a resolution days earlier endorsing same-sex marriage. The resolution was not binding on the denomination's 1.3 million members.

Canada Becomes 1st New World Country To Legalize Gay marriage
by Ben Thompson 365Gay.com Ottawa Bureau

Posted: July 20, 2005 12:30 am ET
Updated 11:00 am ET

(Ottawa) With the stroke of a vice-regal pen Canada becomes the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.

The federal government's gay marriage legislation passed its final hurdle shortly before midnight following a raucous, emotional debate in the Senate. (story)

The final word in the debate came from Ione Christensen, the 71-year-old Liberal senator from the Yukon. To a hushed chamber Chistensen read an e-mail from a constituent.

"You have no idea what a difference it makes to the human spirit to know that you are treated equally under the law,'' the e-mail said.

With that, members of the upper chamber were called in for a three-minute vote that came after about three years of political and legal battles.

The Senate voted 47-21 to pass the bill that allows civil marriage for same-sex couples. Three senators abstained. There are currently 95 sitting senators and 10 vacancies in the appointed upper house.

When the vote was tallied the chamber erupted in a loud cheer.

"I'm so proud to be Canadian," Laurie Aaron, executive director of Canadians for Equal Marriage told 365Gay.com

"This is a country where quality, inclusion and mutual respect are so important."

The legislation sailed through the House of Commons on June 28.

The law goes into effect Wednesday afternoon when it receives royal assent. It affects the four regions of Canada where same-sex marriage has not already been declared legal by courts.

"Same-sex, same rights,'' said Liberal Senator Jim Munson following the vote.

Conservatives in the chamber had attempted to using stalling tactics to delay passage until fall hoping it could then be put off until an election is called in the winter. The Liberals, however, refused to budge. After a threat of invoking cloture - the process of cutting off debate - the measure was put to a vote.

Tories are still threatening to derail gay marriage. Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper has said he would bring in legislation to repeal gay marriage an convert those already performed to civil unions.

While opposition to same-sex marriage worked for US President George Bush in last November's election two recent polls shows the approach appears to be having an opposite effect in Canada.

One poll shows the Liberals have bounced back and hold a 10 percentage point lead over the Conservatives. If an election were held today the numbers would give the Liberals a majority government

The other survey shows that Canadians have become comfortable with same-sex marriage. The Globe & Mail/CTV poll shows that 55 percent of Canadians surveyed say the next government should let same-sex legislation stand. Only 39 percent said they would like to see an attempt made to repeal it.

Same-sex marriage already is legal in 8 of Canada's 10 provinces and one of the three territories.

The government of Prince Edward Island, one of the two provinces impacted by the new law, has already said that it will amend dozens of laws affecting families to conform to the new definition of marriage.

Alberta, the other province, had fought the legislation but now says it will not challenge the federal law. The conservative province, however says it will bring in legislation to allow civil servants and marriage commissioners who oppose gay marriage to refuse to perform the ceremonies.

The law makes Canada the fourth country - after Holland, Belgium and Spain, and the first in the Americas - to legalize same-sex marriage.

Senate passes same-sex legislation
Last Updated Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:31:50 EDT
CBC News
Legislation giving same-sex couples the legal right to marry will become law after it receives royal assent as early as Wednesday.

In a late-night vote on Tuesday, the Senate approved the Liberal government's controversial Bill C-38 by a 46-22 vote. Three senators abstained.

The historic vote comes after gay and lesbian couples launched lawsuits in different provinces demanding the right to marry.

Courts in seven provinces agreed that the traditional definition of marriage violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Liberal government responded to the first of those rulings – in Ontario in 2003 – by introducing legislation which was adopted last month in the House of Commons.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has said he will bring back the same-sex debate if he's elected prime minister.

The bill will become law when it receives royal assent as early as Wednesday.

Once signed by the Governor General, Canada will follow the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain as countries legalizing gay marriage.

Tory motion rejected

Senators rejected a Conservative motion stating the traditional definition of marriage is between a man and a woman, but that civil marriage is between two people.

"It would have brought a great deal of comfort to same-sex couples that they would not be perceived as having somehow gained their legitimate rights at the expense of those for whom the traditional marriage of a man and a woman was so terribly important," said Conservative Senator Noel Kinsella, who supported the amendment.

B.C. Senator Gerry St. Germain, an outspoken critic of the bill, fears judges are determining policies that should be decided by conscience.

"If we don't stop this ... I know what the next steps are. Euthanasia. Decriminalization of marijuana," said St. Germain.

But Senator Nancy Ruth, who voted for the bill, danced in the red chamber moments before the vote.

"There are some reasons to dance tonight and the whole country should be dancing," she said.

I Cannot Yet Skin A Deer
Are you prepared for the Big Collapse? Peak Oil? Rural life? Can you pickle meat and eat bark?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, July 15, 2005

Rare is the opportunity to use authentic, down 'n' dirty rural survival skills in the city. It's true.

You don't need to know, for example, how to skin a deer or pickle your own asparagus or nurture an understanding of which kind of deadwood is best for cookin' pig snouts over the fire pit, or how to shingle your roof with rocks and clay, or how to dig really large holes in the backyard for long-term storage of winter wheat and dead chickens and hoary annoying relatives.

