flyer by Ivan

On March 3 and 4, 2011, acclaimed radical feminist theorist Silvia Federici gave two talks in Philadelphia. On the 3rd, she spoke at the Wooden Shoe anarchist bookstore about her book, Caliban and the Witch, on “The True Nature of Capitalism.” That event literally overflowed with an audience eager to connect the pieces of the historical violence against women, and the ongoing crisis of capitalism.

The next night, on March 4, Silvia spoke at Studio 34 Yoga in West Philly to another packed crowd, on the subject of “Our Struggles, Ourselves: Rethinking Healing Work.”  This was a more personal, and in many ways a much deeper talk, which touched on a multitude of subjects from capitalism’s attacks on humanity and the Earth, to how to build self-reproducing movements that avoid the mistakes of past generations.

Today I am posting the audio recording from that amazing event!

One of Silvia’s most powerful insights that continues to work its way through my brain was the distinction between “suffering,” which may be necessary in movement work, and “sacrifice,” which ultimately harms the movement because it harms us as individuals.  She makes it clear that there should be no place for sacrifice in a movement for our liberation:

“What do we mean when we say sacrifice? Because, it’s very true, in many ways, when we say, ‘I’m not going to go into this career, and instead I’ll do the struggle. I’ll be poor, but eh!’ It may sound like sacrifice. But I would like to say that it’s not!

[Sacrifice] means that I’m taking away something vital from my life, something that I need, and then give it up for the struggle…

It doesn’t mean that the struggle does not make you suffer. But suffering is not sacrifice. It’s really different. There may be pain that comes too. But maybe it’s a pain that is better than the pain you would have if you didn’t struggle.

Maybe it’s a pain that prevents you from dying. Because we can die from numbness, irrelevance, wasting your life in triviality, despair, inertia, passivity, from giving up whatever creativity you have in yourself. So, sometimes it’s worth suffering not to see that in yourself. But i wouldn’t call that sacrifice.”

I am very proud to post this inspiring discussion, including the Question and Answer period, which we recorded in audio format.  There are 2 video recordings which were also made, 1 of each of the talks, and I look forward to making those videos available in the near future.  For now, please enjoy the audio!

Silvia Federici MP3

This is a 2-hour recording, so you might want to download it and put it on your mp3 player or computer.  There is a LOT here, so it may not be possible to get through it all in one sitting!

Also, here I’ll post some notes I’ve taken while re-listening to Silvia’s talk:

At 4 minutes – How can we build movements of resistance without destroying ourselves? How can we build self-reproducing movements?

5:15 – Thesis: We cannot liberate our individual selves without changing the world. At the same time, we cannot change the world without liberating ourselves.

6:30 – Capitalism has not asserted its hegemony simply through economic and military violence, but also by a massive process of disempowerment, by destroying many of our historical, social and natural powers.

Capitalism’s two-fold process of disempowerment:

1. Separation of humanity from nature, “de-naturalization” of the body.
2. Destruction of human communities and relationships with one another, “de-socialization” of society.

Capitalism has destroyed a vast range of knowledges, resistances, needs, desires, in a far more severe way than any other system that preceded it.

13:30 – Our bodies need to encounter the wind, sun, seas, land, plants, etc.

16:00 – Capitalism has broken the patterns of the sun and seasons, and trapped us working indoors in artificial light all year round, without even windows.  This is “a daily torture that is part of a whole sea of unhappiness.”

20:30 – Pre-capitalist society: “most activities were collective activities.” Talks about women giving birth, surrounded by other women.  A very social experience, in which women were empowered and in control of the process.

21:30 – “There is no returning to the past, there is no idealizing of the past, because in many cases those collective structures were not egalitarian structures.” Nevertheless, it is important to be aware that humans have lived drastically different ways throughout history.  We can learn from the past.

27:00 – Most of the important experiences in our lives we now confront alone – birth, death, disease – the situations where we most need to feel connected to other people, are now isolated individual experiences.

31:10 – Many people are even coming to the conclusion that they should be ashamed for experiencing pain and loss.

32:40 – We are losing our sense of ourselves as part of a collective body, a broader community.  Along with the loss of connection with the natural world, this helps explain why there is so much unhappiness and anxiety in today’s world.

36:00 – Two pitfalls in organizing:

1) The idea of political work as a form of self-sacrifice, when you subordinate your own desires, needs, energies, creativity, to the realization of a goal that is outside of you.  This is what much of political work has traditionally been.

2) When you separate political work from your own day-to-day reproduction. This tends to exclude people from the movement who have illnesses, disabilities, or various traumas, who feel that they can’t keep up.

40:30 – Discussion of the amazing success of ACT UP in combating homophobia and AIDS.

43:00 – “We need to rethink what it means to do political work. We cannot do political work, unless, at the same time, as part of it, we also begin to provide, to take into account the very basic reproductive needs that we have individually, collectively, in our communities.”

46:15 – Q+A begins

50:30 – On self-sacrificing organizing: “The worst thing you can do to yourself is to be alienated in the very process that is supposed to liberate you.”

55:15 – Discussion of the “reproductive commons” – the home, how do we create a different way of reproduction that does not turn us into atomized family units, like a kind of prison?  Historically, the home has been the prison where women have been enclosed.

1:01:30 – We need to challenge the dominant ideology that “you have to be self-reliant”, and this whole notion that you cannot depend on others to survive, and to need others is something that degrades you.

1:04:45 – There’s been a growing attack on care work.  Cuts to nursing, aides, etc. by the state.  Most care workers don’t even have time to have a short conversation with the people they are serving – cannot have a human relationship with them, “even though they are probably desperately alone and needing that more than anything else.”

1:07:15 – “The general devaluation of reproductive work”: Reproductive work is supposed to be strictly functional, subordinate to the process of production for the market, functional of making people capable to market-oriented work and cutting the cost of labor.

1:11:30 – Each of us has to understand where we can contribute best – where you’re most drawn to because of the experiences you have.   There is a broad range of struggle.  What we are missing today is the connection between different struggles – to go beyond the Enclosures that separate us into different segments of single-issue politics.  This is the challenge!

1:17:45 – Discussion of the amazing work of Mujeres Creando, in Bolivia.

1:22:30 – “The scam that is microcredits.” Instead of being an instrument to lift women out of poverty, its an instrument of enslavement because it traps women in debt, and many have committed suicide.  Banks humiliate women publicly if they fall into debt.

1:27:00 – “What do we mean when we say sacrifice? Because, it’s very true, in many ways, when we say, ‘I’m not going to go into this career, and instead I’ll do the struggle. I’ll be poor, but eh!’ It may sound like sacrifice. But I would like to say that it’s not! [Sacrifice] means that I’m taking away something vital from my life, something that I need, and then give it up for the struggle.

To me, the struggle is a healing process.  If the struggle itself is not a healing process, it’s not worth it!  There’s something wrong with it. You struggle because you need to liberate yourself.  If the struggle does not liberate you, if it doesnt carry that hope, why bother?

It doesn’t mean that the struggle does not make you suffer. But suffering is not sacrifice. It’s really different. There may be pain that comes too. But maybe it’s a pain that is better than the pain you would have if you didn’t struggle. Maybe it’s a pain that prevents you from dying. Because we can die from numbness, irrelevance, wasting your life in triviality, despair, inertia, passivity, from giving up whatever creativity you have in yourself. So, sometimes it’s worth suffering not to see that in yourself. But i wouldn’t call that sacrifice.”

1:29:30 – As a rule, the struggle must be in itself a reward.  Otherwise you need to rethink it.  Maybe you’re doing something wrong.  I’ve gone through periods in my life where one more meeting and i would have cried.  And i paid a price for it.

1:35:30 – Many younger women now are rethinking feminism, which they first rejected because it was institutionalized and for what it has become.  Many are now discovering in their own lives some dynamics of sexism, but without the broad networks of support and discussion that existed in the 70s. What does feminism mean today?

1:43:40 – The struggle around student debt, education, teaching – the closing of schools, funding, the attack on teachers, is a “major attack on reproduction”.  This is an attack on the future.  Student debt is a form of slavery, a tremendous discipline that shapes the decisions people make about their careers and lives.

1:48:00 – Discussion of the accomplishments of the anti-globalization movement of the early 2000s.

1:50:45 – On electoral politics: The movement periodically gives up its power to electoral campaigns, to the state.  We have a continuous ritual of disaccumulation of knowledge, energies, possibilities, and revolutionary potential every time an election comes around.  We had a lot of energy in the end of the Bush era, which seems to have dissipated now.

1:51:55 – On historical memory: It’s absolutely necessary for us to hand down our stories to the next generations of organizers.

Thanks for listening / reading!  Thanks to scott for uploading, and sarah for recording.

alex

A few statistics:

• By 2008 average college tuition had increased by 439% since the 1980s, meaning it’s over 5 times as expensive as a generation ago. This doesn’t include books, housing, meal plans, etc.
• Graduating college seniors in 2008 had an average debt of $23,200. 67% of seniors graduated with student debt. (Project on Student Debt)
• As recently as 1993, less than half of seniors graduated with debt.
• Prior to 1980, 80% of government financial aid was given in the form of grants and scholarships that did not have to be repaid. Today, 80% of gov’t financial aid comes in the form of loans.
• 78% of undergraduates worked full or part-time jobs while taking classes in 2003-04. In 1984, it was 49%.
• In 1970, 40% of new college students considered “being very well-off financially” to be very important, and about 70% considered “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” to be very important. In 2005, 70% considered “being very well-off financially” to be very important, and about 40% considered “developing a meaningful philosophy of life” very important.

Please comment if you have other suggestions on how to break free of student debt! [alex]

Break the Chains of Student Debt!

Alex Knight, June 3, 2010

Paying back student loans can be a real downer. Loans can make organizing after college virtually impossible as they force debtors to work a full-time corporate or nonprofit job, or join the military just to pay them off. When I graduated from college, I had $50,000 worth of student loan debt. I felt I was forced to get a full-time job, and pay them off as quickly as possible so in the future I could finally dedicate myself to social change work. Luckily I didn’t have to make this choice, as there are other options available! Here are a few worth knowing about.

First, you can defer or get a forbearance, to delay payments. Often with these you can delay paying your loans for years, although interest may accrue during that time, and you may be forced to make special payments. For example Sallie Mae used to require you to pay $100 for a 6-month forbearance on private loans, but now they’ve chopped this to $200 for only a 3-month forbearance, which often makes it almost pointless. Nevertheless, you can often easily qualify for an “unemployment” deferment, even if you are working part-time.

Second, you can try to run from your loans altogether and go into default. The only problem with this, besides destroying your credit rating, is if you have co-signers on your loans, such as parents. If you go into default, you’d also be screwing them over.

A third option has recently emerged, which should be taken advantage of as much as possible. It’s called Income-Based Repayment, and it can be used to reduce or eliminate your monthly payments for most Federal loans (not those pesky private ones, unfortunately). Through the federal government’s Direct Loan program, which was recently enlarged by Obama’s Health Care reform, you can consolidate your federal loans into an IBR (or Income-Contigent Repayment – ICR) plan. Payments then become “based” or “contingent” on your income, so if you work part-time and don’t make a lot of money, you won’t have to pay a lot, and you could even eliminate your monthly payments entirely if you earn less than 150% of the poverty line. If you’re a full-time activist like me, you almost certainly qualify. And after 25 years, your debt will be forgiven.

So check out IBR, and don’t let student loans stop you from dedicating your life to building the social movements our communities and world so desperately need!

Income-Based Repayment
Income-Based Repayment (IBR) is a new payment option for federal student loans. It can help borrowers keep their loan payments affordable with payment caps based on their income and family size. For most eligible borrowers, IBR loan payments will be less than 10 percent of their income – and even smaller for borrowers with low earnings. IBR will also forgive remaining debt, if any, after 25 years of qualifying payments.

Who can use IBR? IBR is available to federal student loan borrowers in both the Direct and Guaranteed (or FFEL) loan programs, and covers most types of federal loans made to students, but not those made to parents. To enter IBR, you have to have enough debt relative to your income to qualify for a reduced payment. That means it would take more than 15 percent of whatever you earn above 150% of poverty level to pay off your loans on a standard 10-year payment plan. Use our calculator to see if you’re likely to be eligible.

How does IBR make payments more affordable? IBR uses a kind of sliding scale to determine how much you can afford to pay on your federal loans. If you earn below 150% of the poverty level for your family size, your required loan payment will be $0. If you earn more, your loan payment will be capped at 15 percent of whatever you earn above that amount.

Except for the highest earners, that usually works out to less than 10 percent of your total income.

This chart shows examples of IBR payment caps as a percentage of the borrower’s family income, based on various incomes and family sizes.

What about interest? In some situations, your reduced payment under IBR may not cover the interest on your loans. If so, the government will pay that interest on your Subsidized Stafford Loans for your first three years in IBR. After three years and for other loan types, the interest will be added to the total amount you owe. While your debt may grow if your affordable payments are low enough, anything you still owe after 25 years of qualifying payments will be forgiven.

What are qualifying payments? The Department of Education has indicated that the following types of payments will count towards IBR’s 25-year forgiveness period, as long as you are in IBR at some point during those 25 years.

Payments made in the Income Contingent Repayment plan (ICR) before July 1, 2009. All payments made on or after July 1, 2009 in the IBR, Income Contingent Repayment (ICR), and Standard (10-year) Repayment plans.

Periods when the borrower has a calculated payment of zero in IBR or ICR (this occurs when your income is at or below 150% of the poverty level for your family size). Periods on or after July 1, 2009, when the borrower has been granted an economic hardship deferment.

For more information, visit http://www.ibrinfo.org/what.vp.html

by Kristin Campbell

Reposted from Organizing Upgrade, March 1, 2010

Organizing Upgrade is honored to offer a preview of this insightful reflection on organizing – Engaging the Crisis: Organizing Against Budget Cuts and Building Community Power in Philadelphia – which will appear in Left Turn magazine #36 (April/May 2010).  You can subscribe to Left Turn online at www.leftturn.org or become a monthly sustainer at www.leftturn.org/donate.

On November 6, 2008, just days after Philadelphians poured onto the streets to celebrate the Phillies winning the World Series championship and Barack Obama the US presidency, Mayor Michael Nutter announced a drastic plan to deal with the cities $108 million budget gap. Severe budget cuts were announced, including the closure of 11 public libraries, 62 public swimming pools, 3 public ice skating rinks, and several fire engines. Nutter also stated that 220 city workers would be laid off and that 600 unfilled positions would be eliminated entirely, amounting to the loss of nearly 1,000 precious city jobs. In classic neo-liberal style, the public sector was to sacrifice, while taxpayer money would bail out the private banking institutions.

