Zen Cybernaught

Rules for Progressively Consuming the Buffett

2011-10-08T14:43:00.006-05:00

My favorite politician Russ Feingold's call to entreat the U.S. Senate's Debt Super Committee to follow the "Buffett Rule" prompted this somewhat supportive diatribe.

If we are to keep our absurdly complicated and economically inefficient system of income taxes, then I urge you to follow Warren Buffett's call to increase the progressivity of the income tax system, so that a greater percentage is paid by the highest earners, who are best able to shoulder the shared and necessary burden of funding the provision of public goods through government spending.

In our present era, the biggest issue of our economy is no longer the creation of wealth, but its distribution in a way that is both equitable and sustainable. Our growing income inequality combined with high unemployment and the increasing concentration of wealth is clearly neither equitable nor sustainable. History clearly demonstrates the undesirable ends this dangerous drift generates. A more progressive income tax would be a step toward reversing these trends and returning to a healthier economic environment with greater opportunity for all.

However, while I believe that while increasing income tax progressivity would generate an improvement in the economic well-being of the country, I think the a more efficient solution would be to scrap our current income tax system altogether, abolishing both corporate and personal income taxes and replacing both with a progressive personal consumption tax calculated (per Robert Frank's proposal) as the difference between income and savings, with a high deduction matching baseline living expenses to exempt the poorest and progressively higher marginal tax rates for greater absolute levels of consumption to preserve the virtues of progressive taxation.

Such a progressive consumption tax scheme promises many benefits. As Robert Reich has argued, eliminating the corporate income tax eliminates the incentive for corporations to skew our political priorities by spend some of their concentrated wealth lobbying to change the tax code in their favor. From an economic perspective, the consumption tax incentivizes savings, which increases investment, thereby spurring innovation, which produces faster increases in productivity, which, in turn raises incomes. A progressive consumption tax with high marginal rates at the top end also decreases the incentive for luxury spending by top earners, the type of spending which serves to increase non-productive "spending for show" by each lower income bracket, as they struggle to "keep up with the Joneses" instead of saving or making better long-term investments such as better quality education for their children.

In this period of fiscal crisis, prolonged economic stagnation, high unemployment, growing income inequality and wealth disparity, I urge you to take tax reform seriously. Return progressivity to our tax system and do so in a way that maximizes the economic incentives for increasing investment, productivity, and growth.

Ditch 'Dangerous by Design' with Complete Streets

2011-06-04T20:15:00.005-05:00

I responded with the following to an action alert conveyed to me by the League of American Bicyclists:

Representative Dold:

As one of your constituents, I urge you to become a co-sponsor of HR 1780: Safe and Complete Streets Act of 2011, now referred to committee. This legislation requires that federal funding for transportation projects include a "Complete Streets" policy requiring new roads to be designed with bicyclists and pedestrians in mind.

As a nation, we must recognize that the automobile is not our only transportation option. We must work to create an integrated multi-modal transportation system with coordinated interconnection of sidewalks, bicycle paths, and public transit to create a safe and efficient transportation network for nonmotorized traffic. Investments in such "active transportation" projects have multiple benefits that serve our long-term best interests:
Sidewalks, pathways, and bike lanes create traffic patterns favoring downtowns as destinations for shopping, dining, and entertainment. Building pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure helps local businesses and is an investment in local economies.
Pedestrian and bicycle traffic lanes reduce injuries and deaths. The Transportation for America report Dangerous by Design 2011 tallies more than 688,000 pedestrian injuries during the last decade and 47,000 pedestrian deaths (67 percent of which occurred on roads eligible to receive federal funding for improvements, making this a federal, not just state or local issue).
Active transportation promotes energy efficiency, stronger communities, and healthier citizens. It decreases greenhouse gas and other pollution, traffic congestion, suburban sprawl, and dependence upon oil imports supporting corrupt, totalitarian states.
I believe that going forward, our new investments should heavily favor making viable for more Americans healthier, less polluting, safer, and more energy-efficient transportation. As a regular bicycle commuter, I know first hand the value of having a dedicated pedestrian and bicycle trail within a block of both my home and office. I am further fortunate enough to live within walking distance of commuter rail service, giving me a public transportation alternative when bicycling is not viable. We must use our transportation funds to open these transportation alternatives to the majority of our citizens, rather than a fortunate few. We must increase investments in beneficial alternatives to our current automobile-centric system in order to direct future growth in a healthier and more sustainable direction.

Thank you for signing on to HR 1780.

Blasphemous Book Brief: The Moral Landscape

2011-04-02T09:13:00.006-05:00

While continuing the reasoned polemic against dogmatic religious belief that he began in The End of Faith, Harris moves to a new level of discourse in The Moral Landscape by offering a positive vision for the role of science in the domain of human values. Echoing a Buddhist conception of the good, Harris argues that the well-being of sentient beings is what counts an the source of moral value. While the scientific tools currently offered by the disciplines of psychology and neurology may still be primitive, this source of value is at least in principle addressable by scientific inquiry, opening a path to discover an objective basis for moral judgment. While I did not find The Moral Landscape as compelling as The End of Faith, I still think that it makes an important contribution to the the field of ethics and establishes critical beachhead in the culture wars, securing a proper role for evidence and reason in our judgment of right and wrong.

Breathing Easier

2011-03-24T20:59:00.007-05:00

I must finally be finishing up graduate school and able to catch my breath a bit, as I chose to actually read the latest Environmental Defense Action e-mail instead of deleting it immediately and cursing my decision to get a second master's degree. Here's the lame public comment I sent to the EPA regarding the toxic air pollution regulations they should have put into effect two decades ago. How long will we have to wait for greenhouse gas pollution regulations?

Thank you for promulgating, after 20 years of delays, a strong Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule to limit hazardous air pollution from U.S. power plants.

While estimates put the cost of compliance with this new rule at $10 billion annually, the cost-benefit analysis decisively on the side of regulation: By preventing an estimated 17,000 premature deaths annually and protecting millions of Americans from preventable cancer, and cardiovascular, dermal, respiratory, and immune systems diseases, the rule will result in total health and economic benefits estimated at $140 billion annually.

In addition, any increased energy prices resulting from this rule simply signal the economic and environmental truth about the real costs of polluting energy sources like coal. These price signals make nonpolluting renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and tidal more economically competitive. The new rule may thereby have an additional benefit of marginally decreasing climate-disturbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Thanks again for instituting the Air Toxics Standards rule.

Deep Horizon: Beyond Petroleum

2010-06-27T19:35:00.009-05:00

Last quarter was killer and my lack of blogging (light as it is even at my most prolific) reflected my lack of time (or time management skills. We shall see how summer quarter unfolds.

So to fill space, I am self-plagiarizing text from previous diatribes in signing Repower America's letter supporting the Senate energy bill that will be crafted in the Senate starting this coming Tuesday.

Obviously, our nation's first priority must be stopping the Deepwater Horizon spill and minimizing its environmental, health, and economic impacts. However, Congress itself can be of little direct help in this important work. While offshore oil drilling safety and risk practices must reviewed, the most effective response that Congress can take is to leverage the political will unleashed by the BP crisis to craft a long-term, sustainable energy policy for America that truly takes us Beyond Petroleum.

Specifically, a comprehensive, sustainable energy policy must be one based both on sound economics and sound science that:

Enforces hard, significant near-term cuts on global warming pollution with a specific, realistic, and aggressive timetable for a progressively decreasing cap based on the best available, continuously updated science, which currently calls for decreases to 35 percent below current levels by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050 to achieve atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of no more than 350 parts per million;
Ensures that all forms of global warming pollution are covered, with no sectors or industries exempted and no loopholes, such as unlimited "offsets" allowing polluters to postpone emissions cuts or "safety valves" limiting the fees polluters must pay for their emissions;
Sets greenhouse pollution allowance quantities low enough & trading prices (&/or "carbon" tax rates) high enough to avoid the mistakes of the EU cap & trade system & force real market competition for nonpolluting energy sources;
Provides an offset mechanism or other revenue stream that promotes sustainable practices and carbon offset projects in developing nations so that global greenhouse gas pollution reductions may be made while directing economic development in impoverished nations in toward sustainable economic growth, targeting equatorial countries in particular to prevent tropical deforestation, which accounts for 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions;
Forces all technologies to compete on their merits in the open marketplace, without "picking winners" in advance through subsidies, tax credits, or other government favoritism, in particular to nuclear power, which presents its own set of environmental, health, safety, and national security issues;
Phases-out subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, which artificially increases production of these polluting energy sources;
Phases out subsidies & sets environmentally sound sourcing standards for biofuels ensuring these interim energy sources actually reduce global warming pollution, do so at an efficient cost, and come from waste biomass or biomass cultivated on non-arable land so that they produce energy without threatening world food supplies;
Lessens the short-term economic pain of higher energy prices to U.S. consumers by applying credits against or reductions to personal income taxes or otherwise providing consumers with financial offsets or dividends;
Invests any revenue generated from polluters in transition/training programs for fossil fuel energy industry workers displaced by the disruption, as well as in energy efficiency incentives, fundamental clean energy research, and additional protections for consumers;

As repeated reviews of scientific studies by the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have made clear, we must take action now to curb greenhouse gas pollution in order to head off major climatic change and its potentially devastating consequences. The longer we delay taking remedial action, the greater the climatic change, the more pronounced its impacts, the more dramatically we will have to cut emissions in future years to achieve the same results, the higher costs to do so and the higher the costs to recover from the consequences of storm damage, flooding, crop failures, water shortages, and forced migration, and resultant human suffering and political turmoil that may result from significant climate change. These long-term environmental and economic impacts of climate change will dwarf those of the current tragedy in the Gulf. I urge you to respond to the Deepwater Horizon spill with comprehensive climate and clean energy policy that sharply limits greenhouse gas pollution, thereby reducing the likelihood of future oil spills as well as mitigating the worst effects of climate change by moving our nation Beyond Petroleum.

