Source: http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/17/the-first-war-on-terror
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Dr. Anne Pusey: The Leakey Foundation
Dr. Anne Pusey: The Leakey Foundation2010 marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Louis Leakey sending Jane Goodall to Gombe Stream, in Tanzania, to begin her groundbreaking study of chimpanzees in the wild. The chimpanzee behavioral research she pioneered there has produced a wealth of scientific discovery. This significant and vital part of scientific history will be celebrated by The Leakey Foundation, in partnership with the California Academy of Sciences. Anne Pusey, former Director of Jane Goodall Institute's Center for Primate Studies, will discuss this important project, which spans 50 years and is still running today.
Dr. Pusey reviews how the Gombe study has revealed the basic structure of chimpanzee society, the nature of social relationships within and between the sexes, life history patterns, and how these resemble and differ from those of humans.
Despite 50 years of study, chimpanzees are slow to give up their secrets and continue to surprise us. Pusey will discuss how long-term data, coupled with new technologies, have facilitated investigations of previously intractable questions and how new observations of unexpected behavior continually generate new questions.
The evening is illustrated with rarely seen archival photographs, video and recent stories of the Gombe chimpanzees.
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700
Location: San Francisco, CA, California Academy of Sciences, California Academy of Sciences
Program and discussion: http://fora.tv/2010/10/15/Dr_Anne_Pusey_The_Leakey_Foundation
Source: http://fora.tv/2010/10/15/Dr_Anne_Pusey_The_Leakey_Foundation
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Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell 'Appalling,' Panders to Radical Left
By Illinois Family Institute
Congress votes undermine the troops by pandering to the radical Left and their social agenda...
Illinois Family Institute is appalled by the lame duck Congress -- including our own U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk for their vote to homosexualize our nation's Armed Forces.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Senate voted 65-to-31 to ignore our military history and traditional morality regarding sexuality and allow those who self-identify as homosexual to serve openly in the armed forces. Illinois' junior Senator Mark Kirk, along with Republican Senators Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Scott Brown (Massachusetts), and retiring Senator George Voinovich (Ohio) broke rank with their party on this fundamental issue of common sense, sexual morality and national security and instead cast their votes for a radical political agenda that will undermine our Armed Forces.
Senate Republicans made a vow not to vote on "Don't Ask Don't Tell" until the budget was resolved. In doing so, they not only have put radical homosexual political interests above fiscal interests but also have put our troops at risk during wartime. Furthermore, they have broken trust with the people.
The Pentagon's own study revealed that nearly two-thirds of those serving believe the repeal would have some negative or significant negative effects. Twenty-four percent of service members said they would leave or seriously consider leaving the military if "Don't Ask Don't Tell" were repealed.
In November the American people told Washington they wanted change in the policies and practices of their elected officials. Instead, Congress has gone full-tilt toward "business as usual," pushing extreme special interest agendas instead of the issues on the minds of working families. The American people were not demanding this type of legislation -- it is being forced upon us, thanks in large part to a very well financed homosexual lobby.
Yet government leaders are not listening to the men and women in uniform. Gambling with our national security over political correctness is not an American value voters support.
Source: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/repeal-of-don-t-ask-don-t-tell-appalling-panders-to-radical-left
Teen Boy Kills 7-Year-Old Then Pulls Trigger on Himself
A Macon, Ga., teen shot to death a 7-year-old boy his mother had been babysitting before turning the gun on himself.
Vonn Gibbons Jr., 19, was at his mother's home as she cared for Jalen Griffin. Gibbons, for no apparent reason, decided to fatally shoot Griffin in the head, then shoot himself in the chest.
Both boys were killed instantly.
Gibbon's mother, Cheryl Cole (pictured above, center), told police she was asleep and didn't hear the gunshots. The distraught mom also claimed she was totally unaware that her son even kept a gun in her home.
Investigators are speculating why Gibbons shot the young boy intentionally, but so far there is no motive. Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones told WMAZ-TV:
"We have no idea as to why. We probably will never get the answers, the truth about this. We just don't know."
Reportedly, Gibbons and the boy were close friends despite the age difference, they played together all the time. Gibbons attended Macon State College and managed to maintain good grades.
Meanwhile, Cole, too, is puzzled about the killings and struggling to come to grips with what happened. She was questioned by police for more than two hours before being allowed to return to her home. "I just want my baby back," said the inconsolable mother.
