Unsolicited Plug 5: Saffron Supply Co.

There is an amazing gem in Salem, on Commercial, sandwiched in between two parts of the Union Gospel Mission operation -- a real, honest-to-God hardware store, staffed by guys who actually do stuff and know stuff. What a treasure. I've spoken to people who have lived in Salem much longer and who don't know what's behind that modest storefront.

They are so old school that they have no web presence that I can find. But they're open Mondays through Saturdays, and instead of pallet loads of stuff you don't need, you can go find exactly what you do need, along with some advice on how to use it. You can buy a single deck screw. A single hinge. A ball of real manila twine. Good tools at fair prices.

As you would expect, Saffron doesn't compete on price -- if you look around, you can often find a better price. But, unless you want Salem to be left with nothing but Home Lowepots (where you often find yourself dealing with staff who are even less experienced and knowledgeable than you are), we need to support local businesses who would never think of pretending that a high-schooler who has never built anything more complicated than a Lego house can help you in hardware.

They're at 325 Commercial St. NE, and the phone is 503-581-7501. Next time you have a hardware need, call and see if they can help before venturing out to one of the Home Lowepots.

Another stake through the heart of transit in Salem

Unfortunately, budget cuts have forced an end to the free bus pass program for Capital Mall employees. In the interest of helping employees cope with this new reality, Alison Wiley (Transportation Options Program Manager at ODOT) is offering the following message to all agencies:

"The bad news is that budget cuts have forced DAS to discontinue giving free bus passes to Capital Mall employees as of July 1 (including passes from park-and-ride lots). . . . "

Getting a feel for how much energy you really use

World energy sources in TeraWatts; note the dominance of the fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas). Image via Wikipedia

A lot of people have heard that North Americans are the energy hogs of the universe, and that we waste most of the energy. But until you know how much energy you are personally using, and how much of that is from fossil fuels, you really can't begin to grasp how much we need to change.

The global average energy use is about 17,500 kilowatt-hours/yr (kWh/yr), or 48 kWh/day.

That's the energy needed to burn 20 100W bulbs all year. On average, for all purposes, people in the USA use six times as much --- like burning 120 100W bulbs all year.

You can get a rough first guess at the amount of energy you use directly as follows. We do it by converting everything to kWh.

1) Electric use.

Luckily, your electric bill already comes that way, so we start there. You can find the information you need on your electric bills. Simply add up a year's worth of use. (Your bill probably reports how much you used per day during each billing period, so you multiply the figure given for each month by 30 and then add those up.)

2) Natural gas use

Multiply the "therms" (10o cubic feet of natural gas = 1 therm) of natural gas you use in a year by 30 to get your natural gas use in kWh for the year.

3) Gasoline use

Multiply the number of gallons of gas you buy in a year by 33 get kWh.

(You DO keep track of your gas consumption so you can follow your mileage, right? If not, how do you know when your car needs a tuneup or alignment or your tires are underinflated?). If you, for some reason, don't have your average gas consumption, figure 600 gallons a year if you drive a normal amount (14000 miles) in a normal car (24 mpg). Adjust that as needed if you drive more or less and to correct for your ride's probable mileage --- i.e., don't use 24 mpg if you drive a Prius or an Explorer.

Note what this suggests: the average American uses more energy just driving the average car the average amount than the average person in the world uses for EVERYTHING.

4) Add 'em up. That's your direct energy use per year.

We'll start figuring how to account for indirect use next time.

Calling Salem Saturday Market & Salem Center managers

Image by Wigwam Jones via Flickr

A NYT story mentioning an upscale mall that failed in SF --- and has been reborn as a farmer's market.

Having just witnessed the Sony-backed Metreon mall in San Francisco shift from its failed existence as a “state of the art technology and entertainment marketplace” to a modest farmer’s market, I’d seen the writing on the wall. Hadn’t the shopping center folks?

Salem desperately needs a year-round greengrocery in the downtown core --- right where Salem Center is located would be fine, in fact, not too far from where the Wednesday Market opens in summertime.

And, hey, there's plenty of vacancies in Salem Center. And soon to be more.

Sounds like there's a deal to be made here: Between October and April, the Salem Center management provides space in the mall for a year-round Farmer's Market (that costs the growers no more than they're paying for space in the Salem Saturday Market). They get more traffic, and Salem gets more people exposed to eating locally and supporting local growers. With cold frames and "hoop houses," Salem area farmers can grow a gorgeous variety of produce in the dead of winter -- they just need an outlet that can absorb the modest quantities that small growers can provide, in a way that lets them keep more of the food dollar.

P.S.: Don't forget: Valet bike parking comes to the Salem Saturday Market this Saturday! Thanks to Friends of Salem Saturday Market. So ride on down, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Salem waterways flush with envy . . . and plastic bags

Washington, D. C. has joined the growing list of places recognizing that disposable grocery bags are an energy-wasting scourge. The plastic ones are not only responsible for killing various marine creatures and birds, they are a blight upon the land. The paper ones are heavy and bulky, which means that making and delivering them for their (typical) single use requires extraordinary amounts of energy as well as creating a demand for logging.

It's time for Salem to join the movement: put a nickel or dime tax on every paper or plastic bag from a retail outlet in Salem. Merchants will fall all over themselves to provide lots of options for inexpensive and durable cloth and net bags. Before you know it, there will be about as many bags laying around as there are pop-top beer can lids.

