We can NOT shop our way to a greener world

Word.

How many times have you heard the argument that small green actions lead to bigger ones?

I've heard it hundreds of times: habits that might scarcely register in their own right are still useful because they encourage people to think of themselves as green, and therefore to move on to tougher actions.

A green energy expert once tried to convince me that even though rooftop micro wind turbines are useless or worse than useless in most situations, they're still worth promoting because they encourage people to think about their emissions. It's a bit like the argument used by anti-drugs campaigners: the soft stuff leads to the hard stuff.

I've never been convinced by this argument. In my experience, people use the soft stuff to justify their failure to engage with the hard stuff. Challenge someone about taking holiday flights six times a year and there's a pretty good chance that they'll say something along these lines:

I recycle everything and I re-use my plastic bags, so I'm really quite green.

A couple of years ago a friend showed me a cutting from a local newspaper: it reported that a couple had earned so many vouchers from recycling at Tesco that they were able to fly to the Caribbean for a holiday.

The greenhouse gases caused by these flights outweigh any likely savings from recycling hundreds or thousands of times over, but the small actions allow people to overlook the big ones and still believe that they are environmentally responsible.

Being a cynical old git, I have always been deeply suspicious of the grand claims made for consumer democracy: that we can change the world by changing our buying habits. There are several problems with this approach:

• In a consumer democracy, some people have more votes than others, and those with the most votes are the least inclined to change a system that has served them so well.

• A change in consumption habits is seldom effective unless it is backed up by government action. You can give up your car for a bicycle - and fair play to you - but unless the government is simultaneously reducing the available road space, the place you've vacated will just be taken by someone who drives a less efficient car than you would have driven (traffic expands to fill the available road-space). Our power comes from acting as citizens - demanding political change - not acting as consumers.

• We are very good at deceiving ourselves about our impacts. We remember the good things we do and forget the bad ones.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't always try to purchase the product with the smallest impact: you should. Nor am I suggesting that all ethical consumption is useless. Fairtrade products make a real difference to the lives of the producers who sell them; properly verified goods - like wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council or fish approved by the Marine Stewardship Council - are likely to cause much less damage than the alternatives. But these small decisions allow us to believe that our overall performance is better than it really is.

So I wasn't surprised to see a report in Nature this week suggesting that buying green products can make you behave more selfishly than you would otherwise have done. Psychologists at the University of Toronto subjected students to a series of cunning experiments (pdf). First they were asked to buy a basket of products; selecting either green or conventional ones. Then they played a game in which they were asked to allocate money between themselves and someone else. The students who had bought green products shared less money than those who had bought only conventional goods.

The researchers call this the "licensing effect". Buying green can establish the moral credentials that license subsequent bad behaviour: the rosier your view of yourself, the more likely you are to hoard your money and do down other people.

Then they took another bunch of students, gave them the same purchasing choices, then introduced them to a game in which they made money by describing a pattern of dots on a computer screen. If there were more dots on the right than the left they made more money. Afterwards they were asked to count the money they had earned out of an envelope.

The researchers found that buying green had such a strong licensing effect that people were likely to lie, cheat and steal: they had established such strong moral credentials in their own minds that these appeared to exonerate them from what they did next. Nature uses the term "moral offset", which I think is a useful one.

So perhaps guilt is good after all. Campaigners are constantly told that guilt-tripping people is counterproductive: we have to make people feel better about themselves instead. These results suggest that this isn't very likely to be true. They also offer some fascinating insights into the human condition. Maybe the cruel old Christian notion of original sin wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Organizing a Better Salem

Some dates to put on your calendar for community gardens:

We have entered the rainy and blustery season, and our time is now devoted to harvesting the last of the crops, putting our gardens to bed, resting and reflecting. In this process, we are overwhelmed with a humble sense that we could not have grown the program without all of you, your thoughts and your passion for community gardens. So thank you! We are on the right path to creating healthy, vibrant and sustainable communities!!!

Below you will find some current hands-on projects that need your support and participation:

First Fall Gardens Program Meeting: Thursday, November 12th, 2009 (3:30-7 pm)

We are in the process of planning a community gardens meeting schedule, with the intention of bringing key garden volunteers into a newly developed Head Start to Garden program. To accomplish this, we are scheduling the first fall community gardens meeting on the same day as our next Head Start to Garden meeting, which is set for Thursday, November 12th from 3:30-5pm at Community Action’s main office (2475 Center St. NE). We will flow from the nitty-gritty of the Head Start to Garden program into some broader issues and focus, with the broader discussion happening over a potluck dinner. You are welcome to come just for the potluck, which will start after 5pm.