Autopsies are being conducted on both bodies. Macon police will continue to investigate the shootings.
Watch the tragedy here:
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Source: http://www.bvblackspin.com/2010/12/20/teen-boy-kills-7-year-old-then-pulls-trigger-on-himself/
Popularity of 'Don't Ask' Repeal May Have Drawn Republican Votes
Some Republicans seemed to conclude they might have been taking on some measure of risk by voting to perpetuate a policy that a clear majority of the public wanted to see repealed.
Haley Barbour Explains He Wasn't Praising Racist Group
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour explains that he wasn't really praising a racist group even though he appeared to be doing just that in an interview with a Weekly Standard writer. He also feels the pain of African Americans in the past.
Wonderland and the World of Caregiving
Sherri Snelling reveals four simple steps to prevent stress and burnout when the time comes to care for your aging parents
Sherri Snelling | 11/10/2010 12:00 am
"Good grief, I’m turning into my mother!" As the boomer generation ages, that concept is an increasingly common reality as more and more of us start to face an unsettling new phase: beecoming a parent to our parents. Welcome to your next stop ? wonderland and the world of caregiving.
According to the latest statistics from the National Alliance for Caregiving, more than 65 million Americans provide care to a loved one who has a chronic illness, a physical or mental disability, or is just "aging in place." Sixty-eight percent of these caregivers are women. In fact, the typical caregiver is a 48-year-old woman caring for her 70-year-old mother.
While women are commonly the nurturers in our ...
Social Entrepreneur Series: Kiva's Premal Shah
Social Entrepreneur Series: Kiva's Premal ShahKiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe. Kiva combines technology with social issues in a way that allows mass participation in facilitating solutions. It allows grass root support for the financing of social alleviation projects and has generated extraordinary excitement and more than $100 million in small online loans that are reimbursed if the donor requests such an outcome.
"What bummed me out was that microfinance is such a great tool to alleviate poverty and that there is a shortage of capital -- but that there is no way for the average guy in the U.S. to invest in microfinance."
For more information, visit: http://www.kiva.org/
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800
Location: San Francisco, CA, Commonwealth Club of California, Commonwealth Club
Program and discussion: http://fora.tv/2010/12/08/Social_Entrepreneur_Series_Kivas_Premal_Shah
Source: http://fora.tv/2010/12/08/Social_Entrepreneur_Series_Kivas_Premal_Shah
BRISTOL PALIN BUDGET BUDGETS AND BUDGETING BUSH ADMINISTRATION
Monday, December 20, 2010
The American Nightmare: DREAM Act Fails in the Senate
"Our friends and our family are always telling us not to do it," said Francisco Gutierrez, 18, a Georgetown University student who moved to the United States from Mexico when he was 3 and recently revealed his illegal status while advocating for the passage of the DREAM Act. "I tell them we can't be fearful anymore. We can't live our lives afraid that there's always something going to happen to us just because we are undocumented."
Unfortunately, Mr. Gutierrez and dozens of other students who bravely revealed their status now face being found and deported, after the controversial bill buckled under the weight of a GOP filibuster in the Senate.
Introduced, but later denounced by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in 2001, the DREAM Act would allow students who entered the United States illegally before the age of 16 to apply for Legal Permanent Residency, after meeting several qualifications such as having a clean criminal record and completing either two years of college or military service.
In the current volatile political landscape that includes the passage of Arizona's strict immigration law, SB 1070, though, Hatch is now suddenly concerned with what the voters might think:
"The American people want the government to secure our borders, create jobs and reduce the deficit." Hatch said. "Instead, Senate leadership is insisting on ignoring the will of the people and holding our troops hostage by cynically pushing a defense bill chock-full of controversial measures to score cheap political points with its liberal base."
The other "cheap" issue Hatch is referring to is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which after 17 years of forcing gay and lesbian troops to hide their sexual orientation, has been repealed by a vote of 65-31 in the Senate.
It is gravely ironic that the historic moment came on the day that thousands of undocumented youth's dreams were shattered.
Approved by a slight majority of 216-198 in the U.S. House last December 8th, the Dream Act was supported by a broad array of national organizations and individuals, including President Barack Obama, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, AFL-CIO, Service Employees International Union, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Such strong support, though, did not weaken the convictions of Republicans who have referred to the bill as a "bail-out for illegal children" and "the gateway to amnesty."
