Letters on plastics - section below

CCL #96 Goodbye American Dreamland: Congress hears quote by Jan Lundberg on peak oil

Jan--
Go get 'em. You're doing a great job.
 Jim Kunstler
Author of
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871138883/104-4172501-0705502?v=glance)

Jan Lundberg responds:  Look who's talking, Jim -- YOU'RE doing a great job. Like, those car/booze/"music"-targeted kidz in Rolling Stone got to hear some real stuff for a change thanks to you.
Jan

Hi Jan - just wanted to say nice work and keep it up. 
Steve Mosko
Campaign Against the Plastic Plague

Jan. Jan. You think Bush doesn't *know* about peak-oil? Hah. Cheney's probably known about it for 30 years, or at least as long as he's been in the oil business. Why do you think he fought so hard to keep the records of his meetings with oil execs private? Because it's a sure bet that peak-oil was the main topic of discussion, and Cheney doesn't want that to be a public discussion. Not yet. Maybe not ever. 
These guys all know about it. Whether they really understand what it means? That's another question, and a good one, because if Jay Hanson is right, they can't really get their heads around it. No-one can, because we are not wired for it. We can't accept it. Humans cannot accept that a crucial resource is irreplaceable. It's like telling a christian there is no god. They can't accept it. They won't. They'll kill first. 
It takes years and years of work to even begin to understand what peak-oil means. You know that. Most people are too damned lazy to even begin the work. They'd rather blame someone. 
That's the danger. Not that the word won't get out, but that people will start the killing once the word is clear. 
Charles Andrews
"What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are." - Epictitus

Dear Culture Change:
No oil needed. A 3600 sq. ft. building at Parkman, Maine survived on $66 for energy this past winter because of: Good insulation Radiant floor Solar window, no ceiling lights anywhere, not needed. Sun raised interior temp by 25F when shining. Special boiler/furnace cost only 37 cents per day, with coldest temps down to 32 degrees below zero F. Previously I had driven a UK Reliant Robin (1976) from Maine to Oregon on 64 gallons of gas, whole continent! We need to be motivated. Our survival is possible, but we will probably wait too long to act. It would take 17 years to replace existing automotive technology. Insurance industry is blocking innovation in vehicles. The Mercedes Smart Car is in Canada already but not in the USA. Small trucks, like the ACE from India's Tata Motors should be allowed in for study. But it isn't. 
Charles E. Mac Arthur, 
curator Wilkinson Institute Research Museum 
Parkman, Maine 
www.seatosea2003.org

Jan Lundberg responds:  Your research museum sounds like a fun visit. Maybe I'll get out there.
As to "no oil needed," it's a petroleum infrastructure we're talking about, and many of the renewable energy components are made with and of petroleum -- so, how can hundreds of million of people switch to renewables when we just sit on our hands and wait for technological miracles? It won't happen. When it's not possible to do anything else, slashing energy will come into vogue. And my position will be popular: we don't even need the energy because the technogizmos are superfluous and harm the Earth.
Thanks for writing,
Jan

[reply to reply:] Passenger car tires. Are being made from petroleum. No hydrogen tires likely, Same for the nuclear tire. Digging up old tire dumps may be THE growth industry in the next decade. I have worked with wood chip gasifiers for small tractors, but even if that could be widespread, there is still the tire problem. We need to restore the small family farm to every neighborhood. Fidel's Havana grows half of its food within city limits, but then he doesn't have the frost problem Our cities are vast concrete and asphalt deserts, with absolutely no resources of their own, no water, no food, no energy, nothing, and about 90% of Americans live there. I hope you have a little soil to till. I am 77, with 70 acres. The big problem with that is that the "haves" will be descended upon by the "suddenly have nots". And the difference between civilized and savage is having missed nine consecutive meals. The grasshopper and the ant? Was that Aesop? 
Cheer up. The earth as St. Matthew Island certainly has its up side..
Charlie 

Mr. Lundberg, 
I much admire your work and your "Culture Change" letters. I saw Roscoe Bartlett on C-SPAN, and had to look twice to confirm that this was really a Republican. He gave a good account of the problem we face, but was short on solutions. The speech, with graphs, is available at his website: http://www.bartlett.house.gov/SupportingFiles/documents/energyspeech.pdf . My modest efforts regarding this issue can be found in my "The Oil Trap" (August 2002) www.igc.org/gadfly/eds/envt/oiltrap.htm and "Last Chance for Civilization" (currently at The Crisis Papers and several progressive websites) www.crisispapers.org/essays-p/last-chance.htm . 
What is your take on Amory Lovins' report, "Winning the Oil Endgame"? It seems too good to be true. However, as I said in "Last Chance," even if Lovins' science is right (the good news), it seems highly unlikely that our politics will allow a solution (the bad news). If the solar-hydrogen-biofuels solution is worked out, it will almost certainly take place abroad, whereupon the USA will descend to it's well-deserved third-world status. It's been my good fortune to live during the golden age. Apre nous, le deluge. 
Ernest Partridge
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers

Jan Lundberg responds: Thanks for writing and sending the link.
Sounds like you're covering the bases with your writing.
As to Lovins, I'm less than impressed -- increasingly so as years go by.  I commented on his recent study at http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-technofix.html
Enjoy.