Transparent Motives

2010-05-12T13:02:00.007-05:00

Hello? ...

Anybody home? ...

What is going on in there?

It has been quite some time since I have posted anything here given my workload this academic quarter, so I had to sign a petition and now blab about it just to make it look like I had not forsaken my lame excuse for a personal blog.

So here you go: Another blow for accountability through transparency struck with my ringing endorsement of the Sunlight Foundation's "Public Equals On-line" campaign!

Book Review: Hot, Flat, and Crowded

2010-02-14T14:55:00.004-06:00

Friedman writes an extremely accessible, well-crafted analysis of the environmental, economic, and political forces shaping the rising storm of environmental destruction and extremist terrorism generated by our over-reliance on fossil fuels and myopic growth strategies. While he may be criticized for coining too many catch-phrases and trumpeting nationalist rhetoric, Friedman is writing for the popular market and he does an admirable job of communicating complex, interrelated dynamics in multiple domains in easily understandable language using vivid examples. His cross-disciplinary approach in explicating the issues is much needed, as it reveals the limitations of ideology and silos of thought in solving the systemic problems we face, a task which requires seeing the whole.

If you have been paying attention to the hard trends of the environment, economy, & population, Friedman's book will not bring much new. However, it is worth recommending not only for its clear communication of the urgency of the problems of global warming-induced climate change and of massive species loss, as well as of the political and social fall-out of the rise of "petro-dictatorship"-funded Islamic fundamentalist extremists, but also for its accessible analysis of the structural issues at work that have created the current dynamics. (I would not have thought learning about the regulatory structure of the public utility commissions governing the energy industry could be interesting.)

While I lack enthusiasm for some of the specific regulations Friedman advocates as partial solutions in this area (RES, CAFE, and other efficiency standards in particular, which I see as heavy-handed side-shows), I share his fundamental belief in the need for bold government leadership in this area and echo his calls for phasing-in strong price signals to reduce GHG-producing activities (preferably through a carbon tax/tax shifting or cap-and-dividend system) and radically re-orientating of market incentives to promote efficiency, conservation, and clean energy.

For its dire message, Friedman's book remains hopeful and optimistic, and points both to heartening examples of progress being made as well as to the specific changes (primarily political and economic) that must be made to "manage what is unavoidable and avoid what is unmanageable" in the coming "energy-climate" era. The issues Friedman rasises should be in everyone's consciousness, informing both individual action and (even more importantly) political choices.

Read the book (or listen to the audio program, as I did) and then pass the message along.

Restore Citizen's Rule After Citizens United Ruling

2010-02-04T19:42:00.006-06:00

I sent the following message to my Senators Dick Durbin (sponsor of S. 752) and Roland Burris and my Representative Mark Kirk.

As the House & Senate consider a legislative response to the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Citizens United ruling, which has opened new avenues for corporations to purchase influence in the democratic process thereby further eroding citizen faith in the fairness of the decision-making of our elected officials, I urge you to support legislation that significantly strengthens the integrity of our representative democracy while protecting first amendment free speech protections for people.

In particular, I urge you to:

1. Pass H.R. 1826/S. 752, the Fair Elections Now Act, which would provide voluntary public funding for congressional campaigns based on the "Clean Elections" model adopted for state elections in Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Vermont, and a growing number of municipalities. As you know, Clean Elections systems provide full public funding, including capped matching funds against any privately financed candidates, to qualified candidates with sufficient grass-roots support who agree to forgo private contributions and abide by spending limits. Clean Elections laws seek to address the underlying, systemic distortion of our political system by monied interests that is inherent in the campaign finance system as it currently exists. The corrosive influence of large political donations undermines the integrity of the "one person, one vote" principle upon which our republic is founded. It amplifies the agenda of the rich and of corporate interests through bundled campaign contributions from corporate executives at the expense of the common good. Clean Elections allows campaigns to focus on the issues voters care about, not how much money a given candidate can raise. It frees candidates once elected from being beholden to the interests of those who bankrolled their campaigns so that they may act in the public interest. It allows them to focus while in office on the issues facing the people rather than on the next cycle of fundraising for reelection.

2. Pass new legislation to extend pay-check protection laws from unions to corporations to require the explicit vote of shareholders to approve any political lobbying or advertising, so that only individuals and associations of consenting people (not just associations of commingled capital) are allowed to participate in democratic decision-making.

3. Pass new legislation to enforce transparency in electioneering advertisements by requiring funding corporations to publicly endorse sponsorship of political ads, even those made by pass-through organizations, so that citizens immediately know the underlying interests the advertisments serve.

4. Provide equal free media air time during campaigns to any candidate who gets on the ballot. The broadcast spectrum is a public resource held in trust by the government and it should be used to serve the common interest of the people. No other single action would take more money out of politics or more significantly reduce the need for the fundraising that corrodes democratic decision-making than equitably allocating air time to political candidates during elections.

Thank you for seizing this opportunity to reform our country's election system and bolster the integrity of our nation's democratic decision-making.

Supercapitalism: It's Super!

2010-01-31T10:59:00.004-06:00

Discussions of the corrosive effect of corporate money in politics have been reignited by the recent U.S. Supreme Court “Citzens United” decision which, citing grounds that such laws violate first amendment freedom of speech protections, overruled previous bans on political spending by corporations in elections. Helpful background for thinking through the structure of the sticky situation we find ourselves in may be found in Robert B. Reich’s 2007 book Supercapitalism, which recently made its way to my hands from the local public library.

Reich offers an accessible, compelling, and remarkably balanced historical sketch of the economic, social, and political transformation of the developed world engendered by the rise of what he calls "supercapitalism", the highly competitive globalized business landscape that has emerged in the past several decades. The economic engine of supercapitalism has done a fantastic job of generating material abundance at "everyday low prices" as well as providing ever-growing investment returns, exactly the outcomes the logic of market competition is intended to achieve. However, its inadequately regulated speed and power has thrown this economic engine off of its tracks, chewing up the natural environment and crashing through the institutions of democracy. In its spill-over into political lobbying and the insidious purchase of corporate influence via bundled campaign donations, supercapitalism threatens the foundations of our society by warping democratic decision making to favor moneyed interests over the common good of the people. We see the results in wasteful and often socially detrimental corporate subsidies; in eroded environmental, safety, and health regulations; in underfunded public education, physical infrastructure, and healthcare; and in growing income inequality, all while the government continues to grow.

While vividly pointing out supercapitalism’s damaging excesses in all of these spheres, Reich goes out of his way not to blame the capitalists, who, by and large, are doing everything they legally can to deliver value for their customers and shareholders in the highly competitive environment in which they must operate. Reich does not even blame the politicians, who, by and large, are doing everything they legally can to make incremental progress enacting their campaign platforms during their short terms while reluctantly taking on the full-time job of raising money to get re-elected in order to make some more incremental progress. Reich instead focuses squarely (and correctly, in my view) on the systemic, structural issues driving behavior in both spheres. The problem, as Reich sees it, is the lack of an effective firewall between corporations and government. Such a firewall would constrain capitalism to the playing field of the market and keeping it out of the rule-making chambers of government, which should deliberate the public good rather than privilege private profit.

Creating such a firewall without trampling on (or amending, as some are calling for) the Constitution is the trick. I have for some time supported voluntary public financing of campaigns, but the recent supreme court decision (which I see as problematic for the separation of money and politics but having merit in keeping congress from legislating who can say what) makes me increasingly cognizant that such a system could only be one part of a solution to this problem, since corporate contributions for political media buys during an election could occur in parallel to the spending of public money by the actual candidates, swaying the outcome of the election and buying influence by another path.

Given this, what should be done? Reich ends Supercapitalism with his prescription for reform, which, like his analysis of the problem, favors neither liberal nor conservative approaches, but a middle road that will probably make both sides unhappy. The reforms all rest on an application of the principle that corporations, despite their name, are legal fictions, bundles of contracts, not incarnate spirits or corporeal bodies. Corporations are not people, who should be the only entities with rights in a democracy. In particular, Reich calls for us to:

End the corporate income tax (passing taxation through to investors), removing incentives for corporations to change tax laws;
End corporate standing as defendants in criminal lawsuits, removing incentives for corporations to change liability laws, and instead holding people instead of corporations accountable for violations of law
Subsidize corporate research & development which upgrades the skills of (and only of) U.S. worker’s, regardless of whether the firm is a U.S. corporation, stopping the subsidization of R&D of U.S.-owned companies that actually goes to benefits workers in their operations in other countries and instead retaining that benefit to U.S. workers to increase our their global competitive advantage;
End corporations' standing to bring lawsuits, reserving that right exclusively to people who have standing due to harm;
Extend pay-check protection laws from unions to corporations to require the explicit consent of shareholders for any political lobbying or advertising, so that it is truly associations of people (not just associations of capital) that are allowed to participate in democratic decision-making (and/or provide a tax credit of $1000 for citizen lobbying to put people on a more equal playing field with corporate-sponsored political speech)

While I have not thought deeply about the broader implications of these policy suggestions, I would only hesitate to endorse the last parenthetical idea Reich advances, as it seems political lobbying is an (economically) unproductive use of capital, so we should be looking for ways to remove, not add, incentives to invest money there. The other proposals appear to be reasonable and balanced approaches to build a much-needed firewall between corporations and government while still protecting our ability as individuals to exercise rights of speech and association and to enjoy the benefits of incorporation without its pathologies.