City in crisis

Well before the economic crises of 2008, a decades-long process of economic restructuring and deindustrialization had left Philadelphia, with a population just over 1.4 million, an incredibly under-resourced city. Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate out of the ten largest cities in the US, an eleven percent unemployment rate and a high-school dropout rate that hovers dangerously around 50 percent.

The proposed budget cuts sparked waves of popular outrage especially concerning the closure of the libraries, many of which are located in low-income communities of color and serve as bedrock institutions for many basic resources. Eleanor Childs, a principal of a school that heavily relies on West Philadelphia’s Durham library, and later a member of the Coalition to Save the Libraries, recalls “a groundswell of concern about the closing of the libraries… people rose up. We had our pitchforks. We were ready to fight to keep our libraries open.”

Nutter’s administration set up eight townhall meetings across Philadelphia, designed to calm the citywide uproar. Thousands of people filled the townhall meetings poised to question how such drastic decisions were made without any public input. Under the banner “Tight Times, Tough Choices,” Mayor Nutter and senior city officials attempted to explain the necessity of such deep service cuts. They explained that the impact of the economic crisis on the city had only become apparent in recent weeks, and because the city could not raise significant revenue to offset its financial loses in the timeframe that was needed, rapid cuts were mandatory and effective January 1, 2009.

Community response

In the following days and weeks, Philadelphians quickly mobilized against the decision that their public services and city workers pay for the fallout of a economic system that had already left so many of them struggling. Neighborhood leaders organized impromptu rallies at the eleven branch libraries. Along with organizing people to turn out at the Mayor’s townhall meetings, these rallies gained media attention on both the nightly news and in the major newspapers, demonstrating widespread opposition to the budget cuts. Sherrie Cohen, member of the Coalition to Save the Libraries and long-time resident of the Ogontz neighborhood of North Philly remembers her neighbors coming together to say, “We are not going to let this library close. It’s not gonna happen. We fought for 36 years for a library in our neighborhood.”

"We Love Our Library" Day, Feb. 14 2009

In mid-December 2008, Sherrie Cohen and attorney Irv Ackelsberg, along with plaintiffs from the eleven branches and three City Council members, filed suit against the City citing a 1988 ordinance that says that no city-owned facility may close, be abandoned, or go into disuse without City Council approval. After two days of court hearings packed with library supporters and just hours before the mandated closure, Judge Idee Fox ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and council members by granting an injunction against the closures. In her ruling Judge Fox said, “The decision to close these eleven library branches is more than a response to a financial crisis; it changes the very foundation of our City.”  Commenting on the major victory, Sheila Washington, who lives just a few doors down from the Haddington branch library in West Philadelphia recalls: “I’ve never been so proud in my life to sit in that courtroom and see justice get served. The Coalition out-maneuvered the Mayor and I don’t think he’s gotten over it yet!”

Grassroots leadership

Initially a non-profit advocacy organization, the Friends of the Free Library (FFL)—itself largely funded by the city—coordinated the opposition to the mayor and positioned itself as the leader of the struggle by attempting to negotiate with the City. Without community input, FFL proceeded to put forth a series of low-level demands calling for “shared sacrifice” and a three day-a-week schedule for the entire library system. Having established itself as a mediating force, FFL’s centered its efforts around media attention and backroom negotiation, shying away from any community organizing or alternative legal and civil disobedience strategies.

Community leaders, rooted in the neighborhoods where libraries were about to close, decided they could not afford to settle with the FFL’s “shared sacrifice” strategy. People who organized the very first rallies to defend their neighborhood branches came together with a broader layer of organizers and activists who wanted to support the fight against the budget cuts and the Coalition to Save the Libraries (CSL) was formed.

The CSL quickly set up a working group structure, loosely based on a spokes-council model that allowed for a multiplicity of work to happen simultaneously. We divided into working groups representing our tactical focuses; media, action, outreach, and influencing decision-makers.  Each working group included a mix of people, some experienced in a particular area and others who were coming to the work for the first time. Members taught each other how to draft media talking points and phone scripts for outreach calls, prep meeting agendas and media spokespeople and write press releases for actions at City Hall. With the intention of structuring the leadership of those most affected by the budget cuts at the center of the organization, CSL formed a coordinating committee where multi-racial and cross-neighborhood membership was prioritized.  Weekly meetings featured rotating co-facilitators, usually paired across difference as way to underline the importance and power in multiracial and intergenerational organizing in Philadelphia.

The CSL was born just weeks before the libraries were mandated to close, which left us with a very short timeline and very high stakes. Organizing in the midst of the economic crisis was fast-paced, anxiety-ridden and offered little time to think about long-term vision and strategy. Nonetheless, CSL’s campaign to keep the libraries open and fully functional consistently attempted to combine short-term demands with a long-term vision for educational and economic justice. The Coalition argued that defending community access to public educational resources—computers, books, librarians—becomes even more important in times of economic crisis, especially in light of how many low-income neighborhoods in Philadelphia have been systematically stripped of these resources over the last few decades.

CSL developed a collective analysis that saw libraries as much more than mere buildings with books, but rather, as powerful organizing bases across the city. As Sherrie Cohen put it: “Libraries are one of the few government sponsored institutions left in our communities. They are a beacon of light in our communities, a sanctuary, a community center, a hub of information and resources.” Closing the 11 libraries would be an attack on poor and working people throughout our City, because as Carolyn Morgan, Coalition leader and Southwest Philly resident put it unequivocally, “Taking away these materials would be a form of murder because the mind is not being fed. Just as the physical body needs to be fed in order to be healthy, the mind needs to be fed in order to grow in wisdom and knowledge.”

While the Mayor was proposing stark neoliberal solutions—including a proposal to sell the eleven library buildings and turn them into privately managed “knowledge centers”—we were demanding that public services be considered common, neighborhood-owned institutions. A common refrain of the CSL has been, “You can’t close these libraries because they are not yours to take!” Looking for more action oriented strategies to involve people outraged by the Mayors proposal, the CSL began to create a community budgeting process for Philadelphia by establishing a ‘People’s Court’—a series of actions outside of City Hall coinciding with the opening day of legal hearings, which stated that it was ‘illegal’ to close down the 11 libraries.

Strategic alliances

Building a strong cross-neighborhood alliance to fight the library cuts became central to CSL’s strategy and was successful for a few reasons. Connecting structurally segregated neighborhoods in Philadelphia meant that we were inevitably building a multi-racial, cross-class, intergenerational organization, which we learned holds tremendous power and potential. Gregory Benjamin, Coalition leader and Southwest Philly block captain remarked, “The citywide coalition was dynamite. It gave us an opportunity to connect with other people, communities and  ethnic groups that really had the same concerns that we had.”

By bringing different people from different neighborhoods together the Coalition built a very real feeling of collective power. Sheila Washington recalls: “I was invited to a Coalition meeting and it was wonderful because I was so stressed out. They were removing books and packing up our library. They were moving the after-school program. And I thought, oh my God, what is this neighborhood going to do?” Organizing to defend the libraries helped us cope with the incredibly difficult economic times, together. The budget cuts were coming down in multiple neighborhoods across the city, mostly low-income neighborhoods, and by building alliances among people who were experiencing the affects of these budget cuts our organization replaced feelings of isolation and shock with feelings of strength and a belief that together we could win.

People's Court action - Jan. 13, 2009

Strategic alliances were built not only across neighborhoods but also across generations. In Philadelphia, a majority of elementary schools rely heavily on their closest public library. With this in mind, a group of third graders led one of our most creative actions—a two-mile book trek from their school to the library. Through the action, young people demonstrated the extremely negative effects of the proposed closings simply by the distance they walked.  Along with strengthening the popular struggle to save the libraries, youth-led actions like these served to build power among the students themselves. Katrina Clark, the students’ teacher, says that whenever they talk about the civil rights movement or other human rights issues the students refer back to the book trek and say, “Like what we did with the libraries?” She added,  “They now have prior knowledge about what it means to fight for their rights…Honestly, that’s what education is about. It’s about empowering students to change the world and giving them the tools they need to do it.”

Long haul

What ultimately stopped the eleven libraries from closing, was the combination of CSL’s short term demands along with its long term vision and popular organizing strategy targeting multiple pressure points. The Coalition accurately assessed the moment and turned widespread anger around the budget cuts into an organized power base; we helped file a lawsuit against the City and organized turnout at legal hearings; and we seriously prepared for a library takeover in the event that the lawsuit failed. Together, the CSL implemented a successful model of crisis-response organizing, by channeling popular outrage into a strong, unified cross-neighborhood force that framed the debate in terms of economic and racial inequity.

Even after winning the court injunction, Philadelphia is still struggling with constant staffing shortages and reduced operation hours due to an $8 million budget cut to the library system. As the library campaign drew to a close, the CSL redirected its efforts to protesting pool closings, attempting to grow and develop into a multi-issue organization.  It was a logical extension of our initial work, as the pool closings affected the same constituencies that were hit hardest by the library closings, poor and working people of Philadelphia.

Because we see this as a long-term struggle, we’ve been working to transition our organization from a crisis-response, single-issue coalition into a multi-issue, long-term grassroots institution in Philadelphia. In order to build for the long haul as an organization, we have continued to tie the budget cuts together and show how they are interconnected, train and develop our leaders, and maintain our cross-neighborhood network. This article is part of our effort to document and reflect on our work as we gear up for the US Social Forum in Detroit this summer.

Our city is in dire need of multi-issue grassroots organizations that are led by poor and working people fighting for social and economic justice and oriented towards organizing to build power in our communities.

Our victory and the relationships we’ve built in the process have given us the inspiration to continue to struggle. Betty Beaufort, Coalition leader and a resident of the Point Breeze neighborhood of South Philadelphia offers powerful advice – “Fight for what you want cause if you don’t fight, you not gonna get nothing. Cause life is a struggle and you wanna turn a struggle into a movement. Don’t get discouraged, cause some days you might say to heck with it, but we need to fight on. Being involved in the Coalition has reminded me of my own strength. We have to be reminded of our own strength because there’s always gonna be something we got to fight for and I’m ready for the fight!”

Kristin Campbell wrote this piece in collaboration with Andalusia Knoll and with additional help from Alia Trindle and Sarah Small. inspired by Eleanor Childs, Sherrie Cohen, Sheila Washington, Carolyn Morgan, Katrina Clark, Gregory Benjamin and Betty Beaufort.

Kristin Campbell grew up in Philadelphia and is a member of the Coalition to Save the Libraries. She has been involved with student, anti-war, global justice, and community organizing efforts over the years. For more information on the CSL please see their blog at: http://coalitiontosavethelibraries.blogspot.com

Despite the economic crisis, the ultra-rich seem to be making off quite well, even increasing their incomes while the rest of us worry about unemployment, foreclosure, and bankruptcy.

Crooks and Liars recently posted an article, “Richest 400 Americans See Incomes Double, Tax Rates Halved,” which has the latest statistics on income inequality, but to fully understand the widening gap between rich and poor, check out the following essay from David DeGraw.

How long will we permit this to go on? [alex]

The Richest 1% Have Captured America’s Wealth — What’s It Going to Take to Get It Back?

By David DeGraw / February 19, 2010

Originally published by Alternet. Recovered from The Rag Blog.

“The war against working people should be understood to be a real war… Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class… And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.” — Noam Chomsky

As a record amount of U.S. citizens are struggling to get by, many of the largest corporations are experiencing record-breaking profits, and CEOs are receiving record-breaking bonuses. How could this be happening, how did we get to this point?

The Economic Elite have escalated their attack on U.S. workers over the past few years; however, this attack began to build intensity in the 1970s. In 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1 the average worker made. Due to technological advancements, production and profit levels exploded from 1970-2000. With the lion’s share of increased profits going to the CEO’s, this pay ratio dramatically rose to $90 for CEOs to $1 for the average worker.

As ridiculous as that seems, an in-depth study in 2004 on the explosion of CEO pay revealed that, including stock options and other benefits, CEO pay is more accurately $500 to $1.

Paul Buchheit, from DePaul University, revealed, “From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America tripled their after-tax percentage of our nation’s total income, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop over 20%.” Robert Freeman added, “Between 2002 and 2006, it was even worse: an astounding three-quarters of all the economy’s growth was captured by the top 1%.”

Due to this, the United States already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the average worker much harder than CEOs, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the U.S. population has grown to a record high. The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all time record.

As mentioned before, just look at the first full year of the crisis when workers lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans increased by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion, which is more than the combined net worth of 50% of the US population. Just to make this point clear, 400 people have more wealth than 155 million people combined.

Meanwhile, 2009 was a record-breaking year for Wall Street bonuses, as firms issued $150 billion to their executives. 100% of these bonuses are a direct result of our tax dollars, so if we used this money to create jobs, instead of giving them to a handful of top executives, we could have paid an annual salary of $30,000 to 5 million people.

So while U.S. workers are now working more hours and have become dramatically more productive and profitable, our pay is actually declining and all the dramatic increases in wealth are going straight into the pockets of the Economic Elite.

If our income had kept pace with compensation distribution rates established in the early 1970s, we would all be making at least three times as much as we are currently making. How different would your life be if you were making $120,000 a year, instead of $40,000?

So it should come as no surprise to see that we now have the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world and the highest inequality of wealth in our nation’s history. The backbone of America, a hard working middle class that has made our country a world leader, has been devastated.

Now that we have a better understanding of how our income has been suppressed over the past 40 years, let’s take a look at how the economy has been designed to take the limited money we receive and put it into the hands of the Economic Elite as well.

Costs of living

Other than in the workplace, in almost all our costs of living the system is now blatantly rigged against us. Let’s take a look at it, starting out with our tax system.

In total, the average U.S. citizen is forced to give up approximately 30% of our income in taxes. This tax system is now strategically designed to flow straight into the hands of the Economic Elite. A huge percentage of our tax dollars ultimately end up in their pockets. The past decade proves that — whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats running the government — our tax money is not going into our community, it is going into the pockets of the billionaires who have bought off both parties — it is obscene.

For an example of how this system flows to the Economic Elite, just look at the Wall Street “bailout.” The real size of the bailout is estimated to be $14 trillion — and could end up costing trillions more than that. By now you are probably also sick of hearing about the bailout, but stop and think about this for a moment. Do you comprehend how much $14 trillion is?

What could be accomplished with this money is almost beyond common comprehension.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg that has hit us. On top of the trillions given to the Wall Street elite, we already have a record $12.3 trillion in national debt — and we now have to pay $500 billion in interest to the Economic Elite on this debt every year, yet another way they are milking us dry. When you add in unfunded liabilities owed, like social security payments, we actually owe a stunning $74 trillion. That adds up to a debt of $242,000 for every man, woman and child in America.