And then…

IGNITE SALEM – Thursday, November 12th, 2009 (7:45-10pm) @ Northern Lights TheaterPub

On this same night, I will be presenting a 7 minute, 20 slide power-point presentation on how we as a community can support the youth of Salem-Keizer in planting the seeds of peace, healing, forgiveness and food security. This will be one of 14 creative/techie presentations. For more info, check here: http://ignitesalem.com

Finally…

FAMILY VOLUNTEER DAY 2009: 11/21/09 (9-noon) in the SE Salem Neighborhood

On Saturday, November 21st, community partners are coming together to facilitate the ongoing tradition of raking leaves throughout the SE Salem (roughly between 17th and 25th----State and Mission). This is a project that Wayne Crowder of Salem Leadership Foundation began and is now passing it off to the community, and many partners are coming together, to LEAF IT TOGETHER, including Hands On Mid Willamette Valley, City of Salem, City of Salem, SESNA, Willamette University and more. We will be meeting on the 21st at Capital Park Wesleyan Church/SE Salem Community Center at 9am to begin this project, with an aim to hit the houses of seniors and people in need, to connect with neighbors, etc., etc., etc, and we need your help! Come with your rake in hand, gloves on and prepared to work as a team to build and revitalize community.

And that’s all she wrote for now folks. Thank you, and please feel free to reply with any questions. Marion Polk Food Share is close to launching a new website, and the gardens will have a blog, therefore that will be the new way of getting updates to you.

Sincerely,

Jordan Blake
Gardens Project Manager
Marion Polk Food Share
Imagine…NO Hunger

P.S.

Here are some “unofficial” stats from this 2009 season:

• Garden produce grown and shared: 59,815 pounds
• Garden volunteer hours: Coming close to 5000 hours
• Number of youth involved in garden projects: 400
• Number of low/moderate income volunteers: 180
• Value of in-kind donations: $12,000

P.P.S. Check out last month’s Living Culture (www.livingcultureonline.com). The Food Share Sustainable Community Gardens Program is highlighted in one of the episodes.

Growth is to sustainability what intercourse is to virginity

Image via Wikipedia

Well, the political season is gearing up here in Salem so we're going to hear a lot about candidates who support the particular absurdity peddled as "sustainable growth," which, like the belief in Santa Claus, makes people feel good despite the phenomenon in question never having existed outside the realm of myth.

The laws of sustainability are these. Bottom line: you can have growth (increased use of materials and energy) or you can have sustainability. Growth is to sustainability what intercourse is to virginity.

City Boards & Commissions: Applicants needed now

After seeing the City Council majority's disdain for actual public participation and its shabby, shameful treatment of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board on the Minto-Brown easements sellout, it's tempting to ignore this notice about boards and commissions vacancies. But if there's anything Salem needs more than for good people to get more involved, I don't know what it is, so here's the announcement.

The [Salem] Boards and Commissions Committee is scheduled to meet Thursday, November 17th, at noon, to reappoint and appoint members. I am asking for your help with recruiting for new applicants.

Listed below Current Boards and Commissions vacancies -

• Airport Advisory Commission (1)
• Citizen Advisory Board (1)
• Citizen Budget Committee (1) - Ward 5
• Citizen Police Review Board (1)
• Downtown Advisory (1) - Business Owner within the Downtown District
• Housing Advisory Commission (4) - Senior, Social Services, Housing, Development and Finance, and (1) recommendation from the City of Keizer
• Housing and Urban Development Advisory Commission (3) - Housing, Neighborhood Association, Human Rights
• Human Rights and Relations Advisory Commission (7) ... 1 is for a student/youth
• North Gateway Advisory Board (1)
• Salem Library Advisory Board (1)
• Senior Center Advisory Board (3) - At large
• West Salem Advisory Board (1) - At large

The Boards and Commissions website has been updated with current vacancy information and applicants can apply on-line or print off the form and mail it in the City Manager's Office, 555 Liberty St., SE - Rm 220, Salem, Oregon 97301

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you,
Linda Cate
Mayor and City Manager's Office
503-588-6255 x7269

Graffiti isn't cool. Call 371-GANG to report tags

Image via Wikipedia

Salem has a real problem with graffiti. Whole books can be written about the social pathology that graffiti represents and the futility of trying to leave it to the police to resolve. Salem seems headed down that track, which is a perfect setup for a vicious cycle of graffiti crackdowns and flareups as testosterone-poisoned young males on both sides of the equation get into a classical primate dominance contest with everybody the worse off and lots of collateral damage all around.

