Three Forces

                                                                                       written 18 August, 2024

                                                                                   published 25 August, 2024

            Three powerful forces currently stress civilization: climate change, peak oil, and shifting economics.

            In 1995, atmospheric CO₂ content was 358 ppm, 78 ppm above the pre-industrial baseline.  The scientific community was still debating if the climate crisis was serious, but quickly reached consensus: it is real and will demand attention.  Today atmospheric CO₂ is 424 ppm, and the impact is already here.  Ask anyone who has had their home burned up, flooded out, or blown away.  

            The fossil fuel industry knew about this 50 years ago, but chose to fund denial, because of the money involved: $7 trillion each year, about $13 million every second.  The GOP works for billionaires, so they support this denial, with the Project 2025 goal of eliminating any effort to respond to climate reality.  But those of us who live in the real world, and want a habitable planet for our descendants, must deal with it.

            The second force arises from the fact that fossil fuels are finite.  1972 was the peak US domestic production of conventional oil (everything except deep water, fracking, and tar sands).  At that point, we lost control of the price of oil, OPEC took over, prices tripled within a decade, causing the worst inflation in US history, beginning decades of hollowing out the American middle class.  In 1973, minimum wage of $1.25/hour could buy over 6 gallons of gas. Today, minimum wage of $15/hour can buy less than 3 gallons of gas.

            2005 was peak global production of conventional oil, which amplified the economic crash in 2008.  But in the US, fracking for oil boomed, and the US again became a global leader in exporting oil.  Conventional fields, like the north slope of Alaska produced for almost 50 years before reducing to a trickle today.  A much more expensive fracked well depletes by 85 percent in just two years, and a new well has to be developed.  Therefore, while oil is produced, it is more expensive.  Industry now reports US fracking production is coming to an end, as the few profitable fields are about exhausted.  2018 was the peak in global oil production from any source.  However, the global depression from the COVID pandemic has so far masked the full economic impact.

            There is a third force driving change.  While fossil fuels get more expensive as the easily developed reserves are depleted, renewable power get cheaper every year, as the scale of production increases.  Solar dropped from $100/watt in the 70's to $0.11/watt from China today.  Solar and wind are the cheapest power to produce, and battery costs are dropping while duration and capacity increase.  In addition, the renewable hardware is a fixed cost, with free energy for the life of the equipment.  Electric vehicles are three times more energy efficient, need less maintenance, and the power can be produced anywhere, down to the level of individual homes.  No fossil fuel can compete with these economic realities.   

            At some point soon, this increasing cost disparity will make fossil fueled transportation economically obsolete.  China is already selling medium range electric cars for $11,500.  Low cost electric scooters are expanding globally.  The City of South Pasadena shifted their entire fleet of police cruisers to Tesla.  Even though the initial vehicle cost was higher, the savings in fuel and maintenance costs, plus the higher resale value of Teslas as used cars, saved the city money overall.

            In "Clean Disruption", Tony Seba talks about how this economic shift will be a "disruptive technology", similar to the impact of the shift from horses to automobiles, film to digital cameras, or land lines to smartphones.  The changes will be sudden, massive, and socially transformative.  As the saying goes, the stone age didn't end because we ran out of rocks, it was supplanted by a more efficient and versatile technology.  Seba sees this shift happening by the end of this decade.

            Our existing electrical systems have not begun to respond to these three forces and the coming shift.  In Ukiah, the utility has yet to add any new local renewable production, nor begun to address the challenge of grid capacity limitations.  Public EV charger installations are happening at 1/10 the needed rate.  The situation in the county is the same.  Whether due to climate denial, lack of awareness, or budget limitations, the result will be the same: complete unpreparedness in the face of the coming changes.  We are challenged to do better.

How Rapidly Things Change

                                                                                       written 11 August, 2024

                                                                                   published 18 August, 2024

   

            The first debate of the 2024 election season was June 28th.  Biden's performance was dismal.  Republicans believed they were a shoo-in for election.  Democrats were discouraged and started to clamor for Biden to drop out. The media focused on the presidential "cult of personality", not the party platforms. 

            However, information about the massive GOP Project 2025 was beginning to be noticed.  This radical theocratic authoritarian plan had been under development for two years, but only 1 in 7 had even heard about it, according to Representative Huffman, who is part of a group working to educate the voting population.  

            Wanting to help, on July 14th I wrote the first of four articles on Project 2025, choosing my primary topic of interest: the climate crisis.  The GOP plan believes the climate crisis is a hoax, and intends to destroy any efforts to deal with the climate, choosing instead to invest heavily in their billionaire friends in the fossil fuel industry.  That same week, the RNC Convention officially nominated Trump for president, and he picked Vance as his pliable "mini-me", for vice-president.  The Democrats were feeling more desperate, and calls for Biden to drop out got louder.