Immigrant rights groups said they planned to turn up the pressure on the Obama administration to slow deportations and end local police enforcement of immigration laws. Students also said they planned to fight for immigrant benefits - though it's not legalization - locally as they've seen anti-illegal immigration activists do to pass tougher enforcement measures in states like Arizona.
"This is a movement," said Nancy Meza, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant and college graduate who wore a University of California, Los Angeles sweatshirt as she watched the televised vote. "We don't have lobbyists and paid staff. It's a movement by students."
President Obama said after the vote that he would continue pushing for the DREAM Act and other steps toward immigration reform:
"It is disappointing that common sense did not prevail today," he said in a statement. "But my administration will not give up on the DREAM Act or on the important business of fixing our broken immigration system."
I emphatically believe that if someone has the courage to make it to this country seeking better opportunities for themselves and their children, they should be allowed to become citizens after the legalization process. They should be afforded the full protection of the United States of America throughout this process, and at its conclusion, have the identical rights and responsibilities as U.S.-born citizens.
This situation, however, needs to be addressed honestly.
There is crime sneaking over the border, there are illegal immigrants abusing our tax system and the Hispanic/Latino community needs to speak out as passionately on these issues as they do about the DREAM Act.
For example, Arizona taxpayers pay out $1.3 billion annually to cover the education, health care and incarceration costs of illegal immigrants, and that does not include the cost of burying those individuals who die attempting to cross the border or the exorbitant cost of investigating and determining their identities.
With our economy in the shambles that it's in, I can understand the need to grasp at something, anything that could possibly reduce our deficit. In Los Angeles it is easier for a Hispanic person to find employment because they speak Spanish, which leaves the probability of other minorities finding employment extremely slim. This development has escalated tension and created animosity towards the Hispanic community, and threatens the tenuous peace that is never far from shattering.
There is encouraging diversity, but there is also pandering for votes, and the political powers that be are veering dangerously close to the latter. While it is true that the parents of these students must ultimately be held accountable for placing their children in a percarious situation, threatening to deport students to countries that they don't remember, to a way of life they have never known, is unnecessarily cruel.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and African-Americans must rally around this issue as well. We, as a people, have also faced persecution and marginalization in this country after being brought here illegally, and Malcolm X's words on April 3, 1964 in his legendary speech "Ballot or the Bullet" still hold true today.
Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now.
As Dreamers take to the streets chanting and crying, threatening continued sit-ins and hunger strikes, the failure of the DREAM Act has forced us once again to re-examine our core values. It is also forcing us to re-define what exactly "Home of the Free" means and how much that freedom costs taxpayers.
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Source: http://www.bvblackspin.com/2010/12/20/the-american-nightmare-dream-act-fails-in-the-senate/
The Art of the Second Act (Photos)
Sybil Sage finds a new career in pique assiette, the French mosaic style that loosely translates to ‘broken plates’
Culture | 11/11/2010 4:00 pm
For years, Sybil Sage has been collecting plates featuring unusual patterns, including Warhol Campbell soup cans, the London Metro map, and musical instruments. Using nippers, she creates tiny shards and combines them with handmade tiles, glass gems, mirrors, to create elegant collectibles. For more information, visit www.sybilsage.com
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To read more of Sybil’s story, and Lily Tomlin’s view of these unique mosaics, click here
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To read more of Sybil’s story, and Lily Tomlin’s view of these unique mosaics, click here
To Keep Or Not To Keep?
Brooks Riley on shedding sentimentality and decluttering your life
BrooksRiley | 11/16/2010 12:00 am
At a certain age, my mother said, "I don’t envy you children having to deal with all this after I’m gone." She was referring to the lifelong accumulation of belongings that occupied the large house where she lived alone after my father died. The question of "sizing down" never occurred to her. She assumed, correctly, that she would live out the rest of her life in that house, with all those belongings.
Not all of her "stuff," as George Carlin and rest of us call the things we keep, was accumulated by her. Some of it was brought by my father from faraway places he had lived in his youth. Some of it came from the many Southern generations that had preceded my mother, such as our mahogany dining ...