City-bred skills and intuitions are, to be sure, unique. But there will apparently be very little call, after the Bush-branded apocalypse rains down, for knowledge of which seat in the café gets the best Wi-Fi signal or where to find the finest burrito after midnight in the Mission when you are post-coitally blissed and in need of refueling.

Very little call, after the Big Ungodly Crash, for knowledge of where to get the most amazing cheap dim sum, how much the large bottle of Astroglide costs at the local Good Vibrations, or which tiny parking spaces in my girlfriend's neighborhood I can sneak into for emergency booty calls without her uptight neighbors calling Bob's Towing.

This all comes to mind as I realize, with increasing sense of dread and alarm and a weird sense of fatalistic ennui, that if any of the dire prognostications for the world soon comes to pass, if the oil crisis strikes as violently as predicted and/or if the eviscerated U.S. economy spirals us into a new and violent Great Depression 2.0 and/or if BushCo does indeed succeed in bringing the wrath of an angry spiteful homophobic God down upon the swarming gay-lovin' tofu-sucking heathen masses, I might not be as well prepared as I'd like.

I am not at all ready for the big return to the agrarian life, as predicted by the most dire Peak Oil prognosticators. I am not at all ready to have the devastated cities plowed under, so that we may plant crops in the ravaged landscape in a desperate attempt to survive the onslaught of a world without home pizza delivery and without drive-thru dry cleaning and without instant and immediate access to supermarkets with their 47 kinds of pasta and 138 different brands of vodka, not to mention the meaty edible flesh of nearly any animal I wish to custom order from the Williams-Sonoma catalog and have FedExed to me within 24 hours in pretty decorated tins. Mmm, prosciutto.

I have no immediate escape route. I do not have land nearby, in the woods, protected by razor wire and laser fencing and large angry dogs. I do not have some place that has enormous underground tanks of propane and oil and grains and canned tomatoes and frozen elk meat and mountains of small-gauge ammunition and stores of camouflage underwear.

I do not know how to dig a water well. I do not know how to install a septic pump. I know not the best month in which to plant potatoes and corn and peas and opium poppies. I cannot knit blankets or sweaters, much less some nice handmade cozies to protect my Pyrex-glass dildo collection.

I currently own no power tools, save for a single small Black & Decker rechargeable drill which I use, of course, not for building a family shelter out of rusty car hoods and not for remodeling my nonexistent garage so it can support a family of 10 and not for cobbling together a chicken coop from scrap wood and baling wire and mesh, but rather, for hanging bitchin' shelving cubes from West Elm.

Oh, make no mistake, the city offers its own dangers and there are plenty of urban survival skills mandatory for navigating the urban jungle, such as learning how to deftly avoid eye contact with ranting homeless people and how to appear tough and muscular when you walk by those small gangs of slouchy angry hooded dudes who look at you like you're the fish and they're the dynamite.

I know how to calmly pray for a parking space a mile before arrival and which sushi joint has the freshest uni and which coffee shop makes the finest soy mocha. I know when Macy's designer stuff goes on double-markdown and who you have to know to get wholesale designer furniture and which yoga teacher has the best kirtan, and how to get a large leather chair up two flights of narrow Victorian stairs and the best place to have sex in Golden Gate Park.

But alas, this is not nearly enough.

I will, when the devolution comes and oil is $200 a barrel and we are at war with China and the dollar is worth about three cents on the euro, be relying on the talents and largesse of others. I have, for example, a wonderful brother-in-law with his own ranch-compound up near Spokane, well stocked with guns and canned goods and copious hiding spaces, and it is remote and rural and ready to be turned into a guarded inbreeding complex just after BushCo finally mistakes his electric toothbrush for the "nukular" button and hastens the end of the world as we know it, just as the evangelicals are right now pleading.

I have a girlfriend whose sister is a well-trained organic farmer, able to grow an entire meal for 25 in a shoebox, well versed in mulch and compost toilets and soil types and what sort of mushrooms you can and cannot eat when you're out scavenging for scraps among the torched babies and the smoking carcasses and the giant robotic cockroaches.

But I am merely a hanger-on. I am not trained. This much must be admitted: When it comes to Armageddon prep, the red states have us city folk beat. Sure-sure, cities are the cultural and social and economic engines of the nation; sure we have all the Ph.D.s and all the artistic talents and all the book-learnin' and progressive ideas and cool European cars and the good wine and the better sex and the polysyllabic words.

But when the economy collapses and the End is Nigh, well, most of us shall fall by the roadside, begging for scraps from the angry evangelical Idaho potato farmer in the beat-up pickup with the little flags stuck on the bumper, and he shall chortle and spit tobacco through his nine teeth and turn up the James Dobson Christian Family Hour on the AM and drive off toward the mushroom cloud, whistling.

The red states will finally rule the world. They will survive. They know how. They can eat squirrel brains. They can pickle things, including various animal parts. They have been known to marry each other. They can subsist on bad beer and cow pies and stuff they find growing in the rusty tailpipes of old farm equipment. They know how to perform home surgery using only a rusty butter knife and bathroom caulk. They eat mice.

But then again, should this all come to pass and the oil crisis strikes and the economy nose-dives and the cities crumble and our iPod batteries fail and international commerce implodes and we're all rushing back to the farmland to hump hay and steal each others' wives and ogle sheep and rediscover a life that is, all over again, nasty, brutish, and short, well, maybe I will no longer care.