            On July 21st, I wrote my second Project 2025 article on women, describing how the plan intends to curtail women's rights, pushing them back a century, returning to being chattel for men.  The male dominated GOP assumes women will just "get over it".

            That day Biden announced he would drop out of the race, threw his support to Harris, and the Democratic political world exploded with enthusiasm.  Donations flowed in at unheard of rates, volunteers for the campaign jumped by a factor of one hundred, and registration of new voters surged.  Within a few days, Harris had lined up enough convention delegates to assure a unified convention, and there was a noticeable change in the energy of the entire campaign.  Everything had flipped.

            Trump is now the tired old man in the race, facing a fresh young opponent, his worst fear, a mixed race woman prosecutor!  It was weeks before Trump could even acknowledge Biden was no longer his opponent, and Vance suddenly became a liability, not an asset.

            On July 28th, my Project 2025 article outlined the plan to cram fundamentalist "Christianity" down everyone's throat, because they believed "God was on their side", despite being a decreasing minority of the population.  The next one described the assault on immigration. 

            Trump and Vance have yet to recalibrate their campaign to the new reality.  At every public appearance they further offend, with abusive and angry outbursts.  Vance is now associated with couches and angry cat ladies, and Trump was so repulsive at the Black Journalist Conference, his staff pulled him off the stage long before the scheduled end time.  

            A few days ago, Harris picked Minnesota Governor Walz as her running mate.  He is down to earth and straight talking, a sharp contrast to Vance.  Walz began the meme that that the GOP candidates are "weird", which seems to have stuck.  The contrast between the two campaigns is striking: joy, excitement, and enthusiasm versus anger, revenge, and insults.

            When Harris/Walz have an event, the venue is packed.  When Vance has an event, the cameras have to avoid showing how few people showed up.  Trump seems to have abandoned the campaign entirely, only phoning in at his few scheduled events.

            While polls have been shown to be inaccurate predictions of political reality, the trend has Harris/Walz pulling ahead.  The Democratic convention, which traditionally gives a further boost, starts next week, on August 19th.

            I find it amazing that this race is still being considered tight.  But many voters don't begin to pay attention until a few weeks before the election.  However, the sudden burst of excitement around Harris, is anything but traditional.  Furthermore, details of Project 2025 are now widely known, with almost two thirds the population aware.  Most of those who have studied the plan are appalled, and Trump is unsuccessfully trying to distance himself from it.

            In addition, Trump is not a healthy man, nether physically nor mentally, so there is no telling what might happen in the next three months.  We are in times of rapid change, and yesterday is no longer an accurate predictor of tomorrow.  Stay tuned, it's going to be an interesting election.  Make sure you are registered, and plan to vote.

Project 2025 on Immigration

                                                                                         written 4 August, 2024

                                                                                   published 11 August, 2024

      

            From a unity perspective, all borders are relative illusions.  The climate crisis proves the physical reality that we really are all in this together.  No one country can effectively deal with the crisis, because weather patterns sweep around the globe, without regard for borders.  

            Similarly, human populations ebb and flow around the world, creating pressure at the borders.  Over time, there have been multiple drivers.  Changing climate, diminishing food supplies, population pressures, wars of conflict, economic collapse, desire for economic improvement, or lust for adventure: all have spurred waves of humans to pull up roots and move.  With very few exceptions, everyone now in America had ancestors who moved here from some other country relatively recently. 

            Immigration has always enriched the US society, bringing people eager to work hard, with drive and creativity, doing essential jobs most legal citizens avoid.  Migrants today pay over $100 billion in taxes.  But immigration has also been a source of conflict with those already here, who fear they will "lose" something.  

            Our economic system is designed to extract wealth and resources from other areas of the planet, for our limited domestic benefit.  US foreign policy supports autocratic governments overseas which favor US corporate resource extraction, resulting in massive structural poverty in those countries.  The US is 4 percent of the world population, but represents almost a quarter of the global economy.  The global average wealth per adult is $85K, but in the US, the average wealth per adult is $551K, a distortion further amplified by local inequity, which is growing everywhere. 

            In addition, the US produced a quarter of all the CO₂ ever added to the atmosphere, driving the climate crisis, which falls disproportionally on countries that never received the economic advantages.  The increasingly extreme economic and environmental global impacts, are powerful drivers of immigration today.  Given we have collected more than our share, is it a surprise people want to come here?

            Being the party of the extremely wealthy, the GOP has always been threatened by immigration.  Trump promises to "terminate every open border policy of the Biden administration", "begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history", and "end birth right citizenship."  Project 2025 outlines more changes in detail.

            Temporary work-visa programs that allow seasonal employers to hire foreign workers will be phase out.  Processing and application fees for migrants will increase.  "T" visas, for victims of severe human trafficking, and "U" visas, for victims of crimes that occur in the US, will be eliminated.  The plan calls for adding a citizenship question to the next census to further "conservative principles". 