Reich has contributed much by providing a clear-headed way of understanding the political challenges we now face and of sketching a strategy to get out of our present quagmire. Unfortunately, he leaves plotting a path to actually enacting these politically challenging changes as an exercise for the reader. Given the realities of our current legislative apparatus, how do we get there from here?

(Due) Process and Real (Network Neutral)ity

2010-01-26T17:16:00.004-06:00

Without giving it as much thought or research as I might have liked, and notwithstanding any sort of larger concerns about whether the FCC really has lawful authority to enforce such regulations, I signed the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Real" Network Neutrality petition advocating that the FCC close a loophole in its proposed rules that would exempt traffic suspected of transmitting illegal copies of copyrighted materials. While I certainly do not condone intellectual property theft, I see other issues at stake: Just as I would not want to be pulled over on the highway by the private police of the publishing industry in order for them to search my trunk for illegal photocopies of any, oh, I don't know, Alfred North Whitehead books that I might be transporting*, I do not want the entertainment industry to be able to force my ISP sniff my Internet traffic looking for suspected copyright violations without probable cause and other due process protections. That precedent opens the door to all manner of unwarranted intrusions.

Then again, I probably should not be signing petitions (or at least writing about doing so) while still dehydrated and dull from 4 days of viral gastroenteritis. Apologies to all 2 readers of my blog for this incoherent post.

*My one and only copy of Process and Reality was purchased legally at Paul's Book Store in Madison, Wisconsin.

Book Review: The Genius of the Beast

2010-01-25T21:51:00.005-06:00

Howard Bloom writes an intriguing, timely, well-researched, fascinating-to-read account of the "Western" market capitalist system as the social extension of nature's 'evolutionary search strategy', an ongoing, universal, process of groping forward into the realm of unrealized possibility to creatively ratchet up the progress of the kosmos. In so doing, he offers a much-needed positive intrepretation of market capitalism as the most powerful force for improving the world, a messianic role which imbues it with far greater meaning that mere profit-making. He also recasts the seeming frivolity, vanity, and waste of consumerism as indispensible drivers of this great economic engine of progress.

Bloom provides much food for thought. He falls short only in either too quickly dismissing or otherwise giving too little attention to minimizing the shortcomings of capitalism, such as strategies which would: constrain capitalism to the playing field of the market and keeping it out of the rule-making chambers of government which should deliberate the public good rather than privilege private profit; limit capitalism's consumption and production activities such that they do not destroy the environment in which they are embedded and so ensure it will remain a sustainable platform for human progress; ensure that the wealth capitalism creates fulfills its potential to lift masses out of poverty rather than simply further enriching the already rich thereby increasing income disparity; and reign-in unbridled status-seeking in cases where capitalist competition for superior relative ranking end ups making everyone worse off.

What The Genius of the Beast really lacks, however, is an editor. While Bloom does a extraordinary job presenting complex ideas in easy-to-understand language and effectively uses fascinating historical illustrations to make his points, the seemingly endless repetition of his novel catch-phrases and the disregard for the use of complete sentences will leave the careful reader annoyed that an otherwise stellar work of scholarship and intellectual creativity did not receive the polishing it so deserved.

Regardless, I highly recommend the book to everyone. Whether you are interested in history, popular culture, literature, business, sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology, or media, you will find something of Genius in Bloom's book.

A Straight Line or a Wandering Path?

2010-01-17T20:42:00.003-06:00

The September/October 2009 edition of the Washington Monthly highlighted StraighterLine, a company generating the type of disruptive innovation of higher education content delivery that Clayton Christensen heralds in Disrupting Class as soon transforming primary/secondary education.

The economies of scale afforded by Web delivery of content promises to commoditize the higher education market. The potential drop in cost is great news for those who cannot afford college in its current form. However, this new competition has the potential to tear apart the university system in the same way that the newspaper industry is being torn apart by free online Web content. This potential disruption has frightening implications for the continuing viability of the basic research and scholarship conducted by universities which underpins our long-term economic and cultural competitiveness, as well as for the ideal of a liberal arts education and the well-rounded individual such an education is intended to produce.

My optimistic view of this new delivery model is that it will expand the postsecondary education market more than it takes away from traditional liberal arts enrollment. Given that the majority of high-wage jobs require more than a high school education but only ~50% of college-age U.S. citizens actually attend college, there is plenty of room for postsecondary education market growth. If StraighterLine and its competitors can serve to upgrade the skills of those who would not have attended college anyway, there is still a possibility of preserving the liberal arts ideal for the top-performers destined for college (and even expanding its accessibility by stemming tuition growth through decreasing costs for delivery of basic content and tutoring), while significantly increasing opportunities for those not as academically suited for or otherwise in a position to attend a traditional 4-year program.

Segmenting the post-secondary market this way may also relieve the pressure some colleges are facing to make all coursework relevant to getting a job post-graduation. Having an undergraduate degree in a career-resistant major like philosophy and a certificate in Integrated Liberal Studies, I definitely view college as providing more than job training. I believe there is great merit in taking a bit more wandering path through the garden of human knowledge so that, nourished by the fruits of many academic disciplines, one may flourish more fully as a human than one otherwise might in only following a straight academic line and quickly devouring the life-sustaining but less nourishing narrowly career-focused content. While I believe that an enriched liberal arts education should be open to as many as possible, at the same time, I also recognize that the traditional college education is not for everyone. Perhaps StraighterLine and its competitors will help fill a widening gap between high school and a full liberal arts college experience.

Complimenting Complementary Transportation Rulemaking

2009-11-14T18:50:00.004-06:00

I submitted the following comment (tracking #80a57bc9) in support of a Federal Transit Authority proposed policy change:

As a regular bicycle commuter and proponent of livable and sustainable communities, I strongly support the expansion of the catchment area for pedestrians and bicyclists for purposes of Federal Transit Authority funding eligibility as outlined in FTA-2009-0052-0001 for the many reasons outlined in that document. I compliment the FTA on this proposal and only stand to quibble with the grammatically incorrect use of "complimentary" instead of "complementary" on page 58679. While walking & bicycling may indeed be free, public transportation is only subsidized.

If you want [health care] reform, start with campaign finance reform

2009-10-20T09:17:00.003-05:00

I signed Public Campaign's most recent petition supporting the Fair Elections Now Act (S.752, H.R.1826) finally introduced in both houses of Congress. The bills provide for optional public financing of U.S. Congressional races. Given the interesting correlations between special interest campaign contributions and a candidate's support for specific policies, this is the fundamental political reform requisite for meaningful public interest driven change in virtually any other domain.

PATRIOT brought to JUSTICE

2009-09-26T15:26:00.011-05:00

True patriots and my former and current senators, Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin, have introduced legislation to redress the unchecked excesses of the PATRIOT Act and recent FISA amendments. I signed the Credo petition and sent this note of largely recycled text to my unelected Senator, Roland Burris, urging him to support this bill, which is also endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Senator Burris,

As your constituent, I urge you to join your fellow Senator Richard Durbin in supporting the JUSTICE Act, which would roll-back the overraching provisions of the PATRIOT Act, as amended, and put in place important accountability safeguards to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens while preserving the government's ability to obtain intelligence to provide for national security.

In an era of global terrorism, I accept that certain nonessential privacies and privileges may need to be foregone in order to enhance our security. However, I demand accountability from those who would diminish our freedoms. We must proceed in such a way to ensure that power is not centralized and abused. We must maintain mutual transparency whenever possible and accountability in all cases. The Foreign Intelligence Survelliance Act (FISA) was drafted specifically to allow the executive branch to engage in intelligence gathering with necessary secrecy while at the same time enforcing appropriate judicial checks to prevent abuse. Checks and balances are an essential feature of our republic and must be preserved to protect us against the corruption that unmitigated authority inevitably brings with it. Unfortunately, the USA PATRIOT Act and its reauthorizations and even more recent FISA amendments weakened these protections to allow additional unsupervised, classified, wiretapping authority (even though FISA already granted technology-neutral survelliance authority and ex post facto warrants), as well as granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications providers who complied with prima facia illegal NSA requests for such wiretaps during the Bush Administration.

The JUSTICE Act redresses many of these missteps, providing appropriate checks on wiretaps and national security letters, protections for libary and bookstore records, and nullifying immunity for telecommunications carriers.

I fully expect my elected representatives to act to protect us from the specter of terrorism, the fear of which robs us of our freedom of assembly, our freedom of movement, and the sense of security required for us to pursue the promise of life, liberty, and happiness which is our birthright. As importantly, however, I expect my elected representatives to defend us against the specter of Big Brother, the presence of which also engenders fear, and which robs us of our freedom of speech, our freedom of thought, and the privacy and security which are also our birthrights.

Reasoned estimates place the likelihood of a U.S. citizen dying in a terrorist attack less than that of accidentally drowning. Neither the public's unreasoned fear of terrorism nor the government's perceived need to be seen as doing something to combat it should force us to give up our hard-fought essential liberties, yet we have already done sowith the overreaching PATRIOT Act and the Bush administration's unconstitutional warrantless eavesdropping program, which has been subsequently sanctioned by Congress in its amendments to FISA.

Please redress this situation by supporting the JUSTICE Act, allowing U.S. citizens to demand accountability from telecommunications carriers for any past misdeeds, thereby ensuring that the rule of law is upheld, and ensuring government accountability going forward by granting appropriately flexible, but checked, wiretapping authority. Thank you for working to restore our rights and liberties.