CCL #95 More traffic congestion is funded / Alien American dream changes the Earth

Your encouragement of a car-free, less consuming lifestyle is very much appreciated!  Thank you for your sensible messages.  It is hard to go against the tide that says spend, spend, spend. 
Jean Bellinger Lake Forest, CA

CCL #94 A culture of torture: out of control? -  Pepperspray via Q-tip, war, ecocide, etc.

CCL #93 Depaver Jan's Petroleum Tour: Earth Day reality check

CCL #92 Fasting for healing and inner peace

CCL #91 Activists and hipsters without territory or a plan  part 1: the problem / part 2: the solution

Jan Lundberg responds: I'll bet I hate computers as much as you or anyone does!  Let us remember that some of us are fighting fire with fire.  So, we must use tools we ordinarily I think the solution is SHARING.  If ten computer users did not have ten computers, but only one instead, this would help a lot to decrease resource use and foster a "new" way of relating to one another in this cooperation-challenged culture.  As for myself, I aspire to go computer-free and do my website work from libraries, Kindo's, friends, etc.  Buying a new computer is a cardinal sin when we can get a used one or rent one. 

Culture Change, 
I think we should start an immediate, worldwide boycott against any company involved in extracting oil from Alaska. How can we get the list of companies?
- Mike Vandeman

CCL #90 From the northern redwoods to Berkeley Babylon

GREETINGS!  I WANTED TO WRITE AND LET YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I REALLY ENJOY THE SITE AND THE MAILS I GET - TRULY OUTSTANDING, LEAST NOT OUTSPOKEN!!  YEAH, YOU ALL HAVE HEARD THIS 2000,000 TIMES, BUT IT'S SO TRUE!  KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING! 
PEACE! 
ZAYT TAYLOR

CCL #89 Ways to end car culture along with the globalized trade godzilla articles by Jan Lundberg and Julian Darley

CCL #86 A spear through the global warming beast’s heart? - In defense of islands, the Arctic, ourselves

JL responds:
Dear Patrick, of course I would have liked the $200 billion that was wasted on genocide and ecocide in Iraq to be used for anything sensible.  That waste, however, does not mean there is an equation that works for substituting petroleum with any mix of renewables.  Where is the model that says it is possible, with today's population size, with the infrastructure already all petroleum oriented, and depleted resources?  That's still assuming the Earth can wait for a transition when it needs immediate relief. 

Still, you are advocating good things.  So is Rhys Roth.  He admitted to me after we got back from Kyoto in '97 that the economic growth vision for the Pacific Northwest that he was advocating via renewable energy really won't do the job considering the population, resources and pollution all considered, but he said that his advocacy was at least in the right direction and didn't do any harm.  That was my first email debate with anyone.

I would like to see you advocate no cars as the way to go.  Even cleaner cars will still take their driver only 5 mph, as Illich found, and they will still kill and require pavement, plastic, tires, etc.  And more than half of the pollution to the air is NOT out of the tailpipe, according to the Environmental Forecasting Institute in Heidelberg.

I also believe that we must distinguish between the increases in efficiency and actually letting the air out of the tires - or whatever - so as to stop the pollution machinery.  Efficiency is not synonymous with conservation.  Please don't pretend that the mainstream technofixers really want radical or serious conservation; if they did want it why don't they say it?  Answer: funding and corporate acceptance are important.

Note: In the Culture Change Letter #86 there was a refinement of the technofix section.  Thanks to Charles Komonoff who challenged my premise that Bill McKibben had not advocated conservation in his pro-technofix opinion piece in the New York Times, I have made a correction and clarification:

"However, he said absolutely nothing in his piece about avoiding the need for using energy – an approach we can call radical conservation:  "Right now, the choice is between burning fossil fuels and making the transition, as quickly as possible, to renewable power," he claims. 