Maybe then it will finally be time to throw in the karmic towel, drink the special Kool-Aid, and let the meek inherit the Earth while the rest of us go to the stars. After all, while I'd actually love to learn to work an organic farm or build a cabin from scratch or learn to distinguish species of trees by examining their leaves and then having sex under their branches, it's just not much fun anymore when we're all out of music and wine and coffee and the entire nation becomes, well, Oklahoma. I mean, what kind of joy is that? And where will I park my Audi?

See? It's only the beginning of the end....


Sea life in peril -- plankton vanishing Usual seasonal influx of cold water isn't happening
Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer
Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Oceanic plankton have largely disappeared from the waters off Northern California, Oregon and Washington, mystifying scientists, stressing fisheries and causing widespread seabird mortality.
The phenomenon could have long-term implications if it continues: a general decline in near-shore oceanic life, with far fewer fish, birds and marine mammals. No one is certain how long the condition will last. But even a short duration could severely affect seabird populations because of drastically reduced nesting success, scientists say.
The plankton disappearance is caused by a slackening of what is known as "upwelling:" the seasonal movement of cold, nutrient-rich offshore water into areas near shore.
This cold water sustains vast quantities of phytoplankton and zooplankton, which are the basis of the marine food web. During periods of vigorous upwelling and consequent plankton "blooms," everything from salmon to blue whales fattens and thrives on the continental shelf of the West Coast.
The larger fish and baleen whales eat mostly krill: free-floating, shrimp- like crustaceans ranging from one to two inches, the upper size limit of the zooplankton realm.
When the water is cold, krill swarm off the Northern California coast by the tens of thousands of tons. Now that they are largely absent, fisheries and wildlife are feeling the effects.
In perhaps the most ominous development, seabird nesting has dropped significantly on the Farallon Islands off San Francisco, the largest Pacific Coast seabird rookery south of Alaska.
Bill Sydeman, the director of marine ecology for the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, a science and conservation organization that maintains a research station on the Farallones, said the collapse of the nesting season is unprecedented in the three decades the group has monitored the islands.
Cassin's auklets -- a relatively rare seabird that feeds almost extensively on krill -- have been particularly hard hit, Sydeman said.
"Normally they breed in March," Sydeman said. "They got started late this year, and by May they had virtually disappeared. We expect zero nesting success for them this year, or close to it. We've never seen anything like it."
Sydeman said other seabirds are also showing the effects of the reduced marine productivity.
"We have little or no nesting of pelagic cormorants (at the Farallones), and Brandt's cormorants are nesting at reduced numbers," he said. "Double- crested cormorant nesting is down by 50 percent (in the Bay Area)."
Upwelling cessation is typically caused by El Niño events -- warm water intrusions from the equatorial Pacific. But what is happening off the coast right now is not a true El Niño, Sydeman said.
"We really don't have a clear idea of what it is," Sydeman said, noting that standard El Niños can be tracked as they progress from the equator to temperate waters, something that hasn't occurred in the current case.
"Some are calling it an El Niño Norte; others think it's some sort of anomalous intrusion of warm offshore blue water onto the continental shelf," he said.
A recent study indicated the phenomenon may be long term, and linked to global warming.
Last week, Fisheries and Oceans Canada -- the federal agency dealing with Canada's marine and inland waters -- released a report saying 2004's spring and summer ocean surface temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska and off British Columbia were the warmest in 50 years.
The study concluded the record high temperatures were caused by abnormally warm weather in Alaska and western Canada, as well as "general warming of global lands and oceans."
Some pulses of upwelling occurred off Northern California in June, Sydeman said, but they're unlikely to significantly increase marine productivity.
"Upwelling has slackened along all the West Coast, except for a little bit of recent activity off Northern California," Sydeman said. "At this point, it's too little and too late. Things aren't going to turn around. For krill predators in this system, it's a very serious situation."
Juvenile rockfish numbers are also way down.
"We annually survey (juvenile rockfish) from San Diego to Cape Mendocino, and this is the lowest catch we've recorded in the 23 years we've been doing it," said Stephen Ralston, a supervising research biologist at the Santa Cruz office for the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency that oversees fisheries in federal waters.
Like krill, young rockfish are a significant food source for seabirds, large fish and marine mammals; they are also essential to maintaining healthy stocks of mature rockfish, esteemed by commercial fishermen and sport anglers.
Off the coast of Oregon, abnormally warm marine water is continuing unabated, affecting local birds and salmon.
"Things are pretty grim up here," said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Marine Fisheries Service office in Newport, Ore.
Peterson said a major die-off of double-crested cormorants recently occurred in Oregon, and juvenile salmon numbers have dropped precipitously. Both events, he said, are likely due to the warm water.
"We do salmon surveys every spring and summer," he said. "Normally, we catch several hundred salmon in the spring. This year we caught eight. And we usually get several thousand fish in the summer. This year, it was 80."
Peterson said the water temperature off Oregon in late June is normally 10 degrees Celsius (about 50 Fahrenheit), "and this year it's 16 degrees (about 61 F). Our (upper layer of warm water) is normally 15 meters thick, and this year it's 30 meters. Krill numbers are down, and the plankton we are seeing are as unusual as can be -- warm water species that you'd find off San Diego or Monterey."
Peterson said it is unlikely Oregon waters will cool significantly this summer.
"It takes an enormous amount of (offshore wind) energy to push that much warm water offshore, which is what we would need to see for significant upwelling," he said. "I don't see that happening anytime soon."
Near San Francisco, salmon have switched from krill to bait fish, and appear to be holding their own -- at least for now.
"The fishing is terrific," said Roger Thomas, the president of the Golden Gate Fishermen's Association and the owner of the recreational angling boat the Salty Lady.
"It's true there's not much krill, but there're lots of anchovies and sardines," Thomas said, "and the salmon are filling up on those."
Thomas acknowledged that the bait fish wouldn't benefit many coastal and offshore birds.
"Sardines are too big for the auklets, and even for other species like common murres," he said. "They rely on smaller prey species."
In fact, say scientists, krill are the keystone forage species for almost everything that swims off Northern California.
"It's the krill that drive the food web dynamics off this coast," said Ellie Cohen, the executive director of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. "Their absence has tremendous implications for everything out there, right up to the humpback and blue whales. We don't know if this is a result of global warming or some natural cycling, but without the krill, you could be looking at a food web collapse."

