Monday 25 February 2008

Oil-Free Countries?

Photo borrowed from Galapagos Wind

TreeHugger reports that Ecuador is partnering with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to celebrate the 500th anniversary of its discovery by becoming completely oil-free! Interestingly, the country was recently registered as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol. This means that countries seeking to offset their CO2 emissions to meet their Kyoto obligations will be able to invest in carbon reduction and fixation infrastructure in Ecuador to do so. I definitely need to look into the CDM listing more as this would be a great way for many small struggling countries to attract international investment.

Sunday 24 February 2008

Move Over, Oil, There’s Money in Texas Wind

Another promising article about the wind power movement in Texas, this time from the New York Times's great Energy Challenge series. As Lester Brown notes in Plan B 3.0, Texas is in the process of installing 23,000 MW new generating capacity from wind alone -- generating capacity equivalent to 23 coal-fired power plants. Also, interesting from the NYTimes is this nifty bar graph showing current wind power capabilities from the top US states...

Wednesday 20 February 2008

The Price of Wheat

For those of you looking for the real costs of unsustainable consumption, look no further than your local grocery store where the demand for new fuel sources has increased the price of wheat-based products almost 3-fold in only one week! Don't understand how the two are linked? The folks at ABC.com do a pretty good job of putting things in plain enough terms...
"Just a few weeks ago, 50-pound bags of flour cost about $15. Today, they're $40."

"Blame it on the price of wheat. Demand for alternative energy has farmers planting less wheat and more corn, the key ingredient of ethanol. According to the USDA, since 1997, the amount of farmland dedicated to planting wheat has dropped from 70.4 million acres to 60.4 million, while corn acreage has risen from 79.5 million to 99.6 million."
Click here to read the rest of the ABC.com story.

This startling connection was actually described by the Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown as early as 2003. The predicament is particularly well described in the newest edition of Brown's Plan B 3.0 (go here to read the entire Preface).
"From an agricultural vantage point, the world’s appetite for crop-based fuels is insatiable. The grain required to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year. If the entire U.S. grain harvest were to be converted to ethanol, it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs.

"Historically the food and energy economies were separate. But with so many ethanol distilleries now being built to convert grain into fuel, the two are merging. In this new situation the world price of grain is moving up toward its oil-equivalent value. If the fuel value of grain exceeds its food value, the market will simply move the commodity into the energy economy. If the price of oil jumps to $100 a barrel, the price of grain will follow it upward. If oil goes to $120, grain will follow. The price of grain is now keyed to the price of oil.

"The emerging competition between the owners of the world’s 860 million automobiles and the 2 billion poorest people is uncharted territory for humanity. Suddenly the world is facing a moral and political issue that has no precedent: Should we use grain to fuel cars or to feed people? The average income of the world’s automobile owners is roughly $30,000 a year; the 2 billion poorest people earn on average less than $3,000 a year. The market says, Let’s fuel the cars" (pp. 40-41).
It's all coming true, only sooner than anyone would have guessed -- well, almost anyone. I think it's time for us Barack supporters to tell Obama he needs to rethink his stance on biofuels.

UPDATE

Tuesday 19 February 2008

Movement in Montana?

Pictured: St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park

I remember being excited by the symbolism of 2004's election of Democrat Brian Schweitzer as Montana's first Democratic Governor since 1988, but haven't thought about him since. Recently I have been listening to Time.com's podcast series where they interview a big name from the Environment scene each week.

The podcast for January 17th was an interview with Mr. Schweitzer, who actually sounds like he has a good understanding of the issues facing us and the potential for growth over the next 20 years, although I read some less exciting things on Wikipedia about mining more coal (which he seems to refute in the Podcast).

"I believe this is the greatest imperative of our generation and maybe larger than that."

“The entire world has recognized this imperative and if American industry and the public sector recognize this and we create a tax code that incentivizes innovation in energy production and consumption we will create the greatest economic engine in the history of this country, selling these technologies all over the world.”
Anyway, the Times.com's article on Montana's growing green movement is worth a read, and there are some interesting news items and videos on the Governor's website as well.