72

2009-09-25T17:48:00.005-05:00

The Sunlight Foundation's Read The Bill initiative made some progress with the introduction of HR 554, so I asked my Representative to support the legislation:

Dear Representative Kirk:

As a strong supporter of accountability through transparency, I previously signed the Sunlight Foundation's Read The Bill petition calling for passage of a law requiring that the full text of any U.S. Congressional legislation be published on the Internet for the public (and our elected representatives) to read for a minimum of 72 hours prior to Congressional debate.

I urge you to support House Resolution 554, the 72 Hour Rule, introduced in the House by Representatives Baird and Culberson, which moves to enact this simple idea in a meaningful way by modifying the House procedural rules, in order to allow for at least a modicum of understanding of and reflection upon the often complex legislation being considered by Congress, which is too often passed without having even been read by those who voted for it, as evidenced by high-profile bills like the PATRIOT Act, FISA 2008 and ARRA.

Thank you for supporting House Resolution 554.

Waxing on Waxman-Markey

2009-06-25T08:49:00.004-05:00

An action alert from Citizens for Global Solutions prompted yet another message to my U.S. Representative:

Congressman Kirk:
I am pleased that Congress has made global warming a legislative priority. I understand that the Waxman-Markey Bill, H.R. 2454, is being rushed to vote in the U.S. House of Representatives as early as tomorrow, June 26. As you know from my previous correspondence, I strongly support strong action to mitigate the worst effects of climate change due to greenhouse gas pollution. However, with H.R. 2454 weighing in at more than 1200 pages of text that has yet to be officially published on Thomas.gov, and with it still undergoing revision just a day before it is slated to be voted on, I cannot comment on its merits. I doubt you or your staff can either. This is itself an issue worthy of attention and one reason I support theSunlight Foundation’s call for all non-emergency legislation to be posted on-line for public review for a minimum of 3-days prior to debate, as embodied in H.R. 554. I urge you to support legislative transparency and allow room for thoughtful policy-making by enacting a 3-day minimum public review period.
However, with respect to the more immediate issue of H.R. 2454, I ask that you work quickly to streamline and strengthen the bill. Given its length, I have no doubt that this legislation has been loaded with dubious programs and budget allocations inserted as concessions to move it through the legislative process, while at the same time, I suspect the core cap and trade program to actually limit greenhouse gas pollution has been weakened. This legislation should be about one thing only: avoiding the most devastating potential impacts of climate change by meaningfully reducing greenhouse gas pollution in the most economically efficient manner. To that end, I ask that you work to strip out any extraneous, over-regulating, money-wasting provisions, and pass legislation that puts a price on greenhouse gas pollution, letting the market work out the details of how to actually reduce emissions. In particular, please strive to see that any enacted legislation:
Enforces hard, significant near-term cuts on global warming pollution with a specific, realistic, and aggressive timetable for a progressively decreasing cap based on the best available, continuously updated science, which currently calls for decreases to 35 percent below current levels by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050 to achieve atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of no more than 350 parts per million;
Ensures that all forms of global warming pollution are covered, with no sectors or industries exempted and no loopholes, such as unlimited "offsets" allowing polluters to postpone emissions cuts or "safety valves" limiting the fees polluters must pay for their emissions;
Sets greenhouse pollution allowance quantities low enough & trading prices (&/or tax rates) high enough to avoid the mistakes of the EU cap & trade system & force real market competition for nonpolluting energy sources;
Provides an offset mechanism or other revenue stream that promotes sustainable practices and carbon offset projects in developing nations so that global greenhouse gas pollution reductions may be made while directing economic development in impoverished nations in toward sustainable economic growth, targeting equatorial countries in particular to prevent tropical deforestation, which accounts for 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions;
Forces all technologies to compete on their merits in the open marketplace, without "picking winners" in advance through subsidies, tax credits, or other government favoritism, in particular to nuclear power, which presents its own enormous set of environmental, health, safety, and national security issues;
Phases-out subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, which artificially increase production of these polluting energy sources;
Phases out subsidies & set environmentally sound sourcing standards for biofuels ensuring these interim energy sources actually reduce global warming pollution, do so at an efficient cost, and come from waste biomass so that they produce energy without threatening world food supplies;
Lessens the short-term economic pain of higher energy prices to U.S. consumers by applying credits against or reductions to personal income taxes;
Invests any revenue generated from polluters in transition/training programs for fossil fuel energy industry workers displaced by the disruption, as well as in clean energy research, energy efficiency incentives, and additional protections for consumers;
As repeated reviews of scientific studies by the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have made clear, we must take action now to curb greenhouse gas pollution in order to head off major climatic change and its potentially devastating consequences. The longer we delay taking remedial action, the greater the climatic change, the more pronounced its impacts, the more dramatically we will have to cut emissions in future years to achieve the same results, the higher costs to do so and the higher the costs to recover from the consequences of storm damage, flooding, crop failures, water shortages, and forced migration, and resultant human suffering and political turmoil that may result from significant climate change. Particularly in context of the upcoming December 2009 meetings in Copenhagen to discuss the terms of the environmental agreement that is to replace the Kyoto Protocol, it is imperative that the U.S. takes a firm stand in leading environmental protection. As the largest of per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, America must shoulder its responsibility by taking meaningful action to protect the commons of the global climate and securing a platform for negotiations with the international community.

The Assault on Reason

2009-05-23T00:12:00.004-05:00

“If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.”

That bumper sticker slogan echoed through my mind repeatedly while listening to The Assault on Reason audiobook.

If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention; Or at least you are not paying attention to that which matters most. In this still timely tome, Al Gore mounts an assault on the criminal excesses of the Bush Administration, recounting its repeated violations of the laws and values of the United States in its deceptive mounting and disastrous execution of the Iraq war, the Federal law-breaking NSA wiretapping program, the sanctioning of enhanced interrogation techniques (read: torture) in violation of international treaties, the creation of an environment of policy and practice conducive to prisoner abuse, and the disregard for habeas corpus and judicial protections contravening our commitment to due process under the law, among a host of other impeachment-worthy crimes and hypertension-inducing misdemeanors. Gore makes an attempt to be balanced in his criticisms, substantiating his accusations with the relevant evidence throughout, qualifying his statements, acknowledging the counter-arguments, and giving the benefit of the doubt when possible. Even so, many of his characterizations of Bush’s actions and policies come off as inflammatory, but more often than not, justifiably so, in my opinion. That G.W. Bush was not impeached and forced from office was astounding to me given how comparatively “minor” were the charges that brought down Richard Nixon. That his administration’s prima facia criminal misdeeds are not being investigated now by an independent prosecutor leaves me frustrated and disenfranchised. Gore repeatedly stresses that ours was founded as a nation of laws, not of men, and upon this principle our freedoms find protection from tyranny. But if our laws can be broken with no consequences, what of that?

Gore lays much of the blame for the absence of any appropriate accountability for the string of Bush Administration transgressions on the role television has taken as a our culture’s core communication conduit. TV, much more so than the print media that dominated the early politics of our republic, is a highly centralized, purely one-way broadcast medium monopolized by moneyed interests owing to its cost structure. These characteristics combine to create the potential for a dangerous concentration of power. Moreover, television is entrancing in a way that print media is not, allowing it to bypass our critical reasoning faculties and appeal to base emotion directly. Gore charges the Bush Administration with skillful use of television to create an atmosphere of fear to manipulate public opinion and silence critics as the key to his success in escaping the bounds of a constitutionally limited executive while avoiding consequences. This is the central assault on reason: television’s hypnotic capability to distract us with sensationalistic drivel and manipulate us with sound bites and fear-inducing images.

I have no doubt that Gore’s diagnosis is, on the whole, valid. What I think Gore glosses over a bit too quickly is the lack of leadership by congressional Democrats during the Bush Administration, who, with a few distinguished exceptions, sat on their hands, largely capitulating to Bush’s agenda and failing to call him to account for his overreaching acts. Gore’s analysis does treat this failure from a systemic perspective, noting that the importance of television in election politics forces politicians to spend much of their time raising funds to buy expensive TV ads in order to take their turn hypnotizing voters in order to get re-elected, with much of the remainder spent reacting to the ways in which the public has been manipulated by other politicians, pundits, and moneyed interests through the same medium, leaving little time for matters of governing in the public interest. I agree with that diagnosis, too, as well as the primary remedies that Gore calls for—voluntary public financing of campaigns, increased civic participation through the far more democratic and participatory medium of the Internet—but I believe that these external factors do not absolve Congress from allowing Bush Administration abuses from going unchecked.

To my mind, Gore’s other oversight is that he fails to clearly define what reason is, a shortcoming for a book with the word “reason” in its title and whose central thesis that it is under attack. This omission leaves the work without a consistent framework would allow it to separate reason from unreason and analyze the core issues more systematically. And while I would not deny Gore the persuasive tools of anecdote and analogy in his writing, the lack of such a definition and system of analysis leaves him open to the charge of sophistry when he does employ them, since such techniques are often ironically the agents of unreason in polemics. To be fair, some of this impression may arise from having listened to the audiobook rather than reading the text; The vocal intonations of the reader may have increased my perception of the emotive content of the arguments presented. Moreover, it is understood that The Assault on Reason is not an academic text. Rather, it is a mass market book meant to persuade, and true to its core commitment, it maintains a high standard of rational argument throughout.