Trillions more, 25% of taxpayer dollars allocated to military spending, goes unaccounted for every year, not to mention the billions spent on overcharging and outright fraud. During the War on Terror, the Economic Elite have used our tax money to build a private army that has more soldiers deployed than the U.S. military — a congressional study revealed that 69% of the “U.S.” fighting forces deployed throughout the world in our name are in fact private mercenaries, 80% of them are foreign nationals.

Private contractors regularly get paid three to five times more than our soldiers, and have been repeatedly caught overcharging and committing fraud on a massive scale. A congressional investigation revealed this and strongly recommended that we seize wasting tax dollars on these private military contractors. However, under Obama, there has actually been a drastic increase in total tax dollars spent on them.

In 2009, just over $1 trillion tax dollars were spent on the military, it’s safe to say that at least $350 billion of that was needlessly wasted.

When you research our tax system you see an unprecedented level of waste and fraud rampant throughout most expenditures. Our tax system is a national disaster of epic proportions. It is literally an organized criminal operation that continues to rob us in broad daylight, with zero accountability.

Politicians and mainstream “news” outlets will not tell you this, but most every serious economist knows that due to so much theft and debt created in the tax system, the only way to fix things, other than stopping the theft and seizing the trillions that have been stolen, will be for the government to cut important social funding and drastically raise our taxes.

Other than the record national debt, many states are running record deficits and are barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services. Our nation’s biggest state economies, like California and New York, are the ones in most trouble.

To merely say that things will not be improving economically is to be a delusional optimist. The truth that you will not hear: we have been hit by an economic deathblow and the United States lay in ruins.

It’s not just this criminal tax system; the theft is now built into all our costs of living.

Trillions more in our spending on food and fuel has been stolen due to fraudulent stock transactions and overcharging. Just 10 years ago, in 2000, American families paid 7% of our income on food and fuel. We now pay 20%.

This drastic increase is primarily driven by fraudulent market manipulation that drives up stock prices. Congress uncovered this in 2006; as part of the Enron investigation they found that companies manipulated the oil market to create major spikes in stock values, and then they didn’t do anything about it — nothing to see here, just move on.

As mentioned before, we have the most expensive health care system in the world and we are forced to pay twice as much as other countries, and the overall care we get in return ranks 37th in the world. On average, U.S. citizens are now paying a record high 8% of their income on medical care.

Part of the reason why foreclosure rates are so high is because the percentage of income Americans pay on their housing has risen to 34%.

So for these basic necessities — taxes, food, fuel, shelter and medical bills — we have already lost 92% of our limited income. Then factor in ever-increasing interest rates on credit cards, student loans, rising prices for cable, internet, phone, bank fees, etc., etc., etc. We are being robbed and gouged in all costs of living, in every aspect of our life. No wonder bankruptcies are skyrocketing and the number of people suffering from psychological depression has reached an epidemic level.

The American worker is screwed over every step of the way, and it all starts with the explosion in the cost of a college education. This is one of the Economic Elite’s most devastating weapons. To have any chance of succeeding in this economy, it is commonly believed that you must attend the best college possible. With the rising costs involved, today’s students are graduating with record levels of debt from student loans.

At the same time, the unemployment rate among recent college graduates has risen higher than the national average, and those that do find work are making significantly less than they expected to make. This combination of extreme debt and reduced pay has crippled an entire generation right from the start and has put them in a vicious cycle of spiraling debt that they will struggle with for the rest of their lives. The most recent college graduates are now known as a “lost generation.”

The American dream has turned into a nightmare. The economic system is a sophisticated prison cell; the indentured servant is now an indebted wage slave; whips and chains have evolved into debts.

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt.” — John Adams

Concealing national wealth

“Liberty in the concrete signifies release from the impact of particular oppressive forces; emancipation from something once taken as a normal part of human life but now experienced as bondage… Today, it signifies liberation from material insecurity and from the coercions and repressions that prevent multitudes from participation in the vast cultural resources that are at hand.” — John Dewey

When you take the time to research and analyze the wealth that has gone to the economic top one percent, you begin to realize just how much we have been robbed. Trillions upon trillions of dollars that could make the lives of all hard working Americans much easier have been strategically funneled into the coffers of the Economic Elite. The denial of wealth is the key to the Economic Elite’s power. An entire generation of massive wealth creation has been strategically withheld from 99% of the U.S. population.

The U.S. public doesn’t have any understanding of how much wealth has been generated and concentrated into the hands of the Economic Elite over the past 40 years; there is no historical frame of reference. This withholding of wealth is truly the greatest crime against humanity in the history of civilization.

What could be done with all the money that has been hoarded by the Economic Elite is extraordinary!

Let’s consider what we could do with the money that has been stolen from us? On top of what should be our average six-figure yearly income, we could have:

• Free health care for every American,
• A free 4 bedroom home for every American family,
• 5% tax rate for 99% of Americans,
• Drastically improved public education and free college for all,
• Significantly improved public transportation and infrastructure,

The list goes on…

This is not some far-fetched fantasy. These are all things that Franklin D. Roosevelt talked about doing in the 1940′s, long before the explosion of wealth creation in our technologically advanced global economy. The money for all this is already there, stashed into the claws of the Economic Elite.

The denial of wealth to the masses is the key to the Economic Elite’s power. Outside of outdated and obsolete economic models and theories — and incredibly short-sighted greed — there is no reason why all this money should be kept in the hands of a few, at the immense suffering and expense of the many.

If Americans could just understand how much wealth is being withheld from us, we would have a massive uprising and the Economic Elite would be swept away, into the history books alongside the evil despots of the past.

[This is Part II of David DeGraw's report, "The Economic Elite vs. People of the USA," originally published at Amped Status. Click here for Part I. Read more of David McGraw's writing here.]

© 2010 Amped Status

Source / Amped Status / AlterNet

[update 2/5: I should also mention the completely misguided funding of nuclear power plants as well, see Obama's Nuclear Giveaway]

This news came alongside an announced “spending freeze”, which would exclude military/war and only affect social programs, like jobs, housing, education and health care. These are precisely the programs which need to be dramatically increased in this economic crisis, not frozen. This proposed freeze would last 3 years, meaning for the rest of Obama’s term in office we could see no new spending on any of the social programs that are desperately needed. The poor, the middle and working classes, and everyone who has hope for a more compassionate United States is essentially being locked out in the cold.

Candidate Obama himself campaigned against exactly such an “across the board spending freeze,” as we may recall if we can muster our memories back through one year of hazy distractions (luckily Youtube never forgets):

If they’re so interested in reducing spending, why not cut totally useless and destructive programs – like NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Why is Obama backsliding on all of his campaign promises? It just so happens that even though there’s no sane use of additional nuclear weapons (the US stockpile is already over 10,000 warheads, and the Cold War is over), nuclear weapons corporations like Lockheed Martin spend millions of dollars to lobby politicians for this funding anyway. And sadly, they’re getting it because Obama is afraid of the Republicans.

Once again we are seeing the continued march towards war, death and neo-fascism. The needs of the population – from decent jobs and housing, affordable education and health care, to a healthy environment – are being denied in order to protect corporate and financial interests.

Here’s Democracy Now! with the nuclear weapons story, and an article from Norman Solomon on the spending freeze below:

Despite Non-Proliferation Pledge, Obama Budget Request Seeks Additional $7B for Nuclear Arsenal

As part of a record $3.8 trillion budget proposal, the Obama administration is asking Congress to increase spending on the US nuclear arsenal by more than $7 billion over the next five years. Obama is seeking the extra money despite a pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world. The proposal includes large funding increases for a new plutonium production facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico. We speak with Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico. Watch video.

Will it be more authoritarian, based on mindless discipline and punishments in order to train students to be soldiers or prisoners? Or will it be more democratic, based on the free development of the potential of each child, and preparation for service to the community? That choice is up to us. [alex]

For-profit Education

Milton Friedman’s Dream

by Paul A. Moore / January 12th, 2010

Originally published on Dissident Voice.

Something for advocates of public education to keep in mind now is the changed face of the enemy. The oligarchs; Gates, Broad, the Walton Family, the Bush Family, Bloomberg and the CEO’s represented in the Business Roundtable, had a plan for the destruction of the public schools. They were supremely confident they could bring to fruition Milton Friedman’s dream that education could become a highly profitable industry. Unbeknownst to them though, they had an Achilles Heel. Their plan was fatally flawed because it was inextricably bound up with the dynamic growth of a global capitalist economy.

That’s over with now. Why? For one, because globalization was so successful in its brief heyday. It penetrated every market on the planet. Who would have thought China could become the largest market for autos the way it has this year? It found the absolute lowest wage possible in the undeveloped world. They bumped right up against outright slavery and where possible went over the edge.

The effect of this success was profits on a scale heretofore unimaginable but it also exhausted the systems possibilities for growth. And growth is its lifeblood. Growth kept it healthy and dynamic. When that growth became impossible capitalism turned in on itself. It began to cannibalize itself. That’s when you get Wall Street turning investment banks into casinos and investment vehicles into logarithms. No more real wealth was being created so the bankers turned to magic tricks, in the form of derivatives, to give the appearance of wealth creation. That’s when you get some of the largest corporate entities ever created disappearing into the history books. So long General Motors!

The other thing a global economy had to have if it was going to work was a plentiful and cheap supply of oil. If the world is not now on the downside of the Peak Oil curve, its close enough for government work in the US, China, India, Russia, the EU. Rulers in these developed and developing countries have begun to act along those lines. For instance, the US won’t be getting out of the Middle East anytime soon for the oil supply it offers. US military presence there has nothing to do with silly bleatings over “underwear bombers” or terrorist threats. And for another instance, economic nationalism, in the form of US tariffs on Chinese steel to give one example, is the wave of the future. Globalization cannot withstand the end of free trade or oil driven trade but it faces both.

A US soldier or two, away from the harrowing places they have been sent, given time to consider, has probably wondered why their government has contracted with Blackwater now Xe-type mercenaries at ten times the price to pull duties once assigned to them. It is completely absurd on its face. The product of a hidden agenda is always absurdity. Globalization, which seeks privatization of all things, is that agenda.

Teachers across this country have come to live everyday with this absurdity. Incessant testing with no relation to the real world, the mindless collection of trivia classified as data, forcing the “business model” (like Enron or Lehman Brothers or General Motors) on the public schools, driving the arts and the social sciences out of the curriculum, and having every Chancellor, Superintendent, Commissioner, and Secretary of Education promote charter schools over their own public schools at every turn. Absurd! But why? Globalization.

There is the temptation to believe the global economy will enjoy a “recovery” and in the US we will visit even greater heights of material prosperity. This is a delusion that is being foisted on the American people. There is no rational reason for this system to be revived and there are oligarchs, and people at Goldman Sachs, and people in the US government and military that know this. They have left behind some people in the public schools, “dead-enders” like Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C. and Joel Klein in NYC to soldier on with the corporate catechism. But they are no longer a credible threat.

The new danger appears in the rise of the seamless melding of the corporation and the state in the US. Our new corporate-state is reflected in the unprecedented amount of money Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suddenly has at his disposal to disrupt the public schools. Duncan has put the 50 states in a competition, he calls it the Race To The Top, to become the most effective at destroying public education and building the charter school movement. Over $4-billion will be spread among the winners. The denial of funds is expected to finish off the losers.

Some people are confused as to why President Obama’s education policy is indistinguishable from that of George W. Bush. It is because both are servants of the corporate-state. In regards to the public schools and every other vestige of democracy in US society the corporate-state is the last stage where fighting back will be possible. Next comes the national curriculum from Winston Smith’s world.

Paul A. Moore is a teacher at Miami Carol City Senior High School. He can be contacted at: Pmoore1953@aol.com. Read other articles by Paul, or visit Paul’s website.

Orwell was an acclaimed writer because he wrote in clear and efficient English. He gave us this 1946 article, “Politics and the English Language” on how to write effectively. Check this out before penning/keying your next masterpiece! [alex]

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

[Orwell goes on to explain how English writing is deteriorating from clear, crisp words into vague and opaque phrase-mongering, citing specific examples of particularly bad writing from intellectuals and politicians.]

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties.

Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

…

The defense of the English language…  has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a “standard English” which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a “good prose style.” On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one’s meaning.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them.

When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails.

I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

…

If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin, where it belongs.

[see full essay]

“The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”

by Naomi Klein

2007 Metropolitan Books

I feel confident saying that The Shock Doctrine is one of the most important political non-fiction works of the last decade. This should be a high school textbook, or at least required reading in college. Naomi Klein applies her extensive vision and intellect to present us with a way of seeing our world that is extremely relevant and powerful: in the pursuit of enormous profits, those running the global economy intentionally exploit terrible catastrophes, or even create them, to take things for themselves that only shocked and traumatized populations would give up. This ambulance-chasing strategy of those in power is defined as the “shock doctrine,” and “disaster capitalism”, alternatively known as “neoliberalism” is the dominant social paradigm it has created.

Although there are flaws here, which I will mention, this book is both timely and well-written; Klein carries the reader through a story about grandiose topics like neoliberalism, torture, psychology, and international politics that is fundamentally readable.

The most important contribution made by this book in my view is the dismantling of the myth that capitalism’s global dominance is a function of democracy or destiny. This is the notion that with the defeat of the Soviet Union, all alternatives to “the free market” have naturally faded into history, presumably because capitalism is so irresistible. To the contrary, Naomi Klein provides numerous case studies to show us the exact opposite is true – the temporary triumph of global capitalism has been fertilized by the victims of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, wars, campaigns of torture, and economic calamity. In short, alternatives to capitalism have been shocked into submission wherever they’ve appeared.

This is no accident, it is part of a conscious crusade by market fundamentalists, those devoted to the pseudo-religious belief that “the market solves all.” Klein explains that the shock doctrine was developed (at least in part) by the patron saint of neoliberalism, free-market economist Milton Friedman. In his words, “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” And he intended to provide those ideas. It was Friedman’s opus “Capitalism and Freedom” that proclaimed neoliberalism’s core edicts: deregulation, privatization and cutbacks to social services.

Since the 1970s, these teachings have been vigorously applied across the globe by the “holy trinity” of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Their institutional missions have been to turn the globe into one enormous marketplace, and generate maximum profits by compelling governments to shed the ability to protect their people and natural environments from the plunder of capital. The trinity’s painful prescriptions (like selling health care and education to for-profit industries) typically followed on the heels of disaster, and were attached to much-needed loans or aid that could not be turned down in a time of crisis. Distressed governments took the bait, but in the long run the shock doctrine just created more poverty and ruin. Davison Budhoo, an IMF senior economist who designed these policies in Latin America and Africa throughout the ’80s explained in his resignation letter, “sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name.”