Is Congress Finally Ready to Go Green?

As concern over global warming became more and more prominent in the U.S. over the past several years — in the media, in opinion polls, in business and in state governments — the one place where the issue seemed all but invisible was the one place that could really do something about it: Congress.

But that began to change in 2007, and nowhere more so than in the Senate's key committee on the environment and public works, which drafts much of the country's environmental legislation. Up until last January, the committee was chaired by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican who memorably called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." When the Democrats took over Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, however, the chairperson's gavel was handed over to Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, and the floodgates opened.

Boxer began a series of open hearings on the science of global warming, giving airtime to the sort of experts — including former Vice President Al Gore — who had been suppressed under Inhofe. "As soon as the change took place, I realized that this was going to be one of my number one goals," says Boxer. "Elections have consequences, and this was one of the consequences."

Monday 18 February 2008

No New US Coal-Fired Power Plants?

From this article by Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown, it sounds like there won't be a future in coal-fired energy in the US. This is great news and well worth reading in its entirety.

The Story of Stuff

Found this nice video and info site through greenormal. Basically Annie Leonard takes you through the processes behind modern consumerism pointing out how the system has propagated itself to its current status as an important part of life and how the system is unsustainable. The site also offers tips on how consumers can go from being a part of the problem to a part of the solution. Very nice, and impressive for making a point without resorting to alarmism.

Related to consumerism, the Sustainable Development Commission (UK) has had a report up for at least a week now suggeting that food (its production, transport, and waste) is a family's biggest source of greenhouse gases (GHG). The BBC article covering the report may be a quicker way to consume the information.

Thursday 14 February 2008

Don't Get Overwhelmed! Get Started!

Picture borrowed from Nature Moms

I recognize that reading about Climate Change can seem overwhelming and make you feel helpless, but that's really not the case. If every person who knew about Climate Change worked to reduce their CO2 emissions and energy waste, we would be well on our way to turning things around.

So for those of you who have expendable incomes and a home you can modify, I offer the following links to give you inspiration, ideas and help in greening your home...

GreenHomeGuide
Smartly organizing its resources based on the rooms of a house (and its exteriors), this is a great place to start finding out about all the things you can do to make your home "greener."

HGTVpro.com's Green Building Centre
This is another good place to start and one that is particularly user friendly if you found the GreenHomeGuide's blog-style format difficult to peruse. Being a product of HGTV, there are also many useful videos to keep your interest.

16 Ways To Green Your Home (.pdf)
This is a straightforward list offered by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). I would recommend that you should read more than just this list though. For example, their section about reducing outdoor water usage doesn't even mention buying and using a rainwater tank (aka "water butt"), which is not a new idea, but a good one.

US EPA's Take Action at Home Tips
Broken down into only three categories, the US EPA provides long but easily digestible bullet point style lists for how to use less energy and water, produce less waste, and information about disposing of toxic household items properly.

Newsweek: Home Green Home
This is a very short but interesting Q&A with author Sara Lamia about whether (and which) eco-friendly upgrades are worth the expenses.

And last but certainly not least...
TreeHugger: How To Go Green
One of the most popular green blogs presents guides on how to green everything from your water and electricity to your sex life and wedding. I would start with their electricity guide and move on from there.

For more detailed and specific resources, I would take a look at the links at What's Working or the UK's excellent Energy Saving Trust.

Tuesday 12 February 2008

Presentation 5

Even if you don't believe half the science in Presentation 5, the half you do believe should be enough to make you use energy-efficient lightbulbs, turn off your heat during the day, and use public transport (or ride a bike) whenever possible. For more friendly tips on cutting your environmental impact, visit California Senator Barbara Boxer's homepage.