Whatever its minor shortcomings, I think The Assault on Reason is an important book. Even though the Bush Administration is mercifully out of power, the damage done has not yet been repaired—among other lingering issues, overreaching planks of the PATRIOT Act and the FISA remain in effect—and, moreover, the underlying systemic distortion of political discourse generated the dynamics of television as our still dominant communications medium remain in full effect. Much work lies before us.

Lipinski's Letter Boosts Bicycle Bucks

2009-05-21T21:16:00.004-05:00

I sent the following message to my representative after considering this League of American Bicyclists Action Alert.

Dear Representative Kirk:

I am sure you have received the May 14th "Dear Colleague" letter from fellow Illinois Congressman Daniel Lipinski asking that you sign on to his policy memo to Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Jim Oberstar, Ranking Member John Mica, Highway and Transit Subcommittee Chairman Pete DeFazio and Ranking Member Jimmy Duncan, urging fair financial support for bicycle and other "active" transportation modes in the upcoming surface transportation authorization bill.

As your constituent and as a regular bicycle commuter, I urge you to sign Representative Lipinski's letter, which wisely calls for transportationg funding legislation supporting a "Complete Streets" policy requiring new roads to be design with bicyclists and pedestrians in mind; for an integrated intermodal transportation system via coordinated interconnection of sidewalks, bicycle paths, and public transit to create a safe and efficient transportation network for nonmotorized traffic; and for increased funding for the Safe Routes to Schools program to provide our nation's students with safe streets and sidewalks on which to bicycle and walk to school.

As a nation, we must recognize that the automobile is not our only transportation option and create an integrated transportation system that serves our long-term best interests. Investments in active transportation projects have multiple benefits:

Sidewalks, pathways, and bike lanes create traffic patterns favoring downtowns as destinations for shopping, dining, and entertainment. Building pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure helps local businesses and is an investment in local economies.
Active transportation promotes energy efficiency, stronger communities, and healthier citizens. It decreases greenhouse gas and other pollution, traffic congestion, suburban sprawl, and dependence upon oil from corrupt, totalitarian states.

I believe that going forward, our new investments should heavily favor making viable for more Americans healthier, less polluting, and more energy-efficient transportation. As a regular bicycle commuter, I know first hand the value of having a dedicated pedestrian and bicycle trail within a block of both my home and office. I am further fortunate enough to live within walking distance of commuter rail service, giving me a public transportation alternative when bicycling is not viable. We must use our transportation funds to open these transportation alternatives to the majority of our citizens, rather than a fortunate few. We must increase investments in beneficial alternatives to our current automobile-centric system in order to direct future growth in a healthier and more sustainable direction.

Thank you for signing on to Congressman Lipinski's policy letter supporting a fair role for non-motorized options in our nation's transportation infrastructure.

1 Day of Clean Democratic Politics

2009-05-06T13:17:00.004-05:00

I added my name Change Congress's petition to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee urging them to adopt permanently a ban on accepting donations from political action committees and lobbyists that they are currently pledging to for all of 1 day (June 18) in deference to President Obama's fundraising event for them on that date. Obama, whose campaign proved that a successful bid for the highest political office can be made without being beholden to special interest money, has already banned such donations from the Democratic National Committee while he is at its helm.

While I do not believe such a voluntary restriction in funding would prove viable in the long term since it would require that the various Republican party fundraising organizations make the same voluntary pledges in order to maintain a competitive equilibrium, I do think in the short term that if the major Democratic party organizations are forced through public pressure to commit to this stance and face the threat of fundraising reductions, then there is a much greater chance that the Democratically held House & Senate would enact voluntary public finance "clean elections" legislation, giving us the systemic reform that would start to free our political system from the corrosive influence of special interest money.

SS SIPOC v1

2009-03-27T16:17:00.014-05:00

The Supplier-Input-Processing-Output-Customer (SIPOC) diagram is one of the standard process management tools in the quality management toolkit, often used in Six Sigma process improvement projects. While it provides an excellent framework for process planning, measurement, and analysis, its sharp boundaries exclude consideration of effects on the larger social and environmental contexts in which the process in focus is embedded, leading to a fractured perspective that can lead to process optimization at the cost of social and environmental degradation.

I present here an enhancement to the SIPOC diagram (also integrating IDEF0 graphical notation) that enlarges its scope of consideration to include environmental factors, allowing these social and environmental externalities to be considered in process design, measurement, and optimization.

Should this graphical technique make sense to anyone, I would be very interested in collaborating on its further development, including metric and methodology specification.

2010-09-30 Update: Released diagram under Creative Commons license based on reader feedback. Additional inquiries welcome!

Keith A. Gillette

Sustainably Steer the Stimulated Economy

2009-03-14T22:26:00.007-05:00

I added my standard line of reasoning to Repower America's petition and the Union of Concerned Scientist's campaign urging the U.S. Congress to pass limits on global warming pollution:

Now that Congress has done what it can to stimulate our beleagured economy with the passage of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, I urge you to take decisive action to steer it in a sustainable direction by passing strong legislation to limit greenhouse gas pollution. While this may seem a low priority at a time when many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, we must consider not only our important short-term priorities but also the long-term interests of our country and our children's future in our decision making. As repeated reviews of scientific studies by the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have made clear, we must take action now to curb greenhouse gas pollution in order to head off major climatic change and its potentially devastating consequences. The longer we delay taking remedial action, the greater the climatic change, the more pronounced its impacts, the more dramatically we will have to cut emissions in future years to achieve the same results, the higher costs to do so and the higher the costs to recover from the consequences of storm damage, flooding, crop failures, water shortages, and forced migration, and resultant human suffering and political turmoil that may result from significant climate change.

While economic exigencies may make it seem like the wrong time to act on climate change, I do not believe we have to choose between a growing economy and mitigating climate change. With the right policy, we can do both. Further, to avoid the costs of climate change impacts and to stay competitive in the 21st century, we must do both. Please pursue greenhouse gas pollution legislation that:

Lessens the short-term economic pain of higher energy prices to U.S. consumers by applying credits against or reductions to personal income taxes;
Invests any revenue generated from polluters in transition/training programs for fossil fuel energy industry workers displaced by the disruption, as well as in clean energy research, energy efficiency incentives, and additional protections for consumers;
Phases-out subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, which artificially increase production of these polluting energy sources;
Enforces hard, significant near-term cuts on global warming pollution with a specific, realistic, and aggressive timetable for a progressively decreasing cap based on the best available, continuously updated, science, which currently calls for decreases to 35 percent below current levels by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050;
Provides an offset mechanism or other revenue stream that promotes sustainable practices and carbon offset projects in developing nations so that global greenhouse gas pollution reductions may be made while directing economic development in impoverished nations in toward sustainable economic growth, targeting equatorial countries in particular to prevent tropical deforestation, which accounts for 20 percent of global greenhouse gas pollution;
Ensures that all forms of global warming pollution are covered, with no sectors or industries exempted and no loopholes, such as unlimited "offsets" allowing polluters to postpone emissions cuts or "safety valves" limiting the fees polluters must pay for their emissions;
Phases out subsidies & set environmentally sound sourcing standards for biofuels ensuring these interim energy sources actually reduce global warming pollution, do so at an efficient cost, and come from waste biomass so that they produce energy without threatening world food supplies;
Sets greenhouse pollution allowance quantities low enough & trading prices (&/or tax rates) high enough to avoid the mistakes of the EU cap & trade system & force real market competition for nonpolluting energy sources;
Forces all technologies to compete on their merits in the open marketplace, without "picking winners" in advance through subsidies, tax credits, or other government favoritism, in particular to nuclear power, which presents its own enormous set of environmental, health, safety, and national security issues.

Even though its worst impacts may lie decades in the future, the vast geographic- and time-scales of global warming may make it the most urgent environmental and humanitarian threat facing the planet today. At the same time, it also represents a tremendous market opportunity to spur innovation and growth by creating the clean energy economy of the 21st century. As the largest of per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, America must shoulder its responsibility by taking meaningful action to protect the commons of the global climate. The signatories of the of Kyoto Protocol have already committed to do their share and the rest of the world is waiting for our lead. Please pass legislation that ensures we carry out this responsibility in such a way that compels the market to innovate, thereby stimulating the economy, increasing U.S. competitiveness, and creating new jobs.

Sincerely,
Keith Gillette

Dollars: 787,000,000,000; Words: 185,947; Amendments: 485; Readers: 0

2009-03-12T20:04:00.011-05:00

As a strong supporter of accountability through transparency (and a cautious supporter of common sense), I signed the Sunlight Foundation's Read The Bill petition calling for passage of a simple law requiring that the full text of any U.S. Congressional legislation be published on the Internet for the public (and our Senators and Representatives) to read a minimum of 72 hours prior to Congressional debate. For example: Not that I personally want to read the 1100 page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, but I think it would have been appropriate for someone to do so prior to the (underinformed) debate and passage of the largest spending bill in history.

Build Paths to a Healthy Future with Economic Recovery Funding

2009-03-08T22:40:00.004-05:00

I sent the following recycled text to Governor Pat Quinn as part of the League of American Bicyclist's Transportation Enhancement Funding Action Alert.

As an Illinois resident whose regular bicycle commute to work is made possible by bicycle trails and sidewalks, I am writing to urge you to allocate the Transportation Enhancement funding that the U.S. Congress has provided through the economic recovery bill not only for repairs to our existing roads and upgrades to our public transportation systems, but in active transportation alternatives by significantly expanding bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. Such active transportation projects provide compelling benefits both in the short-term and long term.