Incidents of graffiti have significantly increased over the past three months throughout Salem, with the past week being particularly busy. Thankfully, in most cases property owners have been compliant with rapid removal. In some cases the Graffiti Abatement Team has responded to the area and removed graffiti, only to have it get tagged again within a matter of days. While this high volume of calls has created some delay in the response time of the Graffiti Abatement Team, we ask for patience from the public as we work very hard to catch up on calls, and we also ask for your vigilance in reporting and removing graffiti in a timely manner. If you do remove graffiti, please remember to take a photo first and send it to knelson@cityofsalem.net Also, remember that graffiti is a crime. Please report in-progress crimes immediately by calling 911 and report suspicious activity.

Our community has been very aggressive at keeping graffiti in check, and we want to thank you for being our partner in fighting crime and not allowing the vandals to win!

Graffiti Hotline: 503-371-4264

Sgt. Doug Carpenter
Salem Police Department
Crime Prevention Unit
555 Liberty St SE #130
Salem, Oregon 97301
503-588-6050 ext 7030
dcarpenter@cityofsalem.net

Nice short summary on the need to rebuild the trains

Americans are great for killing things and then wanting to "preserve" the remnants of the things killed. Thus we have beautiful restored stations serving an emaciated and crippled rail network. Image via Wikipedia

James Howard Kunstler, from the foreward to "Waiting for a Train."

Since then, train travel in the United States has become a pretty bare-bones affair. Amtrak has become the laughingstock of the world. Most Americans now living have never even been passengers on a train -- for them it's as outmoded as the stagecoach.

The final three-decade blowout of the cheap fossil-fuel fiesta led to the supremacy of the automobile and the fabulous network of highways that provided so much employment and so many real-estate development opportunities. This is all rather unfortunate because we are on the verge of experiencing one of the sharpest discontinuities in human history.

We're heading into a permanent global oil crisis. It is going to change the terms of everyday life very starkly. We will be a far less affluent nation than we were in the 20th century. The automobile is now set to become a diminishing presence in our lives. We will not have the resources to maintain the highways that made Happy Motoring so normal and universal.

The sheer prospect of permanent energy-resource problems has, in my view, been the prime culprit behind the cratering of our financial system for the simple reason that reduced energy "inputs" lead inexorably to the broad loss of capacity to service debt at all levels: personal, corporate, government. It's quite a massive problem, and it's not going away anytime soon, which is why I call it "The Long Emergency."

There are many additional pieces to it, including very troubling prospects for agriculture, for commerce, manufacturing -- really for all the "normal" activities of daily life in an "advanced" civilization.

I think we're going to need trains again desperately. Among the systems in trouble (and headed for more, very soon) is commercial aviation. In my opinion, the airline industry as we know it will cease to exist in five years.

Combine this with the threats to our car culture -- including resumed high fuel costs and the equal probability of scarcities and shortages, along with falling incomes and lost access to credit -- and you have a continental-sized nation that nobody can travel around.

Rebuilding the nation's passenger railroad has got to be put at the top of our priority list. We had a system not so long ago that was the envy of the world; now we have service that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of.

The tracks are still lying out there rusting in the rain, waiting to be fixed. The job doesn't require the reinvention of anything -- we already know how to do it. Rebuilding the system would put scores of thousands of people to work at meaningful jobs at all levels. The fact that we're barely talking about it shows what an unserious people we have become.

Rebuilding the American passenger-railroad system has an additional urgent objective: We need a doable project that can build our confidence and sense of collective purpose in facing all the other extraordinary challenges posed by the long emergency -- especially rebuilding local networks of commerce and relocalizing agriculture.

There's been a lot of talk about "hope" in our politics lately. Real hope is generated among people who are confident in their abilities to contend with the circumstances that reality sends their way, proving to themselves that they are competent and able to respond intelligently to the imperatives of their time.

