Well observed

A ghost bike, a monument to yet another rider killed by a car. Image by drburtoni via Flickr

The very good "Breakfast on Bikes" blog has a good piece on the unfortunately situated Kroc Center.

The "conservatives" threaten to push America into the abyss of corporate control

Image by vj_pdx via Flickr

The Rights of Corporations

That does not mean that corporations should have no rights. It is in society's interest that they are allowed to speak about their products and policies and that they are able to go to court when another company steals their patents. It makes sense that they can be sued, as a person would be, when they pollute or violate labor laws.

The law also gives corporations special legal status: limited liability, special rules for the accumulation of assets and the ability to live forever. These rules put corporations in a privileged position in producing profits and aggregating wealth. Their influence would be overwhelming with the full array of rights that people have.

One of the main areas where corporations' rights have long been limited is politics. Polls suggest that Americans are worried about the influence that corporations already have with elected officials. The drive to give corporations more rights is coming from the court's conservative bloc — a curious position given their often-proclaimed devotion to the text of the Constitution.

The founders of this nation knew just what they were doing when they drew a line between legally created economic entities and living, breathing human beings. The court should stick to that line.

Standing up for those who can't stand up for themselves

Will Farrell and friends stand up for the real victims of the health insurance debate: insurance company executives.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Why the era of economic growth is over

Study that graph. (Y-o-Y . . . "Why, Oh Why" you might pronounce it --means "year over year.")

What the graph should show but doesn't is oil price. According to the conventional economic wisdom, plummeting demand for oil means plummeting prices ... not prices fully at 50% of their all-time peak.

What's going on? Why, oh why, is the world and particularly the US in such a state? Well, it's actually simple to understand, once you know that economic "growth" is simply a shorthand way of saying "measuring, in monetary units, of using more energy and materials." Given that, and given that our economic chefs assumed that there was a limitless energy supply when devising the recipe for everything grown, mined, made, or moved in this country, the consequences of reality seem abrupt and painful: energy is actually quite finite, and the kind of energy we're most dependent on --- cheap oil --- is now starting to decline in availability.

In other words, "demand" is recorded as declining because the powers-that-be cannot bring themselves to admit that the world would be quite happy to use lots more oil, except that it's not there (since only a infinitesimally small amount of oil is stored, demand always equals supply ... the graph above should be labeled "supply rate" rather than demand).

Bottom line, the minimum price needed to keep the oil flows from plunging happens to be above the price that causes economies built on cheap oil to collapse. The only way to square that circle and maintain the conventional wisdom blinders is to pretend that "demand" is down and to ignore that the high prices for oil in a reduced demand market seems to suggest that the law of supply and demand has been repealed. Either way, the catastrophic effects are the same: fewer jobs, more poverty, more hunger, more social unease as the post-peak-oil hangover kicks in.

The result for Salem: we're in the new era where "growth" and big new infrastructure projects -- the third bridge, new elementary schools, to name just a few -- are finished. All public investments from here out need to be aimed at reducing our reliance on fossil energy not increasing it or servicing those parts of our system that were built when we thought the party would last forever. (Hat tip to the Goal One Coalition blog for the graph.)

Whoa -- who knew?

Image by Dale Gillard via Flickr

Did you know that Salem has a Mac Store in Lancaster Mall?

UPDATE: Well, that was disappointing. The Applecare folks sent me to this Mac store to swap my defective mouse, but the Mac store wouldn't make a swap ... all they would do is ship it to Apple (just like I could) and I would be without a mouse at all while waiting -- at least if I go through Apple they send me the replacement before asking for the other one back. I realize that this store is not an Apple-owned store, but it seems that they ought to be able to use my Applecare case number and accept my return. When I was in the store I decided to buy the Parallels software there to thank them for the service --- guess I'll just buy it online instead, since there was no service other than to tell me to go to Bridgeport.

It's not (just) the heat, it's the acidity

Just what does it take to wake people up? If only Osama Bin-Ladin was dumping acid into the oceans to acidify them and destroy the base of the food chain and starve billions of people and destroy countless species.