In the short-term:

Pedestrian & bicycle projects can get money into the economy quickly due to their smaller scale. Furthermore, projects are more likely to benefit local engineering and construction firms, as well as the local “Main Street” economy.
Because the ratio of labor to material is greater in bicycle and pedestrian transportation infrastructure than in automobile infrastructure, these projects net more jobs per dollar spent, making them a more efficient in terms of job-creation, which is so vital to stem our increases in unemployment.

In the long-term:

Sidewalks, pathways, and bike lanes create traffic patterns favoring downtowns as destinations for shopping, dining, and entertainment. Building pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure helps local businesses and is an investment in local economies.
Active transportation promotes energy efficiency, stronger communities, and healthier citizens. It decreases greenhouse gas and other pollution, traffic congestion, suburban sprawl, and dependence upon oil from corrupt, totalitarian states.

While I support the use of stimulus funds to repair and improve existing roads, bridges, and highways, I believe that going forward, our new investments should heavily favor making viable for more Americans healthier, less polluting, and more energy-efficient transportation. As a regular bicycle commuter, I know first hand the value of having a dedicated pedestrian and bicycle trail within a block of both my home and office. I am further fortunate enough to live within walking distance of commuter rail service, giving me a public transportation alternative when bicycling is not viable. We must use this opportunity to open these transportation alternatives to the majority of our citizens, rather than a fortunate few. We must increase investments in beneficial alternatives to our current automobile-centric system. To do otherwise by simply throwing money at traditional automobile-centric transportation projects may provide short-term benefit, but wastes the opportunity to direct future growth in a healthier and more sustainable direction.

Thankfully, we do not have to sacrifice our short-term economic recovery for our long-term best interests. Funding for this category of transportation infrastructure provides just the kind of high-impact, job-producing projects we need now, while also serving the long-term best interest of Illinois and our country. Thank you for directing Transportation Enhancement funding toward bicycle, pedestrian, & other efficient multi-modal transportation infrastructure.

Market Externalities & NetImpact Draft Letter to President Obama

2009-03-01T20:28:00.002-06:00

I sent the following feedback to the NetImpact leadership on their draft Letter to President Obama on priorities for a sustainable future.

As a NetImpact member, I commend your efforts in this draft letter to President Obama to influence government policy to promote socially & environmentally responsible business & I appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback. Here are my recommendations:

Make “Set targets and actively work to decrease U.S. carbon emissions through a mandate system” the first bullet point in the first section. As we in business know, market behavior changes when the financial incentives change. Changing price signals so that they “tell the environmental truth” will do more than any other action to reduce our greenhouse gas pollution & mitigate the potentially catastrophic effects of continued fossil fuel use. While the government should fund other programs to ease the country’s transition to clean energy sources, the single most important action it can take is this systemic economic intervention. We must adopt the strategy of internalizing negative environmental externalities through appropriate price signals by taxing pollution and valuing ecosystem services in order to achieve market-wide compliance & sustainable progress on our environmental issues.
Add a section on improving corporate governance. If we are truly serious about seeing corporate social responsibility becoming the standard for business, then we must change the accountability structure within corporations so that all stakeholders have representation & managerial incentives align with the social good. While most organizations have leaders who at least follow the moral imperative to “do no harm”, & many have leaders who go far further than that, seeking to do social good even beyond “gains from trade”, the intrinsic competitive nature of the marketplace will ensure that those corporations that can externalize costs will be the market victors. This simple competitive logic guarantees the spread of corporate pathology, of acting exclusively in the corporate self-interest. The only market-wide solution to this exploitative pathology comes from ensuring that costs cannot be externalized, either through government regulation/taxation in the cases creating the most extreme demonstrable harm, or, more generally, through changes in the corporate form, from requiring corporate governance structures that give decision-making authority to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, thereby institutionalizing in the most powerful “persons” in society the same internal constraint on behavior instilled in each of us & expected of all public actors: a conscience.

Thanks again for your efforts & the opportunity to provide input,
Keith Gillette

Include Bicycle & Multimodal Transportation in the Stimulus

2009-02-11T11:25:00.013-06:00

I sent this to my U.S. Senators & Representative as part of the League of American Bicyclists action campaign:

I understand that the Senate version of the economic stimulus package does not include the provisions for transportation infrastructure funding of bicycle and pedestrian projects. As your constituent, I ask you to urge members of the conference committee to include funding for bicycle, pedestrian, and other worthy active and multi-modal transportation projects into the final version the stimulus bill.

My regular bicycle commute to work is made possible by dedicated bicycle trails. While I support the use of stimulus funds to repair and improve existing roads, bridges, and highways, I believe that going forward, our new investments should heavily favor making viable for more Americans healthier, less polluting, and more energy-efficient transportation. We must increase investments in alternatives to our current automobile-centric system and its associated problems of greenhouse gas and other pollution, traffic congestion, suburban sprawl, and dependence upon foreign oil. To do otherwise by simply throwing money at traditional automobile-centric transportation projects may provide short-term benefit, but wastes the opportunity to direct future growth in a healthier and more sustainable direction.

Thankfully, we do not have to sacrifice our short-term economic recovery for our long-term best interests. The America Bikes Coalition has presented a list of hundreds of ready-to-go active transportation projects from communities across the country to the House leadership, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the House Appropriations Committee, making funding for this category of transportation infrastructure just the kind of high-impact, job-producing projects we need now, while also serving the long-term best interest of the country.

Thank you for urging inclusion of bicycle, pedestrian, & other efficient multi-modal transportation infrastructure in the economic stimulus package.

Adopt biomimetic closed "cradle-to-cradle" production lifecycle through extended producer responsibility

2009-01-15T02:19:00.007-06:00

I made the mistake of drinking strong coffee to keep awake during class tonight. I couldn't sleep, so in my insomnia, I wrote this entry for President-Elect Obama's Citizen Briefing Book. I am not really sure why, since it is not even my top environmental issue, nor even my top political issue, but go vote it to the top if you like it!

Waste rarely appears in nature. Nearly every output from one biological process is the input to another, creating an extraordinarily complex, dynamically balanced, self-regulating, closed-loop system. By contrast, human industrial production system is largely linear, extracting natural resources from the earth, manufacturing a product (often with planned obsolecence in mind) that will most likely end up buried in a landfill within a short period of time, most often preceded in that ultimate fate by its too often non-biodegradable packaging, both potentially leaching hazardous materials into our water supplies. Furthermore, the majority of resources extracted in a typical manufacturing process end up as waste by-products during production, creating even more landfill waste or mining or manufacturing slurry, sludge, or other effluent. While recycling theoretically closes this loop, as currently implemented in this country, it is added on as an afterthought, and is often not economically viable, and certainly not effective, with less than 2% of the waste stream actually being recycled.

The least intrusive system intervention to remediate this wasteful production system and reduce the environmental burden posed by its linear nature is to put the onus of disposal on the product manufacturer. If the manufacturer of a product must bear ultimate financial responsibility for its disposition, it will immediately have the incentive to:

Make the product as durable, upgradeable, & long-lived as possible so that it may remain in service without need for disposal.
Design the product for maximum remanufacturability/recyclability, so that it will be easy to refurbish or remake into a new product through remanufacturing or total recycling.
Design the product and its packaging to be biodegradable to avoid the need for special disposal.
Reduce the use of toxic or hazardous materials in the product to avoid the cost of proper disposal under appropriate environmental regulations.

Making manufacturers fully responsible for their creations from cradle-to-grave (or, if they choose, from cradle-to-cradle) prevents them from externalizing the environmental and societal costs of product disposal, and therefore represents the most efficient, least economically burdensome formula for reducing most types of pollution. It also makes sense from a systems design perspective, since the creatorof a product will naturally have the most knowledge about it and be in the best position to oversee its lifecycle. Please work to phase-in extended producer responsibility. This single, sweeping reform would put our society on a path to sustainable production without the need for byzantine micro-managing environmental regulation.

Related Resources:

Active Transportation & Infrastructure Investment for Economic Recovery

2008-12-19T15:07:00.001-06:00

I sent the following message to my U.S. Representative (and copied it to the Obama-Biden Economic Policy Team) as part of the League of American Bicyclist's initiative to guide transportation infrastructure investments likely to come out of the coming economic stimulus legislation.

Dear Congressman Kirk:

I fully support investment in upgrading our nation’s public infrastructure as part of an economic stimulus package both designed to provide jobs and stabilize our foundering economy in the short-term as well as build our country’s productive capacity in the long-term. In considering investment in transportation infrastructure, I urge you to emphasize multimodal transportation initiatives which will provide alternatives to our current automobile-centric system and its associated problems of greenhouse gas and other pollution, traffic congestion, suburban sprawl, and dependence upon foreign oil. To do otherwise and simply throw money at traditional automobile-centric transportation projects may provide short-term benefit, but wastes the opportunity to direct future growth in a healthier and more sustainable direction.

While significant funding should be allocated to maintain and improve the safety and capacity of existing roads and bridges, investments in new transportation initiatives should emphasize multimodal options, especially pedestrian and bicycle trails, which promote energy efficiency, stronger communities, and healthier citizens. As a regular bicycle commuter, I know first hand the value of having a dedicated pedestrian and bicycle trail within a block of both my home and office. I am further fortunate enough to live within walking distance of commuter rail service, giving me a public transportation alternative when bicycling is not viable. We must use this opportunity to open these transportation alternatives to the majority of our citizens, rather than a fortunate few.