One of Mr. McKibben's statements can be interpreted as advocating conservation: "Just to slow the pace of this rapid warming will require every possible response, from more efficient cars to fewer sprawling suburbs to more trains to – well, the list is pretty well endless."  But his short list does not spell serious conservation, when stopping our purchase and use of machines is much more crucial than building and buying more efficient ones.  Car-free living and halting any new roads construction are overdue "innovations."  His examples are not energy-slashing measures that will cut the global warming beast off at the knees.  Does Mr. McKibben mean that fewer sprawling suburbs should be built, or that some should be depaved and turn into ecovillages?

Dear Jan: (Patrick Mazza responds to above)

In the past couple of years I've been treated to presentations on world energy growth from WRI and coal plant growth from NRDC that have caused me to metaphorically throw up my hands.  I acknowledge what a sisyphean task it seems to be to stabilize the climate under conditions of economic growth as usual.   I have far from a full answer.  It is clear that as North Americans we are in a poor position to tell the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians to radically conserve. They've been doing it and now want the goodies we've flaunted.  And even if we became a voluntarily simple pure Ecotopia we'd still be swamped by world economic growth.  So all I can see to do, other than eating, drinking and making merry because tomorrow we fry, is to move as quickly as possible to create and deploy the leapfrog technologies that allow the developing nations to improve their material standards without making our mistakes, and that help us to clean up our mistakes and set a better example. Both clean energy production and radical efficiency technologies.  Yes, some people like you need to be in there raising the hard questions about economic growth, and absolutely right that's not the most fundable message.  I do think we're going to hit tough spots in coming years that will make openings for some pretty fundamental re-assessments of our civilization.  I only hope it won't be too late.

 

Meanwhile, Limits to Growth 2004 is on my reading shelf for a little later this year, along with a couple of Herman Daly's newer works. 
Patrick Mazza

JL responds - 
I appreciate your points, and I believe we want the same thing.  I don't think there need to be millions of entropy boxes such as refrigerators, so maybe we differ there.
I don't object to "leapfrog technologies" or any decent reforms and regulations as long as they make a solid dent in the global warming beast, and as long as the adherents of the technofix push for fundamental change.  The problem with the funded environmental groups is that they don't advocate fundamental change or, therefore, serious conservation that would end the cycle of massive pollution. The real question might be How to stop the global economy, when you observe that making an Ecotopia in the U.S. might not make other nations alter ecocidal policies.  Real defense means protecting the global ecosystem, but in the U.S., "defense" is about offense against the ecosystem and anyone actively opposing the corporate juggernaut.

Dear Jan,
McKibben both practices and passionately advocates for energy conservation.

 

Are you miffed that McKibben didn't say "conservation"? If so,

maybe you could cut him some slack? Maybe you could allow that

perhaps in this piece he was trying a different line of rhetoric

-- using code words for conservation as a way to get past

readers' (or editors') indifference/hostility to the word.

Maybe you could acknowledge that in 650 words you can't say

everything, partic'ly when you're trying to get past the

gatekeepers of the NYT.

McKibben isn't NRDC. He's one person trying -- and he's been

trying for a long time -- to make a difference. Why sharpen

the blades for him?

 

With all due respect, your criticisms seem petty and, to me

anyway, just diminish your excellent points. To what end, Jan?

 

  -- Charlie Komanoff
of KEA, consultants on transportation and energy.  See Komanoff's co-authored road pricing study from a Climate Solutions webpage.

CCL #85 The awakening of the downtrodden  — Are you the downtrodden?

CCL #84 The David Brower Memorial Parking Garage is on a head of steam (a greenhouse gas)

Dear Jan,
this is @#$%^&*() unbelievable. I will have to put it in my global warming book, or something. It sounds like your basic "Let all ye who enter here be damned."
carry on, etc....jane holtz kay
(the writer is architecture review editor for The Nation magazine)

Dear Jan,
The irony is ovewhelming...
Mark Robinowitz

CCL #83 Bangladesh Strife: Crimes against children, women, and minorities

CCL #82 War on plastic  -  Rejecting the toxic plague

CCL #81 Materialist culture and the ego: expendable artifacts?  

Nov. 8, 2004
Please remove this address from your e-mail list. I've endured enough of your venom over the last year that I'm sure I must be immune to any snake bite out there.
Sincerely,
Tony Flynn
managing editor, Skagit Weekly Group

JL responds: I finally thought of something to say in response:
What snakes out there should you worry about? Apparently you're not bothered by the corporations and war monger politicians. I must have insulted you too much over Kerry if you endured a year of Culture Change Letters (subject lines only?), but I'll grant you that Kerry may not have been a real war monger, in his quest to rattle the sabre to pass the red-white-and-blue test.