We are, in effect, our own generators of hope. Rebuilding the American railroad system is an excellent place to start recovering our sense of purpose.

A real "No Child Left Behind" curriculum

Secretary of Ed. Prevention Arne Duncan. Job: ensure maximum student- years wasted on standardized tests so students can be blamed for their inability to cope in the world they inherit, rather than the schools that failed to prepare them. Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This is the kind of material that should be in Salem-Keizer Schools and not just on the web. We need to be replacing the idiotic standardized test mania with a REAL "No Child Left Behind" mindset, which would mean that no child coming up is left behind without real, practical skills that will be needed in an energy constrained world.

Our local school district, showing perfect obliviousness to our predicament, is considering expansion even as the resource base to support the existing school facilities is collapsing. Prediction: Any new schools in SK will be award-winning, architect wet-dream designs . . . and be totally useless in a low-energy future. This guy's students are extremely lucky to have a teacher such as him.

WHAT LOWER CONSUMPTION MEANS

by Dr. R. Daniel Allen

Most of the kids have a good laugh with the before/after comparison chart, and I laugh along with them. The contrasts between the present and (likely) future presented in the chart are striking to the point of unbelievability to them, and their reactions are honest and humorous: “So, Dr. Allen, where can I buy this mule I’ll need?”

But I also laugh with some sadness and a touch of fear; sadness that prudent suggestions to prepare for a difficult future are still regarded as a joke; and fear for a possibly much darker future I don’t think they yet comprehend -- a fear that we might not be able to pull this off.

Note that this is directed at high school kids as part of my ongoing series of “important side notes” to the regular Chemistry curriculum. Even though topics such as EROEI and the “net energy curve” are very relevant to this discussion, I have not introduced them yet in this essay for the sake of simplicity. For these topics, I highly recommend many related posts on www.theoildrum.com by Ugo Bardi, Charles Hall, and David Murphy, as well as the references contained therein.

Executive Summary: The fevered frenzy of Industrial Civilization’s resource consumption appears to have finally reached its apex and begun its decline in this, the first decade of the twenty-first century. A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin’ civilization. Resource depletion is a predicament requiring adaptation to an entirely new low-consumption paradigm, rather than a problem to be solved with technological or social solutions. As a country, we need to start the conversation about what a lower-consumption, resource-poor society would look like, and begin the appropriate preparations.

The Insatiable Hunger of Industrial Civilization

Over the past 150 years, the relentless combination of exponentially-increasing population and exponentially-increasing per-capita (i.e. per-person) consumption has significantly depleted a wide-range of resources necessary for the continuation of our modern Industrial Civilization. These include both non-renewable resources (ex: fossil fuels, metal ores, phosphate fertilizers, etc.) and theoretically-renewable resources that are being abused to such an extent that they are becoming essentially non-renewable on useful timescales (ex: fisheries, topsoil, freshwater, etc.).

Pick any of these key resources and the annual extraction rate data will likely show an exponential increase from the mid-1800’s to the present. Ask scientists about the resource and they will tell you the bad news: the annual extraction rate curve is near, at, or past the point of collapse. Ask conventional economists or politicians and they will tell you the good news: “Everything’s going to be OK; the market will take care of it; It always has.”

So who do we believe? Taking a quick look past the rhetoric, the situation becomes clear -- alarmingly so for those who wish the industrial party to continue, as well as for those who fear we are not properly prepared for what follows.

The Easy Stuff’s Gone

As modern Industrial Civilization built momentum, the easiest resources, the “lowest hanging fruit,” were logically picked first: the high purity coal, metal ores, and phosphate-bearing minerals at or near the surface; the light, sweet crude oil and gas that burst at great pressure from shallow wells; the huge, dense schools of protein-rich fish that practically jumped into the boats; the deep-rich top-soils that required minimal inputs to produce bountiful crop yields.

While the ease of extraction and high quality of these resources gave us a great confidence as a civilization, ever-increasing consumption rates actually became ingrained as a necessity for the continuation of our industrial economies. As this consumptive frenzy gained momentum, however, these once-easy resources became “high graded;” meaning that as the easiest stuff was skimmed off every year, the resources that remained were of increasingly lower quality.