Please use this opportunity to both advance the long-term good of our nation at the same time as we make necessary investments to bolster short-term employment. The America Bikes Coalition has presented a list of hundreds of ready-to-go active transportation projects from communities across the country to the House leadership, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the House Appropriations Committee. Invest in these and other long-term cost-effective multimodal transportation initiatives so that active and public transportation become the norm, rather than the exception, for Americans.

Thank you for your quick action to create new jobs and spur economic recovery while simultaneously serving the long-term best interests of the nation.

URLtide Greetings from Beth & Keith

2008-12-14T20:38:00.005-06:00

	*U-R-Ltide Greetings!** Ancient yuletide tradition meets the Internet age.
	*Uniform Resource Locator, the standardized address format for Internet sites.

	Beth & Keith reflect on 2008 & wassail the World Wide Web in this electronic end-of-year epistle!
	January Braced for 11 more months of political campaigning by attending a performance of The Capitol Steps, who lyrically lampooned every presidential candidate with bipartisan buffoonery. Click on the Huckabee campaign button for a Beatles-themed sound bite of their political humor.
	February Escaped the ice & cold of the Illinois winter with a short trip to South Carolina to celebrate Bette Black's 20th birthday, on which she turned 80, as only a Leap Year Baby could do... [Photo: Bette Black, taken the day after her un-birthday, while on a short mini-vacation in Florida.]
	March Began an Italian for Travelers course with our favorite Venetian, Monica, in preparation for a summer buon voyage. Buon giorno! Vorrei due bicchieri di vino rosso, per favore!
	April Celebrated Colin's new full-time job as a Web programmer for Active Media Architects, where he writes PHP code for the back-end of web applications. Helped Colin relocate to St. Clair Shores, Michigan, where he has a nice apartment in a complex right on Lake St. Clair. If he were running for Vice President, he would tell you, "I can see Canada from my apartment." [Photo: Colin on move-in day at his new apartment.]
	May Celebrated Emma's graduation from UW-Madison, where she received a Bachelor of Science Degree, majoring in English, minoring in adventurous international travel & charmed living, and receiving Certificates in Global Studies, Women's Studies, and Leadership. [Photo: Emma on the terrace in her pre-party pose.]
	June Enjoyed a fabulous Italian adventure with friends Tom & Tracy, exploring the canals of Venice, the coastline of Cinque Terre, the museums of Florence, and the sensual pleasures of Tuscany. Sampled countless flavors of gelato; learned to make pici and focaccia; ate our weight in pecorino, pizza, and pasta. [Photo: Taken in our hotel room by the harbor in Vernazza, Cinque Terre, a location where the word "breathtaking" truly applies. For more, follow the link & click on View Photobook, then Play Slideshow.]
	July Veni, vidi, sudo: We came, we saw, we sweated. Spent a glorious week ducking inside cool, dark, treasure-filled churches to recover from hiking around Rome in the blistering heat uncovering layer upon fascinating layer of ancient history. Concluded that, aside from the decision to live in the uncivilized heat of Rome, the ancient Romans had this civilization thing figured out millennia ago. [Photo: Ruins between the Colosseum and Palatine Hill.]
	August Relaxed at Ravinia, our neigborhood outdoor music festival, with great music, cheap wine, and mildly competitive Scrabble. Beth gave Keith a folding bicycle for his birthday, which he slings over his shoulder using an appropriated strap from a laptop bag to board the train on days when he needs to commute to Chicago and can't make his normal (mountain) bike commute to work in nearby Lake Forest. Before the summer slipped away completely, found time for A Midsummer Night's Dream and other plays at our other favorite venue for erudite entertainment, American Player's Theatre. [Photo: Taken on a day-long bike ride along the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago.]
	September Started back to school, with Beth starting her 3rd year as Director of Development at Chiaravalle Montessori School, Keith his 5th as Director of Information Technology at Lake Forest Country Day School, and Emma her first year of graduate school. As the first student accepted into UW-Madison's dual Master's degree program in Public Health and Public Policy, Emma is enrolled in both the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and the LaFollette School of Public Affairs. She also was awarded a full tuition waiver with a half-time program assistantship doing an evaluation of a state public health policy initiative.
	October Embarked on our own dual dueling Master's degrees [following Ben Franklin's economic advice]. Keith, who has a Master's in Information & Telecommunications Systems Management, started the evening MBA program at the University of Chicago. Beth, who has a Master's in English Literature, started the Masters in Learning and Organizational Change degree program at Northwestern University. Since turning our salaries over to universities in an uncertain economy was not risky enough, we also chose this fall as the time to spend money remodeling our basement.
	November Celebrated Obama's historic victory. Throughout the Bush nightmare years, we were compelled to watch episodes of The West Wing in order to see a White House that reflected our values. Can we once again respect our elected leader? Yes, we can. Also gave thanks for family, hosting Emma, Colin, & Keith's mom Rita on Thanksgiving for tons of tasty turkey, sumptuous sweet potatoes, & Beth's patented home baked vodka-crust squash and apple pies.
	December Changed our new household phone number to 224-765-4085. Created this year in review to communicate that change and our holiday sentiments: Much love to all of our family and friends. Hope to spend time with you in the New Year. —Beth Bah, Humbug! —Keith Happy Holidays & Best Wishes for 2009!

	This holiday greeting created with 100% recycled electrons. Save a tree. Read digitally

Pardon Breaches of Etiquette, Not Violations of Law

2008-12-06T13:17:00.003-06:00

I offered the following in support of both the ACLU's petition urging President Bush to refrain from issuing preemptive pardons as well as the Democrats.com's petition in support of the passage of H.Res 1531a, a sense of Congress against such pardons & for independent investigations of potential criminal wrong-doing by Bush Administration officials:

Serious problems confront us as a nation: the economic recession, growing environmental threats, energy security, health care affordability, & global terrorism, to name but a few. I believe that in order to solve these problems, we must come together to find a path forward in nonpartisan cooperation & compromise. That said, we must at the same time renew our commitment to our fundamental principles, including the rule of law. I support fair & independent investigation &, as necessitated by the evidence, prosecution of potential wrongdoing by government officials, especially in the areas of warrantless wiretapping in violation of FISA and in the authorization of torture in violation of the Geneva conventions & U.S. law, both of which represent fundamental breaches of the public trust & violation of core American principles. I commend passage of Representative Jerrold Nadler's House Resolution 1531a and call on the President to refrain from granting preemptive pardons to administration officials who may have violated the law. Let us reinforce to ourselves and demonstrate to the world that core American conviction that no person, however powerful or privileged, is above the law.

Black Friday & Invisible Threat

2008-11-28T14:15:00.000-06:00

Prompted by Repower America (and undeterred by their petition-accompanying graphic attempting to characterize it as a toxic choking cloud, rather than the colorless, odorless, silent, & invisible threat that it is), I sneaked in under today's deadline this comment on the EPA's proposal to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act:

Dear Administrator Johnson & staff of the United States Environmental Protection Agency:

Thank you for the opportunity to submit my public comment on the proposed changes to regulate carbon dioxide & other green house gases as pollutants which "endanger the public health and welfare" under the Clean Air Act. As there exists a clear scientific consensus summarized in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that (1) we are in a period of global warming, (2) carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution is a primary cause of such warming, & (3) both current & continued warming will have significant deleterious effects on human welfare based on (potentially radical) changes in our climate, and as their exists a clear legal consensus from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision clarifying the EPA's authority to regulate this area, I urge the EPA to take immediate action to strictly regulate greenhouse gas pollution. I urge you to handle this pollutant as you did acid-rain inducing sulfer dioxide (SO2) pollution, with a country-wide cap on emissions & a trading market to allocate the pollution credits in the most efficient manner possible, to ensure minimal disruption to our already fragile economy, while aggressively reducing our emissions to keep atmospheric concentrations of CO2 below 350 parts per million.

EEE: Vision for America

2008-11-19T21:50:00.012-06:00

I posted this as my Economy, Energy, & Education vision for America to the Economy section on Change.gov. It could equally well have gone in the Energy & Environment section. I also used it as my contribution to the Repower America petition from Environment America. It is heavily derivative of Eco-Economy/Plan B, Natural Capitalism, & Al Gore's Repower America platform.

President-Elect Obama:

Thank you for the opportunity to voice my vision for America.

In the current accelerating economic crisis, you have an historic opportunity to make significant changes to U.S. government policy which will affect the course of our nation and the world. I implore you take a broad and long view as you plot your response, recognizing that our present economic crisis is not the only one we face. Rather, we stand against multiple threats, in particular, threats to our environment, significantly from the long-term climatic disturbances due to global warming, to our long-term economic competitiveness and national standard of living from flagging educational achievement compared with other nations, as well as continuing threats to our national security from the specter of global terrorism.

While a series of short-term stimulus packages will no doubt be required to shore up our economy, please take the long view when designing them and the broader policy reforms that will accompany them. I urge you to take full advantage of this opportunity by implementing integrated, systemic changes that simultaneously address our present needs while laying the foundation for solutions to our long-term problems, all the while remaining true to our shared ideals and values: See that economic reforms preserve our individual autonomy, the free markets that have brought our nation's prosperity, while at the same time protecting those individuals and segments of the environment that the markets alone have ignored or actively harmed.

In particular, I urge you to phase-in a massive restructuring of our tax system, radically lowering income taxes while preserving a highly progressive structure, maintaining revenue neutrality by levying taxes on activities which create negative externalities and phasing out subsidies for environmentally destructive practices. This work-rewarding economic strategy has the advantage of increasing consumer purchasing power, thereby bolstering the economy in our current economic downturn, while simultaneously guiding purchases away from ultimately self-destructive environmentally detrimental purchases, funneling capital in sustainable ways. This tax-shifting strategy should include:

Carbon dioxide taxes and/or cap & trade greenhouse gas emissions markets to prevent the worse effects of the impending global-warming induced climate crisis.