Nov. 8, 2004
I don't consider this campaign or the election a mistake. I believe that Bush won this election by fraudulent means. Because of that, I find your statement "after the last mistake" to be very insulting and misleading!!!!!
Christine Simpson

Nov. 8, 2004
I don't see my work on the Kerry campaign as a mistake at all. He almost became our President, and that would have been so much better than the Bush regime. There is no other realistic alternative at the national level.  If we want to get a decent president anytime in the near future we need to keep putting energy into electing a Democrat for president. 
     Organize a radical opposition movement? Yes, of course. We need it, but  to then suggest that the movement will elect someone at the national level is folly. It might result (one would hope) in a more left leaning candidate nominated in the Democratic Party, perhaps a Howard Dean or a Dennis Kucinich. But that is as far as it would go in the short term. 
     As for smashing the "System," what exactly does that mean? Are we talking about non-violent resistance that would somehow sweep away the current system? Or are you referring to a revolutionary movement with guns and killing in the streets? The violent stuff was tried in the 1960's and failed miserably, leading, in part, to the sweep of conservative thought that we currently suffer under. Radical reform, yes, but taking out the system? Maybe, but what would you replace it with? European style democracy with numerous parties that can form coalitions? I could support that. 
-Ron Sundergill
ecoleader.org

Earth has no more time for electoral mistakes (JL responds:) When people are in the streets in great numbers -- and I clearly stated it should be nonviolent (although the police can initiate violence in order to intimidate) -- there can be such pressure as to change policies radically, no matter who is power whether Democrat or Republican. Voting alone does not cut it. After all, where has it gotten us so far? 
     In case you missed something, do you want to re-read my original piece? I shall clarify further: I am not against someone voting for a lesser evil, nor campaigning to get such a candidate nominated, but the real work would have to begin after such a politician got into power. Power concedes nothing without a demand, and the so people must take power to keep rulers in check or replace them along with their system. Trouble is, people sit on their asses watching the propaganda box, except to vote once in a blue moon. 
     Reform is fine if it moves toward a worthy goal. The leaders of the mainstream environmental movement have not really done so, when none of the groups over a ten year period would support a paving moratorium or advocate serious conservation such as car-free living. As the limited-reform approach is insufficient, and could not even get a Kerry elected despite the amazingly bad record of Bush, it is time for activists of the limited-Democrat approach to stop hogging the activism stage and begin advocating a change in the system -- from the streets and overflowing the jails. Look at history for the successes; the power-elite never relinquishes power or changes the status quo voluntarily. There needs to be a Martin Luther King, Jr. eco-leader, don't you agree? MLK Jr.'s later writings had it down, man! Thanks for writing.

CCL # Doom and gloom?  Your perception calls the tune —  Interconnectedness of all in the universe

Dear Jan Lundberg, 
      I've read your 'Doom and Gloom' with both interest and hope but find/expect that I remain among of the many caught between the possible and the theoretical. Jonas Salk and Garrett Hardin (among others) define the parameters for our future but their visions are seemingly embracing and exclusionary at the same moment. I have to ask how you justify your wonderful vision, "One's perception could thereby be joyous upon exiting today's conflict-ridden phase of history and transitioning to a sustainable culture.", with Hardin's thesis of a ceiling for cultural/social evolution? It is the could that I question. How can we break through that barrier of self interest which is the life and death fabric of us all and experience such joy? I send this as an encouragement to your continued efforts and with my best wishes, 
Jerry Quigley 
Orleans, MA

Dear Jan,
      I have been privileged to read many of your passionate essays about a sustainable society over the last several years, and I do appreciate being enlightened by someone with your depth of knowledge as well as your deep desire to save the earth from its current rush to destruction.  I admire your courage, and thank you for caring enough to speak out. I look forward to hearing more from you in the future. We can only hope and pray that the next administration is led by people who care more for the common good than for their own special interests and greed.
 Gratefully,
 Joe Mondello

Inspiring as ever, but sad to hear that you are 'moving on'. I am sure this is not an easy decision to make, it sure ain't easy to get by in the system we have set up (or had set up around us!. You have certainly inspired us, and our bikes wear your stickers with pride (even here in the UK). Best of luck in the next phase. 
Best wishes, 
Joanne

Thank you Jan, 
Your service toward the cause means more than you realize and I believe you understand yourself well when you proclaim to be ahead of your time. It is sad to live in a world with such shortsighted, knuckle headed compatriots who have collectively put the worst possible person at the head of the class. While I'm not optimistic about improvement in the average person, I am optimistic that we (collective society) won't make the worst mistake of our elective lives again. Just be too ironic for reality and makes us humans deserve our global warming destiny... but you and I deserve better so it just can't happen. Sorry. 
Sincerely, 
Jay Lustgarten

CCL #70 Plastics: Your Formidable Enemy Questioning exposure, recycling, biodegradability, alternatives 

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