LINKS
Presentation 5 (.pdf)
The fifth in a series of climate change presentations given to the Working Group on Climate Change in the UK Parliament 6 months ago and was later presented at the UN Summit in Bali.

Blog summarizing Presentation 5 and John Grant's endeavor to have the issues it raises made more publicly available.

The
blog of a concerned advertising executive with ideas about how to spread the word about Presentation 5.

UPDATE: I just noticed that the links for the two blogs above didn't get inserted. I've fixed that now for those of you interested in learning about the campaign to publicize Presentation 5.

Lo-Flow Post

I started reading the METAEFFICIENT blog over the last few days and although it suffers from a lack of editing, it has a lot of great and usually practical information for people interested in efficient design and bringing some of it into their home.

The two things that most interested me were a post on low-flow shower heads (
here), and low-flow toilets.

While I think the low-flow showerhead post is good, I would like to add a little about what I found out about toilets...

For one, the
US EPA reports that toilets account for about 30% of residential indoor water use. They suggest that by installing a WaterSense high-efficiency toilet (HET), you can save 4,000 gallons and $90 per year (for a family of four). This means that even more expensive HETs (e.g., costing around $300-400) will pay for themselves in only 3-4 years of use. If you buy the cheapest HET model currently listed on Home Depot's website (cost: $99.00), it will pay for itself after the first year!

For two, I didn't know that 1992 saw a dramatic drop in the amount of gallons-per-flush (gpf) required for American toilets. Standard toilet models in the US prior to this time used 13 litres (L) or about 3.5 gallons (gal), and older toilet models may actually use 5.0 gpf. After 1992, toilets were required to use no more than 6 L or 1.6 gal. Beyond this, the US EPA's WaterSense programme requires that toilets getting their seal of approval as HETs use no more than 1.28 gpf (20% less than the 1992 standard) while still removing at least 350 grams (g) of waste (
full details). They have provided a list of toilets fitting these specifications here. The problem with their list is that it doesn't list the actual gpf used by each toilet, however the Santa Clara Valley Water District's list does! I guess if you live there you can get assistance in buying up to three HETs for your home.

One problem people have had with older model low-flow toilets is their tendency to have problems actually flushing things.
Terry Love's Consumer toilet reports aims to save people hassles by testing toilets and telling consumers which ones actually work. If you want to skip ahead, you can go straight to his favorite manufacturer's webpages: TOTO and Caroma. From Love's message boards, it seems like you can't go wrong with the TOTO Aquia. That said, he doesn't cover HETs. For a good list of HETs, head over to the California Urban Water Conservation Council's (CUWCC) list which was revised as recently as August 21, 2007. CUWCC's Product News pages have information for just about every water-using appliance/fixture/thing you can think of (including much more about HETs) and is well worth a look.

Monday 11 February 2008

Texan Environmentalism

Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center -- Texas

I found quite a few interesting articles on the NPR.com about Texans moving towards renewable energy projects in a massive way.

While the
Preface to Lester Brown's Plan B 3.0 mentions a massive wind power expansion of 23,000 MW capacity (equal to the output of 23,000 coal plants), what he doesn't mention explicitly is that the driving force behind the Texan interest in wind power has very little to do with averting disastrous global climate change. In fact, according to this article from NPR.com, the state government's Republican leaders don't even believe in global warming -- an opinion shared by many Texans themselves.

What is happening in Texas is the greatest example of the environment benefiting from human greed and our incredible ability to pursue our own self-interests. Texans are building wind power because it makes them money, and that's it! While I think
this article takes a more romantic view on the matter, it does a great job of describing how the West Texas town of Roscoe has gotten behind wind power in hopes of saving their debilitated economy. While the majors of many Texas cities are pushing environmental policies in the face of failing state leadership, I think the road most Americans will travel towards sustainability will originate from their pocketbooks and not their hearts.

For this reason, the story of Roscoe is a hopeful one, because it didn't take a plague of locusts to happen. All it took was one person who noticed renewable energy is worth more than failing cotton crops.

