Beware of Gifts Bearing Strings

Image via Wikipedia

Well, here we go, the "gift" that bankrupts you. The Salem City Council is getting set to decide whether to accept a "gift" to create a "Teen Library" in the old CCTV studio space.

Salem City Council also will:

-Consider accepting a $121,338 gift from the Salem Public Library Foundation to pay for renovations to an area that would house the teen library.

It's not just that a "Teen Library" is a truly terrible idea, offering little but a way to further isolate and segregate young people from the adults that they need more exposure to, not less.

It's also that the library budget is in dire straits, and we're whittling away at core library services. And that this "Teen Library" will require new staff to supervise the place, which means removing staff from elsewhere, which will further the deterioration of our already-shrinking library.

Essentially, the goal of the "Teen Library" crowd appears to be creating something like an Ike Box within the dank interior of a windowless basement (because if there's anything our teens need today, it's MORE time spent inside with gadgets and "hanging out" with other teens). (SEE CORRECTION BELOW.)

For teens actually interested in what the library has to offer, the whole library is the teen library. And what's really needed in Salem is a lot more libraries in a lot more segments of the city -- not a wasteful boutique for teens in the basement that comes out of the services that should be made available to everyone of all ages.

Want a far better use for $120k invested to help teens? Forget the renovation and hire a bunch of teens to bring seven-day-a-week library book pickup and delivery services to every neighborhood center across the city so that every Salem resident is within walking distance of a neighborhood book drop/pickup point.

Also: the library is without a librarian right now. Salem should not be embarking on a "Teen Library" project before a new librarian is hired--instead, the candidates for the job should all be asked to prepare a brief analysis of the Salem Public Library's needs and the means it should use to meet them. There's no way that a professional librarian could look at Salem's declining services and conclude that it makes sense to spend any money on a boutique library hangout for teens within the main library.

The Council should refuse this burdensome gift and direct the City Manager to get a librarian hired before anything else. If there's any value to a "Teen Library" then it will wait.

CORRECTION: A library friend sends:

I wanted to send you a link to the full staff report so you can see how the project has evolved. Probably the biggest change is that the proposal no longer put the Teen Library in the CCTV area. Instead, we're looking at relocating the collection and services into the area currently occupied by Technical Services. It's much brighter and more accessible. We've also developed a plan to ensure that the collection is available and accessible to anyone who wants to use young adult materials during all open library hours. Here's the link:
http://www.cityofsalem.net/CouncilMeetingAgenda/Documents/169/4.3d.pdf

Well, thank goodness for that --- although whomever gets shoved into the CCTV space will probably regret the change . . . it's quite the dungeon down there.

However, the central issue is not about the ambiance of the "Teen Library." The problem is the whole notion of a "Teen Library" separate and apart from the library for everyone. What teens most need is an opportunity to interact with and learn about being an adult, not more segregation into ghettos of teendom, where everything is provided for them and nothing is expected of them.

If only gay sex caused climate change (instead of dapper gents like this)

That dapper gent is Salem's own M. Lee Pelton, President of Willamette University and one of about a dozen Oregonians who are most responsible for

• creating hundreds of millions of climate refugees,
• melting the polar ice sheets,
  
• eliminating glaciers we depend on for drinking water,
  
• acidifying the oceans, destroying the ocean food chain,
• driving species extinction on a historic scale,
  
• further impoverishing the already impoverished, and
• causing Biblical-scale droughts, fires, and floods.
  

That's because Pelton and his accomplices on the PGE Board continue to imagine that "cheap" electricity from the Boardman coal plant -- Oregon's single largest polluter and greenhouse gas emitter -- is more important than a livable planet. Just as the banker-gangster class drove the global financial system into the ditch by failing to understand risk and pursuing profits today without a care for tomorrow, utilities like Pelton's PGE are doing exactly the same: misunderstanding and minimizing the risks for tomorrow to pursue higher profits today.

"If only gay sex caused global warming" instead of handsome, dapper gents like Pelton.

Airline industry has lost almost $60 billion in last decade

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2009-11-23-airpanels23_ST_N.htm

Now why would Salem think that ANYTHING Salem could do would make a difference as far as airline service goes?

Remember that oil is now more expensive than ever on an average annual cost basis -- the spike to $147 and collapse to $33 showed people how volatile prices will be now that Peak Oil is here, but the grinding reality is that, under the volatile spikes and collapses, is an inexorable upward trend . . . and that's even before the carbon taxes kick in that the article talks about.

Bottom line: It's time to privatize Salem's McNary Field -- Give the feds the portion they use and get the rest onto the tax rolls as an airfield or for whatever other purpose an investment group wants to use it for. An industry that loses $60 billion in a decade of historically very cheap oil prices will never make money again. The only thing that public subsidies do is take money from public purposes and allow airline executives to lavish it on themselves.

My Jobs Plan suggestion

Metal roofing with integral water collection features should be mandatory in the building code. Image via Wikipedia

A commenter at The Oil Drum asked for suggestions for a national jobs plan. Here's a low-tech, high-value, project that could benefit virtually every community in America and be funded and started tomorrow:

And don't forget a national program to do millions of add-on insulated white metal roofs with water collection features.

1) Insulated -- most energy loss in a home/apt is out the roof; but adding insulation in the attic is labor intensive (not a minus in your project, but if your money all goes to labor, you get fewer roofs done -- better more roofs, more saving)

2) White -- see Secy. of Energy Chu's presentations

3) Metal with water collection features -- most American homes have toxic roof shingles where the rain washes a steady stream of the asphalt away; it is possible to collect and use the water, but to unknown result. Rather than tear these off (wasted labor, creation of landfill waste), leave them all on there, under a nice insulating blanket and metal roof that drains into an integral guttering/collection spout system that flows into barrels or cisterns.