From the always-excellent Desdemona Despair blog:

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air, the result of burning fossil fuels like oil and coal, mean more carbon dioxide is being absorbed into the ocean, making ocean water more acidic. Because calcium dissolves in acidic water, that poses a threat to corals, plankton and other life forms that use calcium to form a shell or skeleton.

In a book published this year about the oceans, Mitchell tells the story of Colorado-based marine ecologist Joanie Kleypas, who, when she realized the implications of ocean acidification, ran to the bathroom at the scientific conference she was attending and threw up.

"We are changing the chemistry of the global ocean," Mitchell said in an interview.

"Without all those creatures in the ocean living and doing what they're meant to do, we can't survive." …

Photo above is the PGE's Boardman Generating Plant, one of Oregon's two biggest emitters of CO2, mercury, nitrous and sulfur dioxides, along with radioactive materials and other heavy metals. When the oceans acidify, the glaciers are gone, and droughts and floods are starving people across the globe, Oregonians can always take comfort in knowing that we always put PGE's profits before public health or providing future generations with a livable planet.

On a happier note: Shepherds Grain flour

This is why no-till agriculture is so vital -- in addition to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, it preserves the soil on which we depend. Image via Wikipedia

Used by better bakeries throughout the Northwest, including Salem's own Cascade Baking Company.

Nearly all of Washington's wheat — 85 to 90 percent — ends up in foreign countries, mostly in Asia. The state produces most of its confectionary wheat, the kind used in pastries, cakes, cookies and crackers. But wheat for bread tends to come from Montana and farther east.

Stone-Buhr now prints an ID code on each bag of flour identifying which Shepherd's Grain farms it came from. Customers can go to a Web site, FindTheFarmer.com, to learn more about the farmers. Some provide bits of history; others have photos, video and descriptions of their farming methods.

All Shepherd's Grain farmers are committed to no-till farming, which means they don't plow to kill weeds and aerate the soil. They plant on top of stubble from the last harvest, saving tractor fuel and giving the topsoil something to hold onto when the rains come.

On farms that have been tilled, Fleming and other farmers have seen rainstorms wash topsoil across roads and neighboring farms, right into the Spokane River nearby.

Making business fun

Few farmers are marketing their flour, according to Tom Mick, CEO of Washington Grain Commission in Spokane.

"It's a lot of work," Mick said. "It takes four or five years to establish your reputation; there's a lot of capital outlay and commitments from farmers to stick with you. There are a lot of risk factors."

Shepherd's Grain oversees the type of wheat each farmer plants and makes sure they are blended properly so the flour consistently meets bakers' specifications.

The company also has a consistent price, set each fall after the farmers calculate their costs. That means customers can count on about the same price for six months to a year, although distributors might vary how much of a cut they take.

The commodities market is less predictable. Demand grew so fast that Shepherd's Grain briefly turned away new customers about two years ago, when the flour market skyrocketed and its product suddenly looked like a deal.

Escalating flour prices contributed to the appeal of Shepherd's Grain, but so did the idea of buying locally, said Ben Davis, co-owner of Grand Central Baking, which got its start in Seattle and now has its headquarters in Portland.

Growing up, he drove wheat trucks and learned a few things about the business that make him appreciate Shepherd's Grain.

For one thing, he knows how rare it is for Washington farmers to grow the kind of wheat that bread bakeries use. Less than a quarter of Washington wheat is the hard red wheat used in bread and bagels; that type is far more plentiful in Montana and North Dakota.

Davis said he also appreciates the innovation that Shepherd's Grain farmers demonstrate by no longer tilling soil, a change that's difficult for some farmers to make.

And he said he likes knowing who grew his wheat.

"It makes doing business fun," he said, "to have lunch in their kitchen and be served apple pie by the guy's wife who sits on the tractor."

(Note that the illustration is NOT what you get in fields growing Shepherd's Grain flour.)