UPDATE: West Texas's 63 MW Snyder Wind Project is now home to the world's tallest wind turbines. Read about it at METAEFFICIENT.


The "Relocation, Relocation" Problem

"Port Nanven, Cornwall" by Benjamin Novant

I have to admit that I watch and enjoy Channel 4's Relocation, Relocation programme with Location, Location, Location presenters Kirstie Allsop and Phil Spencer helping wealthy couples (usually from London) make the part-time move back into the countryside while also holding onto a "crash-pad" in their urban job centre. It's escapism at its best seeming to offer us all the chance to leave the city behind and return to an idyllic and quiet rural setting only a stone's throw from a charming village. However, since I started watching the programme, a few questions have come to mind.

The first is whether any "family" (most are couples wanting to start families or with their first newborn) regardless of their wealth should be allowed two homes in one country? England is a country currently starved of affordable housing with the government fighting to build 15,000-20,000 new homes over the next 20 years (click here to read about plans to make 6,000 of these homes carbon neutral). So why should a wealthy couple have homes in Cornwall and London, one of which sits empty most of the year, when many Britons can't afford to buy any home at all?

The second issue is what kind of economic instability this kind of absentee ownership causes in these rural communities? Aside from issues of not spending locally, wealthy families cause damage to the local housing market because they can afford to pay top dollar for their village homes, funding their purchases with London wages or profits made through selling heavily inflated urban properties. The use of this urban wealth in the countryside inflates the village housing market substantially, making it very hard for locally employed workers to afford to live in their own village. Jasper Gerard from the Guardian reports that Cornwall area house prices can be as much at 17 times the annual income of locals. While there is some effort going into building affordable housing for locals only, the bigger issue is one that has substantially limited progress in the States: How much will government be willing to restrict the wealthy from enjoying their money at the expense of rural communities and/or the environment?

Sunday 10 February 2008

Plan B 3.0

Preface from Lester Brown's Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing To Save Civilization.

When Elizabeth Kolbert was interviewing energy analyst Amory Lovins for a profile piece in the New Yorker, she asked him about thinking outside the box. Lovins responded, “There is no box.” There is no box. That is the spirit embodied in Plan B.

Perhaps the most revealing difference between Plan B 2.0 and Plan B 3.0 is the change of the subtitle from “Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble” to simply “Mobilizing to Save Civilization.” The new subtitle better reflects both the scale of the challenge we face and the wartime speed of the response it calls for.

Our world is changing fast. When Plan B 2.0 went to press two years ago, the data on ice melting were worrying. Now they are scary.

Two years ago, we knew there were a number of failing states. Now we know that number is increasing each year. Failing states are an early sign of a failing civilization.

Two years ago there was early evidence that the potential for expanding oil production was much less than officially projected. Now, we know that peak oil could be on our doorstep. Two years ago oil was $50 a barrel. As of this writing in late 2007, it is over $90 a barrel.

In Plan B 2.0, we speculated that if we continued to build ethanol distilleries to convert grain into fuel for cars, the price of grain would move up toward its oil-equivalent value. Now that the United States has enough distilleries to convert one fifth of its grain crop into fuel for cars, this is exactly what is happening. Corn prices have nearly doubled. Wheat prices have more than doubled.

Two years ago, we reported that in five of the last six years world grain production had fallen short of consumption. Now, it has done so in seven of the past eight years, and world grain stocks are dropping toward all-time lows.

As the backlog of unresolved problems grows, including continuing rapid population growth, spreading water shortages, shrinking forests, eroding soils, and grasslands turning to desert, weaker governments are breaking down under the mounting stress. If we cannot reverse the trends that are driving states to failure, we will not be able to stop the growth in their numbers.

Some of the newly emerging trends—such as the coming decline in world oil production, the new stresses from global warming, and rising food prices—could push even some of the stronger states to the breaking point.