Red Deer River levels start to drop
Last Updated Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:23:11 EDT
CBC News
People living in Drumheller, Alberta, are breathing a sigh of relief after the Red Deer River crested just below the tops of a hastily topped up dike.
"A really big relief," Stan Donias, one of more than 3,000 people forced from their homes over the weekend, said of the Tuesday afternoon development.
"It's peaked and coming back down. I hope the wall holds until it's done."
Emergency officials said water levels have dropped about 25 centimetres since the river crested early Tuesday morning.
Some people may be allowed back in their homes as early as Wednesday, although about 25 houses did suffer some water damage.
As many as 800 volunteers worked around the clock Sunday and Monday to build up the dike that lines the river, adding about two metres of earth to the berm.
Alberta Environment estimates that the river, which crested about 1 a.m., came about five centimetres from the lowest edge of the dikes. A logjam on a tributary north of the Alberta town prevented the water from rising higher and pouring through the town.
Town officials say it's too early to determine when more than 3,000 people, who were ordered evacuated from their homes, will be allowed to return. By late Monday, about 25 homes in the area had been flooded.
The flooding across the province has led to the deaths of at least three people. Two men died in separate accidents in the Calgary area when their vehicles crashed into swollen rivers. A teenager, who is believed to have been near a footbridge that was washed out, is also missing.
Truck plunge kills driver
Meanwhile, pedestrians who had gathered on the Morrin Bridge to view the flooded river are being blamed for triggering a fatal truck crash overnight near Drumheller.
Police say the truck plunged into the river as it attempted to dodge cars that had slowed down to avoid the pedestrians.
"The cause is directly related to pedestrians on the bridge," read an RCMP news release, which said ignoring safety warnings places "human lives at risk."
RCMP say the truck had been travelling at about 100 km/h when it came over a hill. The vehicle hit a car, then slammed into the side of the bridge, knocking out two girders and plunging into the water, killing the driver.
In Calgary, officials threatened to ration water if people didn't start limiting the amount they use. The Elbow River spilled over its banks on the weekend in Calgary, forcing more than 1,500 people from their homes and prompting a mandatory water-rationing order.
The city has asked residents to voluntarily conserve water because the two water treatment plants are having trouble keeping up with demand. The river water coming into the plants is so full of silt and debris that the facilities are struggling to produce enough clean water.
In Edmonton, emergency officials have said the city is no longer at risk of flooding as the North Saskatchewan River crested overnight and water levels have stabilized. The high water point reached 8.7 metres, which is nearly a metre lower than expected.
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has estimated the cost of damage from the flood is going to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

From CNN.com:

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) -- Flooding forced the evacuation of about 1,500 people in Calgary and swamped or cut off hundreds of homes in the city on Sunday after two rivers overflowed their banks following days of heavy rain.
A state of emergency remained in force for a second day as officials feared the Elbow and Bow rivers that merge in the city -- the center of Canada's oil industry -- could swallow more homes in eight vulnerable neighborhoods.
The rain that has pounded the western Canadian city of nearly 1 million people for more than a week finally stopped on Sunday, but authorities said the danger had not passed.
"It's very extensive damage," Mayor Dave Bronconnier told reporters. "The flows along the Elbow River have peaked and they are currently holding steady, although the flows along the Elbow and the Bow rivers are of extreme concern to us."
"There are literally hundreds of homes that have been impacted. It is still critical," he said. "This is why the mandatory evacuation order has not been lifted.
Despite a major effort by hundreds of city workers and residents to lay sandbags and push dirt on Saturday night, two major roads close to the downtown core were closed as water gushed against bridge decks. The Elbow River in some low-lying districts lapped up above the ground floors of buildings.
It was not clear how many houses sustained flood damage, and Bronconnier said fire department officials would have to survey all the homes in the evacuation areas and confirm they were safe before he lifted the state of emergency.
The volume of water gushing down the Elbow, the smaller of the two waterways, was pegged at seven times the normal amount overnight.
That is because Calgary's main reservoir crested and overflowed the dam that regulates its flow. The Elbow connects with the Bow in the city center.
Much of the rest of southern Alberta dealt with similar problems due to the heavy rains that have swelled rivers and streams throughout the region.
A portion of the Trans-Canada Highway, the country's main motorway, was closed on Saturday west of Calgary because of high water. Cars and trucks were diverted onto a smaller road, leading to a traffic snarl.
About 800 people in the town of Sundre, Alberta, northwest of Calgary, were evacuated on Saturday when their homes were threatened.