Source: http://www.wowowow.com/life/keep-size-down-your-stuff-organize-hoard-shed-brooks-riley-510913
HOUSE REPUBLICANS HOUSING AND REAL ESTATE HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT HOWARD DEAN
Environmental Watchdogs Confused By E-Waste Practices
retroworks writes with a California-centric story that might have parallels in other states, too: "The Sacramento Bee digs further into the controversy over E-Waste exports, and finds that environmental watchdogs doth protest too much. Remember how we were all urged to use a 'Pledge' Signing company to properly recycle our old computers and televisions? Remember how companies which didn't 'Pledge' were accused of exporting toxic poisons by groups like Basel Action Network? The Bee's Tom Knudson discovered that some of the loudest Pledge recycling companies used the exact same exporting brokers as BAN was attacking as 'worst actors.' One California firm exported 6.9 million pounds of raw electronics through the same export market which the environmental 'watchdog' attacked earlier this year... Whether or not the export market was ok to begin with, or continues to be unacceptable, the watchdogs still want to be the experts of who is the best 'e-waste' recycling company. Credibility, RIP."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
No Senate vote seen this year on EPA carbon rules
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation imposing a two-year pause on Environmental Protection Agency regulation of carbon dioxide pollution from smokestacks appeared to be dead for this year as Senator John Rockefeller accused Republicans on Friday of withholding their needed support. 
Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/Reuters/PoliticsNews/~3/phIDNekf8KE/idUSTRE6BF5YG20101218
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Sunday, December 19, 2010
One Last Ride On The 2010 Economic Roller Coaster
As the year winds down, most employers still aren't feeling confident enough to hire more workers. Banks are continuing to foreclose on legions of home owners. �But the year wasn't all bad; profits rose, stock prices perked up and U.S. automakers survived.
The Zipper Club
On Larry King's final show last night, Tom Shales notes there was "a fleeting bit of embarrassment" involving the term "zipper club."
King noted that he and Bill Clinton, who was a guest via satellite, "were both members of that fanciful aggregation, an unfortunate reference considering that, earlier, Ryan Seacrest had clumsily asked King whether the fly on his trousers had a zipper or buttons."
King belatedly explained that the "zipper club" is for men who've had open-heart surgery. "I'm glad you clarified that," Clinton said, with a forgiving smile.
King noted that he and Bill Clinton, who was a guest via satellite, "were both members of that fanciful aggregation, an unfortunate reference considering that, earlier, Ryan Seacrest had clumsily asked King whether the fly on his trousers had a zipper or buttons."
King belatedly explained that the "zipper club" is for men who've had open-heart surgery. "I'm glad you clarified that," Clinton said, with a forgiving smile.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PoliticalWire/~3/09pm-seoJ4w/the_zipper_club.html
FarmHack celebrates ?resourceful farming with found materials?
by Bonnie Azab Powell.
Farming is not a career path for people who want to get rich. Sixty percent of small farms in America have sales of under $10,000 a year [PDF], and survive because someone in the family has an off-farm job.
Young farmers in particular have to pinch their pennies hard. Fortunately, the field attracts tinkerers, makers, and make-doers—and now they’ve begun open-sourcing their inventions on FarmHack, a blog about “Resourceful Farming with Found Materials” recently launched by the Young Farmers Coalition.
On it, you’ll find a Google Sketchup drawing for a cultivating tractor mod, a “slaughter chic” mailbox kill cone, recycled burlap coffee-bean sacks as path mulching material, a broken trampoline turned pastured chicken coop, and a project for those cheap-o Costco cups:
What did you do with all those cups you and your guests used at that farm party last night? I know, I know, you used mason jars and your responsible party going friends brought mugs. At the right point in the spring, the iconic red plastic cup is perfect for potting up plants such as tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, etc. Just drill a few holes in the bottom, put in some compost and potting soil, and transplant the start. They are relatively cheap and if you are gentle with them you can use them year after year. When you are done with the cups they can be recycled.
Related Links:
Feeding our wood stove in winter
Young farmers need help from the USDA—and the next Farm Bill
Source: http://feeds.grist.org/click.phdo?i=c9fbd594490e2c4c50829844ce7d3ed4
GERALDINE FERRARO GERRY CONNOLLY GINNY BROWN-WAITE GLENN BECK
Wyden Could Miss Votes Due to Surgery
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) will undergo surgery on Monday for early-stage prostate cancer, the New York Times reports, "potentially denying Democrats a crucially needed vote at the end of an extremely busy lame-duck session."
Said Wyden: "I scheduled the surgery for the Monday before Christmas anticipating that the Senate would have recessed by that time and that there would be no disruption to my work in Oregon or Washington. However it now appears that I will be missing votes tomorrow and possibly next week while I prepare and undergo this procedure. I expect to be back to work full-time when the Senate reconvenes in January."