What remains now, of course, at our currently-advanced stage of depletion, are resources that are much more expensive, of much lower quality, and much more difficult to extract. These are the low-purity metal ores thousands of feet underground; heavy crude oil and gas laced with toxins that must be coaxed with great effort from beneath thousands of feet of ocean, rock, and salt; sparse schools of lower-quality fish requiring monstrous nets and huge ships for their economical extraction; and the nutrient-depleted, thinned-out top-soil requiring significant inputs to obtain reasonable yields.

The Difficult Stuff’s Too Difficult

Let’s assume to a very rough (but not entirely unreasonable) approximation that half of all theoretically-extractable resources have been depleted as we begin the 21^st century – fossil fuels, metal ores, phosphate fertilizer, fisheries, etc. The industrial consumers say, “Wow, that still leaves half remaining to be extracted. We still have another 150 years of fun. Party on!” There are, however, two key problems that will undermine their (understandable) exuberance.

First, due to much-increased population and per-capita consumption rates, we are burning through these resources at a significantly faster rate than at the start of the first 150 years. Even if the second half of the resources were easily obtained, they would be likely be gone in a matter of a few decades. Secondly, the first half of the resources was the cheap, easy half. What remains is so increasingly difficult to access that it would require actual extra-terrestrial energy inputs for their complete extraction – i.e. it’s not gonna happen. Not even close.

Here’s the dark irony of our resource predicament: The low-quality, difficult half of the resources that remain require an infrastructure for their extraction that can only exist in the presence of the high-quality, easy half of the resources -- the ones that no longer exist. Please read that again.

In other words, a relatively large percentage of the low-quality, difficult resources that remain will likely never be extracted. The age of cheap, easy, high-quality resources to power the current version of Industrial Civilization is over, and the age of expensive, difficult, low-quality resources to power a future version of Industrial Civilization will simply never occur.

Our beloved Industrial Civilization, this pinnacle of human ingenuity, this shining beacon of light in an otherwise backward Universe, (this destructive monster killing the biosphere) is just about out of fuel. It’s time to get out and start walking.

Lower Consumption Is the New Higher Consumption

So what does all this “bad” news mean for our everyday lives?

The short answer is that we can expect a rather drastic involuntary reduction in resource use in the not-too-distant future, gradually worsening, and extending into the distant future. This coming resource supply-reduction may well proceed in a stair-step fashion -- unexpected drop, period of stability, unexpected drop, period of stability…etc, giving repeated temporary illusions of “the bottom.” The steady erosion of the resource pipeline will not only utterly cripple our growth-requiring Industrial economy, it will send ripple effects through every facet of our formerly-industrial lives, changing them almost beyond belief.

We will not only have less and less of the “primary” extractable resources available to us every year -- less oil, less coal, natural gas, less phosphate fertilizer, less metals, etc; but we will also have less and less of the “secondary” resources that the primary resources make possible: less electricity, less nitrogen fertilizer, less water treatment, less transportation, less computers and electronic communication, etc.

Again, it’s important to state here that not only will this decline be involuntary, it will not be preventable by any combination of political, social, or technological solutions. It will simply occur, and we must simply respond to it.

How we respond, of course, will make a great deal of difference as to whether our predicament becomes disastrous or just very difficult. Moral guidance will be greatly needed throughout. The varied fields of Ecology, Biophysical Economics, Permaculture, and Natural Systems Agriculture (among others) have much to teach us about adapting to our changing resource situation, and we certainly should listen to them. (Note to Obama: Please contact the Post Carbon Institute. Invite Wendell Berry over for a beer. Heck, Derrick Jensen too.)

Also realize that there are many important facets of our lives which need not decline in the upcoming future – indeed, they may even increase: personal connections with our families, communities, and the natural world; block parties and potlucks; tag-football and pickup-basketball; joking around and shooting the breeze; love in our hearts, etc. In other words, it’s quite possible we just may find a lot more important and fulfilling things than we’re losing.

Much is still up to us.

What Lower Consumption Means

The following chart is meant to give a brief flavor of our coming lower-resource future. A quick read down the left column gives a pretty good overview of our current Industrial society, in all its fast-paced, consumptive glory.

I’ve been told by my students that the right column reads seems suspiciously Amish-like. That’s really not an accident -- the Amish generally lead a much less consumptive lives. Whatever you happen to think of their social structures, the physical lifestyles of the Amish will probably gradually become the lifestyles of a majority of the population.