On the economic front, China has now overtaken the United States in consumption of most basic resources. By 2030, when its income per person is projected to match that in the United States today, China will be consuming twice as much paper as the world currently produces. If in 2030 the country’s 1.46 billion people have three cars for every four people, U.S. style, China will have 1.1 billion cars. And it will be consuming 98 million barrels of oil per day, well above current world production.

The western economic model—the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy—is not going to work for China. If it doesn’t work for China, it won’t work for India or the other 3 billion people in developing countries who are also dreaming the American dream. And in an increasingly integrated world economy, where we all depend on the same grain, oil, and steel, it will not work for industrial countries either.

The challenge for our generation is to build a new economy, one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a highly diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles everything. And to do it with unprecedented speed.

Continuing with business as usual (Plan A), which is destroying the economy’s eco-supports and setting the stage for dangerous climate change, is no longer a viable option. It is time for Plan B.

There are four overriding goals in Plan B 3.0: stabilizing climate, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the earth’s ecosystems. At the heart of the climate-stabilizing initiative is a detailed plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020 in order to hold the global temperature rise to a minimum. The climate initiative has three components: raising energy efficiency, developing renewable sources of energy, and expanding the earth’s forest cover both by banning deforestation and by planting billions of trees to sequester carbon.

We are in a race between tipping points in nature and our political systems. Can we phase out coal-fired power plants before the melting of the Greenland ice sheet becomes irreversible? Can we gather the political will to halt deforestation in the Amazon before its growing vulnerability to fire takes it to the point of no return? Can we help countries stabilize population before they become failing states?

The United States appears to be approaching a political tipping point as opposition builds to the construction of new coalfired power plants. A fast-spreading nationwide campaign has led several states, including California, Texas, Florida, Kansas, and Minnesota, to refuse construction permits or otherwise restrict construction.

With this movement gaining momentum, it may be only a matter of time before it expands to embrace the phasing out of existing coal-fired power plants. The question is, Will this happen soon enough to avoid dangerous climate change?

In Plan B 2.0, we talked about the enormous potential of renewable sources of energy, especially wind power. Since then we’ve seen proposed projects to generate electricity from such resources on a scale never seen with fossil fuel power plants. For example, the state of Texas is coordinating a vast expansion of wind farms that will yield up to 23,000 megawatts of new electrical generating capacity, an amount equal to 23 coal-fired power plants.

Two years ago, the notion of plug-in gas-electric hybrid cars was little more than a concept. Today five leading automobile manufacturers are moving to market with plug-in hybrids, with the first ones expected in 2010.

We have the technologies to restructure the world energy economy and stabilize climate. The challenge now is to build the political will to do so. Saving civilization is not a spectator sport. Each of us has a leading role to play.

When we published the original Plan B four years ago, we noticed that some 600 individuals ordered a copy of the book and then came back and ordered 5, 10, 20 or 50 copies for distribution to friends, colleagues, and political and opinion leaders. With Plan B 2.0, this number jumped to more than 1,500 individuals and organizations that were bulk buying and distributing the book.

We call these distributors our Plan B Team. Ted Turner, who distributed some 3,600 copies to heads of state, cabinet members, Fortune 500 CEOs, the U.S. Congress, and the world’s 672 other billionaires, was designated Plan B team captain.

This book can be downloaded without charge from our Web site. Permission for reprinting or excerpting portions of the manuscript can be obtained from Reah Janise Kauffman at Earth Policy Institute.

And finally, there is not anything sacred about Plan B. It is our best effort to lay out an alternative to business as usual, one that we hope will help save our civilization. If anyone can come up with a better plan, we will welcome it. The world needs the best plan possible.

Lester R. Brown
October 2007

Thursday 7 February 2008

Precinct Caucus and the Environment

So that no one has an excuse not to get involved, I've looked up some information about Saturday's Democratic Precinct Caucus...

For one, if you have no idea what a "Precinct Caucus" is (I didn't), you should start out at the Washington State Democrat Party's
FAQ.