Said Wyden: "I scheduled the surgery for the Monday before Christmas anticipating that the Senate would have recessed by that time and that there would be no disruption to my work in Oregon or Washington. However it now appears that I will be missing votes tomorrow and possibly next week while I prepare and undergo this procedure. I expect to be back to work full-time when the Senate reconvenes in January."
Mr. wOw Considers Contentious Interviews
While liberals Maddow and Stewart bicker, W. stands firm on pro- book-buying stance
Mr. Wow | 11/14/2010 11:15 am
Mr. wOw has had big headaches recently. So big he has not been able to wrap his head around certain current events.�
Bad movies I’ve caught on cable haven’t helped.� I enjoy a good bad movie ? "Showgirls," "Valley of the Dolls," or "Secret Ceremony." But sitting through crap like "The Box" and "The Lovely Bones" just about did me in. "The Box" was simply sadistic. The low point for Cameron Diaz. "The Lovely Bones" left me screaming with frustration and with a new loathing of CGI. (I understand Source: http://www.wowowow.com/pov/mr-wow-contentious-interviews-jon-stewart-rachel-maddow-bill-oreilly-george-w-bush-lovely-bones-cameron-diaz-511624
CONDOLEEZZA RICE CONGRESS CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE
Mythbusting: Cheap food does not equal higher quality of life
by Tom Philpott.
For decades, the federal government has watched idly while a few gigantic companies grabbed ever-greater control of the food industry. As big players gobble smaller ones, they concentrate power at the top of the food chain—and apply relentless pressure to cut costs, giving rise to many of the things I hate about the food system. Workers, farmers, the environment, animals, public health—all get abused so that mega-retailers like Walmart, meat producers like Smithfield, and corn processors like Cargill can keep costs down while profitably selling cheap food.
Well, in a sharp break from its predecessors, the Obama Justice Department is actually acknowledging the problem and contemplating actually doing something about it. The DOJ has been holding public meetings to let players in the food system air out thier views on the issue.
I will be very surprised—and very pleasantly so—if anything substantial comes of the exercise. But it’s fascinating to watch it play out.
Over on Eclectic Edibles, blogger Shwankie found an interesting tidbit while watching the C-Span feed of recent hearings in D.C. Apparently, a representative from the Food Marketing Institute got to mouthing the food industry’s main defense of consolidation: that it benefits U.S. consumers by allowing us to spend less on food as a percentage of income than the citizens of any other country in the world.
Comparing U.S. consumers’ food expenditures to those of the French and Spanish, the flack concluded that our tightly consolidated food industry is serving us a higher “quality of life” along with all the burgers and frozen dinners.
Shwankie very smartly shredded that assertion by coming up with a little chart comparing food expenditures and various diet-related troubles among the United States, France, and Spain. She didn’t give her data sources, so I felt uncomfortable reprinting her chart. Inspired by her, I came up with my own version. I threw Germany into the mix, just to broaden the sample.
Now, correlation does not prove causation. But if the food industry wants to claim that its abundance of cheap crap delivers higher quality of life, it will have to explain why our citizens come down with diet-related maladies at rates so much higher than those in countries where food is pricier. For most of us, “quality of life” does not dovetail with gaining too much weight, getting diabetes, and dying of a heart attack.
I added to my chart a metric not found in Shwankie’s post: the United Nations’ “Gini index” of income inequality. That’s my tribute to U.K. researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, whose book The Spirit Level: Why Equality Makes Societies Stronger has been blowing my mind.
If the food-industry rep is probably dead wrong that cheap food increases quality of life, Wilkinson and Pickett point to a factor that actually seems to: income equality. Below, find their chart tracking income equality against a broad quality-of-life index.
To me, cheap food underpins our highly inequitable income system. If we’re going to have a large low-income class, a perpetually squeezed middle class, and a small caste of super-rich, then a cheap food system plays a vital role in keeping those at the bottom fed—if under-nourished.
Wilkinson and Pickett’s inequality work has provided me with a new way of looking at food-system reform. It may be that that a food system predicated on slashing costs—at the expense of the environment, workers, animals, and public health—is a symptom of a broader problem: an economic system that concentrates power and income at the top. It may well be that we can’t really reform the food system until we reform the economy. That’s an idea I’ll be mulling and teasing out in the new year.
