Environment

The Meaning of the Oil Spill

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It is not possible to imagine a better symbol of the miserable condition of the United States today than an oil company destroying a huge swath of the American ecosystem, society and economy, while the President sits by helplessly, saying that he is meeting with experts in order to find out “whose ass to kick.” Obviously, Obama should have seized all the equipment that BP had available to plug the leak, deputized their engineers, brought in the US navy and coast guard, and spent as necessary to deal with the problem within days, or even hours of the original spill, when it became clear that BP was in over its head. That is what Lincoln did in 1861 when he took control of the railroads and telegraph lines around Washington DC, what Wilson did in 1916 when he nationalized the defense industries, what Roosevelt did in 1941 when he seized an aviation plant, and again in 1944 when he seized Montgomery Ward, it is what Truman did in 1947 when the government took control of the steel industry, in a sense it is what Reagan did in 1980 when the government fired the air controllers. These acts were all controversial but that is what strong Presidents did when facing threats no less severe than those in the Gulf today. Why hasn’t Obama done anything like that?

Culture

Schoolchildren Teach Organic Farming to Troops

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In May of 2010, a group of northern New Mexico middle school students helped to train the 2nd 45th Agricultural Development Team of the Oklahoma National Guard techniques of organic permaculture farming. The youngsters showed troops how to milk goats, clean eggs and care for bees in preparation for their deployment to Afghanistan in September, 2010. The three week training was coordinated by the Pojoaque, NM-based Permaculture Institute. These children from my community are the only youngsters who have ever trained US troops. The Oklahoma 2nd 45th Agricultural Development Team is a battalion of guards formed to assist Afghanistan to rebuild the small farm infrastructure indigenous to that country prior to the Soviet invasion and subsequent simultaneous rise of poppy farming and the Taliban.

Environment

On the possible virtues of a rationally planned economy

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Come to our Tikkun/Network of Spiritual Progressives conference in DC starting a week today if you possibly can! One of our major themes is how to build in social and environmental responsibility to the very idea of a corporation. We are proposing the ESRA, the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the constitution. The goal is to rid American democracy of corporate money, and to require large corporations to act responsibly. This will only be possible if something drastic is done to counteract the influence of corporate money in elections, which the Supreme Court gave the green light to in January when it ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in elections.

Environment

Sunday Morning and the Gulf Oil Spill

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George Stephanopoulos is at it again. The earth is bleeding, 5,000 feet below
the water’s surface of
the Gulf of Mexico,
an opened artery flowing, and
without the surgeon’s deft suture,
mortally wounded
While America wakes to
Sunday morning “This Week,”
where it’s all about PR,
who looks good and who
looks bad in Washington,
what we should think about the
ineffectual response, wasting time
talking about the time wasted and
how politicians could look better. I change channels and hear
reporters joke
there’s no one to interview,
because not enough
sorry enough looking
real people have yet been affected, so
they have only the pelicans to poll,
never considering they might be
too tarred to respond;
We no longer need canaries. Planet earth is in the emergency room,
and we have no life support. George ends with photos
of fallen soldiers, and “Oh-My-God”
music— the cue to honor,
as we ponder the message
over coffee and cereal.

Environment

Becoming a Political Prayer

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I was taken with this email from the PICO network. PICO is a organization that does Saul Alinsky-type community organizing with congregations, and has done a great deal of lobyying for adequate political responses to help people hurt by the mortgage crisis, by our health care system (that should really be “health” “care” “system” as all three words are inaccurate) and many other issues. Here in this email is one piece of news of ordinary people in a congregation working together and making an impact relevant to BP and the Gulf. I was intrigued to find that the action asked is to pray, and not just to pray but to sign a petition promising to pray, so that the activists on this issue will be able to show the support they are getting from prayers (which, as Elizabeth Cunningham noted here last week in Becoming A Prayer is a noun that can describe the person praying as well as the words prayed). I am posting it to celebrate their success and to note this web-based example of the public use of prayer, which has been used for political causes, good and bad, down through the millennia:
Dear Friend,
Last week, a group of Vietnamese-American and African-American residents from my church — Mary Queen of Viet Nam, a member of PICO affiliate Micah Project in New Orleans — won an important victory against BP and other oil and gas companies.

Environment

BP's Response to Stuff Happens or Houston We Have a Problem

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Thinking about BPs response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we hear one of its representatives say: “Alternatives are currently being progressed.”  This is what Doug Suttles, Chief Operation Officer of the Exploration and Production Division of BP told Matt Lauer on the Today Show on Monday, May 24.  A more straight forward response would be:  “We do not know how to fix it.” The federal government officials should say the same thing.  Instead we get awkward statements in the passive voice and talk about the federal government applying more pressure to BP.  Until we have better answers, we ought to stop off-shore drilling. BP’s response reminds me of a scene in the movie Apollo 13.  Three astronauts are coming back home after an explosion caused them to have to abort their mission to the moon.  “Houston we have a problem.”  It turns out there were a series of problems that needed a solution to bring the men home safely. One problem was how to power up the capsule for reentry.  At one point, one of the astronauts rightly surmises:” They don’t know how to do it.”  Much of the suspense of the movie is watching the experiments on the ground to find the correct procedure to give the men enough power to return to earth safely. In this current disaster, engineers from across the oil industry are in Houston working on the problem.  However, it is correct for us to surmise that they do not know how to do it.  If they had a solution, it would have already been deployed.  The federal government does not know how to fix it.   I have no doubt that BP would listen to anyone with a workable idea at this point.  The problem of fixing a leak at this depth is clearly beyond our current knowledge.  Spokespeople for BP and for the federal government should treat the public as if we are adults and say so.  Everything BP does at this point is an experiment, and they have no idea how these experiments will work.  They do not know what the consequences of the fix to the problem will be. They have used chemical dispersants on the oil spill that may be more toxic than the oil itself.  At the same time, the Obama administration has come under attack from friend and foe for its response.  The New York Times reports that despite President Obama’s moratorium on permits for drilling new oil well, that permits have nonetheless been issued.  During his media address to the nation on Saturday, May 22, the president announced a bi-partisan commission to study this accident to learn the root causes and the options for preventing such a thing in the future.  This is to be a comprehensive study.

Environment

Connections and Values Create Biodiversity

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You may remember that I wrote about “Earth Day at 40” a couple of weeks ago. Since then, my brother-in-law has put a video of my sister Amy Vedder’s presentation online. It’s worth a look — with great photos and description of some of the innovative approaches Amy has developed over the last 30 years to successfully preserve animal species and their habitats. Amy, who is now senior vice president of the Wilderness Society, offered three examples of her successful projects during this talk. The most dramatic was setting up the Mountain Gorilla Project in Rwanda in the late 1970s.

Environment

Howl if You Love Gaia: Cristina Eisenberg's The Wolf's Tooth

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I thought of titling this post “Howl if You Love Jesus,” although Cristina’s Eisenberg’s in depth survey of the effect of keystone predators on a wide variety of ecosystems, makes no mention of Jesus or of any religion.The Wolf’s Tooth: Keystone Predators, Trophic Cascades, and Biodiversity is all about food webs. And I found myself thinking of Jesus saying to his disciples: Take, eat this is my body. If you think of the earth as the body of Christ, then all its members are important: the predator, the prey, the trees, the grasses, the birds, insects, fish, the forests, the rivers, the seas, and all their myriad forms of life. A scientist with a poet’s command of language, Cristina Eisenberg writes with precision and passion. Her own ongoing research focuses on wolves as keystone predators, what happens to various landscapes when wolves return in sufficient numbers to drive a trophic cascade.