Naomi takes us on an extensive tour to survey the damage. The first stop is probably the most striking – Chile 1973. It was here that Salvador Allende, democratically-elected socialist president of Chile, was overthrown by the Chilean military with the support of the CIA and Richard Nixon. The brute violence, disappearances and torture that followed are painful to recount, but equally painful were the economic policies implemented straight out of Milton Friedman’s neoliberal playbook. Following the coup, it was disciples of Friedman – the “Chicago Boys” – who were put in charge of the economy, and they acted swiftly to reduce wages, break unions, and sell off vital social services to private multinational corporations. This first neoliberal testing ground showed that Friedmanism succeeded in raising profits, just as it raised the inflation, unemployment, and hunger that soon gripped the country.

These origins of the shock doctrine are fascinating, but Klein also brings us up to the present to inspect disaster capitalism as it operates in today’s world. One of the examples is Iraq, where “Shock and Awe” facilitated the complete dismantling of the Iraqi state, and continued US military occupation still prevents the population from interfering with highly unpopular shock treatment policies like selling off the nation’s vast oil wealth to western oil corporations. Likewise we see the same pattern in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, as officials jumped at the “opportunity” of this cataclysmic storm to push through policies that normally would have faced stiff opposition, like the shutting down of public schools and housing projects to make way for charters and condos. This privatization may have the effect of increasing the suffering of the impoverished and now somewhat homeless black majority of the city, but in the shock doctors’ eyes, such suffering is hidden behind large stacks of money.

In case you weren’t convinced yet, we also get to tour South Asia following the 2004 tsunami, post-Soviet Poland and Russia, post-Tiananmen Square Massacre China, post-Apartheid South Africa, and at least 5 other traumatized regions to study the shock doctrine in action, and everywhere we find the same theme – exploiting disasters with economic projects that benefit the few before the many can respond. Whether the crises are intentionally created or merely opportunistically seized upon, Naomi Klein helps us see that it’s the policies of deregulation, privatization, and cutbacks to social services that prove to be as disastrous as the calamities they follow.

My main criticisms of this book center around the fact that it’s simply too long and too depressing. There’s a tremendous wealth of information here, and the points are well made, but it ends up being overwhelming (even for me, and I’m used to reading about horrible tragedies). How much can one read about torture chambers, mass poverty, and violent exploitation before despair sets in? At 466 pages, this is overkill, and the author can’t help but be redundant. Worse, only the last of the 22 chapters actually deals with solutions, providing essential hope for our otherwise desolate and traumatic landscape.

This conclusion is by far the best and most important section, because it shows that in many ways this disaster capitalist complex is being defeated by the efforts of regular people, most dramatically in Latin America. Detailing how the global justice movement has delegitimized the neoliberal project and its trinity of institutions provides necessary knowledge for all organizers and activists today – the weakpoints of the worldwide capitalist menace.  But preceded by 400+ pages of gloom, I bet most readers don’t even reach this before giving up on the book. In short, as vital as The Shock Doctrine is, it could have been made truly transcendant by cutting at least half the exposee of the problem and supplementing several more hopeful chapters along the lines of the (excellent) conclusion. Surely the shock doctrine’s traumatic story doesn’t have to be a trauma to read.

In the end, Naomi Klein stands out as a genius who’s mastered an incredible library of knowledge, and an artist able to weave together a torrent of difficult concepts and facts into a compelling story that educates the reader on basic truths of their reality. The lessons and themes of The Shock Doctrine can be applied much more extensively than Klein dares to here, as it’s not just “disaster capitalism” that requires an element of shock to propagate itself, but capitalism as such. From the beginning with the land enclosures and the witch burnings of 15th-17th century Europe, capitalism was built through appalling theft and horrific flames. Understanding how the system we have to deal with now was birthed in those pioneering social and ecological shocks (as part of a more-or-less deliberate strategy by elites) is an effort made much easier with the help of this book.

And now that capitalism is suffering its own shocks, will new disasters present themselves as opportunities for the powerful to develop fresh forms of exploitation (bank bailouts spring to mind), or will we establish the space to finally heal from the trauma we’ve been subjected to under capitalism, as we move towards a more just and sustainable future?  That story is still being written, one day at a time, by all of us.

“You Call This a Democracy? Who Benefits, Who Pays, and Who Really Decides?”

by Paul Kivel

2004 Apex Press

Paul Kivel exposes the ruling class of the United States and how it operates in this short, easy-to-read book. With simple concepts and cute illustrations, a nuanced class analysis is presented in a very clear and accessible format.

If the education system was any good at all, “You Call This a Democracy?” would be one of the textbooks used in all high schools. It explains what the ruling class is (those with a family income above $373,000 and net financial wealth of at least $2 million), how it controls the government, media, and economy, and the negative effects we all suffer, such as poverty, wars, disease, pollution, over-working, stress, and meaningless, isolated lives. Kivel particularly does a great job exposing how the ruling class uses racism, sexism, homophobia and other social divisions to keep itself, a relatively small group of basically white Protestant men, in power. Making the connections between systems of oppression is one of the keys to the freedom of everybody, and this book helps move that analysis forward.

There a couple criticisms I could make about the book, first that it doesn’t inspire enough hope or provide much of a systematic solution to the problem that it systematically critiques. And secondly that the book can be cumbersome to read because of a fair amount of repetition coupled with too many general statements about segments of the population. To a certain extent, this was unavoidable in a book of this nature, but I could have used more examples of particular corporations, politicians, and businesspeople and their ilk, even though the examples given in the book are all great.

Definitely check this out if you want to have any idea about the country you’re living in, and how you and your family and everyone you care about are being screwed over by the super-wealthy elite. The path to a democratic future starts when we become informed.

Detroit: City of Hope
Building a sustainable economy out of the ashes of industry.

By Grace Lee Boggs

Originally published by In These Times

February 17, 2009.

Photographer: Fabrizio Costantini/Bloomberg News. Hazel Williams picks green tomatoes at an Urban Farm off Linwood Avenue in Detroit, on Sept. 22, 2008. Photo by Fabrizio Costantini / Bloomberg.

Detroit is a city of Hope rather than a city of Despair. The thousands of vacant lots and abandoned houses not only provide the space to begin anew but also the incentive to create innovative ways of making our living—ways that nurture our productive, cooperative and caring selves.

The media and pundits keep repeating that today’s economic meltdown is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But in the ’30s, the United States was an overproducing industrial giant, not today’s casino economy.

In the last few decades, once-productive Americans have been transformed into consumers, using more and more of the resources of the earth to foster ways of living that are unsustainable and unsatisfying. This way of life has created suburbs that destroy farmland, wetlands and the natural world, as well as pollute the environment.

The new economy also requires a huge military apparatus to secure global resources and to consume materials for itself, at the same time providing enormous riches for arms merchants and for our otherwise failing auto, air and ship-building sectors.

Instead of trying to resurrect or reform a system whose endless pursuit of economic growth has created a nation of material abundance and spiritual poverty—and instead of hoping for a new FDR to save capitalism with New Deal-like programs—we need to build a new kind of economy from the ground up.

That is what I have learned from 55 years of living and struggling in Detroit, the city that was once the national and international symbol of the miracle of industrialization and is now the national and international symbol of the devastation of deindustrialization.

When I arrived in Detroit in 1953, the population was 2 million, the majority white. Today, it is less than 900,000, majority black. Back then, racism was blatant and overt. Many bars, restaurants and hotels refused service to blacks. Blacks could buy homes in inner city neighborhoods but could not rent apartments in buildings right next door to these homes.

Meanwhile, freeways were enabling white flight to the suburbs, and technology was replacing human beings with robots.

In 1973, we elected our first black mayor, Coleman Young. Young was a gifted politician who was able to eliminate the most egregious examples of racism, especially in the police and fire departments and City Hall. But he was unable to imagine a post-industrial society. So, for 14 years, he tried in vain to woo industrial jobs back to Detroit.

In 1988, toward the end of his fourth term, Young decided that the factories weren’t coming back and that Detroit’s salvation depended on casino gambling, which he said would create 50,000 jobs.

To defeat his proposal, we organized Detroiters Uniting, a coalition of community groups, blue-collar, white-collar and cultural workers, clergy, political leaders and professionals.

Our concern was with how our city had been disintegrating socially, economically, politically, morally and ethically. We were convinced that we could not depend upon one industry or one large corporation to provide us with jobs. It was now up to us—the citizens of Detroit—to create meaningful jobs and income for all citizens.

We needed a new kind of city where citizens take responsibility for their decisions instead of leaving them to politicians or the marketplace.

Greening the Motor City

In 1992, to introduce this civic vision, we founded Detroit Summer, a multicultural, intergenerational youth movement and program to rebuild, redefine and respirit Detroit.

Youth volunteers began working on community gardens with Southern-born African-American elders who called themselves “Gardening Angels.”

People were moved by the image of young people and elders reconnecting with one another and with the Earth. The result has been an escalating agricultural movement: neighborhood gardens, youth gardens, church gardens, school gardens, hospital gardens, senior independence gardens, wellness gardens and Kwanzaa gardens.

Capuchin monks have created Earthworks, a program that uses gardening to educate Detroit school children in the science, nutrition and biodiversity of organic agriculture, as well as to provide fresh produce for the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and for WIC (Women, Infants and Children) supplemental nutrition program.

At the Catherine Ferguson Academy—a public high school for pregnant teens and teenage mothers—students raise vegetables and fruit trees and grow alfalfa to feed the small animals that provide eggs, meat, milk and cheese for the school community.

Architectural students at University of Detroit Mercy produced a documentary called Adamah (Hebrew for “of the Earth”) that envisions how a 2.5 square-mile area on the east side of Detroit could be developed into a self-reliant community with a vegetable farm, a tree farm and a sawmill to produce lumber.

Every August, the Detroit Agricultural Network conducts a tour of community gardens. After one such tour, one of my friends, a retired city planner, told me that it gave her a sense of how important community gardens are to a city, how they reduce neighborhood blight, build self-esteem among young people, and provide them with structured activities, build leadership skills, provide healthy food and a community base for economic development.

“I see it as the quiet revolution,” she said. “It is a revolution for self-determination taking place quietly in Detroit.”

This quiet revolution has been preparing Detroiters to meet today’s growing crises of global warming and spiraling food prices.

As writer Rebecca Solnit said in the July 2007 issue of Harper’s, “Detroit is where change is most urgent and therefore most viable. The rest of us will get there later, when necessity drives us too, and by that time Detroit may be the shining example we can look to—the post-industrial green city that was once the steel-gray capital of Fordist manufacturing.”

What’s next?

From my experience with the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 in Detroit, I have seen and heard many stories of grassroots activities that Detroiters are creating—or want to create.

Because of these inspiring stories, in 2007 we launched the Detroit City of Hope campaign. Our aim was to identify, encourage and promote infrastructure-building initiatives:

• Expand urban agriculture and small businesses to create a sustainable local economy.
• Reinvent work so that it is not simply done for a paycheck but to develop people and build community.
• Reinvent education to include children in activities that transform themselves and their environment.
• Create co-ops to produce local goods for local needs.
• Replace punitive justice with restorative justice programs to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison.

Working together as neighbors of all ages, we can evolve into the more socially responsible, active citizens we are capable of becoming.

We can begin by organizing ourselves in every city and community to secure a moratorium on foreclosures.

As food prices soar, we can achieve food security and better health by joining the local foods movement.

We can bring the neighbor back to the ‘hood by organizing “skills banks” to exchange goods and services among ourselves.

We can create home-repair teams to fix homes and/or tear down those beyond repair. The Electrical Workers, Carpenters and other unions can dedicate one day a week to work with community groups to rebuild whole neighborhoods, while also training young people in rebuilding skills to help them get jobs and recognize the dignity of work.

Other communities across the country are beginning to create alternative ways of living. In Milwaukee, a renaissance has begun, sparked by the two-acre farm of former basketball player Will Allen, who recently received a MacArthur Genius award. “We have to go back to when people shared things and started taking care of each other,” Allen said recently. “That’s the only way we will survive. What better way to do it than with food?”

These are only a small sample of what is possible once we recognize that a new local and sustainable economy is desirable and necessary.

Creating this new economy starts by accepting that there are no solutions except the ones we imagine and implement.

[This article was excerpted from Grace Lee Boggs’ keynote address at the National Lawyers Guild Convention in Detroit on Oct. 16, 2008. For information about the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, visit www.boggscenter.org. Grace Lee Boggs is a writer and lifelong activist whose career spans more than 60 years. She is the author of Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (with her husband James Boggs), Women and the Movement to Build a New America and Living for Change: An Autobiography.]

Source / In These Times / Posted Feb. 17, 2009

My favorite solution: “Neighborhood watch instead of neighborhood watch TV.” [alex]

Prepare for the Best

A guide to surviving — and thriving in — Philadelphia’s new green future.

by Paul Glover

Published: Jan 28, 2009
CityPaper

The Dark Season closes around Philadelphia. Wolves howl, “Tough times coming!” Young professionals with good jobs study budget cuts, watch stocks flail. Career bureaucrats are laid off; college students wonder who’s hiring. Old-timers remember when Philadelphia staggered through the terrible Depression years without jobs or dollars, while crime and hunger rose. Some districts here never escaped that Depression — they’re still choosing between heating and eating.

As usual, the future will be different. Philadelphia’s responses to global warming and market cooling, high fuel and food prices, health unsurance, mortgages, student debt and war will decide whether our future here becomes vastly better or vastly worse. Whether we’re the Next Great City or Next Great Medieval Village. Imagine Philadelphia with one-tenth the oil and natural gas.

But to hell with tragedy. Let’s quit dreading news. Take the Rocky road. There are Philadelphia solutions for every Philadelphia problem.

Imagine instead that, 20 years from now, Philadelphia’s green economy enables everyone to work a few hours creatively daily, then relax with family and friends to enjoy top-quality local, healthy food. To enjoy clean low-cost warm housing, clean and safe transport, high-quality handcrafted clothes and household goods. To enjoy creating and playing together, growing up and growing old in supportive neighborhoods where everyone is valuable. And to do this while replenishing rather than depleting the planet. Pretty wild, right?

Entirely realistic. Not a pipe dream. And more practical than cynical. The tools, skills and wealth exist.