Important Jeff Rubin: The future is local

Oil Crisis was a Peak into the Future

Former CIBC Chief Economist predicts end of globalization, promotes local food

Jeff Rubin doesn't fit the typical profile of an interview subject for The Dominion. For more than a decade, he was Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, one of Canada's largest investment banks. Rubin recently broke ranks with the financial crowd to publish his book, Why Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller. The man once touted as Canada's top economist now predicts the end of globalization because of triple-digit oil prices.

"The same economics that compelled the mass exodus of manufacturing abroad will compel [the] return [of manufacturing to North America] because distance will cost money," he says between sips of San Pellegrino, as we watch container ships move through Vancouver harbour. This end point isn't far away; Rubin predicts that a barrel of oil will hit US $225 by 2012.

Forecasting the price of oil, or anything for that matter, has long been considered a fool's game. And plenty of respected analysts think the former CIBC guru has gone over the top. But, when it comes to looking into the crystal ball of global capitalism, Rubin has a far better track record than most other pin-striped sages. In 2000, Rubin correctly predicted that oil would top $50 per barrel by 2005. And in 2005 he got it right again, forecasting prices would top $100 per barrel in 2007.

The basis of Rubin's predictions—the peak oil theory—is nothing new. However, according to his analysis of oil markets, humanity is going to hit the wall a lot sooner than previously expected. Rubin spoke with journalist Chris Arsenault at the posh Fairmont Hotel on Vancouver's waterfront, before beginning the US leg of his book tour.

The Dominion: Some analysts estimate that 25 per cent of the world's hydrocarbons are located in the Arctic and will soon be open to exploitation due, ironically, to global warming. Won't this new supply nullify the severity of price rises?

Jeff Rubin: The stuff in the Arctic is a drop in the bucket. You are losing sight of what the Cambridge Energy Research Associates and Exxon don't tell you about. They hold big press conferences to talk about, 'Oh we just discovered the Jack Field—10,000 feet under the hurricane-ravaged waters of the Gulf of Mexico, isn't that fantastic.'

They don't hold press conferences [to announce], 'See this field here? It has been producing for 50 years. It's about to run dry.'

Every year we lose four million barrels a day [of production due to depletion]. Over the next five years, we are going to have to find 20 million barrels a day of new production, just so that we can [continue to] consume what we consume today.

The Canadian tar sands have become a major new source of crude; Canada is now the number one foreign exporter to the US. Won't these massive, unconventional reserves around Fort McMurray offset depletion from older fields in Mexico or Saudi Arabia?

The attractiveness of Fort McMurray is not just what is under the ground; it's where it is [located]. In Fort McMurray, all Exxon has to do is sponsor a minor hockey team and they are 'good corporate citizens.' In most places in the world, they're starting to believe oil and natural gas resources should be owned and operated by the state. The world has already gotten a lot smaller for Exxon. Outside of Canada, the US and a handful of other countries, it is the state companies who control access to hydrocarbon resources.

As far as Fort McMurray, there are 165 billion barrels of oil trapped in those sands. To produce one barrel of synthetic oil, you have to burn 1,400 cubic feet of natural gas, schlep two tons of sand [and] pollute 250 gallons of water. The very prices that will be needed to bring that oil out of the ground are the same prices that will take you off the road. Sure, at $200 a barrel of oil, we can produce four million barrels per day out of Fort McMurray. But, at $200 for a barrel of oil, you are talking seven dollars for a gallon of gasoline.

At what point does the price of oil make export-driven globalization untenable?

The model as we know it peaked in 2007. If we measure globalization by the percentage of world GDP that is an export or an import, 2007 will mark the peak of a past age.

You are going to see less and less container ships. All of those containers are about one thing: a wage ark. Moving your factory from someplace where you pay folks 30 bucks an hour to somewhere where you pay folks 30 bucks a week is great, if it's just about wages.

But what moves those container ships is oil. At $150 to $200 per barrel, the wage ark becomes penny wise and a pound foolish because what you save on a wage bill you more than spend on bunker fuel.

If free markets worked as the economics textbooks say they should, high oil prices would lead companies to invest in green technologies. Why aren't we seeing viable alternatives to petroleum?

