XL PIPELINE, IF YOU BUILD IT, IT WILL LEAK!

It's just "Murphy's Law," you build a massive pipeline for Canadian tar sands oil that must be diluted with toxic corrosive chemicals and pumped across the country under high pressure and at high temperatures, and things are going to go wrong. The part of the Keystone pipeline that has already been built has had 14 spills and two shutdowns. The problem is that tar sands oil is almost impossible to cleanup. Why are we taking this risk? So some very rich multinational corporations can sell the world's most polluting oil to the world's most polluting country, China. The other reason is jobs (3500 construction jobs for two years and 35 permanent pipeline jobs) unless you count all the temporary cleanup laborers that are going to be needed.  These are desperate times and I know that states and communities really need the jobs but at what cost? How much of the environment will you sell in exchange for these temporary jobs?

Here's Robert Redford's take on the XL Pipeline:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-redford/senate-keystone-pipeline_b_2931109.html

UPDATE: Here's what you can look forward to from the XL pipeline.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-radford/the-arkansas-oil-spill-ph_b_2998988.html?ref=topbar

UPDATE: Here's a video you've got to see on the XL pipeline.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckibben/the-video-president-obama_b_3360973.html?utm_hp_ref=green

RAND PAUL AND THE DRONE WARS!

I'm not a big fan of Senator Rand Paul, his father the Texas Congressman Ron Paul, or most of their ideas but I do believe Senator Paul did our country a great service by using his filibuster, of the Brennan nomination, to bring the issues surrounding the use of drones to the fore. Drone and cyber attacks are clearly the wave of the future in warfare and they are already being used by a number of nations in a semi clandestine fashion. The United States is leading the way in both of these categories with the Stuxnet Worm attack on the Iranian Nuclear program  and the prolific use of drones in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali and who knows where else. This brings several problems immediately to mind:

SECRECY AND DUE PROCESS - We've already used drones to kill three Americans, that we know of. U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of plotting the so-called underwear bombing of a plane in 2009 and two others who were apparently accidents. Watch Christiane Amanpour's video on the subject:

http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/12/americans-killed-by-american-drones/ 

The trouble is that the whole process is so secret that we have no oversight of it or understanding of how these decisions are made. Perhaps the most important question of all is, "when mistakes are made and innocent lives are lost, who is held accountable?" I think more transparency, accountability and a stronger legal framework needs to be built into this program.

AGGRESSIVE DRONE/CYBER WAR AND VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW - So when we are talking legal framework another important consideration is International Law. We started both our cyber and drone programs basically as intelligence gathering operations but both have now been weaponized and used in and on foreign countries, think Pakistan and Iran.  When you are violating a nation's airspace using drones to hunt some of their citizens down and assassinate them, then your actions could logically be seen as an act of war. The same could be said of cyber attacks that destroy large amounts of critical data or do real damage like destroying the Iranian centrifuges or shutting down electrical grids. As more nations follow our example by developing and aggressively deploying these type of weapons it is likely that real war will result. 

COLLATERAL DAMAGE AND BLOW BACK - If real war resulting from a nation violating another's sovereignty with cyber or drone weapons isn't enough, there are other types of collateral damage. Right now whole sections of Pakistan are being terrorized and traumatized by our drones. Contrary to the administration's claims drone attacks do kill innocent noncombatants. For each innocent mother, father or child killed how many new terrorists will be be born? When you project out ten or twenty years the blow back from our use of drones could be substantial.

NON STATE ACTORS - Drone technology is not rocket science. In it's most basic form, think radio controlled model airplanes or helicopters. If memory serves, the prototype for one our most successful drones was built by an engineer in his garage using predominately off the shelf parts. The take away, is that non state actors, like terrorists, could soon be using forms of drone technology. The same is obviously true of cyber war. As drones and robots become a bigger part of modern society new opportunities for terrorists will  present themselves. Think of the potential of Google's self driving cars, imagine self driving car bombs.

Don't get me wrong drone and cyber weapons are the future. The drones weapons of today are going to look like Model Ts in just a few years. We desperately need to start discussing the appropriate use of these weapons within our own country and throughout the world before something dreadful happens. This is why I believe that Rand Paul  and Ron Wyden, the only Democrat to join the filibuster, have done us a great service. They have begun an important dialogue on this most secret subject but it is only the start.