Mayor Michael Nutter foresees we’ll become the “Greenest City in the United States.” So it’s common-sensible to ask, “What are the tools of such a future?” “What jobs will be created?” “Who has the money?” “Where are the leaders?” “How will Philadelphia look?” “What can we learn from other cities?”

Some of the proposals sketched here can be easily ridiculed, because they disturb comfortable work habits, ancient traditions and sacred hierarchies. Yet they open more doors than are closing. They help us get ready for the green economy, and get there first. Big changes are coming so we might as well enjoy the ride. You have good ideas, too — bring ‘em on.

As President Barack Obama says, “Change comes not from the top down, but from the bottom up.” Philadelphia’s chronic miseries suggest that primary dependence on legislators, regulators, police, prisons, bankers and industry won’t save us. They’re essential partners, but the people who will best help us are us. As stocks and dollars decay, most new jobs will be created by neither Wall Street nor government. We and our friends and neighbors will start community enterprises; co-operatives for food, fuel, housing and health; build and install simple green technologies to dramatically cut household costs. Then we can have fun. Music, sex, breakfast. Music, sex, lunch. Music, sex, dinner.

Amid the worst daily news, thousands of Philadelphia organizations and businesses, block captains, landlords, homeowners and tenants are already setting the table for an urban feast. Many know they are part of a movement seldom noted by media; others work alone. Some take big bites of this future; others nibble. Several take large risks; others go slow. Rather than stare at gloom, they fix it. They see a future that works.

The trumpets and drums of Philadelphia’s green symphony are its boldest groups and businesses. They set the pace for rebuilding the entire city toward balance with nature. While all green actions are celebrated, here are some Philly “Best of Future” nominations. For more details, see greenjobsphilly.org/future.html.

Challenges: Like an army camped far from its sources of supply, Philadelphia trucks food from hundreds and thousands of miles away, especially in winter. Costs of harvest, processing and distribution rise, raising prices. Fertile soils were scraped bare. Thousands are hungry here. Relax, though, we’re not riding a spoon to the mouth of doom. An urban food army is marching.

Next steps: Philadelphia has 40,000 vacant lots. Their best use is now for growing fruits, berries and veggies. Same with many of our 700 abandoned factories: These are prime sites for vertical and roof farms, hydroponics, aquaculture, mushrooms. Plant the parks, too. Greenhouses extend seasons. Land breathes again when abandoned parking lots are depaved. Edible landscaping blooms meals. Edible community centers process neighborhood yields. Fallen leaves stay in neighborhoods to become new soil. Feeding kitchen scraps to worms (vermiculture) builds the food of food.

Local heroes: Mill Creek Urban Farm, Greensgrow, Weaver’s Way Co-Op Farm, City Harvest, Youth 4 Good, Philadelphia Orchard Project, Neighborhood Gardens Association, Philadelphia Urban Farm Network, Farm to City, edible landscapers, Philadelphia School and Community IPM Partnership, Henry George School, Philadelphia’s greenhouses, Community Supported Agriculture.

World champions: Beijing grows all its vegetables within 60 miles. TerraCycle manufactures organic soil. Guerrilla Gardeners throw seed bombs. Sites: cityfarmer.org, urbanagriculture-news.com, spinfarming.com. Books: Food Not Lawns, The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping. Keywords: depaving, urban land reform, solar envelope zoning.

Big picture: Philadelphia can become a giant orchard and year-round garden, housing and reliably feeding more people than live here today.

Challenges: Within 20 years Philadelphia businesses, homes and agencies that waste energy will close. Philadelphia Gas Works CEO Thomas Knudson recently declared that natural gas is a “transitional fuel” beyond which this city must evolve. The price of coal tripled last year. PECO rates will leap within two years. Electric shut-offs rise. So we’ll rebuild Philadelphia rather than fade.

Next steps: Establish independent neighborhood utilities with wind, passive solar and micro-geothermal. Employ thousands to build and install these. Employ multitudes more to manufacture and install insulation made with newsprint and fly ash (a residue of coal combustion). We’ll get free winter warmth from 500,000 solar windowbox heaters. District heating and cogeneration reduce fuel need. Municipal utilities reduce grid costs. Tree shade reduces cooling costs: Plant a million.

Local heroes: Energy Coordinating Agency, Bio-Neighbors Sustainable Homes, Roofscapes, Philadelphia Green, Philly Tree People, Urban Tree Connection, green contractors. Harold Finegan’s gym needs no fossil fuel for heating and cooling.

World champions: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Rocky Mountain Institute, Sacramento Municipal Utility District. Book: Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It Ourselves Guide.

Big picture: Philadelphia can function even better with one-tenth the fossil fuel. Our lives will be more secure.

Challenges: Absentee ownership and unemployment discourage repair and foster blight. Gentrification, foreclosure and taxes pressure humble homes. More middle class become homeless daily. Whether rowhouse or condo, homes won’t be affordable unless massively insulated. And hey, river wards, both ocean and sewage, are rising. ‘

Next steps: Renters become homeowners through right-of-first-refusal (landlords offer sale first to renters) and sweat equity credits (renters swap community work for houses). Enforce law requiring absentee owners to have local agents. Shift to Land Value Taxation, which places tax burden on land rather than homes. Equitable development is a legal movement that‘ prevents gentrification through restraints and incentives. Enforce the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires lending in low-income neighborhoods (not sub-prime) and prohibits racial lending. Cease evictions based on dishonest loans. Evict shady lenders. As heating bills rise we’ll move underground, because deep dirt is the best insulation. Not just elites to bunkers (Bill Gates lives inside a hillside), but all of us into pleasant, sunlit ecolonies. Big solar windows catch winter heat. Amend building codes for green innovation.

Local heroes: Hundreds of local organizations fight for and finance affordable neighborhoods. Women’s Opportunity Resource Center, Women’s Community Revitalization Project, Philadelphia Housing Task Force, Community Land Trust Corp., Project H.O.M.E., People’s Emergency Center, African-American Business & Residents Association, Henry George School, Habitat for Humanity, Green Roof Philadelphia, Ray of Hope Project, churches. Major underground buildings in Philadelphia include Franklin Court Museum, Wilma Theater, Penn Center shops.

World champions: Germany requires R70 insulation — three times tighter than the typical U.S. home — in new buildings. National Community Reinvestment Coalition, United for a Fair Economy, Earthships, Boston City Life/Vida Urbana, Equitable Development Toolkit, Shelterforce. Book: The Earth-Sheltered House: An Architect’s Sketchbook.

Big picture: Everyone living in Philadelphia in 50 years will be living in earth shelters. Green means we’ll all be comfortable. No behind left chill.

Challenges: Corporate insurers raise costs, limit choices, resist paying. They block reform legislation. Premiums rise beyond the reach of millions. ‘ Taxes rise to cover city employee benefits and indigent care. Thousands of Philadelphians are stuck in jobs they dislike, to keep insurance. ‘ Philadelphia’s 140,000 uninsured avoid care and die earlier, or go bankrupt paying more. Medicaid’s waiting list grows. Hospitals close; free clinics lose staff. Toxic air and chemicals, junk food and lack of exercise cause much disease. Grassroots action will heal city and citizens.

Next steps: While pushing for universal health care (less bureaucracy, lower cost, free choice), gaps can be filled by genuinely nonprofit regional self-financing systems. Fraternal benefit societies and member-owned co-op health plans create independent safety nets and preventive care clinics. Medical centers can barter, accept Philadelphia MediCash.

Local heroes: Thousands of holistic and allopathic healers, Health Care for All Philadelphia, Catholic Worker Free Clinic, Esperanza Health Center, Congreso de Latinos Unidos, Planned Parenthood, Philadelphia Urban Solutions, Philadelphia Community Acupuncture, Philadelphia FIGHT, Philadelphia Health Care Center, PhilaHealthia, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Shriners Hospital for Children. Dozens more at philllyhealthinfo.org.

World champions: Mutual Health Organizations, Ugandan Health Cooperative, Ithaca Health Alliance, Dr. Patch Adams, Healthcare-NOW!, Book: Health Democracy.

Big picture: When sickness is big business, free healing requires insurrection.

Paul Glover teaches metropolitan ecology and green jobs at Temple University. He is founder of the Philadelphia Orchard Project (POP), Ithaca HOURS local currency, Citizen Planners of Los Angeles and other groups. He is the author of Green Jobs Philly, Health Democracy and Hometown Money. More information at paulglover.org.

Challenges: Extreme capitalism and extreme socialism trample humanity. Lack of cash and credit kills businesses, jobs and homes. Some folks still have lots of money, but most of us have less. Dollar power dwindles because dollars are backed by less than nothing: rusting industry and $10 trillion debt. So we’ll print real money — neighborhood currencies — backed by real people.

Next steps: Mutual enterprise systems (neither Wall Street nor Red Square) celebrate the spirit of regional enterprise when it serves community and nature. They applaud innovations — public and private and personal — that meet real needs. Local trading credits based on local land, skills, time and tools refresh the economy. Poverty is lack of networks more than lack of dollars, and Philadelphia has thousands of networks — business, professional, technical, fraternal, neighborhood, church, union, electoral, senior, youth, racial, sexual, athletic, hobby, family, friends. Woven together they’re a powerful base of regional trust, trade and wealth. Take your pick of neighborhood and sector currencies. Cities may not issue them but may accept them for taxes.

Local heroes: Philadelphia’s 83 credit unions, Valley Green Bank, e3bank, Equal Dollars, barter exchanges and gift economy, Philadelphia Regional and Independent Stock Exchange, Philadelphia Fund for Ecological Living (PhilaFEL).

World champions: Ithaca HOURS, Berkshares, LETS, Time Banking, National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, Permaculture Credit Union, Grameen Bank microlending, Kiva, Robin Hood Ventures.

Big picture: Dollars control people; local currency connects people.

Challenges: Millions are spent to sanitize polluted river water and pump it to homes. Then we poop into it. Storm drains carry sewage and garbage back to rivers. Sewage treatment does not remove all pharmaceuticals. Old chemical tanks poison groundwater. Sinkholes undermine houses. Bottled-water scam drains local economy. Climate change brings frequent flood and/or drought. ‘ But new technologies will protect our liquid assets.

Next steps: Amend code to permit filtered graywater yard use, and waterless compost toilets. Install watersaving devices. Collect rainwater in rooftop tanks, barrels and swales. Plant xeriscapes. Depave driveways and abandoned parking lots. Start Progressive Street Reclamation, converting least-used streets and alleys to playgrounds and gardens.

Local heroes: Philadelphia Water Department taxes pavement, rewards depaving, distributes rain barrels. Friends of the Wissahickon installs compost toilets in the park. These convert turds into clean, sweet-smelling garden soil.

World champions: Swedes collect urine from apartment houses, store it six months, then use as fertilizer (EcoSanRes). Mexicans collect urine from city hall and schools to fertilize fields (TepozEco). Zimbabweans plant fruit trees atop privy muck (ArborLoo). Book: The Humanure Handbook.

Big picture: Clean water is becoming more valuable than gold. Nobody shits on gold.

Challenges: Philadelphia’s rail system was ripped out for cars, which clog streets and slow emergency response. Cars smash, kill, maim. They inhale paychecks and taxes, exhale rotten air. They compel war for oil. We’ll become stronger and sexier as pedaling bipeds.

Next steps: To risk your life for your country, ride a bike. Hop on the bus. Revive street rail with ultralight passenger cars. Restore regional freight routes. Raise transit funds with local gasoline tax. Make pathways for bicycles, rollerblades, skateboards, Segways, scooters and wheelchairs. Restore canals. Zone for mixed use, to reduce travel needs. Live near your work. Employ multitudes making mosaic sidewalks. Convert paving to playgrounds.

Local heroes: PhillyCarShare, Bike Share Philadelphia, Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, Neighborhood Bike Works and Bike Church, Critical Mass bike rides, bike shops, Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, Pennsylvania Transit Coalition, PenTrans. Even SEPTA: Trains are clunky and late, but they’re there.

World champions: Carfree Cities conferences, carfree.com, World Naked Bike Ride, Urban Ecology.

Big picture: The first cities rebuilt for proximity rather than speed will win this race.

Challenges: Philadelphia has lost 400,000 manufacturing jobs in 50 years. Now we import stuff once made here. Today, millions of American jobs depend on servicing bad things rather than good things. Car crashes are 8 percent of the GDP. How many jobs would end if criminals went on strike? What jobs would be lost if people ate healthy fresh food and exercised? What if we were content with what we owned?‘ We’ll advance from jobs managing damage to jobs creating a beautiful city worthy of beautiful children.

Next steps: All skills can rotate greenward. Philadelphia needs at least 100,000 green-collar jobs to rebuild, retrofit, plant, harvest, manufacture and repair the homes and tools of the future. Arts and healing arts are green jobs, too.

Local heroes: Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, American Cities Foundation, Penn Future, Ray of Hope Project. Green Jobs Philly, Neighborhood Environmental Action Team, Green Labor Administration, several City Council members.

World champions: Blue Green Alliance (enviros and unions united), Green for All, Apollo Alliance, D.C. Greenworks, Sustainable South Bronx.

Big picture: We’ll develop new definitions of career, success; build green safety nets.

Challenges: America has been outstanding at pouring concrete, going fast and throwing things away. But high costs of raw materials, manufacture and trucking are causing consumers to quit consuming for the sake of consumption. Our Next Great Economy will sell more of durable value. We’ll all have enough.

Next steps: Regional manufacture will resume as transport costs grow. Top niches will be basics: housing, energy, clothing, housewares. Orchards and gardens and food processing. Holistic healing will grow. Likewise, handcrafts. Everything energy-efficient.

Local heroes: Sustainable Business Network, Buy Local Philly, White Dog Café, Provenance Architecturals, Re-Store, flea markets, farmers markets, materials exchanges, repair shops, recycling.

World champions: Socially Responsible Investing. ‘Magazines: Green Business Journal, Adbusters. ‘Site: storyofstuff.org.

Big picture: Smart money invests to raise all boats.

Challenges: Many bureaucrats trained in obsolete systems resist change, defend their turf. City’s health insurers and pensions drag city down.

Next steps: Government welcomes grassroots innovators by passing laws facilitating greening of economy and neighborhoods: urban land reform, urban agriculture, sanitation and water codes, building codes. When urgent change is resisted, citizens underthrow the government.

Local heroes: Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, PWD, streets guys who dig on rainy nights.

World champions: City of Curitiba, Brazil, encourages experimentation and welcomes mistakes. Magazines: Governing, Planners Network.

Big picture: Good government takes risks, makes change easy. “Make no little plans” —Daniel Burnham.