For two, you can look up where you should go to vote
here.

And if you're really excited about change and being a part of it, you can sign up to volunteer by going to
this page and filling out the form. For example, maybe after the 2004 Election, you felt particularly motivated to get involved. Well this is your chance!

So you know what a Precinct Caucus is, and you know where to go on Saturday, but whom do you vote for? Well there are lots of issues, but for me the question of where we get our energy after we run out of oil, and how we combat climate change are the most important issues. If you're like most Americans, you evidently care mostly about the economy. Well here's
a great argument for why voting for a President should not be about the economy (hint: they don't have any control over it).

Obama has this outline page entitled "
Energy & Environment." I think this is a great way to organize policy, but I haven't read much yet. Hilary has organized her outline page under the title "Energy Independence & Global Warming" which I have to say is a less inspired viewpoint. I think tying our interests in averting global warming to our fear/hatred of Islamic extremists is a particularly Republican way to frame things. In the end, she may be right. Global Warming has been in newspapers regularly for 10 years with very little public interest, so it might take fear to bring this issue to the fore. That said, I think there are a few arguments against this practice.

For one, I think Americans are at a fatigue point with the whole Iraq War, so linking this "new issue" with one that they have been beaten over the head with for 5 years might not get them all that excited or motivated about your issue. For two, I think it's best to focus on one message and one motive for changing our energy infrastructure, and both Clinton and Obama have already figured out a way to connect the all-important economy issue to the challenge of mitigating climate change -- they just need to stick to it!

The message is this: We need to become a renewable energy-based society because this is energy produced in America by Americans. New research, building new power plants, creating new energy infrastructure, modifying homes for efficiency and sustainability, and microgeneration (producing your own power) are all areas that will require new jobs that cannot be outsourced. And that's just the start. If we phase out oil and coal use, all automobiles will need to be replaced or upgraded, mass transit systems will need to be built, and electronics will need to be re-engineered to reduce plastics (and heavy metals). It's a lot of hard work, but it's all highly paid hard work, and this is what drives economies. Al Gore knows this and is working with massive venture capital firm
KPCB to support companies working towards green solutions.

China has also come to this realization and are beginning to build some creative solutions including
an entire city built from the ground up to be completely self-sustaining. The issue can be shaped as friendly competition with the Chinese for who can do the best by being the greenest. It's selfish capitalism turned on its head, but it needs to be pushed by the government.


Free trade and capitalism alone have a very bad track record of bringing about societal change. If it weren't for the government, automakers wouldn't have put seatbelts in cars, and if Congress hadn’t mandated CAFE standards in 1975, the fuel economy of most cars would still be at Ford Model T levels (some say they still are!). This might explain why fuel economy has increased only marginally over the last 25 years -- the time period in which computers, the internet, cellular/mobile phones were all invented and popularized to the point that children in Sub-Saharan Africa are now provided with laptops connected to wireless internet through mobile networks.

Wednesday 6 February 2008

AT&T And Censorship?

I think it's worth reading Slate's article about what AT&T is preparing to do (snippets below).

...last week AT&T announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws.

Once AT&T gets in the business of picking and choosing what content travels over its network, while the law is not entirely clear, it runs a serious risk of losing its all-important immunity. An Internet provider voluntarily giving up copyright immunity is like an astronaut on the moon taking off his space suit. As the world's largest gatekeeper, AT&T would immediately become the world's largest target for copyright infringement lawsuits.

Very very odd times these are. If you thought the RIAA was out of touch going after consumers of it's own music with very little or no proof that they had actually committed copyright infringement, this goes a step further. Why AT&T would care about copyright infringement is beyond me unless someone has made it worth their while to police their traffic, which evidently includes most of the data networks we're all using.

This is the head of the tech blog site Gizmodo, on a program funded by AT&T and aired exclusively on their tech channel. He decides to hijack things and ask some questions upfront before the producers realize what's happening and cut the conversation off.