Update: I've just read the most interesting article on this subject. Have a look.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/when-the-whole-world-has-drones-20130321?page=1?mrefid=skybox

Update: Attorney General Eric Holder has admitted, in a letter to Congress, that the U.S. has killed four Americans with drone strikes.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57585776/attorney-general-holder-drones-killed-4-americans-since-2009/

JOIN THE GREEN REVOLUTION!

When you think of the "Green Revolution" I'll bet that something like this cartoon comes to mind, sort of barbarians at the gate. Or perhaps you picture groups of old hippies coming out of the Cascadian wilderness to protest pipelines and stand in front of coal trains. A "Green Rebellion" in a nonviolent, obstructionist, pain in the rear kind of way. Even if you are sympathetic to our cause you most likely think it's pretty much a waste of time and if you aren't sympathetic then it just looks like another left wing special interest group trying to kill jobs and slow progress. These views are quite understandable considering who owns the media in this country but allow me to share with you an alternative vision of the "Green Revolution."

THE GREAT DISRUPTION - The engine that is driving the "Green Revolution" isn't a group of old hippies, or Greenpeace, or the Sierra Club, it is Mother Nature in the form of climate change. Oh sure, there are old Baby Boomers aplenty and literally  hundreds of organizations that are fighting to protect the environment but they aren't toppling governments, or causing hundreds of billions of dollars in storm and drought damage, or melting the polar ice caps, climate change is.  It's hard to believe that climate change may have caused the "Arab Spring." It didn't, by its self but it was a powerful contributing factor in the destabilizing of the Middle East. Check this article out:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/03/climate-change-secret-inflamer-arab-spring/4896/
As global warming continues to alter our climate we are going to experience economic and political disruption on a massive scale for the foreseeable future. The "Green Revolution" isn't causing this, it is in reaction to it. In my view, it is an effort to try come to terms with reality of global warming and the climate change it is causing.

THE GREEN REBELLION - When you turn on your TV or log on to your favorite news site this is the part of the "Green Revolution" you will see first, "the Rebellion," and for most folks this is all they will see. It is the war being fought to slow the damage we are doing to the planet and hasten our conversion to a green economy. The battles are fought locally but the struggle is global and it is being led by organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace just to mention two. It may seem, to the casual observer, that the "Green Rebellion" is anti growth but it is not an effort to stop progress, it is an attempt to redirect it into a green and more sustainable path. For instance, the idea is to stop the development of more fossil fuels like tar sands and lobby for more investment in renewable energy like wind and solar. This "Green Rebellion" is being fought in every corner of the globe and at times it seems impossible to stop the power of unrestrained capitalism and it's unquenchable need for cheap resources but as climate change progresses the strength of the "Rebellion" will grow.

BACK TO THE GREEN FUTURE - This is the part of the "Green Revolution" that I find most fascinating. It is the efforts of many everyday people to adjust to the difficult realities we are facing by taking old practices and technologies and updating them for use in modern times. For instance, the Farmer's Market, which completely disappeared from America after World War II, has been brought back to life in communities across our country. We can expect to see these markets expand as our globalized food distribution network gradually breaks down under the pressures of climate change and imported food stuffs become more expensive.  Many people are also becoming farmers, urban farmers, with sizable garden plots, fruit trees, honey bees, chickens, goats and community gardens. Wind mills and high speed trains would be high tech examples of old technology being updated to serve the "Green Revolution." I think you will see more of this kind of innovation as time passes.

THE AGE OF GREEN INNOVATION - We already can see that we are living an age of great creativity and innovation but the results of our inventions and ideas aren't always green or sustainable. This will continue to be true as climate change progresses but I believe, the power of the climate disruptions we will experience eventually will give us focus and more and more effort/dollars will be poured into green research. It's already starting to happen in the military which is becoming one of our leaders in green technology. Another reason for calling this the "Age of Green Innovation" is the law of unintended consequences which means that technologies, that weren't invented to be green can end up inadvertently helping to move the revolution forward. Telecommuting is taking million of cars off the roads worldwide but the invention of the personal computer and the internet wasn't intended to reduce air pollution. Hydraulic Fracking for natural gas is not very environmentally friendly yet the cheap gas it produces is putting the coal industry (the most polluting fossil fuel source) in the United States out of business. How's that for unintended consequences? I think that "Green Innovation is perhaps the most invisible part of the "Green Revolution" but the part that may be progressing the quickest.