Challenges: Whenever people are hungry, cold or fearful due to unemployment, crime rises. Isolated resentment becomes street protest or riot. Racism flares. Taxpayers cannot hire enough police to escape chaos. Public safety is secured by creating safety nets for food, fuel, housing and health care.

Next steps: Jobs fight crime. Decriminalize marijuana locally. Hire ex-offenders. Neighborhood watch instead of neighborhood watch TV.

Local heroes: Block captains, Men United for a Better Philadelphia, Ray of Hope Project, City Harvest, People Against Recidivism.

World champions: Time Dollar Youth Court, Rainbow Police. Book: Defensible Space.

Big picture: People who are respected, loved and secure do not kill. ‘

Challenges: Curriculums are less relevant to getting jobs or fixing society. Forty-five percent of Philadelphia high-schoolers drop out. Students are graded like eggs.

Next steps: Respectfully teaching skills of neighborhood management will make learning fun. Teach creativity rather than consumerism.

Local heroes: Thousands of dedicated teachers, Neighborhood Enterprise Schoolteachers, magnet schools, Waldorf School. Newspaper: The Notebook.

World champions: Paolo Freire; free university education in Europe.

Big picture: Loving learning is the first lesson.

Challenges: Media that’s cynical about grassroots power features crime and celebrities.

Next steps: Empower average people to make music, art, dance, theater. Revive street-corner singing. Bring back vaudeville. Parachute clowns into parks.

Local heroes: Mural Arts Program, Raices Culturales Latinoamericanas, Spiral Q Puppet Theater, 373 groups listed at philaculture.org. Locally made homecrafts. Philadelphia’s 2,800 murals feature children, heroes, nature.

World champions: El Sistema (Venezuela) makes barrio kids into maestros.

Big picture: Everyone is a creative genius. Good culture releases that power and beauty.

Whether you’re a student, job seeker, employee or retiree, there are thousands of ways to connect to Philadelphia’s green movement. You’re the one we’ve been waiting for. Check the ever-growing list of local green-jobs Web sites (start with greenjobsphilly.org/future.html). Visit local green businesses and groups. Time to bring those murals to life.

Paul Glover teaches metropolitan ecology and green jobs at Temple University. He is founder of the Philadelphia Orchard Project (POP), Ithaca HOURS local currency, Citizen Planners of Los Angeles and other groups. He is the author of Green Jobs Philly, Health Democracy and Hometown Money. More information at paulglover.org.

As more and more workers fill the unemployment rolls, it’s time to ask: where will future jobs come from?  While government and corporate bigshots plan yet another “economic stimulus” and bailout of the banks, what long-term jobs can we realistically create right now?

Lots of answers present themselves if we look through the lens of peak oil, and start replacing our oil-based economy with a people-based economy. Instead of relying on greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels, we can tap into the power of human labor, which happens to be our greatest renewable resource.

Certainly there is a need to employ millions to weatherize homes and build and install solar panels and wind turbines (which Obama may address), but there is also a huge need to re-tool Detroit automakers to STOP producing gas-guzzling individual cars, and start making buses, trains and other forms of public transit. Bicycles are also desperately needed, so we need workers to build them and more to repair them too.

We also need lots more doctors and nurses if we make health care universally available, and social workers and therapists to help deal with the psychological trauma our population has suffered from militarism and soulless consumerism.  Since many of these jobs require education and training, we need to hire lots more teachers, and we also need education to be a lot more affordable to so more people can access these kinds of careers.

Perhaps the largest gains in the job sector can be achieved by shifting food production away from mega-scale agribusinesses and fossil-fuel intensive monoculture and factory farms, towards community-based, local, organic, family farming and free-range livestock raising.  By breaking up the huge corporate farms into family-size and community-size plots, we can repopulate rural America (and stop suburban sprawl), produce better, healthier food, respect animal rights, and create millions of new landowners.  Simultaneously we can follow the example of Cuba and turn our blighted inner-cities into gardens, by utilizing permaculture and organic community-run agriculture, which would reduce crime and poverty in our decaying urban areas, bring quality food to places currently plagued by malnutrition, and create millions upon millions of rewarding and meaningful jobs.

How will we finance it?  Simple.  Disassemble the huge financial firms and multinational corporate banks whose greed caused this economic crisis and create thousands of local banks and credit unions, run by people in the community (even more jobs!)  Taxing the rich would help a lot too, and we can cut tons of wasteful government spending on things like the wars in the Middle East, excessive prisons, and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.  The money is right there, we just need to redirect it to things that actually help people instead of killing them.

This of course requires a revolutionary change in the economic and political structure of the United States, which means average people like you and me having control over the decisions affecting our lives, instead of remaining at the whim of wealthy elites who in the current crisis have shown themselves unable to run a lemonade stand, let alone the global economy.

[alex]

Deluge of layoffs hits U.S. economy

January 27, 2009

Los Angeles Times

By Jerry Hirsch and Maura Reynolds

Email Picture

Scott Olson, Getty Images

A worker walks between Caterpillar earth-moving equipment at a road construction site near Joliet, Ill. The company has announced that it will cut nearly 20,000 jobs as the recession reduces demand for its products.

Companies including Home Depot, Caterpillar, Pfizer and Sprint plan to cut nearly 60,000 jobs, adding urgency to the need to agree on a stimulus plan.

U.S. companies slashed nearly 60,000 jobs Monday, adding impetus to the Obama administration’s efforts to reach agreement on a plan to pump $825 billion into the economy over a two-year period.

But it’s unclear whether even that massive influx of funding and tax cuts would be enough to get companies hiring again in the near term.

The cuts by firms including Caterpillar, General Motors, Texas Instruments, Home Depot, Sprint Nextel and Pfizer brought the total of jobs shed so far this month to 187,550, more than November or December and well over double the number of January 2008, according to employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

Analysts believe that Obama’s strategy of pouring money into state and local governments could prevent layoffs and furloughs of public sector employees, including teachers, police officers and other government workers.

Economists have estimated that the plan will protect or create 3 million to 4 million jobs in the next two years.

But the U.S. economy lost 2.6 million jobs last year and could lose 2 million more during the first half of this year.

The stimulus plan “is as much psychological, to get people to think that even if we’re in a recession, it’s going to be temporary so I don’t have to lay people off,” said Gus Faucher of Moody’s Economy.com. “It’s designed to provide a psychological boost.”

But that won’t be much help getting disparate companies such as earth-moving equipment maker Caterpillar Inc., computer software designer Microsoft Corp. and home improvement retailer Home Depot Corp. motivated to stop cutting and start hiring, analysts said.

Caterpillar, which said Monday that it would fire 5,000 workers on top of 15,000 in job reductions previously disclosed, needs to see signs that industrial production is stirring, such as increased prices for minerals, metals, energy and other commodities, said Kristin Kubacki, an analyst with Avondale Partners in St. Louis.

When that happens, Kubacki said, the company will be able to sell its heavy equipment for use in digging mines and in oil and gas exploration. Even then, however, Caterpillar dealers will need to sell an extensive inventory of already built backhoes, excavators and other equipment before it ramps up production.

The Obama stimulus plan would also fund easy-to-implement renovation projects that would generate jobs for currently idled construction workers, and lead to new orders for hard-hit manufacturing companies that provide building supplies and other raw materials. But that won’t be big enough to help Caterpillar.

“Equipment right now is plentiful,” Kubacki said. “It’s a long road for that money to reach the factory floor at Caterpillar.”

Home Depot said Monday that it would cut about 2% of its workforce, or 7,000 jobs, and close about four dozen specialty stores, including all of its Expo Design Center stores.

It would probably take a big increase in consumer confidence before the struggling retailer would start hiring again in any numbers, said Ken Goldstein, an economist with the Conference Board in New York.

“What we need to see is the consumer starting to spend money again. About the only thing you see Home Depot selling right now is duct tape, and that’s not good,” Goldstein said.

Microsoft, which said Thursday that it would slash as many as 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months, its first mass layoff, will be anticipating more technology spending.

“They’ll be looking for a bottoming in the semiconductor market, because that’s what goes inside computers,” said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore. That will be an indicator of higher computer sales and thus more need for Microsoft’s core product, software.

At the same time, Microsoft executives will be watching for any lift in information technology investment by business, figuring that the Redmond, Wash., giant will increase sales once companies start to replace computers.

The stimulus program probably would help people who have lost their jobs by extending unemployment benefits and increasing funding for food stamps.

In addition to government spending, the stimulus plan includes business tax incentives that would permit companies with losses in 2008 to offset them by getting refunds on taxes paid over the previous five years — a provision, known as a “carryback,” that currently applies only to the previous two years.

Companies would also be able to get tax breaks for some capital expenditures and accelerate the depreciation of others.

Economists say tax incentives of that sort are not as “stimulative” as direct government spending but are important because they can take effect quickly. And if they help restore business confidence in the short run and save some more jobs, so much the better.

“We believe that the stimulus package can keep the employment floor about 2 million higher than it otherwise would have been, and prevent the unemployment rate from breaching 10%,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS-Global Insight in Lexington, Mass.

To succeed, the package would need to do all that and more.

Employment reductions over the last year have pushed the nation’s jobless rate up to 7.2% in December, compared with 4.9% in December 2007.

Goldstein of the Conference Board believes that the jobless rate could approach 9% by the end of this year, fueled by the cutbacks announced Monday and future losses.

Drug maker Pfizer Inc., which announced that it would acquire rival Wyeth for $68 billion, also said Monday that it would cut about 8,000 jobs from its current workforce. Once the companies are merged, thousands more will lose their jobs.

Sprint Nextel Corp. said it would eliminate 8,000 jobs by the end of March. Texas Instruments Inc. said it would dump 3,400 positions. And General Motors Corp. said it would cut shifts in the second quarter at plants in Ohio and Michigan, eliminating about 2,000 jobs, and decrease production at other plants in the U.S. and Canada.

Past downturns indicate that job losses will continue for at least six months after the recession bottoms out, UCLA economist Edward Leamer said. Recessions — defined by an extended decline in gross domestic product — typically hit their low point in the third quarter of the downturn, but the job losses continue for at least another two quarters, Leamer said.

Companies will see sales pick up and stop firing workers, but they won’t do much hiring until they have seen several quarters of revenue growth, he said.

Obama, Recovery, and the Green Economy

by Jerry Silberman

http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/PressSummary01-15-09.pdf

It is worth everyone’s time to take a look at the House draft stimulus plan and think about it from a perspective of peak energy and global warming. There is much that is admirable in the act, but there are larger problems with its failure to go in new directions. Understanding its unspoken premises is helpful.

What the Act does propose is funding deferred maintenance on existing infrastructure and social programs ignored during the Bush years, and clearly many of these upgrades are needed. A look at transportation funding, however, finds 3x as much, $30 billion, for highways compared to $10 billion for transit. Symmetrically, airports get three times as much as Amtrak, although the admitted backlog need is highest for Amtrak. The underlying assumption is that we will not, and should not move away from the primacy of the private automobile. This is underscored by the huge proportion of research and science funding devoted toward developing electric cars. Missing is the arithmetic of energy consumption not only in cars but in an automotive based land use pattern, and an understanding of the realistic potential for renewable electricity.

Speaking of energy, the press release does not define renewables, but we know that “second generation” agrifuels are high on the list, and Obama is pushing for increased ethanol, despite the rapidly growing global consensus that any generation of agrifuels is a disaster on several levels. The logic is very simple – since these fuels at best have a dramatically lower net energy than fossil fuels, and growing them will accelerate the destruction of fertile land, because all the nutrients are removed, not to mention the natural ecosystems destroyed, they cannot meet the need.

While half a billion is allocated for cleaning up nuclear waste, that doesn’t come close to what is needed to secure the nuclear waste we have already produced, let alone more. By continued to fund the chimera of fusion power, among other points, the report underscores what it says, in fact very directly “the next great discovery” is needed to bail us out. This is a classic example of expecting to solve problems using the same ways of thinking which created them. What is really being pursued, or hoped for, is a perpetual motion machine. Its not there.

$7.8 billion is allocated for military projects. While most of this is for hospitals and veterans facilities, and not directly for weapons, it is still war spending, hidden elsewhere in the budget, when it should come from the Pentagon budget, which is still 50 cents of every tax dollar.

The education funding does not include funding the Green Jobs Act, and is overwhelmingly devoted to college education. With increasing numbers of college graduates finding no place to use their education, we need education funds for green jobs, technical, manual, and especially non-industrial agriculture. How many MBA’s does it take to sell pretzels on Market St.?

Over $120 billion is devoted to health care, as supplemental funding for Medicaid, with $30 billion in subsidies to laid off workers to pay their COBRA…..in other words, to pay private insurance companies. For that much money, we could establish Medicare for All national health, (HR 676) and put many more billions back in the pockets of workers, and the coffers of state and local governments, and make a real contribution to economic recovery.

Finally, the Act talks of $275 billion in tax cuts. With government revenues dropping precipitously as a result of shrinking economic activity, increased government spending needed. With the dollar at risk of becoming a junk bond on the world market, tax cuts are not part of the solution. When our country’s economy was at its most robust, (not to suggest that I think that is a model we want to return to) corporations paid the bulk of taxes in this country, now they pay almost none. Tax cuts on the poor are not needed, rather we need tax increases on the rich.

As he enters office, Obama is asking us to bear with him, that things won’t change immediately, and that there will be problems along the way. If he is asking us to suspend criticism and challenge of the direction he is taking and have faith in his efforts, I submit that that is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Support for appropriate actions should not mute our criticism, challenge, and activism on inappropriate actions. There is too much at stake.

Memo to the President-elect on Energy Realism and the Green New Deal

MuseLetter 200
December 2008 by Richard Heinberg

Executive Summary

Our continued national dependence on fossil fuels is creating a crippling vulnerability to both long-term fuel scarcity and catastrophic climate change.

The current economic crisis requires substantial national policy shifts and enormous new government injections of capital into the economy. This provides an opportunity for a project whose scope would otherwise be inconceivable: a large-scale, coordinated energy transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy.

This project must happen immediately; indeed, it may already be too late. We have already left behind the era of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels, with a permanent decline of global oil production likely underway within three years. Moreover, the latest research tells us we have less than eight years to bring carbon emissions under control if we hope to avoid catastrophic climate change. Lacking this larger frame of understanding and action, a mere shift away from foreign oil dependence will fail to meet the challenge at hand.

The energy transition must not be limited to building wind turbines and solar panels. It must include the thorough redesign of our economic and societal infrastructure, which today is utterly dependent on cheap fossil fuels. It must address not only our transportation system and our electricity grid, but also our food system and our building stock.