Car industry lies to Canadians
April 15, 2005
Canadians should be disgusted with their federal government this week, but not just because of what has come out at the Gomery inquiry.
No, Canadians should be outraged because, once again, their government has ignored the best interests of its citizens and refused to stand up to a corporate dinosaur. That dinosaur is the automotive industry, and the recently announced deal to reduce emissions amounts to nothing more than another government subsidy to prop up an industry that feeds off the health and pocketbooks of Canadians.
The new agreement, wrapped in obfuscating language about megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and navel-gazing preamble after preamble, doesn't guarantee any improvements in gas mileage at all. In fact, it amounts to little more than a PR exercise for automakers and the feds.
On top of everything, it actually lies. Just look at the many preambles:
"And whereas the Canadian Automotive Industry has shown good faith in meeting their commitments in other Memoranda of Understanding and are currently parties to numerous successful active agreements;"
A lie. Way back in 1982, the industry fought like mad to derail fuel efficiency regulations that had already been passed by Parliament. Government caved in to the industry, which promised to meet the targets "voluntarily." On paper, they met those targets. But in reality, they avoided them by exploiting a loophole that allowed them to build and promote more and more gas-guzzling light trucks, which were exempt from the standard. The industry also has also argued, threatened and whined about the "impossibility" of everything from smog-reducing catalytic converters to safety innovations like seatbelts and air bags.
Here's another good one:
"And whereas the Government of Canada acknowledges that the Canadian Automotive Industry has made significant progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving fuel efficiency since 1990;"
Another lie. Fuel efficiency has decreased in recent years because the industry is hell-bent on selling bigger, heavier and - more expensive - vehicles that cost less to make, like SUVs. But you don't have to take my word for it. Just look at a comprehensive analysis by economists Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling published in the current edition of American Scientist.
Bezdek and Wendling point out that average fuel economy for all new vehicles has declined from 26.2 mpg (8.9l/100km) in 1987 to 24.7 mpg (9.5l/100km) in 2004. They then point to more than two dozen technologies identified by the U.S. National Research Council as technically feasible ways to make cars more fuel efficient today. They then examine the costs of using these technologies and what it would mean for the industry and the economy. Their input-output analysis concludes that making cars burn less gas would actually create more jobs, save money for consumers, and improve the economy - in addition to reducing smog and climate change.
Good for consumers, good for jobs, good for health - this win should have been relatively easy for the federal government. Polls show that 90 per cent of Canadians want more efficient cars and the vast majority don't believe the industry's lies that making them would be either too hard or too expensive. California already set the precedent in North America by enacting laws that require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from new cars, thus forcing them to improve gas mileage.
Instead, we've got a voluntary agreement that guarantees nothing and again leaves enough loopholes to drive a Hummer through. Canadians are being played for dupes by the industry and the feds are letting them get away with it. This industry lies. It lies and it lies and it lies. And our government doesn't have the guts to stand up to them.

Science Matters by David Suzuki
Science Matters is published weekly in newspapers across Canada.
Canada's big lie
June 3, 2005
Feeling smugly superior of Americans may be a great Canadian pastime, but lately it seems that we have less and less to crow about.
One of Canada's greatest claims to fame has been that we are good environmental stewards. Indeed, polls show that Canadians greatly value our tremendous natural heritage and that we very much want to conserve it. Unfortunately, our behaviour is not lining up with our values.
Results of a five-year study by the NAFTA-created Commission for Environmental Co-operation reveal that release of harmful pollutants into the environment increased by five per cent in Canada between 1998 and 2002. At the same time, they decreased by 14 per cent in the U.S.. During the same period, release of air pollutants in Canada increased by eight per cent. In the U.S., it decreased by 21 per cent.
What's going on here? Are our southern neighbours really going green?
Not really. In fact, according to many environmental indicators, the United States is still the world's biggest polluter. However, some states in the U.S. are indeed working to clean up their acts. They have seen the ecological and economic benefits of having strong environmental standards, so they're taking action. Meanwhile, Canada has been sitting back on our heels and letting our reputation speak for itself.
As a result of our inaction, Canada's environmental health has suffered and we've lost out on many economic opportunities. Rather than pursue innovative, new business strategies, we've stayed the course with business-as-usual plans - even while the world around us has been changing. In part, we can blame the big industrial polluters who make a powerful lobbying force in Ottawa. In part, we can blame our politicians for listening to them. And in part we can blame ourselves for not pressuring our leaders to really move Canada's economy into the 21st century.
But rather than pointing fingers, we'd be better off just looking ahead - finding examples of best practices and then emulating and improving on them. Sweden, for example, is one country that has improved its environmental performance and at the same time improved its economic performance. In fact, as Swedish Ambassador Lennart Alvin pointed out recently in the Globe and Mail, Sweden manages to better Canada in most environmental rankings, such as greenhouse gas emissions, while also bettering Canada economically. Last fall, for example, the World Economic Forum compared industrialized countries in terms of economic competitiveness and ranked Sweden third, Canada 15th.
Mr. Alvin explains that Sweden has reached this enviable position through a number of strategies, including energy efficiency and cutting waste. It also began a program of "green tax shift," which decreased taxes on things like payroll - thereby leaving more money for citizens and businesses - while increasing taxes on things like fossil fuels and energy consumption. That encourages conservation, which decreases pollution and reduces the need for high-priced fossil fuels.
Canada's government has talked a good game about sustainability, but has been slow off the mark - until recently. Over the past few months, the federal government has produced a budget that includes some truly innovative measures, like a new deal for cities to help them become healthier and more sustainable. Our government has also released its long-awaited climate change plan. The plan, while weaker than those in leading countries, is a good starting point to begin reducing pollution and improving our competitiveness.
We have a long way to go, but we aren't operating in the dark. Countries like Sweden can serve as a model and inspire us to do better. Even if we didn't value our natural heritage, becoming better environmental stewards makes sense from an economic perspective. That's something our neighbours to the south are starting to notice too - and surely we can't let them beat us at our own game.