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Obama Takes Alabama

I had to add this good news to the sheet, even if it does smack of an awkward way to deal with race issues in the South.

More awkward still is the presence of a mentally handicapped Republican analyst talking with a BBC reporter about how Ronald Reagan is the GOP's John F. Kennedy. I wonder how long it will be before we start talking about the "giant genius" of G.W. Bush? Probably it will happen right after we create an Alchemist's stone to produce oil from endangered species -- the true cause of Global Climate Change.

Super Wednesday Morning

So it's Wednesday at 1:40am in the morning and I'm listening to BBC reporters bantering back and forth about the Republican race with old Reagan crony Peggy Noonan who is sitting in a fur coat in front of a surprisingly modest view of the Manhattan skyline, and I've realized this is the Super Bowl for the rest of us.

There's a suggestion of a hint that McCain will not be able to push Mitt Romney (and possibly even Huckabee) out of the race, and that they will struggle along for the next 6-months, just as we know will happen in the Democratic race. So I'm staying up for basically no reason, but it's still semi-exciting.

The downside, and there is a downside, is that a line of discussion pointed out that America is obviously so tired of Bush that the Democrats will win the election no matter what. The reason this bothers me is that I remember hearing this exact word-for-word discussion 4-years-ago with Kerry being the "Anyone-but-Bush" candidate. After he lost, he was blamed for being insignificant and not getting people excited, even though the media couldn't push the point hard enough that he just needed to have a pulse and not be George W. Bush to be elected. They were horribly wrong in 2004.


Of course, Bush can't be elected a third time, although if he could I'm not sure he wouldn't. Do I trust Americans to make informed decisions in 2008? No. Not after 2004. I know that Europe tends not to blame us for re-electing Bush, but they're letting us off too easy. I just heard some 30-something woman in an NYC bar say another scary 2004 tag line: "It doesn't matter who I vote for because they're all the same person." Actually, this was a famous 2000 Election tag-line too and couldn't have been further from the truth then, when being spouted by Nader supporters about Bush and Gore, than it is this year.

There are real differences between John McCain and the Democrats this year and the fact that McCain is a moderate with a history of independence has been heavily tainted by his efforts to support Bush over the last 2 years and his unflinching belief in the Iraq War. So along these lines, I have to present VAJOE.com's 2008 Candidate Calculator. While you can question the inclusion of some issues and the exclusion of others, this is a great way to find out which candidates best fit your beliefs on a number of important issues. The way in which they score the candidate's stances on issues is probably overly simplistic, but the idea is great, and without this tool I would never have realized that former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel agrees with me on the big issues 77.78% of the time.

Sunday 3 February 2008

Oil Webs

This is a pretty cool tool. It creates nodal maps for all of the presidential candidates wherein each candidate has a picture, the size of which represents his/her amount of contributions from the oil industry. These pictures are then connected to circles representing oil interest groups or companies by a line, the thickness of which represents the size of the contribution from that specific group. You can also click on the "Politician View" tab at the top to see an itemized breakdown of the candidates and their donations and even view the receipts for each pledge. I found this tool at the New Scientist website.
P.S.: That's Kerry from the 2004 Election in the upper left-hand corner, receiving just 7% ($184,000) of the $2.65 million Bush received from oil interests. Not to ruin your fun, but because I know you're interested, Al Gore received $142,000 in 2000 from various oil industry groups.