Another accusation I get is that I’m predicting the 21^st century will increasingly resemble the 18^th century. I respond with this: if that’s what the Laws of Thermodynamics and the finite material limits of the Earth dictate, I don’t see how we have a choice.

Let’s try to make the best of it.

NONE/LESS OF…	REPLACED WITH…
Cars & trucks	Bicycles, walking, electric scooters, horses, & mules
Airplane travel (domestic & international)	Infrequent long journeys by trains and boat
Power boats, barges, ocean liners, cargo ships, & super tankers	Sailboats, row-boats, canoes
Supermarket food shopping	Home gardens & local farmers markets
Vacations (domestic & international)	“Stay-cations” to local beaches, rivers, lakes, forests; Sunday’s at the creek
Restaurant & fast food meals	Cooking at home & family meals
Electronic gadgetry (TVs, computers, ipods, cell phones, DVDs, etc.)	Entertaining friends at home, block parties, visiting among neighbors,
Hollywood movies & CDs/downloads of your favorite bands	Community theater & neighborhood concerts by local artists & musicians
Power tools	Hand tools
Electricity on demand	Partial/multi-day electrical blackouts & limited-use electricity restrictions
Electric light bulbs	Candles & early bedtimes
Universities & colleges	Community colleges & trade apprenticing
Large grade-schools & high-schools	Small community schools & home-schooling
Huge farms in California & Mid-west supplying our food	Small farms everywhere (even in suburbs & cities) supplying our food
Oil/gas/electric home-heating	Wood stoves, passive solar, insulation, sweaters, blankets, & long underwear
Air conditioning	Shade trees, swimming holes, cool drinks, & sleeping on your porch
Hot showers	Cold showers, luke-warm baths & solar water heaters
Running water	Cisterns & hand pumps
Swimming pools	Swimming holes; local rivers, lakes, & oceans; dipping your head in a bucket
Parking lots	Bike racks & hitching posts
Skyscrapers & huge office buildings	Bat habitat & salvage projects
Refrigerators & freezers	Root cellars, smoke-houses, drying racks, ice-houses, & salt barrels
Credit card, loans, & debt in general	Cash, bartering of goods, trading work
Skiing & snowboarding	Sledding, snowball fights, ice-skating
Budweiser, fine wines, & mixed drinks	Home-made wine, beer, hard cider, & moonshine
One-family households	Extended-family or multi-family households (i.e. Grandma’s comin’ home…and so is Uncle Bob)
Divorce & re-marriage	Gritting it out (& hopefully working it out) with support of extended family
Clothes shopping	Hand-me-downs, mending, making
Not knowing (or barely knowing) your neighbors & little interaction with them	Intimately knowing your neighbors & relying on them for your survival
Terrorist threats (i.e. trying to grow commerce in an increasingly hostile global political climate)	Climate threats (i.e. trying to grow your food in an increasingly unpredictable physical climate)
Overweight & obese people	Malnutrition & “just enough”; lean & skinny people
High-fructose corn syrup & table sugar	Honey & fruit
Putting out recycling & garbage	Re-using everything & fixing stuff
Police protection	Neighborhood-watch groups

The early victims of climate disruption are rising up

Image via Wikipedia

The nations that have done the least to cause it and will pay the most because of it have had enough of rich countries' callous failures to act responsibly:

African countries have said they are prepared to provoke a major UN crisis if the US and other rich countries do not start to urgently commit themselves to deeper and faster greenhouse gas emission cuts.

In a dramatic day in Barcelona, UN officials were forced to step in after 55 African countries, in an unprecedented show of unity, called for a suspension of all further negotiations on the Kyoto protocol until substantial progress was made by rich countries on emission cuts.

Earlier, the UN chair had been forced to abandon two working groups after the Africa group refused to take part.

The African countries were supported by all other developing country blocks at the talks. In a series of statements, the G77 plus China group of 130 nations, the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, as well as Bolivia and several Latin America countries, all broadly backed the African action.

The move by developing countries reflects their deep and growing frustration over the slow progress that industrialised countries are making towards agreeing cuts. With less than three days full negotiating time left between now and the opening of the final talks at Copenhagen, the split between rich and poor countries threatens to blow the talks fatally off course.

Bruno Sekoli, chair of the LDC group, said: "Africa and Africans are dying now while those who are historically responsible are not taking actions." . . . .