This New House

News: The American Dream just keeps growing. Since 1970 the size of the average new home has ballooned by 50 percent. “Great rooms,” Viking ranges, 10-acre lots—can moats and turrets be far behind?
March/April 2005 Issue

Since 1950, the average new house has increased by 1,247 sq. ft. Meanwhile, the average household has shrunk by 1 person.

The National Association of Home Builders’ “showcase home” for 2005 is 5,950 sq. ft. That’s 15% bigger than last year’s model.

The Unabomber’s legal defense team cited the size of his shack—10’ x 12’—to buttress his insanity plea.

1 in 4 Americans want at least a 3-car garage.

88% of American commuters drive to work.

76% of those drivers commute alone.

The number of Americans with commutes of longer than 90 minutes each way has increased 95% since 1990.

Since 1982, 35 million acres—an area the equivalent of New York state—have been developed.
More than 50% of exurban lots are 10 acres or larger. Exurban homes account for 80% of residential development since 1994.

In 1950, 1 in 100 homes had 2.5 baths or more. Today, 1 in 2 do.

14 million households own 4 or more TVs.

Americans spend more to power home audio and video equipment that is “off” but still plugged in than they do to power such devices while actually in use.

Such “energy vampires” consume 5% of the nation’s electricity.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition recently gave a 6-bedroom, 7-bath, 7-television house to a family of 4.

Americans with cable TV have 30 hours of home-improvement programming available to them each day.

Sales of Sub-Zero and other “premium” and “superpremium” refrigerators have been rising by 15% a year.

1 in 5 new homes is larger than 3,000 sq. ft.—the size at which it becomes unmanageable to clean without hired help.

The average cost of a luxury kitchen remodel is $57,000. That’s $10,000 more than it costs to build a typical Habitat for Humanity home.

Suburban and urban kids use illegal drugs, have sex, fight, and steal at the same rates, but suburban kids are more likely to drink and smoke.

0.03% of U.S. homes are fueled by solar energy. 0.4% lack complete plumbing facilities.

People who live in cities use half as much energy as suburbanites.

If Americans bought only appliances with an“Energy Star” rating over the next 15 years, the reduction in greenhouse gases would equate to taking 17 million cars off the road.

1/3 of a home’s heating oil is used for hot water. Multiple-head shower systems can drain a 40-gallon tank in less than 4 minutes.

The average new home requires 13,837 board feet of lumber and 19 tons of cement.

Since 1976, federal housing assistance has been slashed by 48%.

Last spring, the Bush administration proposed an additional $1 billion cut to the Section 8 housing subsidy.

87% of homeowners are white.

Overall, blacks receive subprime loans 2.83 times more often than whites. The disparity increases when affluent blacks are compared to affluent whites.

If it were a state, New York City would rank 51st in energy use per capita.

Suburban white men weigh 10 pounds more than men in cities.

Only 2.7% of San Francisco’s teachers, 5.7% of its cops, and 4.2% of its nurses can afford to buy a home there.

1 in 4 Californians are considering moving out of state to reduce their housing costs.

Rush Limbaugh’s Palm Beach estate is worth 15 times the value of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Chappaqua, N.Y., home.

7% of all homes are in gated communities.

7% of all homes are mobile homes.

Since 2001, the number of Americans who have bought second homes has increased by 24%.

Global Warmin' Is Fer Idjuts Exxon writes America's energy policy, BushCo chops up emissions reports. Is there any hope at all?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 10, 2005