Related Links:
Increasing consumer demand in China won’t save us
Sorry, McWilliams, the New York Times got the USDA cheese story right
Food justice: It’s not black and white in Detroit
Source: http://feeds.grist.org/click.phdo?i=93b6f341dd59f0d496a5782726cb7162
Saturday, December 18, 2010
If efficiency hasn?t cut energy use, then what?
by Charles Komanoff.
One of the most penetrating critiques of energy-efficiency dogma you’ll ever read is in this week’s New Yorker (yes, the New Yorker). “The efficiency dilemma,” by David Owen, has this provocative subtitle: “If our machines use less energy, will we just use them more?” Owen’s answer is a resounding, iconoclastic, and probably correct Yes.
Owen’s thesis is that as a society becomes more energy-efficient, it becomes downright inefficient not to use more. The pursuit of efficiency is smart for individuals and businesses but a dead end for energy and climate policy.
This idea isn’t wholly original. It’s known as the Jevons paradox, and it has a 150-year history of provoking bursts of discussion before being repressed from social consciousness. What Owen adds to the thread is considerable, however: a fine narrative arc; the conceptual feat of elevating the paradox from the micro level, where it is rebuttable, to the macro, where it is more robust; a compelling case study; and the courage to take on energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins. Best of all, Owen offers a way out: raising fuel prices via energy taxes.
Thirty-five years ago, when the energy industry first ridiculed efficiency as a return ticket to the Dark Ages, it was met with a torrent of smart ripostes like the Ford Foundation’s landmark “A Time to Choose” report—a well-thumbed copy of which adorns my bookshelf. Since then, the cause of energy efficiency has rung up one triumph after another: refrigerators have tripled in thermodynamic efficiency, energy-guzzling incandescent bulbs have been booted out of commercial buildings, and developers of trophy properties compete to rack up LEEDS points denoting low-energy design and operation.
Yet it’s difficult to see that these achievements have had any effect on slowing the growth in energy use. U.S. electricity consumption in 2008 was double that of 1975, and overall energy consumption was up by 38 percent. True, during this time U.S. population grew by 40 percent, but we also outsourced much of our manufacturing to Asia. In any case, efficiency, the assertedly immense resource that lay untapped in U.S. basements, garages, and offices, was supposed to slash per capita energy use, not just keep it from rising. Why hasn’t it? And what does that say for energy and climate policy?
A short form of the Jevons paradox, and a good entry point for discussing it, is the “rebound effect”—the tendency to employ more of something when efficiency has effectively cut its cost. The rebound effect is a staple of transportation analysis, in two separate forms. One is the rebound in gallons of gas consumed when fuel efficiency standards have reduced the fuel cost to drive a mile. The other is the rebound from the reduction in car trips after imposition of a road toll, now that the drop in traffic has made it possible to cover the same ground in less time.
Rebound effect one turns out to be small. As UC-Irvine economics professor Ken Small has shown, no more than 20 percent of the gasoline savings from improved engine efficiency have been lost to the tendency to drive more miles—and much less in the short term. Rebound effect two is more significant and becoming more so, as time increasingly trumps money in the decision-making of drivers, at least better-off ones.
Rebound effects, then, vary in magnitude from one sector to another. They can be tricky to analyze, as Owen unwittingly demonstrated in an ill-considered 2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing congestion pricing, “How traffic jams help the environment.” He wrote:
If reducing [congestion via a toll] merely makes life easier for those who drive, then the improved traffic flow can actually increase the environmental damage done by cars, by raising overall traffic volume, encouraging sprawl and long car commutes.
Not so, as I wrote in “Paradox, schmaradox. Congestion pricing works”:
When the reduction in traffic is caused by a congestion charge, life is not just easier for those who continue driving but more costly as well. Yes, there’s a seesaw between price effects and time effects, but setting the congestion price at the right point will rebalance the system toward less driving, without harming the city’s economy.