Imagine all the energy saved (1) from the added insulation; (2) from the reduced air-conditioning load in summer; and (3) from reduced water pumping. And the nice increase in global albedo doesn't hurt either.

Thanksgiving reminder: If you are reading this, you are rich

Sustainability and Social Justice: Do the Math

According to data compiled by the UN, the Global Footprint Network, and Dr. William Rees at the University of British Columbia, total human consumption already exceeds the Earth's capacity by 30 per cent. This is known as biological 'overshoot'. The UN estimates that most natural services to human societies - forests, fish, fresh water and clean air - decline annually. As human population and consumption grow, our collective overshoot increases.

Meanwhile, the wealthy 15 per cent use about 85 per cent of the resources - the total energy and materials - the 'stuff' - that Earth provides. The 'wealthy' includes anyone who has a home, job, transport, access to education, hot showers, convenient fuel and food every day: people in the so-called 'developed' world. If you have those things, you live among the wealthy 15 per cent who use most of the world's resources.

WORD: Joe Bageant

Bageant could well meet an end like Socrates, and for the same reason. Image via Wikipedia

Joe is the author of a great book, "Deer Hunting with Jesus." This excerpt is from his blog post "One party has no heart, the other no spine":

Unfortunately, we have an economic system and national philosophy based on the idea of every man getting rich. Impossible, unsustainable and bound for disaster from the start. Mankind's entire idea of what constitutes an economy is about to come into question at some point soon. Not just in America, but all the other (over) developed nations too. We cannot manufacture our way out of it, or spend or invest pour way out of it, through a free market "green economy." That's what got us here in the first place. Superheated spending to pump up a malignant economic system that devoured the earth.

No American political party is ever going to admit that. And no party will ever represent the constituencies that cannot speak for themselves, much less raise hell. The trees, the animals, the rivers cannot cry out from their appointed courses, nor the oceans from their beds that, "Hey, we are not your resources. We are the only god damned shot you have at survival!"

I never expect to see politicians tell the people: "Quit buying. Quit using all that electrical stuff. Quit traveling all over the world. Quit driving. Just eat, be happy you are breathing and work to grow your mind and soul and let's see if we can come to understand this ruined world around us and how to heal it -- or at least do less damage. Let us change our entire idea about what constitutes governance, and work and happiness."

That's what it will take. . . .

Something to be really thankful for: That we do not get what we deserve

Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide Emissions Up by 29 Percent Since 2000

ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2009) — The strongest evidence yet that the rise in atmospheric CO₂ emissions continues to outstrip the ability of the world's natural 'sinks' to absorb carbon is published November 17 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

---

Reference

• Consensus of scientists regarding global warming
• Fossil fuel
• Automobile emissions control
• Ocean acidification

An international team of researchers under the umbrella of the Global Carbon Project reports that over the last 50 years the average fraction of global CO₂ emissions that remained in the atmosphere each year was around 43 per cent -- the rest was absorbed by the Earth's carbon sinks on land and in the oceans. During this time this fraction has likely increased from 40 per cent to 45 per cent, suggesting a decrease in the efficiency of the natural sinks. The team brings evidence that the sinks are responding to climate change and variability.

The scientists report a 29 per cent increase in global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008 (the latest year for which figures are available), and that in spite of the global economic downturn emissions increased by 2 per cent during 2008. The use of coal as a fuel has now surpassed oil and developing countries now emit more greenhouse gases than developed countries -- with a quarter of their growth in emissions accounted for by increased trade with the West. . . .

No comment

Humble became part of Exxon as the Standard Oil octopus reassembled itself, like the blown apart pieces of the Terminator. (h/t to The Oil Drum)

Global Forecast: Mass suffering, thanks to Salem's own M. Lee Pelton and the rest of the PGE board

This is Oregon's biggest polluter and biggest contributor to a hellish future for billions of people. Image via Wikipedia

GLOBAL TEMPS SET TO RISE OVER TEN DEGREES BY 2100

Independent, UK - The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C (10.8F) by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. Such a rise - which would be much higher nearer the poles - would have cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable and threatening the basis of human civilization.

We are headed for it, the scientists said, because the carbon dioxide emissions from industry, transport and deforestation which are responsible for warming the atmosphere have increased dramatically since 2002, in a way which no one anticipated, and are now running at treble the annual rate of the 1990s.

Although the 6C rise and its potential disastrous effects have been speculated upon before, this is the first time that scientists have said that society is now on a path to meet it.

Here are the names of the people who would rather that billions suffer than PGE's profits be reduced by so much as a dollar:

Board of Directors PGE's Board of Directors includes executives in utilities, management, finance and accounting.

Corbin A. McNeill Jr. Chairman of the Board of Directors, Portland General Electric John W. Ballantine Retired executive vice president, First Chicago NBD Corp. Rodney L. Brown Jr. Managing Partner, Cascadia Law Group PLLC David A. Dietzler Retired Pacific Northwest partner-in-charge of audit practice, KPMG LLP Kirby A. Dyess Principal, Austin Capital Management LLC Peggy Y. Fowler Retired CEO and president, Portland General Electric Mark B. Ganz President and CEO, The Regence Group Neil J. Nelson President and CEO, Siltronic Corp. M. Lee Pelton President, Willamette University Jim Piro President and CEO, Portland General Electric Robert T.F. Reid Corporate Director

Another hopeful sign

It is absolutely depressing these days, and not just because the days are getting shorter and shorter. When the very best that politics offers falls far, far short of even a shadow of a reflection of what sustainability requires of us (and the heads of esteemed universities are climate criminals) it is frightening.

So every now and then, it's good to stumble on signs that there is still a lot of creativity out there working on developing practical approaches to things.