And Mill Creek and the Willamette and all our storm drains (that clog with plastic bags) will thank us!

UPDATE: Tom Toles, the brilliant cartoonist, nails it.

As the legislative session grinds towards an end

Basically, what we can conclude from the Highway Pork Extravaganza (HB 2001) and the recent DEQ action on Boardman (advancing the haze rule that would, if it is implemented, mean that Boardman will run indefinitely rather than shut down ASAP) is that we have no intention of doing anything serious about climate in Oregon.

We are acting like it's 1959 (on roads) and 1979 (on coal). Meanwhile, the earth is actually in the year 2009, and we're making decisions that mean that, in 2109, Oregon will be a very, very different place, with a much harsher climate, a lot less agriculture, no salmon at all, no snowpack whatsoever, frequent draughts and fires all over.

Thanks, Oregon Legislators! Now go home and apologize to your kids and grandkids, because you're sure doing them dirty . . .

Yes, Michael Moore is something of a slob

Image via Wikipedia

But, he's also one very smart guy who has a much better track record of insights and proposals than any of his vast multitude of critics. We can quibble with elements of this but even if we had to vote it up or down we'd be far, far better off adopting Moore's suggestions here than anything else we could do.

Monday, June 1st, 2009
Goodbye, GM ...by Michael Moore

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.

As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.

President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.

9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.

100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.

So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Future jobs

We need to prepare young people for a future of relocalization -- where globalization has unwound. Image by Spring Dew via Flickr

A guy posted the below to The Oil Drum. Pretty good list.

Now think about how well your local educational institutions are preparing young people for the future they are likely to face.

Most of our oil based enterprises will cease to exist in the near future. If you hope to put food on the table, you need to reassess your career plans. Several weeks ago a particularly astute young reader of my letters asked, “What business opportunities do you see going forward?” Following is my current list of potential viable business opportunities. The ideas are not ranked by importance.

1. Maintenance of existing essential equipment – mechanical, electrical, electronic
a. Transportation
b. Manufacturing
c. Farm
d. Household

2. Maintenance of existing housing stock and modification to accommodate multiplefamily occupants.

3. Medical services, midwifery, and emergency medical service with out medical clinic or hospital backup.

4. Local manufacture of essential equipment. For example wood cook stoves and wood heaters.

5. Fabrication/rebuild of repair parts for existing essential equipment

6. Commercial distribution of essential equipment and supplies- Wholesale/retail (We will go back to the mom/pop kinds of business. The Wal-Mart/ Home Depot business model will not survive. Even those such as Weyerhaeuser will have difficulty surviving because their structure has become too rigid. (The ‘gypo’ logger and small local saw mill will replace them. )

7. Elder care. Short term for those who have money but no family or no responsible family. Long term people will by necessity take care of their own or let them depend on the charity of the community which will be in short supply. You fifty year olds and younger need to make sure that your children and grandchildren love you and are trained to assume responsibility for your care in your old age. You can forget about Social Security, Medicare, savings and private pensions. Most are insolvent even now. My generation has already ‘eaten your lunch, breakfast and dinner’.

8. Farmer market type food production and commercial distribution

9. Local food processing – canning, freezing, etc.

10. Training/retraining for all of the above. A Boeing machinist would be lost initially in the new environment. Many will not be able to make the transition even with retraining. The new environment will require much less specialization, more flexibility, and far more personal initiative because the current support systems will not be affordable.

11. Managing the acquisition and distribution of minimal food, clothing, and shelter for large masses of unemployed people. This will be a welfare program on an unimaginable scale.

12. Private security forces.

I do not consider the above to be negative, pessimistic, or defeatist. Rather it is a realistic and desperate call for you to get serious about planning and preparing for coping with the unfolding chaos.

A sister capital city also begins the transition

Nice op-ed in The Olympian introducing readers of that paper to their Transition movement. Excerpt below.

Salem has a small transition group forming now (STIR, the Salem Transition Initiative for Relocalization) too. We're in the early stages of coming together and figuring out how we want to help co-create answers to the questions the writer mentions (the central questions our elected and appointed officials should have on their walls and on every piece of letterhead):

“How are we going to

• drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change);
  
• significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil); and
• greatly strengthen our local economy (in response to economic instability)?”

Resources available now to begin the transition toward life we’re seeking

The Transition Town Movement – a grass-roots initiative spreading around the globe – is asking, “How are we going to drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change); significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil); and greatly strengthen our local economy (in response to economic instability)?”

The movement, originated by Rob Hopkins, a UK ecological designer and permaculturist, provides a roadmap away from this triple threat and toward a sustainable future.

Transitioning encompasses the work we must do in the outer world, but equally important, it invites the inner work we must do to adapt to unprecedented change in our lives.

This roadmap is a 12-step process resulting in a community generated re-localization and energy descent action plan (REDAP). In the last 150 years we have quickly climbed to a peak of energy consumption fueled by cheap oil and now we face descending the other side. Without a plan we are likely to experience chaos and catastrophe. With a REDAP we can downshift to lifestyles that are simpler, more pleasurable and sustainable.

It is not coincidental that this movement contains 12 steps, since one of the triple threats we face is our addiction to cheap oil. People working within Transition Initiatives hold deep-seated confidence in our collective genius – within our communities and as a species – to solve the problems we face and create a desired future.

Recently Paul Hawkin, renowned entrepreneur and environmental activist, said: “If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.” . . .

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