It is all a question of time. Higher prices will light the path. And I am sure in 20, 25 years we will have new fuel technologies.

Unfortunately, our rendezvous with triple-digit oil prices isn't in 25 years, it's in 12 months. We have to figure out a way of engineering our economy and our lives to use less energy.

If the market can't create viable alternative energy technologies, what role do governments have in ending fossil-fuel dependency?

I don't believe in government, I believe in the market, I believe in prices. I believe prices will show us what to do. Sure, we need to be more efficient. But the emphasis has to be on conservation, so peak oil doesn't have to equal peak GDP.

Couldn't increased energy efficiency make up for shortfalls in production?

We think that efficiency leads to conservation, but history has shown that is not what happens.

The average engine today is 30 per cent more efficient than the engines produced before the OPEC oil shocks [of the 1970s]. Yet, the average [North American] vehicle consumes just as much gasoline in the course of a year.

Back in the 1970s, we [North Americans] used to drive about 9,000 miles a year; now we drive 12,000. Back in the 1970s, we weren't living in the far-flung suburbs. All those gains in efficiency have led us to, ever more efficiently, consume more and more oil.

How will triple-digit oil prices affect politics?

The US steel workers should be at the forefront, arguing to Obama for a price on carbon emissions. I think you'll find that when unions go through the math, Archie Bunker is going to get into bed with Al Gore.

We [North America] can produce a ton of steel and emit one-third less CO2 than steel producers in a developing country like China. Right now, that is totally irrelevant. There is no price advantage to [producing with less greenhouse gas emissions], so it doesn't flow to the bottom line and it doesn't affect where steel jobs are. But, if you are one-third more efficient, you want the price of emissions to be as high as possible—the higher the price of emissions, the greater the economic advantage.

By putting a price on carbon emissions and making our trading partners pay the same price, going green is going to bring jobs home instead of sending them away.

Won't those proposed duties, either though a carbon tax or a cap and trade system, come into conflict with World Trade Organization rules?

I would argue that is a market failure. The only reason that those steel plants went to China in the first place is because we didn't put a price on carbon emissions. In an efficient, functioning market we would have allocated resources much differently.

The carbon-spewing industries of the world should not be in the places that have the cheapest labour, but rather in places [with] the cleanest technologies. That's not where these industries are located today.

You don't seem too upset about globalization coming to an end.

I don't think this story has to be as apocalyptic as peak oil is usually displayed. It is apocalyptic if we insist on having the lifestyles we had when oil was cheap and abundant, if we insist on commuting 40 miles back and forth to work in our SUVs and importing steel from China and flatscreen TVs from Korea or Taiwan.

But I'm hopeful. I'm not hopeful because of governments; I'm an economist, I believe in prices.

I understand that there are folk who have already adopted the local paradigm for cultural or ecological reasons. But whether you think that way or not, you are going that way for the very simple fact that you won't be able to afford any other way.

When gas is seven dollars a gallon, no one is going to have to buy my book to know what to do. Folks are going to get off the road because they can't afford to drive. When there is no bus to get on, they will get their politician's attention. Why are we bailing out Detroit when 50 million vehicles are likely to head off the road in the next ten years? We should be investing in public transit, not cars.

It's now widely accepted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was primarily about oil. Just ask former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. A lot of analysts are predicting a violent scramble for the last remaining resources. Where do you think these conflicts might happen?

Let's understand that when we are talking about hydrocarbons, we aren't just talking about moving cars or powering container ships. We are talking about food. Modern agriculture is really the massive transformation of hydrocarbons into food [through] fertilizer, irrigation and mechanization. If you look at arable land under cultivation, it hasn't grown in the last 10 to 15 years. All the increases in world food production have come from increasing the yield per acre. All of those increases have come about by adding more fertilizer to the land and using more tractors.

The real challenge is: does peak oil equal peak food? If there are going to be wars, I suggest that will be the fault line.

Take countries like Saudi Arabia; they are buying land in Pakistan and Africa to grow food. The countries that rent the land? None of that food is going to their populations. What happens when their population starts to starve and they see their land being used to grow food for people in other countries? Is that a sustainable model?