Like anyone is the slightest bit shocked.
Like anyone is the slightest bit appalled anymore by the breathtaking litany of utter BS oozing forth from the White House these days, this time about how one of BushCo's top oil-lovin' henchmen has been hacking away at countless scientific reports for over two years, editing them at will, all to downplay the effects of emissions on global warming.
His name is Philip Cooney, and he has zero scientific training whatsoever and was formerly the "climate-team leader" (read: top flying monkey) and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the oil industry. He is now chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the group that helps devise and set the nation's environmental agenda; Cooney's cuts and edits of scientific emissions and global warming reports often made it into final White House policy.
Isn't that just the cutest thing? Aren't you just, like, yawning with ennui at the bitter repetition of it all? At how savagely and biliously common these stories have become?
Or how about that other story about how Bush's decision not to sign the Kyoto Treaty, the landmark environmental policy signed by 122 other nations to reduce greenhouse emissions, was influenced not at all by sound science or serious concern for the planet, but by pressure put on him by his pals at ExxonMobil and other major oil corporations? Did you read that one?
Thus proving what everyone already knows: Bush cares about as much for the health of the planet and for air quality and for the future of your miserable stupid emphysemic kids as a snake cares for lip balm.
Or rather, in more plain terms, it means this: The environmental policies of the most powerful and gluttonous nation on the planet are being written by the world's most powerful oil company. Which is, of course, a bit like our national dietary guidelines being written by Burger King, or our national health care guidelines being written by Merck, or our national school curricula being written by lost born-again Neanderthal creationists. Oh wait.
This, as we all now know, is the BushCo way. They lie about environmental devastation, going so far as to hire known skeptics of global warming to testify in court against piles of data compiled by thousands of world-class scientists the world over that prove the obvious direness of the threat.
They lie about abortion and breast cancer. They lie about unemployment data and corporate layoffs. They lie about prison-inmate torture, about intentionally desecrating the Koran and smearing menstrual blood on prisoners and violating the Geneva Convention the way a lonely farmer violates a sheep.
They lie about why a gay male model and former prostitute who ran gay porn Web sites was allowed to pose as a partisan hack reporter in White House press briefings for over two years, allowed to ask softball questions of the president and the press secretary and allowed to sleep overnight in the White House and shall we venture a guess who might've been waiting down in the dungeon all those nights, all sweaty and adipose, waiting for hunky Jeff Gannon to come and spank him but good?
And of course, most impressively, BushCo lied about WMDs, about why we're at war, about why we're dumping $5 billion along with dozens of dead U.S. soldiers and thousands of wounded per month into the Iraq quagmire (total cost: over $175 billion, and counting -- fast) when our own economy is gutted and the dollar is at a desperate low and the deficit is at an all-time high and our education and health care systems are crumbling and we are, as a nation, essentially running on fumes.
Yes, I know. This isn't even news anymore. Doesn't even raise an eyebrow. And how sad is that?
So these latest salvos, these latest disgusting proofs of misprision and environmental abuse, they're just par for the BushCo course, standard operating procedure for a callous and domineering administration that, if it can't find the data it needs to support its agenda, simply creates it, edits it, forces it into existence and crams it down your throat and calls it sound government policy.
There are, however, glimmers of hope. There are forces of change at work, despite BushCo's laziness and resistance and despite his administration's whorelike devotion to Big Oil and Big Coal and despite his outright ignorance of all things environmental and desperate and imminent.
Look over here. There stand 132 U.S. mayors from all over the nation, including many Republicans and including some from Texas and including Bloomberg from New York, who have bucked the general vicious BushCo idiocy regarding global warming and have agreed to carry out the Kyoto Protocol rules in their own cities, on their own. Seattle, for one, is poised to become, by the end of this year, the only city in the nation whose municipal energy utility produces zero net emissions of greenhouse gases.
And over here are the national scientific academies of all G8 nations, plus those of the three developing countries that consume the most oil on the planet -- China, India and Brazil -- making an unprecedented political gesture by signing a common letter declaring that a plan to address global warming must be put into action immediately, if not sooner.
And they've aimed the letter straight at the mumbling, bumbling BushCo, whose only decision on greenhouse emissions to date has been to let the major polluters of the nation self-regulate until 2012, when he's a faint, painful, cancerous memory and the global warming problem is far worse and even more dire and is shoved onto the plate of the next guy. Aww, thanks Dubya.
Even some of BushCo's more rabid followers, even some hardcore evangelical Christians, those intelligent few not wrapped up in the nutball Rapture Index and who therefore don't believe it's our God-given duty to ravage the planet and burn through all the resources as fast as possible so as to hasten the arrival of a really pissed-off, homophobic Christ, even some powerful evangelicals are urging Bush to get on the global warming issue ASAP, as, according to the Bible, we are supposed to be good stewards of the Earth, not its destroyers.
And you know the global warming issue has become dire when even staunch, lifelong environmental activists like Stewart Brand are beginning to look anew at the old demon of nuclear power to help ease the energy strain on the nation. It's not because nuclear reactors have become so beautiful and safe and desirable. It's because the global warming threat has become just that ominous. Going back to nuclear is simply the lesser of two evils. We have little choice.
So there you go. For the next 3.5 years, these alternatives appear to be the only path, the only means toward change. Via grassroots movements, regional lawmaking, commonsense ideas, collectives of like-minded people banding together despite their differences to thwart the idiocy and abuse and general autocracy of one of the most heartless and corporatized and least accountable administrations in American history. Think it'll work? Think we'll make it? Stock up on water, keep your fingers crossed and keep handy plenty of SPF 1000

Oh Mark...the single voice in the chaos that I can relate to...