More importantly, as Owen points out in his New Yorker piece, a narrow “bottom up” view—one that considers people’s decision-making in isolated realms of activity one-by-one—tends to miss broader rebound effects. On the face of it, doubling the efficiency of clothes washers and dryers shouldn’t cause the amount of laundering to rise more than slightly. But consider: 30 years ago, an urban family of four would have used the washer-dryer in the basement or at the laundromat, forcing it to “conserve” drying to save not just quarters but time traipsing back and forth. Since then, however, efficiency gains have enabled manufacturers to make washer-dryers in apartment sizes. We own one, and find ourselves using it for “spot” situations—emergencies that aren’t really emergencies, small loads for the item we “need” for tomorrow—that add more than a little to our total usage. And who’s to say that the advent of cheap and rapid laundering hasn’t contributed to the long-term rise in fashion-consumption, with all it implies for increased energy use through more manufacturing, freight hauling, retailing, and advertising?
Owen offers his own big example. Interestingly, it’s not computers or other electronic devices. It’s cooling. In an entertaining and all-too-brief romp through a half-century of changing mores, he traces the evolution of refrigeration and its “fraternal twin,” air conditioning, from rare, seldom-used luxuries then, to ubiquitous, always-on devices today:
My parents’ [first fridge] had a tiny, uninsulated freezer compartment, which seldom contained much more than a few aluminum ice trays and a burrow-like mantle of frost ... The recently remodeled kitchen of a friend of mine contains an enormous side-by-side refrigerator, an enormous side-by-side freezer, and a drawer-like under-counter mini-fridge for beverages. And the trend has not been confined to households. As the ability to efficiently and inexpensively chill things has grown, so have opportunities to buy chilled things—a potent positive-feedback loop. Gas stations now often have almost as much refrigerated shelf space as the grocery stores of my early childhood; even mediocre hotel rooms usually come with their own small fridge (which, typically, either is empty or—if it’s a minibar—contains mainly things that don’t need to be kept cold), in addition to an icemaker and a refrigerated vending machine down the hall.
Air conditioning has a similar arc, ending with Owen’s observation that “access to cooled air is self-reinforcing: to someone who works in an air-conditioned office, an un-air-conditioned house quickly becomes intolerable, and vice versa.”
If Owen has a summation, it’s this:
All such increases in energy-consuming activity [driven by increased efficiency] can be considered manifestations of the Jevons paradox. Teasing out the precise contribution of a particular efficiency improvement isn’t just difficult, however; it may be impossible, because the endlessly ramifying network of interconnections is too complex to yield readily to empirical, mathematics-based analysis. [Emphasis mine.]
Defenders of efficiency will call “endlessly ramifying network” a cop out. I’d say the burden is on them to prove otherwise. Based on the aggregate energy data mentioned earlier, efficiency advocates have been winning the micro battles but losing the macro war. Through engineering brilliance and concerted political and regulatory advocacy, we have increased energy-efficiency in the small while the society around us has grown monstrously energy-inefficient and cancelled out those gains. Two steps forward, two steps back.
I wrote something roughly similar five years ago in a broadside against my old colleague, Amory Lovins:
[T]hough Amory has been evangelizing “the soft path” for thirty years, his handful of glittering successes have only evoked limited emulation. Why? Because after the price shocks of the 1970s, energy became, and is still, too darn cheap. It’s a law of nature, I’d say, or at least of Economics 101: inexpensive anything will never be conserved. So long as energy is cheap, Amory’s magnificent exceptions will remain just that. Thousands of highly-focused advocacy groups will break their hearts trying to fix the thousands of ingrained practices that add up to energy over-consumption, from tax-deductible mortgages and always-on electronics to anti-solar zoning codes and un-bikeable streets. And all the while, new ways to use energy will arise, overwhelming whatever hard-won reductions these Sisyphean efforts achieve.
I wrote that a day or two after inviting Lovins to endorse putting carbon or other fuel taxes front-and-center in energy advocacy. He declined, insisting that “technical efficiency” could be increased many-fold without taxing energy to raise its price. Of course it has, can, and will. But is technical efficiency enough? Owen asks us to consider whether a strategy centered on technical and regulatory measures to boost energy efficiency may be inherently unsuited for the herculean task of keeping coal and other fossil fuels safely locked in the ground.
I said earlier that Owen offers an escape from the Jevons paradox, and he does: “capping emissions or putting a price on carbon or increasing energy taxes.” It’s hardly a clarion call, and it’s not the straight carbon taxers’ line. But it’s a lifeline.
The veteran English economist Len Brookes told Owen:
When we talk about increasing energy efficiency, what we’re really talking about is increasing the productivity of energy. And, if you increase the productivity of anything, you have the effect of reducing its implicit price, because you get more return for the same money—which means the demand goes up.