Our 21st century nation’s dependence on 20th century fossil fuels is the greatest threat we face, far more so than the current financial crisis. A coordinated, comprehensive transition to an economy that is no longer dependent on hydrocarbon fuels and no longer emits climate-changing levels of carbon—a Post Carbon Energy Transition—will be the Obama Administration’s greatest opportunity to lead the nation on a path toward sustainable prosperity.

Overview: Need and Scope

As a new Administration prepares to take the reins of power, America’s economy is descending into a recession or, quite possibly, a depression. Deepening economic turmoil is generating an assortment of urgent priorities for the national leadership. Among economists there is widespread discussion of the need for an economic stimulus package of historic proportions to create jobs and spur more production and consumption.

Meanwhile, a more profound crisis has been silently gathering for decades, and is now reaching a point of no return. This crisis issues from our reliance on fossil fuels, and it manifests as the twin dilemmas of fossil fuel depletion and climate change.

Fossil fuels define the modern era. Their concentrated, inexpensive energy has generated unprecedented economic benefits, enabling Americans to enjoy cheap food, cheap travel, and cheap manufactured goods made from and with petrochemicals. But our unbridled consumption of fossil fuels has brought us to the current crisis, where we face both the imminent decline of our most important energy source and the very real possibility of catastrophic global climate change.

These two challenges highlight the hidden costs of our still-growing dependence on oil, coal, and natural gas—costs that may do far more than merely drive the economy into a depression.

Fossil fuel depletion and climate change present threats of a scale unprecedented in human history. Failure to address them will risk an economic collapse from which no recovery is possible, as well as environmental calamity of apocalyptic dimensions. Moreover, the impacts we face are not decades away; they are immediately threatening. It is no overstatement to say that if we in this nation—and soon, the entire human family—cannot agree upon and undertake a deliberate, proactive transition away from fossil fuels beginning immediately, we may forfeit our last realistic opportunity to avoid global economic and environmental collapse.

As the world’s top oil consumer and economic power, it is incumbent upon the United States to lead the way out of this crisis. A wide range of far-reaching policies and initiatives—touching every aspect of modern society from transportation and electricity to food and housing—is needed worldwide to ensure a peaceful and equitable energy transition. This global effort must begin here and now with a national plan to reduce energy consumption, develop renewable energy sources, and reconfigure our fossil fuel-dependent infrastructure.

By taking up a de-carbonized renewal of America’s transport, electricity, food, and housing systems, the new Administration can address a number of problems simultaneously: climate change, economic contraction and unemployment, environmental destruction, resource depletion, geopolitical competition for control of energy, balance of trade deficits, the threat of hunger, and more.

The energy transition plan must not be merely a wish list of good ideas, but a prioritized, staged program with robust funding and hard yet realistic targets.

Further, it must be presented to the American people in a compelling way: public education on a massive scale will be required to help ordinary citizens understand what is at stake and how sacrifices undertaken now can build a better world tomorrow.

Despite the need for public buy-in, the purpose of this document is not to outline a program that will be an easy “sell” from a political standpoint; rather, its intent is to set forth what is actually needed in order to save America and the world from economic and environmental collapse—and what is needed may not be easy or palatable. Somehow the necessary must be reconciled with the possible, but it is the empirical requirements for survival that are ultimately decisive. It will be the task of leaders at all levels of government to mold political realities to fit those requirements.

The current financial calamity is appearing at perhaps the last historic moment when action to avert climate catastrophe has a chance of succeeding. Crisis is nearly always an opportunity for someone or something. In the current instance, economic crisis affords the opportunity for bold action of a kind and on a scale that would otherwise seem unacceptable.

The Problem

The fossil-fueled economy
Something both wonderful and terrible has happened in the past two centuries. As a people, we have become more mobile. We now spend only a small portion of our incomes on food, and only a tiny proportion of us need to bother ourselves with growing it. Our shopping malls have become filled with a dizzying array of products, many of them imported from around the world.

These are just some of the gifts of fossil fuels—concentrated energy sources that have proven both cheap and abundant.

But claiming these gifts has led us to build a societal infrastructure that is designed for, and utterly dependent on, plentiful oil, coal, and natural gas.

We have built cars and trucks, and an extensive network of highways on which they travel. We have built passenger aircraft that are swift and safe, and airports in practically all medium and large cities.

We have configured our food system to take advantage of these fuels by mechanizing production, by using petrochemicals to fertilize crops and kill weeds and pests—and then by transporting food ever further distances to centralized processing and storage centers and finally to giant supermarkets intended to be accessed almost exclusively by private automobile.

We heat our homes with fossil fuels, and we have designed our homes around automobiles, setting aside a large portion of interior space to enclose them in garages. We have built countless neighborhoods through and to which no one is expected to travel by any mode other than by car. We define the functionality of our cities by the highways that connect their neighborhoods and suburbs.

We have built an electric grid system to supply power for every aspect of commerce and daily life—from communication to entertainment to food refrigeration. This essential system depends on fossil fuels for two-thirds of its energy.

In short, we have become systemically dependent on cheap fossil fuels. And in this systemic dependency lie acute vulnerabilities.

Fossil fuel depletion

It may be too soon to speak of the end of fossil fuels altogether, but we have unquestionably reached the end of an era.

It is increasingly clear that global oil production growth is stalling, with permanent decline likely underway by 2012. The petroleum price spike of 2008, in which the cost of a barrel of oil rose to $147, was a warning of what is to come. The International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2008 report released in November concluded:

Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable,…the sources of oil to meet rising demand, the cost of producing it and the prices that consumers will need to pay for it…[are all now] extremely uncertain.

The report’s Executive Summary points out that nearly all future world oil production growth depends on supplies from OPEC, and ends with the unequivocal judgment that “the era of cheap oil is over,” warning member nations that, “the time to act is now.”

We have tended to think of coal as being so abundant that supply constraints will not appear for many decades or even centuries. Yet a 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded:

Present [official US] estimates of coal reserves are based upon methods that have not been reviewed or revised since their inception in 1974, and much of the input data were compiled in the early 1970s. Recent programs to assess reserves in limited areas using updated methods indicate that only a small fraction of previously estimated reserves are actually minable reserves.

A 2007 report from an energy research body established by members of the German Parliament, suggests that production of coal in the US may reach its maximum level as early as 2030, after which it will decline as high-quality resources are exhausted. With such limited supplies, and in the absence of commercially viable carbon sequestration—which is still at least 25 years away and has its own set of challenges regarding energy efficiency and scalability— coal is neither an economically nor environmentally sustainable solution for our future energy needs.

Production of “conventional” natural gas in North America is declining, but recent technical advances have enabled the industry to extract substantial new quantities of this fuel from low-porosity reservoirs. We are now hearing assurances from some of the companies producing such “unconventional” gas that the nation has over a hundred years’ worth of the resource. However, rapid depletion rates in new gas wells force the industry to pursue ever-higher drilling rates (drilling rates are today three times what they were a decade ago), suggesting this resource may be much more short-lived.

There are also economic problems with shifting to natural gas. The low amount of energy returned on the energy invested in unconventional gas infrastructure and drilling efforts suggests that further production growth will be achievable only with very high natural gas prices, and that much of the resource theoretically available will never be produced no matter how high the market price goes. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports are a poor long-term alternative, given growing global demand for the fuel, significant gas import dependency in Europe, and reports of shipments being diverted en route to higher bidding ports.

Altogether, over the course of a few generations we have depleted what nature generated throughout tens of millions of years. We have picked the low-hanging fruit. We must plan and prepare for the end of fossil fuels now, while we still have a relative abundance of energy with which to build the alternative energy infrastructure that we will soon need.

Climate change

In the process of burning fossil fuels, we are releasing gases into the atmosphere that are changing the global climate, and thus reducing the survival prospects of future generations.

New data always seem to outdistance previous forecasts: the north polar icecap is melting much faster than projected, and thawing arctic permafrost is already releasing unexpectedly large quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

In other words, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide believed only a few years ago to be “safe”—in that it would not trigger catastrophic climate change—seems already to be making some of the predicted worst-case impacts a reality.

Leading climate scientist James Hansen of NASA, among others, is now advocating the adoption of 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide as the global target for climate protection efforts. The current level, however, is approximately 387 ppm. We are already beyond the threshold.

This means that, if humankind is to avoid catastrophic climate change, we must being reducing fossil fuel carbon emissions immediately, and bring them virtually to zero before mid-century.

The financial crisis

Ostensibly, the ongoing credit crunch is the result of a subprime mortgage fiasco plus the leveraging of debt through financial instruments so sophisticated that virtually no one who purchased them understood their risk.

However, the fact that world oil production was essentially stagnant during the years 2005-2008 (leading up to price spike of 2008) should not be overlooked as a contributor to the economic meltdown. Previously, the growth of financial capital could be supported by the energy-based growth of the real national and global economy. But as energy prices soared—crippling the airline and auto industries and raising costs for farmers, manufacturers, and shippers—the financial balloon suddenly began to deflate.

Unfortunately, connections between energy and economic activity are often overlooked: energy is widely regarded as merely a component of the economy, whereas in fact the entire economy crucially depends upon energy. If energy supplies are cut off, economic activity halts; and without energy growth, economic growth becomes problematic if not impossible.

Paradoxically, now that the global economy is contracting, investment in future oil, coal, and gas production projects is dwindling. At the same time, investment in renewable energy projects is also falling away. This virtually guarantees future energy shortages.

The cruel result is that as soon as the economy begins to grow once again, energy supply limits and skyrocketing energy prices will nip recovery in the bud.

Therefore it would be self-defeating for the new Administration to put the energy transition on the back burner while giving full attention to the immediate financial crisis. The financial crisis must be addressed by pursuing an energy transition.

Similarities to, and differences from, the 1970s

The current energy and economic crises carry unmistakable and disturbing echoes of the 1970s. In 1977, President Carter addressed the nation, telling Americans that,

With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes . . . We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us . . . The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation . . . This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war”—except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.

In retrospect, his speeches were a courageous effort to prepare the nation for the inevitable decline in fossil fuel production, which now looms, and to avert geopolitical conflict over remaining supplies. Had we followed the course that President Carter recommended, America might not be so vulnerable today.

But Carter lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan, who promised a sacrifice-free return to prosperity. All politicians understandably regard this as a cautionary tale when considering any bold effort to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels. Nevertheless, there are reasons that the situation today is different.

First, the energy crisis isn’t going away this time. In the 1980s, the nation could turn to recently discovered giant oilfields on Alaska’s North Slope and the world had gained access to abundant, high-quality crude oil from the North Sea. Today there are few new frontiers available for exploration. Oil from the planet’s polar regions (including ANWR) will be costly to produce and slow to arrive. Crucially, these new supplies will probably be insufficient to make up for worsening production declines from existing oilfields.

Second, the economic crisis is worse this time. While the oil shocks of the 1970s and the costs of the Vietnam War forced the U.S. to repudiate the gold standard and resulted in several years of low or negative growth, the economic calamity currently engulfing the world is leading historians to look further back to the 1930s or the 19th century for precedents. Many economists have concluded that interest rate adjustments and a $700 billion bailout package will not be enough to forestall a depression. Something bold must be done—and it must involve government spending on a grand scale that has the effect of massive job creation. Today the question is not, Can our leaders afford to be bold? It is rather, Can they afford not to?

Finally, there simply is no longer a “business as usual” option for our energy future. According to the IEA, trillions of dollars of new investment will be needed for exploration and the implementation of new extraction technologies if fossil fuel production is to continue satisfying growing demand for the next two decades (for the world as a whole, over $26 trillion will be required in year-2007 dollars for the period 2007-2030). On the other hand, trillions will also be needed to build a renewable energy infrastructure.

The difference is that the former solution would be temporary: fossil fuels are finite and depleting resources. We will still face scarcity even after paying the enormous cost of finding and developing the last of the world’s oil and gas fields and coal mines. Renewables, on the other hand, can power society indefinitely. In either case most of the needed investment should come not from government, but from the private sector. However, government’s role will be decisive in setting the course through leadership, coordination, regulation, and investment.

The current financial crisis forces the conclusion that America cannot have it both ways. Either we direct public investment toward developing expensive, low-grade fossil fuels (such as tar sands, oil shale, and shale gas) in a vain effort to maintain growth in our fossil-fuel dependent economy, or we direct investment toward building the renewable energy infrastructure of the future.

If the 1970s were an early warning, today is the final moment for action. We will have no third chance at the energy transition.

The Solution

The obvious answer to fossil fuel depletion and climate change is to simply substitute alternative energy sources for oil, natural gas, and coal.

However, this solution quickly bogs down on two fronts. First, there are no alternative energy sources (renewable or otherwise) capable of supplying energy as cheaply and in such abundance as fossil fuels currently yield, in the time that we need them to come online. Second, we have designed and built the infrastructure of our transport, electricity, food, and heating systems to suit the unique characteristics of oil, natural gas, and coal; changing to different energy sources will require the redesign of many aspects of those systems.

The energy transition cannot be accomplished with a minor retrofit of existing energy infrastructure. Just as the fossil fuel economy of today systemically and comprehensively differs from the agrarian economy of 1800, the post-fossil fuel economy of 2050 will profoundly differ from all that we are familiar with now. This difference will be reflected in urban design and land use patterns, food systems, manufacturing and distribution networks, the job market, transportation systems, health care, tourism, and more.

It could be argued that these changes will occur in some fashion whether we plan for them or not, that it is only necessary to wait for the market price of fossil fuels to reflect scarcity, with higher costs forcing society to adapt. However, lack of planning will result in a transition that is chaotic, painful, destructive, and perhaps (if the worst climate forecasts are realized), unsurvivable. As a recent study for the U.S. Department of Energy showed, such a passive approach to the problem would lead to “social, economic, and political costs” of “unprecedented” scope. Once again: bold action is required.

We need to reduce our overall energy consumption, and restructure our economy to run primarily on renewable energy—and the federal government must lead the way. This energy transition should have five components: a massive shift to renewable energy, and a retrofitting of the four key systems of electricity, transportation, food, and buildings.

1. Make a massive and immediate shift to renewable energy

The development of alternative energy sources must obviously be a cornerstone of any plan to reduce our national reliance on conventional fossil fuels. However, many alternatives being discussed—including nuclear power, industrial-scale biofuels, and low-grade fossil fuels such as oil shale and tar sands—suffer from serious drawbacks, including low energy profit ratios, high environmental impacts, or a limited resource base.

Renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and advanced geo thermal clearly represent the long-term solution to the nation’s and the world’s energy problems. However, in many cases these require further research and evaluation. For example, research is needed into new energy storage technologies, as well as new photovoltaic materials and processes, and new geothermal and tidal power technologies. While much of this could be accomplished by the private sector, the economic crisis is likely to delay or undercut needed funding, increasing the need for government support.

The U.S. Department of Energy should be tasked with undertaking a rapid but thorough assessment of available alternative energy production technologies using a carefully mapped set of consistent criteria. This assessment should be formatted in a way that helps states and communities, as well as the federal government, make practical planning and investment decisions.

Given the immediacy of this need, Post Carbon Institute, in collaboration with the International Forum on Globalization, is currently undertaking a preliminary comparative review of alternative energy sources, using criteria including energy profit ratio, environmental impacts, scalability, and materials requirements. That publication will be available by February 2009.

2. Electrify the transportation system

America’s sunk investment in highways, airports, cars, buses, trucks, and aircraft is enormous. However, this is a transport system that is completely dependent on oil. It will be significantly handicapped by higher fuel prices, and devastated by actual fuel shortages.

The electrification of road-based vehicles will help; however, this strategy will require about two decades to fully deploy, given that the average passenger vehicle has a useful lifetime of 15 years. Meanwhile, road repair and tire manufacturing will continue to depend upon petroleum products, unless alternative materials can be found.

Even if it is electrified, a ground transport system consisting of trucks and private automobiles is inherently energy intensive compared to public transit alternatives like bus and rail, and non-motorized alternatives like bicycling and walking. The building and widening of highways must come to a halt, and the bulk of federal transportation funding must be transferred to support for electrified and non-motorized infrastructure and services. This overall shift of transport investments and priorities will require comprehensive planning and coordination at all levels of government.

There are few if any good options for maintaining the airline and air freight industries without cheap fossil fuels. While some amount of air travel is likely to persist throughout the transition, its cost will inevitably and persistently rise, and the airline industry will contract accordingly. Increasingly, high-speed electric rail connections between major cities will become the lower-cost option, but the national high speed rail network is still in its infancy. Meanwhile, the existing fleet of private automobiles must be put to use more efficiently through carpooling, car-sharing, and ride-sharing networks coordinated primarily at the local level, but supported by federal policy and funding.

3. Rebuild the electricity grid

Nearly all experts on the U.S. electricity grid agree that the system is approaching crisis and desperately needs a substantial overhaul. Electricity demand has been growing at over one percent per year due to rising population and an explosion in the numbers and types of electronic devices now considered essential, but power generation capacity has not kept up. Meanwhile our transmission networks rely on 100- year-old technology and high-voltage trunk lines that were installed in the 1950s and ’60s. It is a fragile and extremely inefficient infrastructure, and managers of the system anticipate widespread blackouts in the near future.

What is needed is not merely an enhancement of the existing system with more of the same technology. New generating capacity must come from renewable sources, many of which are intermittent and are likely to be sited far from existing power lines. The transmission system must support distributed generation, as well as robust two-way communications, advanced sensors, and distributed computers to improve the efficiency, reliability, and safety of power delivery and use.

Regional utility companies are already beginning to invest in renewables and “smart grid” upgrades, but the work is going much too slowly to avert looming power supply problems. Moreover, the credit crunch will likely slow the work that is currently under way.

Therefore the federal government must step in to set goals and standards and provide public investment capital. This effort must not favor commercial utilities over municipal power districts; indeed, the devolution of control over power systems to the community level should be encouraged, as decentralized power systems are likely to be more resilient in the face of now-inevitable power disruptions.

4. De-carbonize and relocalize the food system

Our national industrial food system performs spectacularly well at producing cheap, abundant food using minimal human labor. However, it is overwhelmingly dependent upon oil and natural gas for tractor fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and the transport of farm inputs and outputs. Moreover, the current food system is responsible for over 20 percent of all greenhouse gases introduced into the atmosphere from human activities in the U.S.

This situation is patently unsustainable. As fuel prices rise, farmers will go bankrupt and food prices will skyrocket. As the global climate becomes destabilized, crops will wither. Unless America undertakes a coordinated, planned redesign of its food system to eliminate dependence on fossil fuels, the future looks bleak. Famine, which formerly was an unwelcome but unavoidable fact of life in agrarian societies, could make a comeback even here in the wealthy U.S.

New farming methods, new farmers, and a re-localization of production and distribution are all required. These in turn will require land reform, educational and financial support for new farmers, and the creation of local food processing and storage centers.

Post Carbon Institute, in collaboration with the Soil Association of Great Britain, is producing a report (forthcoming in early 2009) on “The Food and Agriculture Transition,” highlighting the context, issues, and possible strategies in detail.

5. Retrofit the building stock for energy efficiency and energy production.

Most Americans live in homes that require heat during the winter months, and most of those homes are inadequately insulated by modern standards. Natural gas heats most of the nation’s homes, with a majority in the Northeast heated by oil. Buildings in the South and Southwest require air conditioning during summer months. Fuel shortages, power outages, and energy price hikes could bring not just discomfort, but a massive increase in mortality from cold and heat.

The technology already exists to increase energy efficiency in both new and existing buildings. Germany has successfully pioneered the “Passive House” standard that dramatically reduces the energy required for heating and cooling; the European Union is considering adopting it as a building standard by 2012. In this country organizations like Affordable Comfort Incorporated (ACI) have been doing important work along similar lines for decades, and both the US Conference of Mayors and the American Institute of Architects have adopted the 2030 Challenge to set a nationwide carbon-neutral standard for all new buildings by 2030.

Throughout America, millions of buildings can and must be superinsulated and, in as many instances as possible, provided with alternative heat sources (passive solar, geothermal, or district heating).

However, the widespread deployment of existing knowledge and experience to retrofit millions of American homes and public buildings will require investment as well as trained workers. Once again, the potential exists for the creation of millions of jobs—as Van Jones has discussed in his proposals for a Clean Energy Corps. But funding, new regulations, and education are needed.

Requirements for an Energy Transition

1. Investment and capitalization

Clearly, enormous amounts of investment capital will need to be mobilized to accomplish the energy transition. The promise of $150 billion to be spent on renewable energy over the course of the next ten years is a welcome beginning; however, it must be seen merely as a small component of the entire transition program. As noted, much of the needed investment can eventually come from the private sector, but since the private sector is currently contracting economically this puts the onus back on government.

How can enough capital be deployed? The current practice of deficit spending may not be sustainable in the context of a faltering global economy, as there may be limited demand for U.S. government IOUs.

Other options for creating the needed capital should be explored, such as direct money creation through government spending. While this practice might have adverse implications for the value of the dollar, it is constitutional and has historical precedents during the Kennedy and Lincoln presidencies.

2. Coordination

The energy transition will be complex and comprehensive, and its various strategies will be mutually impacting. For example, efforts to redirect transport away from highways and toward rail service will need to be coordinated with manufacturers, farmers, retailers, and employers.

Therefore, within every government department considerable effort will need to be spent coordinating that department’s overall efforts with the energy transition.

The coordination process could be aided substantially by the creation of an office, tied to no existing Department, specifically tasked with tracking and managing the energy transition, and with helping existing Departments work together toward the common goal.

3. Carbon and energy policy

Worldwide, there has already been much discussion of, and some experimentation with, policies to discourage fossil fuel use and encourage the transition to renewable energy sources. More exploration of such policy options is needed.

The carbon Cap-and-Trade scheme that was deployed in the European Union, in which fossil fuel companies were automatically awarded carbon credits, has tended merely to push high-polluting jobs to poorer nations, while enriching bankers with trading commissions and rewarding established polluters.

The auctioning of all carbon credits, so that existing polluters must buy them, would be a clear improvement on that system. Cap-and-Dividend or Cap-and-Share programs would go further still by promoting social equity, with the proceeds from carbon credit auctions going directly to the public to offset the impact of rising energy costs.

As Al Gore has suggested, carbon taxes could raise government revenue to pay for the energy transition and discourage fossil fuel consumption while replacing payroll taxes—thus adding minimally or not at all to the tax burden of citizens.

However, all such systems assume a market for fossil fuels in which severe resource scarcity plays little or no role. In fact, scarcity may partially undermine carbon trade, share, or dividend systems (no oil company would need to buy carbon credits if the supply of oil is shrinking as fast as yearly caps would otherwise mandate), while resulting in extreme price volatility that would overwhelm both individual consumers and entire industries. Under a carbon tax system, falling oil production would translate to falling government tax revenues.

A policy solution to the depletion-led scarcity dilemma might be a fuel quota rationing system administered so that the total number of quotas issued declines annually. Such a system, called Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs), is being studied in Britain. In it, quotas of carbon or specific fossil fuels (e.g., gasoline) would be issued electronically to all adults yearly, with the information stored on a magnetic card swiped at the point of fuel purchase. Each year the total quantity of quotas would be reduced to conform either with carbon reduction targets or declining fuel availability. Consumers could sell extra quotas or purchase them as needed, with the market price reflecting aggregate supply and demand. Each consumer would thus have an immediate interest in conserving fuel. Allowances could be made for low-income citizens with temporary need for more quotas as they get rid of older cars and insulate homes.

Policy tools to directly support the deployment of renewable energy sources, such as Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and Feed-in Tariffs, should also be reviewed for effectiveness, comparing existing case studies. In general, Feed-in Tariffs, in which government guarantees a price for electricity generated from renewable sources, appear to succeed in harnessing entrepreneurial zeal to the energy transition.

Innovative financing policies like California’s AB 811 could help cities provide low-interest loans to homeowners for renewable energy.

Meanwhile, laws and incentives affecting the food system (including food safety laws and farm subsidies) will need to be reconsidered so as to provide preferential support for small-scale, local, low-input producers.

4. Education

The energy transition will result in the creation of many millions of new jobs and careers. While President-elect Obama called for the creation of five million green-collar jobs, the energy transition will in fact demand something on the order of a ten-fold increase in that goal. However, these new jobs and careers will require skill sets largely different from those currently being imparted by our educational system.

Because they are inexpensive, numerous, and widely dispersed, community colleges could play a central role in preparing workers for new opportunities in sustainable food production, renewable energy installation, grid rebuilding, rail expansion, public transport construction, and home energy retrofitting.

In order for community colleges to fill this new role, teacher training and curriculum development on a grand scale will be needed, ideally organized and coordinated at the national level through the Department of Education.

This reorientation of curriculum should begin with gardening programs in all grade schools and increased course emphasis on topics related to energy and conservation.

5. Public messaging

The successful management of a project of the scope outlined here will require public buy-in at every stage and level, and this in turn will depend upon the use of language and images to continually underscore what is at stake, to focus attention on immediate and long-range goals, and to foster a spirit of cooperation and willing sacrifice. This in itself is no small task in a nation that is politically divided and that has come to regard consumerism as patriotic.

As in the New Deal and World War II, business leaders, advertising agencies and even Hollywood must be enlisted in the effort—indeed, this high-level cooperation must be seen as a quid pro quo for the Federal government’s enormous efforts to salvage the economy by bailing out banks and corporations.

President-elect Obama built his campaign around grassroots organization and the empowerment of individuals to take ownership of a movement. The energy transition could similarly benefit from a sophisticated, interactive, web-based program to inspire individual and group action by providing tools and resources for reduction of fossil fuel dependence.

Tax breaks could be offered to businesses, churches, and other groups that develop personal action teams. Civic programs, such as a mayors’ challenge, could also play a significant role. Grassroots initiatives, such as the international Transition Towns movement, could lead the way toward voluntary community efforts to end fossil fuel dependency.

6. Planned decentralism

During the Franklin Roosevelt Administration, advisors engaged in a healthy debate about whether the New Deal should consist solely of a top-down imposition of new bureaucratic programs, or whether it should also, or primarily, seek to build healthy local communities and regions with the autonomy to design their own development strategies. Arthur Morgan was perhaps the primary decentralist intellectual of the period, but the movement—which traces back to Thomas Jefferson—included southern agrarians as well.

In the present instance, decentralist ideas and strategies must be taken even more seriously than was the case in the 1930s, if only because the end of cheap energy will inevitably entail a reduction in Americans’ mobility, and a re-localization of production and consumption.

This emphasis on decentralism could translate to the creation of programs designed at the sub-federal level that promote increasing regional self-sufficiency in food, manufacturing, and energy production.

7. Challenging goals and targets

The energy transition cannot be accomplished in four years or eight: the construction of our existing fossil fuel-based societal infrastructure required a century, and its replacement will take three or four decades at a bare minimum. What can and must be accomplished in a single administration is the essential change of direction—the beginning of a process of renewal that can persist through other administrations to its ultimate fruition.

This sense of embarking on a journey with a long arc of collective struggle toward an eventual goal can best be maintained through specific time-based targets for reducing carbon emissions, reducing fuel consumption, building renewable energy generation capacity, improving public transit systems and constructing new ones, producing more local low-fuel food, and retrofitting buildings for high energy efficiency. A series of challenging yet feasible annual and four-year targets should be set at the beginning of the transition process, with the ultimate goal—complete freedom from fossil fuel dependency—to be achieved by 2050. Future Administrations will be in positions to adjust strategies toward the realization of that goal, but the goal itself must remain irrevocable through bipartisan consensus.

Targets can be extended through every sector, from individuals to schools, government, and businesses. The Federal government should take the lead by setting targets for all federal buildings, departments, and employees.

Achievement of annual targets should be cause for public celebration, mutual congratulation, and a refocusing of effort on the long-term goal.

Conclusion

What is being suggested in this proposal is of such enormous scope that its intended audience may initially be inclined to dismiss it out of hand. However, the authors have not exaggerated likely costs of inaction, nor have we overstated the critical need for comprehensive changes in interconnected societal systems that now depend upon an unmaintainable flow of cheap fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, we have perhaps not adequately stated the benefits of pursuing this program. By ending our national addiction to fossil fuels, we can shrink this country’s need to police energy-rich areas of the world and foster international peace, while saving hundreds of billions of dollars annually through reduced military budgets. We can save hundreds of billions more by creating a food system that substantially reduces massive health problems such as obesity, cancer, and asthma. We can dramatically curtail environmental pollution, most of which results directly or indirectly from fossil fuel use. We can help Americans become more skilled and more self-reliant, and more prone to volunteer in community-based programs—and they will be happier as a consequence. We can reduce our nation’s political divisions by calling forth qualities of character prized by both liberals (concern for the welfare of others) and conservatives (local autonomy and self-sufficiency).

In the end, what is accomplished by this enormous collective effort will be not merely the reversal of a historic economic and environmental calamity, or even the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure, but the revival of a civilization—and the creation of a sustainable foundation for the accomplishments of future generations.