GREEN ECONOMICS - This maybe the last part of the "Green Revolution" to emerge but when it does it will be the turning point in our battle with climate change. At the heart of our problem is that raw unrestrained capitalism does not pay for the damage it does to the environment, just take a look at China. To turn the corner in our struggle with climate change we must support new ways of doing business like using "Feed in Tariffs" to democratize the electrical grid, a "Carbon Tax" or a "Cap and Trade" system to help slow down  air pollution, "Impact Investing," "Socially Responsible Investing" and most of all we must nurture the emergence of a new sustainable capitalist model of economics. This is going to be hard! The rich, who control our present day carbon based economy are not going to give up what has worked so well for them in the past but climate change isn't going away either. The outcome of this struggle will determine our future. I believe that this change has already begun as corporations are finding that going green is sound economically and that consumers a very interested in buying green products from ecologically responsible companies.

THE LEFT BEHIND - This is the sad part of the "Green Revolution," those that it leaves behind. There are billions of people on the planet who have little choice in how they will deal with climate change, it will just be about survival. There is no telling how things are all going to work out but there is the potential for massive loss of life and many countries becoming essentially ungovernable. There are other communities and individuals that can do a lot to fight global warming and climate change, of those some will join the "Green Revolution" while others will oppose it. Just like in the Industrial Revolution those who embrace the "Green Revolution" will be more likely to prosper in our new  climate change driven world. Those who can't or won't adjust to the new realities that we are facing will be left behind trying to compete with increasingly inefficient technologies and out dated ideas. 

JOIN US - So join us! It is the defining struggle of our age and it's just beginning. It is the 800 pound guerrilla in the room that we just want to close our eyes and have go away, "The Inconvenient Truth" Al Gore keeps talking about. Here's the bottom line, climate change is the force behind the "Green Revolution" and it will not stop until we create a green and sustainable economy, fundamentally altering the way we do business and live our lives. You can join us in our struggle to create a greener more livable and sustainable world or you can watch it pass you by. There are many ways you can help but the choice is yours!

Greenpeace

Sierra Club

350.org

GLOBAL WARMING: LAKE EFFECTS!

This cartoon is about an effect of global warming that never occurred to me, the record low levels of water in  Lakes Huron and Michigan. The other Great Lakes and the Mississippi River are also suffering from extremely low levels of water. It's already started to curtail barge traffic on the Mississippi and shipping on the Great Lakes. 

Prepare yourselves, I think we will see many things, in the coming years because of climate change, that we would never have expected in our life times. Global Climate Change isn't just an inconvenient theory, it's here, now and we will suffer the consequences. The only question that remains is "Will we learn from the experience and change our behavior, our economy and our relationship with nature?" On that question the jury is still out.

Take a look at this post on CNN about the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, it's an eye opener.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/13/us/great-lakes-low-water/

So what do you think? Will we learn and if so what and when?

PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH?

Aristotle said that "We make war that we may live in peace." This concept is as familiar to modern men as it was to the ancients and I believe that it has been driving much of our foreign policy and military spending since World War II. It's sort of the "Peace Through Strength Doctrine" and it just seems to make sense but the questions I'd like to ask are "Does it work and if not, Why doesn't it work?" Are powerful nations at peace more of the time than weaker less militaristic ones? Is our "Peace Through Strength Doctrine" really just another form of winning through intimidation, call it "Peace Through Intimidation?"

To explore the first question I think we should begin by examining Israel, the Mighty Mouse of modern nation states. Don't let it's small size fool you, man for man it may have the most capable army and air force in the world. It also has nuclear weapons and an intelligence service that is second to none. It has, on more than one occasion, defeated the armies of all of it's neighbors at the same time. No country in their right mind would pick a fight with Israel, yet for all it's power it has no peace. You might, rightly respond that Israel's situation and history are much too complicated to be reduced to such a simplistic discussion and that would be my point exactly. How nations live with their neighbors is complicated and can change over time. Simply building a big military may in one situation help a nation to establish a stable peaceful relationship with it's neighboring countries but in another situation or at another time the same military build up could provoke war. 

Having brought the basic concept of "Peace Through Strength" into question I'd like to propose a four reasons why I think it does not work:

Provocation - Nations like people have personalities. Some are secure, some are not. If your country is close to a nation that is worried or perhaps a little paranoid about it's survival then a military build up on your part may provoke attack. Think of how the Israelis have moved so aggressively to destroy the nuclear programs of both Iraq and Syria. They are now threatening to do the same thing to Iran. 