Saturday 2 February 2008

Michael Moore's "SiCKO"

So Sheena and I just finished watching Michael Moore's SiCKO, which I know is not new and everyone's seen it, but I think we have a unique opinion as we are currently living in one of the countries Moore mentions with socialized healthcare. In the past I've been skeptical about Michael Moore's selective reporting of facts, and I think there's definitely some polishing going on here, but I will say that from our experience with the UK's NHS (socialized healthcare system), the level of care we've received from our doctors here is at least as good as we had in the States, the time from when you first call for an appointment until you are in the examination room is usually much shorter (within 1-3 days in the UK whereas it could be many weeks in the States if it's not urgent), and the pharmacies are indeed very inexpensive. The NHS is actually a very popular system with most people quite happy about their level of care. Europeans, in general, do obtain travelers insurance prior to visiting America for fear of taking ill and being left to die on the streets because they lack HMO coverage. Michael Moore had all these things right so far as we can tell. I would say that there is some concern among the healthcare industry that NHS doctors are stretched too thin and paid too poorly, but this is not typically front-page news and gets nowhere near the press that the negative impact insurance fees have had on doctors in the States does.

The things Moore didn't mention that I think are worth covering are:

(1) UK medical students pay little-to-no fees for their education, covering only their living expenses. These are often paid by parents, through loans, or through state-funded scholarships which appear to be more available here than in the US. They graduate from medical school at the same time that US students are finishing their bachelor’s degrees, so they should have a much longer earning potential making up for the possibility of per annum (pa) wage deficiencies. For example, assuming doctors in both the US and the UK are able to retire at 60, UK doctors making the equivalent of $100,000pa will make $3.5 million. A US doctor making $120,000pa (from
payscale.com) will begin working at least 5 years after their UK counterparts, and graduate with an average debt of $200,000. By the time they are 60, US doctors will have grossed only $200,000 more than their UK counterparts ($3.7 million) or much less if you consider loan interest rates, the fact that medical school debt has increased 8.5% per year according to the AMA, and reductions due to the high cost of US malpractice insurance.

(2) Moore mentions that people in the UK have lower incidence of disease in almost every measurement than Americans, but he doesn't mention whether this is due to lifestyle differences or the healthcare system being of a higher caliber. I tend to think it is a matter of the NHS focusing on preventative healthcare much more than US HMOs. People in the UK drink and smoke much more on average than in the US and have a definite passion for meat and pastries (or “pasties”).

(3) Moore visits France and finds that things are better there than they are in the UK, after having just shown the benefits of the UK’s NHS over the US HMO schemes. This is likely true, but there are huge cultural differences between the French and the Americans that are probably behind the differences he finds in healthcare and social services. The emphasis in America at all socioeconomic strata tends to be on acquiring material wealth at the cost of day-to-day quality of living. I think the best example of this is that most Americans work 8-10 hour days and 5-6 day workweeks with it becoming commonplace to work from home. After these long days/weeks, Americans indulge in more fast food than any other country as well. Meanwhile, the French are currently transitioning to a 4-day workweek and are not working 10-hour days to make up for it. They believe improvements in efficiency over a shorter week will make the system more effective for everyone involved. The idea underneath this is that the French are trying to achieve the same standard of output by the most efficient means, whereas American industry is continually looking for increased productivity/output by whatever means possible. Where efficiency is lost in the American system, it is made up for by increased work hours and in many cases, increases in work days over each week. This results in huge per capita work increases with much smaller productivity gains.

Anyway, this has gotten into a long polemic, but I feel this is an important problem for America, and one that the Democratic campaigns have decided is finally worth taking a stand on. Hopefully, when we return to the States in 2012, we’ll find a much different system than we left, not that I’ll be holding my breath.

P.S.: Happy Groundhog Day(!), and the photo at the top is from our family trip to Alaska last Summer.

Friday 1 February 2008

A wee test

This is just a post to figure out how Blogger works.

The picture to the right was taken with my mom's
point-and-shoot Canon at Rosslyn Chapel just outside Edinburgh during her Christmas visit. I took some pictures of the chapel in September with my dSLR (my pics are here), but as you can see, I didn't get any good ones of the interior. The point-and-shoot in fully manual mode did a much better job. Who would have figured?

For all of those reading this in America, I found
this article from the Washington Post about an IRS scam where someone sends you a fake e-mail about getting a tax rebate. Yet another reason tax cuts are bad for everyone concerned.