The antidote to the Jevon paradox, then, is energy taxes. We can thank Owen not only for raising a critical, central question about energy efficiency, with potential ramifications for energy and climate policy, but for giving us a brief—an eloquent and powerful one—for a carbon tax.
Related Links:
Regional cap-and-trade advances
Ten affordable neighborhoods-in-progress will design to LEED-ND standards under grant program
Taxing carbon as part of responsible, progressive fiscal policy
Source: http://feeds.grist.org/click.phdo?i=250b31b867ca053c214a68635d116595
HOUSE REPUBLICANS HOUSING AND REAL ESTATE HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT HOWARD DEAN
Would you eat a fetus?
By Joseph Wales
Yes, it sounds crazy, but think about it for a moment. If a fetus isn't a person with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then why can't we just eat them?
So, if you believe killing fetuses is ok, why not consume them as well? It would be like having eggs for breakfast, or maybe veal.
If not, I'd like to know why.
Source: http://www.opposingviews.com/asks/would-you-eat-a-fetus/answers
Reader Comments: The Obama Tax Deal
A sampling of recent reader responses to President Obama's plan.
Source: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/reader-comments-the-obama-tax-deal/
Senate kicks off debate over US-Russia arms treaty
A new arms control treaty with Russia is essential for the United States to keep tabs on its rival's vast nuclear arsenal, backers of the pact said Wednesday as the Senate plunged into debate on President Barack Obama's top foreign policy priority.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40672067/ns/politics/
CINDY SHEEHAN CITIZENS UNITED CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION CIVIL UNIONS AND DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS
Friday, December 17, 2010
Great moments in subway cinema
We've gathered some of the best in classic subway scenes. "The Warriors," "Ghost," "Jacob's Ladder" and "Risky Business" remind us just how fun the train can be. Read Andrew O'Hehir's review of the latest subway movie, "The Taking of Pelham 123."
Source: http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/ifc/2009/06/12/vd_ifc/index.html
ALEX CASTELLANOS ALEXANDER HAIG ALEXI GIANNOULIAS ALVIN GREENE
Dow Diary: Flat as a Punctured Tire
Dear Diary,
I had a flat day. My performance was as flat as a tire that just ran over a nail. It was as flat as the world before Pythagoras and Eratosthenes. It was flat like a bottle of soda that sat open in the sun too long. It was flat like a bad karaoke singer. I'm talking pancake flat. Crepe flat. More flat than a British apartment.
Obama signed an extension of the Bush tax...
Source: http://www.observer.com/2010/dow-diary-flat-punctured-tire?utm_medium=partial-text&utm_campaign=home
Working Poor Take Home Less Pay With Tax Deal
Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama
Despite a tax cut compromise that is supposed to keep everyone whole financially, if not better off, 51 million households will face a higher tax bill or a lower refund compared with this year.
The main culprit: The proposed payroll tax break would not be as generous for many low- and middle-income households as the tax cut it is replacing.
The bill, which has passed the Senate and is set for a House vote on Thursday, would for one year reduce workers' Social Security taxes. Workers pay 6.2% on their first $106,800 of wages. The tax cut deal would reduce that to 4.2%.
That payroll tax "holiday" would replace the Making Work Pay credit, which expires Dec. 31 and was part of the 2009 Recovery Act.
As a result, 51 million households -- about a third of the total -- would be out an average of $210 compared with this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
"Nothing else in the compromise tax agreement compensates [them] for those losses," Tax Policy Center senior fellow Roberton Williams wrote in the blog Tax Vox.
About 45 million of the households represent private and public sector workers.
Here's why they won't get as much tax relief in 2011: Making Work Pay was worth $400 for individuals making $75,000 or less or $800 per couple making $150,000 or less.
To get that much under the payroll tax break, one would need to earn at least $20,000 ($40,000 for couples). That's because the payroll tax break would amount to 2% of a worker's pay.
The other 6 million households affected represent state and local government employees who received the Making Work Pay credit but won't qualify for the payroll tax holiday. Why? Because they're not covered by Social Security and therefore don't pay into the system.
Source: CNN
Kevin Eason is a freelance editorial cartoonist and Illustrator from New Jersey. His brand of satire covers news events in politics, entertainment, sports and much more. Follow him on Facebook.
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Source: http://www.bvblackspin.com/2010/12/16/working-poor-take-home-less-pay-with-tax-deal/
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