Are you growing a garden?

[Laughs] No, but where I live [in Toronto], and a lot of places, have artisanal food stalls every weekend. It's organic food, basically grown around [the local area] and it's happening more and more.

At first, [organic local food markets] might be a yuppie thing to do. But soon it's going to be mainstream because that's going be the only kind of food we can afford to eat. That is going to mean changes to our diet. When I was a kid, there were no blueberries and raspberries in January; we are going to have to go back to local diets.

Chris Arsenault holds the Phil Lind Fellowship at the University of British Columbia's Department of History. He is currently writing a history of sabotage and the Alberta oil patch.

Black Crepe for Health Care "Reform"

A retired physician living in Salem says this about our so-called health care reform proposal:

From the Desk of

Mary A. Vorachek, M.D.

The Black Crepe Health Insurance Reform Packages

Wow, America, has the United States Congress got a deal for you. If and when a black crepe health insurance reform package is passed, you can expect to keep going bankrupt while you watch health insurance corporations keep getting richer. It’s not as good a deal as the one that gave all of our money, all of our children’s money and all of our children’s children’s money to the financial criminals on Wall Street. It’s not as good as the deal that gave and keeps on giving unaccountable billions of taxpayer dollars to military-industrial killers and corrupt contractors to destroy Iraq and waste in Afghanistan. But hear this, voters; this is what you can expect from a Congressional black crepe health insurance reform package:

1. You will receive a health insurance mandate. In other words, you will have to buy health insurance from a private health insurance company, like it or not.

2. If you are not so poor as to be unable to afford health insurance but choose not to buy insurance, you will be fined and have to give $1000 to $3500 to the health insurance industry.

3. You can still go bankrupt because health insurance co-payments and deductibles can still suck up all of your savings if you are unlucky or careless enough to get sick but not rich enough to afford to get sick.

4. You can continue reaping (as in Grim Reaper) the benefits of private for-profit health care, which has been shown to be of lesser quality than non-profit health care.

5. Instead of 45,000 excess deaths each year, you can look forward to only 25,000 or fewer excess deaths of people who will still be uninsured.

6. You can keep admiring the ingenuity of health insurance corporations as the administrators keep banking 20 to 30% of your premium dollars, and you may even get to pay tax on your premiums. (Civilized countries with universal healthcare spend less than half the amount of dollars that we spend on administrative costs.)

7. Single Payer is off the table, but a worthless Public Option is a possibility or a Health Cooperative could be in your future. (So far Public Options have failed in five states and Health Cooperatives have been proven to be unable to compete with insurance corporations.)

8. You can still look forward to single payer health insurance if you survive to age 65 and are then forced to join Medicare, but your life expectance is two years shorter than people in civilized countries with universal healthcare.

9. Finally, rest assured, Congress will still have its plum health insurance coverage.

Members of Congress are sorry to want so much money to be re-elected so they can continue helping you to help the corporations help themselves. But, look on the bright side, the American economy was boosted by $260 million dollars of health industry lobbying, $20 million dollars were given to Congress for their re-election campaigns, the pharmaceutical industry plans to spend $150 million dollars to promote passage of a black crepe health insurance reform package, and CEOs of health insurance corporations will still be able to make $200,000 a day. You can voice your support for your favorite healthcare reform option by voting below (below this line, not below ground):

Use a black pen or pencil to mark your choice*

O Public Option

O Health Cooperative

O Private health insurance

O None of the above, I want universal Medicare for all from cradle to grave

*You can voice your choice for healthcare reform by contacting one or all of the following—President Obama, your Representative or your Senators. All of these health insurance reform package probabilities can be verified in the interview of Dr. Steffie Woolhandler on September 18, 2009 by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now or by listening to Dr. Woolhandler’s presentation on Alternative Radio of September 16, 2009. Dr. Woolhandler is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

A little Thomas Paine for Constitution Day

"When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or 

distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars;

the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive . . .

when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government."

Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1797-91).