Fighting cancer with aromatherapy and astrology

Allowing coal burning in Oregon while trying to figure out a way to address climate disruption from runaway greenhouse gas emissions is like trying to combat advanced lung cancer by having the victims breathe in the scent of baking cookies while consulting their star charts.

We have no choice if we want to have any hope of not condemning ourselves to a risky climate crapshoot. We must replace Boardman's coal burners with a natural gas turbine or two and a concentrating solar power generator. Or we can keep sniffing those brownies and hope for lucky stars.

Just as Boardman was a first for Oregon, it can be part of another first, a state putting the long-range good of its people ahead of the profits of its utility investors.

Will Oregon Close the State's Only Coal-Fired Power Plant?

The Boardman coal-fired plant is the single largest and most polluting site in Oregon, and citizens here have affixed their bull's-eye smack dab on its soaring smoke stacks.

While outsiders may think of Oregon as a green utopia, with its environmentally friendly urban populace and New Age ambiance, it's undoubtedly not that groovy when it comes to the issue of coal.

Over 40 percent of the state's energy comes from the burning of this precious black rock, half of which is pumped out of the Boardman Power Plant each year. No coal-mining operations exist in the state, so all of the coal set ablaze in Boardman is dug up and transported from places like the majestic Powder River Basin, which straddles the high-plains border of northern Wyoming and southeastern Montana.

In recent years, studies have shown that the Boardman plant contributes to regional haze and visibility impairment in the Columbia River Gorge, a national scenic area, as well as 14 national parks and wilderness areas in Washington and Oregon.

The U.S. Forest Service has even demonstrated that Boardman contributes to acid fog and rain in the Columbia Gorge. . . .

"Shutting down coal plants saves lives -- immediately. This is not about our grandchildren. It's about the here and now," says Ted Nace, director of CoalSwarm, an environmental project of the Earth Island Institute that seeks to shut down coal plants in the U.S. "For example, particulates from power plants alone are killing 24,000 people each year in the United States -- that's 240,000 lives lost per decade due to this moribund industry."

While debris from coal-fired power plants may be killing tens of thousands of people every year, the smoke that billows from these structures are also the primary source of that great global warming menace, CO2.

James Hansen, who serves as the director of NASA's Institute for Space Studies, argues that the U.S. should phase out all coal-fired power plants by 2030. Indeed, the coal plant fleet in our country is old, with over half being built before 1965 . . . .

PGE's proposed energy plan is controversial to say the least. It includes two new gas-fired power plants and over $500 million worth of pollution-reduction upgrades for the Boardman facility. Environmentalists say this money would be better spent if it was invested in renewable-energy sources. In late September, concerned citizens stormed a public hearing on PGE's plan, and they voiced numerous objections.

"It would normally be very difficult to justify shutting down a coal plant," Steve Weiss, a policy analyst with the NW Energy Coalition, told the Oregonian after the meeting. "But when you're talking about having to put a half-billion into it, it changes the equation. If they go forward and put all this money into the plant, they'll never close it down, and if they're forced to, it will cause a huge economic hardship."

. . . "To allow PGE to make an ongoing investment in fossil-fuel generating resources begs the question of what happens if we continue to confront the tipping points of climate change that are lining up in its path?" Lloyd Marbet, executive director of the Oregon Conservancy Foundation, writes in a letter to PGE. "Will PGE be allowed to make this investment and then expect to be publicly bailed out, with taxpayer dollars, if the future it paints fails to unfold and the requirement is imposed in a crisis to shut these generating plants down or severely curtail their operation?" . . .

"This is a historic turning point for our country, and Oregon can lead the way," adds Cesia Kerns of the Oregon Sierra Club. "[We] should be proud and inspired by the notion that our state could lead the country in freeing ourselves from coal and building a new, clean energy economy -- but it will require citizens to raise their voices in favor of alternatives to Boardman, and pressure Portland General Electric to do the right thing by phasing out Boardman by 2014."

Failure to plan is planning to fail

On the irrationality of failing to plan for peak oil.

UPDATE: Jeff Rubin has an excellent concise explanation of why we're not running out of oil . . . we're just running out of oil that we can afford. And that is before even considering the environmental havoc that follows from trying to maintain an auto-dominated carburban culture. If Robert Rapier is right that $5 gas means a rush to embrace liquid fuels from coal then there's no hope for a stable climate future.