            Project 2025 will dismantle the DREAM Act, which grants conditional residency and work permits to immigrants who entered the United States as minors.  It will restrict the DACA program, which allows immigrants who were children in the US in 2012 to be deferred from deportation.  

            Homeland Security grants Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to immigrants already in the US who are nationals of a country experiencing ongoing armed conflict, or environmental disaster, that would prevent them from returning safely.  Project 2025 would repeal all active TPS designations, affecting over 700,000 individuals, many of whom have been in the U.S. for decades.  

            Project 2025 directs the DOJ to assist Homeland Security in collecting information about aliens across the United States, and impose financial punishments on "sanctuary cities" that do not follow federal immigration laws.  It will increase the authority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prioritize “the civil arrest, detention, and removal of immigration violators anywhere in the United States, without warrants" which could affect over 10 million people.  It would “bar U.S. citizens from qualifying for federal housing subsidies if they live with anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.” 

            This harsh authoritarian agenda would create an intrusive police state, and disrupt essential food and service sectors of the economy, without any element of "Christian" compassion

            Think about how this impacts you, or your relatives, or your friends.  Is this a world you want?  Educate yourself about the GOP Project 2025, and then talk about it to everyone you know.  Share this information with people outside our local area.  The more people learn about these GOP plans, the more motivated they become to work to ensure they never comes to pass.  Make sure you are registered, and on election day, get out and vote!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Project 2025 on Religion

                                                                                            written 28 July, 2024

                                                                                     published 4 August, 2024

    

            A 2024 Gallup poll on Religion in US found 68 percent identify as Christian (33 percent Protestant, 22 percent Catholic, and 13 percent other Christians), 7 percent as other religions, and 22 percent listed no religious preference (3 percent didn't answer).  This is a sharp difference from 50 years ago when 87 percent identified as Christian, 6 percent as non-Christian, and only 5 percent had no preference.

            In that same time frame, church membership declined from 73 percent to 45 percent, primarily among Catholics and evangelical Protestants.  Weekly church attendance declined as well, with 57 percent now attending "seldom or never".  While this decline is mostly young adults, it includes older adults who previously attended. 

            It is important to distinguish between the message within each spiritual tradition, and the man-made, dogmatic rules of the religious organizations, which arise with growing political and financial power.  I suspect attendance decline represents growing dissatisfaction with the heavy dogma, and outright hypocrisy, that oppresses what is essentially a personal investigation of spiritual reality. 

            There are more than 200 Christian denominations in the US, and over 45,000 globally, all distinguished by the different dogmas they profess.  At the extremes, religious sects fight, and kill, members of other sects, and even members within their own sects, who are defined as "heretics".  Wars between Christian denominations have killed over 100 million Christians, and many more "unbelievers", all in the self-righteous assurance that they do the "work of God".

            It was in reaction to this long-standing religious barbarity that the founders of America prohibited Congress from enacting a state religion (which would prioritize one sect among the many), but saw nothing wrong with having religion in American culture.  But the same self-righteous assurance that has historically led to religious wars, is alive and well in the today's "Christian nationalist" extremism, a foundational part of the current GOP, explicitly expressed in the Project 2025 document.

            The Center for Renewing America, a member of the Project 2025 advisory board, was founded in 2021, by Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official.  They have "a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society", and lists “Christian nationalism” as one of the major priorities of a second Trump term.  

            Project 2025 claims that centralized government “subverts” families by working to “replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones,” as evaluated by their narrow biblical interpretation of "natural" versus "unnatural".  For the “well-being of the American family”, it attacks gender ideology, arguing “these theories poison our children", and assaults the "traditional" nature of men and women. 

            The plan calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to “maintain a biblically based, social science reinforced definition of marriage and family,” arguing that “families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society.”  It objects to “nonreligious definitions" of marriage and family as put forward by the Respect for Marriage Act, claiming that all family forms apart from “heterosexual, intact marriage", involve higher levels of instability.  It further claims that Biden’s administration is “hostile to people of faith".

            The religious orientation presented in Project 2025 is inspired by the most conservative arm of Catholicism, and fundamentalist evangelical Protestantism, the two religious sects most in decline in America.  The orientation is judgement, guilt, fear, and punishment, based on dogma, not the spirit of love at the core of Christ's teachings.  This push toward theocratic autocracy is a last gasp of a dying perspective.

            At least 30 percent of America does not even identify as "Christian", and of those who do, the majority are not fundamentalists.  For anyone who lives any form of a spiritual path, you know the foundation is personal and interior, between you and however you view the larger divine.  It is arrogant and offensive to have any one group pushing their specific, limited narrative on everyone else, thinking they have “the one and only truth”.  

            Educate yourself about the GOP Project 2025, by searching for "Project 2025 document", or find summaries.  If this is a world you don’t want, talk about Project 2025 to everyone you know, so we are aware of what is coming.  The more people see what is in the plan, the more motivated they become to work to make sure it never comes to pass.