Temptation - The leaders of a nation are human and can succumb to the temptation to use military power when a wiser course of action is available.  Lets say that a difficult confrontation occurs between two nations. When one nation knows that it is so strong that it can easily win a military conflict with the other then there is a big temptation for the stronger nation to through it's weight around, and there is no finer example of this than the United States of America. I'm 61 years old and I can't remember all of the coups, policing actions, invasions, interventions and air strikes that we've carried out worldwide over the years, not to mention our full blown wars. It's my personal belief that our second Iraq War fits into this category. It's kind of a case of excessive strength leading to a form of bullying.

Human Resistance - War is won in the will. Since our "Peace through Strength Doctrine" often boils down to a game of intimidation then it is wise to remember that attempts to intimidate people or nations can backfire.  The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was clearly an attempt to cower the United States that didn't work out so well. We've all seen the kid who stands up to the schoolyard bully even though he knows he's going to take a beating and there are leaders who are so determined that they can not be be intimidated, think of Hitler or Bin Laden.

Financial Exhaustion - Waging war and preparing for war are expensive, very expensive! It is possible to create military forces of such a large size and to use them with such regularity that you bankrupt your own country. Perhaps the best example of this, in recent history, is the former Soviet Union. It built one of the world's  most formidable armies during World War II and then entered into an arms race with the United States, called the "Cold War", that lasted for over forty years. In 1989 it began to collapse, by 1991 it was all over and much of the reason for the fall of the Soviet Union was due to trying to maintain a military that their economy couldn't support. Since 9/11/2001 I think we've been on a similar path.

Teddy Roosevelt said "Walk softly but carry a big stick." Well our stick is the size of a giant redwood tree and we've exhausted ourselves trying to use it to beat Afghanistan and Iraq into ant hills. We were provoked by Bin Laden into starting the war in Afghanistan and tempted by our own strength into starting the war in Iraq. In the last twelve years we've suffered two recessions, one of which was nearly a depression and the world economy is still in trouble, yet our Defense Budget is by far and away the world's largest, dwarfing China's. Since World War II we've seen our concept of "Peace Through Strength" degenerate into a doctrine of "Winning Through Intimidation"  and now we're approaching the point of financial exhaustion. Isn't it time to reexamine this old "Cold War Era" idea that we must be so strong that we can police every conflict and intimidate the entire world? 

UPDATE: Here's the top ten list of big military spenders:
http://247wallst.com/2013/06/27/countries-spending-the-most-on-the-military/

SEQUESTRATION: THE CARPET BOMBING OF OUR ECONOMY!

Do you remember the term "Carpet Bombing"? It comes from World War Two and the Vietnam War when the planes would fly over the battlefield and just lay down a blanket of bombs. There was no precise targeting, they destroyed pretty much everything. Well we are about to experience the economic equivalent of carpet bombing, it's called "Sequestration." I don't know where they came up with that name but it boils down to  1.2 trillion dollars in across the board cuts to all agencies of the Federal Government except for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, food stamps and federal retirement programs. 

Now, if you are of the Tea Party persuasion then this probably sounds pretty sensible but here's the problem, it will cost us about 2.14 million jobs at a time when we have record high unemployment and an economy that is just starting to get it's head above water. Sequestration is also like "carpet bombing" in that it does not make targeted cuts. Every program gets an equal percent cut, good, bad or indifferent, they all will get whacked.

If we are going to fix our long term debt problems we need to do three things and we need to do them in a certain order and a precise way.

Step 1  "Restore Robust Growth" and bring down unemployment drastically. This can be done by spending money on updating and rebuilding our infrastructure, expanding educational opportunities and converting as much of our power grid as we can to renewable energy. If restoring growth is not done first, then we will be taking the path of Greece, Spain and England who all made massive cuts to government spending and promptly slid into recession or in the case of Greece and Spain, depression. Oh, and by the way had their debt problems increased at the same time.

Step 2 "Reform the Programs That Are Really Causing Our Debt Problems." Of all the programs that are at the heart of our debt problems only Defense is included in the Sequestration cuts. I'm no fan of the Defense budget but if we are going to fix the problem we need to work on all programs that are  causing it.

Step 3  "Cuts Must Be Precise And Well Thought Out." All these cuts and reforms effect peoples lives, the stability of our economy and the security of our country we should really think about what we're doing not just use automatic, indiscriminate cuts to slash and burn our way to a balanced budget.

So that brings me back to how the Sequestration cuts are like "Carpet Bombing?" Simply put, they are both automatic, indiscriminate, frighteningly destructive and create a lot of collateral damage. Did I hear someone yell "INCOMING"?

So what do you think? Will Congress act before we carpet bomb our economy back into recession or could that be precisely what the Tea Party Republicans want to do?