Die Die SUVs Please Die Sales of the bloated monster trucks are in a huge slump. Time for enviro-lovers to rejoice?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, June 1, 2005

You hear that? That cheering and rejoicing and heavy exhausted sighing? Why, it's coming from the massively fatigued Prius-happy enviro-green set and it's all about the fact that sales of huge bloated oil-belchin' SUVs are in a major free-fall, down nearly 20 percent for the year and dropping faster than Jenna Bush can slam a bottle of Cuervo.
Can we all just wave our Greenpeace flags high and scream an I-told-you-so and go spank an Expedition driver and be glad for that? Can I get a "Hell yeah"?
Because indeed, it's the kind of minor but still gratifying news you want to sort of dowse yourself in rub all over your progressive brain and inject into your withered Bush-bashed spirit and say ahh, finally, finally people are coming to their senses and finally the world is waking up and finally some enlightenment is peeking through.
This is the hope. Finally people are understanding just how inane and dangerous and pollutive and just plain stupid these vehicles so very much are, and maybe, just maybe, there is a tiny bit of hope that the planet can finally begin to exhale and unclench and we can finally begin to progress, to move toward something akin to health and compassion instead of this painful devolution and isn't that all happy sounding and positive? Aren't good things imminent and abounding?
And yet, no. Because just as these very shining and positive thoughts escape your brain like some sort of happy pink mist, still you are gnawed, as always, deep down. Still the other, less gullible, less perky voices in your head kick back with a six-pack of Skyy Blue and a boxed set of Jenna Jameson DVDs and a deep obvious roll of the eyes and say, yeah right, not so fast, sucker.
This is the funny thing about this sort of good news -- it usually just isn't all that good. This is when you gotta sit up and take the medicine. This is when you gotta get slapped in the face with cold hard dumbass 'Murkin reality.
Because the truth is, SUV sales are down not because people are becoming more politically aware and not necessarily because people are finally becoming more environmentally attuned and not because the population as a whole is finally realizing how BushCo has dragged us into a violent hellpit of screaming oily economy-gutted warmongering inarticulate debt. Wishful thinking, sweetheart.
And it's certainly not because everyone suddenly realized the oil-soaked Saudis are just as bad as the Taliban and we should be investigating alternative fuels and rediscovering the joys of riding bikes and walking to work, and while we're at it let's all examine our souls and examine our motives and examine just what the hell it is we in this country think we're doing by being the most gluttonous, environmentally devastating resource-abusin' landmass on the entire hobbled whirling sphere. All this is but a fraction of the explanation.
Nope, SUV sales are down for one reason and one reason only: high gas prices. SUV sales are down because when it costs upward of a hundred bucks to fill up your shiny clunky chrome-rimmed uber-bloated Escalade so you can burn donuts in the Wal-Mart parking lot for two hours on Friday night, dude, well, your sister's Dodge Neon suddenly looks like a worthy alternative. Even in Texas.
Optimism, this ain't. I wish I could say that the Prius-led revolution is at hand, that signs are increasingly resplendent of a massive war-weary cultural awakening, but of course I'm afraid the proof is just all too obvious that we just ain't all that nimble of spirit or that interesting a species and we just ain't that enlightened as a collective brain. Not yet, anyway.
Truth is, if gas prices were to suddenly drop to a buck fifty again and stay there for a few months, why, SUV sales would jump right back up. This has been proven. This has happened before. Hell, even the gas-starved Europeans indicated in a big poll a while back that if a gallon of Euro petrol suddenly dropped from five bucks to one, they'd be all over the big-bloated-American-car thing faster than Lynne Cheney on bad lesbian prose.
It's all real simple: When resources are cheap and plentiful, we gorge, we indulge, we stop caring. About repercussions, about the environmental, socioeconomic, spiritual or karmic costs of our behavior. Ditto the CEOs, the corporations that feed our gluttony -- they go for profit uber alles, even if it means massive economic abuse, backhanded politicking or war. It's just the way of the species.
However, when resources get scarce and expensive, we pay attention. We get scared. For our wallets. For our excessive habits. This is America, beeyatch: Fear and money are the only things that really trigger us. We respond only to crisis, change our behavior only when absolutely forced to, or because the GOP has pumped the nation full of bogus fear. Same as it ever was.
See, it's not really about raised consciousness. Not yet, anyway. It's not about a deep concern for how we treat the air, the planet, each other. By and large, we don't seem to give much of a damn for the fact that SUVs roll and pollute and stomp the Earth like Karl Rove stomps live kittens, not to mention how they endanger your family's life, and every other passenger in every other car you can't successfully swerve around in an emergency. After all, it's all about the illusion of safety and machismo, baby. Who cares if it's actually true?
And besides, SUVs aren't exactly going away. They're simply morphing into the new breed of crossover vehicles, essentially jacked-up trucklike cars on steroids, and one look at the upcoming manufacturing forecast from any automaker proves that, save for a handful of hybrid models, not a single automaker is eagerly rolling out a new fleet of small, sexy, environmentally friendly, gas-frugal vehicles.
And why? Why don't automakers care? Because they don't have to. Not yet. Despite amazing new engine technologies, automakers haven't cared to improve MPG ratings for over 20 years, thanks in large part to the GOP yanking away all incentive or pressure for them to do so and essentially giving them carte blanche to gouge and pollute however the hell they want. Not to mention how the EPA's MPG ratings for most cars are, quite simply, way off.
So then, let us celebrate the death of these silly monster tanks with only mild, muffled cheers, aimed mostly at those cute pseudo-macho hellbeasts driven by myopic jingoist love bunnies who stick little 'Murkin flags on the back of these 8-mpg Ford Excursions and call it patriotism.
Because the good news is, as long as gas prices stay up -- and verily, they could be way up, forevermore -- huge numbers of the biggest of the dumb trucks will be sitting on the lots, unsold. But bad news is, the sad, misinformed, aggro attitude that spawned them has yet to shift much more than an inch.