Comprehensive initiatives to value ecosystem services, making it economically profitable to prevent aquifer depletion and leave land undeveloped or return land to its natural state, in order to provide clean water, clean air, carbon dioxide sinks, and wildlife habitat for current & future generations.

Congestion taxes to curb polluting & gridlock-inducing automobile traffic & encourage investment in cost effective, energy-efficient, public transportation.
Phase-outs of subsidies for fossil-fuel and nuclear energy generation to allow all energy sources to compete on price in the context of strict greenhouse gas and other harmful pollution-limiting regimens.

Phase-outs of subsidies for (at least) foodstock-derived biofuels, which do little or nothing to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions or achieve energy independence, but do unnecessarily increase global food prices by diverting land and crops to the production of fuel in preference to food.

Phase-outs of nonessential agricultural subsidies, which often bias production toward unsustainable farming practices and the wasteful overproduction of government-selected crops, undermining public health through overconsumption of subsidized foods with low nutritive value.

While many will call for the subsidization of alternative energy sources, I caution against government over-involvement in this area, as subsidies too often have unintended negative consequences, as the examples above demonstrate, because the government, as a limited actor, does not have the requisite variety in knowledge, information, or expertise to make decisions that “pick winners” by subsidizing particular technologies or industries over others. Moreover, subsidy programs have a dangerous tendency to become autopoeitic, with subsidized industries forming strong lobbying groups to influence Congress to continue & expand subsidies far in excess of any social benefit, which represents waste and an unconscionable cost to the taxpayer, especially at a time when the economy is in crisis.

That said, the government should take a role in investment & sponsorship of areas the private sector cannot effectively finance through pure market mechanisms. In particular, government-funded stimuli introduced to alleviate our present economic crisis should be targeted in a way that helps solve our pressing environmental, social, & security problems:

Provide incentives and enact regulations to ensure the rapid upgrade of the U.S. electrical system to a “smart grid” capable of creating markets for not only selling energy to U.S. consumers, but buying it from those who invest in solar cells & other household-scale electrical generation utilities.

Expand tax credits for investments in energy efficiency in LEED-level & higher home building/remodeling practices, & in automobile purchases to reduce our nation’s energy needs, decrease global warming pollution, and offset potentially higher energy prices due to phased-out fossil-fuel subsidies & carbon dioxide taxation.

The foregoing measures will promote adoption of plug-in hybrid automobiles, a promising way to reduce our carbon footprint and restore automobile sales (and therefore automobile production jobs), while maintaining the freedom and flexibility of automobile transport.

At the same time, the government should balance infrastructure investments in the maintenance of our automobile-centric highway transportation system with increased funding for energy-efficient, low-pollution options such as public mass-transit, mandatory bicycle lanes, and massively interconnected networks of bicycle paths to provide cost-effective & environmentally preferable transportation alternatives.

Invest in upgrades to our other public works to make them more efficient & less prone to terrorist attack, simultaneously providing jobs while increasing our national security.
Provide directives to federal agencies to ensure that all funding for projects respect environmental and social priorities, in particular, stopping land & energy-consuming suburban sprawl.

Sponsor research grants & competitions in developing non-polluting energy sources to spark the creation of jobs & markets in much-needed new energy technologies to meet our energy needs while avoiding a global-warming induced climate crisis.

Commit the U.S. to an ambitious national goal of energy independence based on clean energy sources. Support this commitment with the aforementioned public infrastructure upgrades & research investments, along with even more fundamental investments in public science, technology, engineering, & math education that will be required to bring us long-term solutions in this critical area. Such a program will have multiple synergistic benefits, including stimulating job creation in the education & energy sectors, thereby helping the U.S. economy, moving the U.S. toward environmentally sustainable energy sources, thereby averting a global environmental crisis, bolstering our public education system, thereby maintaining our long-term economic competitiveness, all the while decreasing our reliance on foreign oil, which will sap income from the too-often corrupt, oil-financed regimes funding global terrorism, thereby increasing our national security and, with hope, forcing these oil-revenue-dependent countries to invest in their populace rather than exploit their natural resources to maintain & improve their standard of living.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share a vision for America’s future. I urge you to take full advantage of the opportunity hidden in our present financial crisis to pursue a comprehensive program of tax reform and selective public investment. Cut income taxes to spur consumer spending, thereby creating economic activity, expanded markets, and ultimately more jobs, helping to reverse our current economic woes. Responsibly finance these tax cuts and lead spending away from self-destructive purchases by phasing-out subsidies for and levying taxes on environmentally destructive activities, while supporting constructive investments in our future. I have confidence that you will act boldly to counter our economic crisis, and with great foresight in doing so.

Reclaiming Our Moral Authority

2008-11-16T09:01:00.004-06:00

With hopes that under new leadership, the United States can reclaim our moral authority as a nation where fundamental human rights and the rule of law and are respected, I signed the ACLU's open letter to President Elect Obama urging him to make good on his promises to close the Guantánamo Bay prison, shut down military tribunals, and cease torture programs, ending this largely ineffective and arguably illegal activity, which ends up making more enemies for our country.

Gorebama

2008-11-06T23:08:00.008-06:00

Barack Obama's decisive victory on Tuesday was some much-belated consolation for Al Gore winning the vote but losing the election in 2000. I signed on to WorldChanging's letter to President Elect Obama and the similar but much less specific Repower America petition urging him to adopt the kind of comprehensive response to the brewing climate crisis that has been advanced by Gore. I added the following comment to the Repower America submission:

President-elect Obama, You rise to leadership at a time when the United States & the world face tremendous challenges, from our current financial crisis and gathering recession, to the long-term threats to our national prosperity posed by our faltering education system, to the enormous costs of the climate crisis likely if global warming goes unchecked, and the ever-present threat of global terrorism. These problems seem unrelated, but may all have common threads in an integrated solution. I look to you to lead this country in what Thomas Friedman has called an "energy moonshot" that would channel, through market incentives, massive investment in U.S. jobs in producing clean energy, while cataylzing the U.S. education system to produce the next generation of engineering & entrepreneurial talent needed to completely transition us away from fossil fuels and secure our long-term economic competitiveness while simultaneously reducing the flow of money to foreign oil regimes funding terrorism, and stemming, within the framework of CO2 taxes and/or cap & trade greenhouse gas emissions legislation, our contribution to global warming to avert a climate crisis. Thank you for giving America hope that we can move forward as a country. I look forward to supporting you as we find solutions to the significant challenges we face.

Coal Plants, Carbon Capture, & Energy Investments

2008-11-06T23:00:00.006-06:00

Getting fired up over a Union of Concerned Scientists action alert about coal-fired power plants, I sent the following message to my elected federal representatives:

Representative Mark Steven Kirk
Senator Barack Obama
Senator Richard 'Dick' J. Durbin

While our economic woes have taken much of our collective attention of late, we face another, less immediate, but no less important transnational danger in the impending global climate crisis. Even while we take necessary steps to shore up our economy, we must ensure that the investments we make to meet our energy needs are in our long-term best interest. Therefore, please act to prevent construction of any coal-fired power plants lacking the ability to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions. Constructing new pulverized coal power plants would lock the United States into decades of increased greenhouse gas emissions that would make it extremely difficult to avoid the worst consequences of global warming, as well as spread the well-documented degraded air quality and public health problems created by coal combustion.

The best way to accomplish this restriction for new coal plants is to pass legislation putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon dioxide tax and/or cap & trade emissions credits, which would allow the free market to allocate investment capital to the technologies that most efficiently provide the energy we need without adding to atmospheric greehouse gas levels.

However, failing that comprehensive market-driven approach, government regulation and public funding of new coal-fired power plants should require carbon capture and storage technology, and be limited to a handfull of demonstration plants until such technology is proven to be safe, reliable, and cost-effective. The Union of Concerned Scientists has found that the U.S. can meet its near-term energy needs and curb greenhouse gas emissions through current renewable-energy and energy-efficiency technologies, so significant investment in dirty energy sources like coal is not warranted at this time. Rather, the U.S. should focus on catalyzing job creation & economic recovery through investment in innovation in clean, renewable energy sources to meet our long-term energy needs while simultaneously averting the most devastating impacts of a global warming-induced climate crisis.

Why won't ABC take green money?

2008-10-10T10:34:00.004-05:00

I added my name to the We Campaign's petition to get ABC to reverse its refusal air the (simple-minded but supportable) Alliance for Climate Protection's Repower America advertisement promoting reducing the adoption of clean, renewable energy & reducing our dependence on fossil fuels:

As a contributor to the We Campaign, I urge you to reconsider your refusal
to broadcast the Alliance for Climate Protection's Repower America public
service advertisement. A transition to clean, renewable energy brings us closer
to solving our climate, economic, and security problems. Please balance your
support of self-interested & often misleading ads by oil and coal companies
by broadcasting this public awareness-raising announcement.

Meaningless, Irrelevant Action

2008-09-26T21:52:00.004-05:00

In complete obliviousness to the financial crisis preoccupying the markets, the media, and Congress, I signed on as a Public Campaign Action Fund "citizen cosponsor" of the Fair Elections Now Act, the House version of legislation that gives far less than $700 billion dollars of public money away to qualified congressional candidates who agree to forego private fundraising and abide by campaign spending limits, thereby eliminating obligations to monied special interests. This sort of "clean election" campaign finance reform legislation used to be supported by both presidential candidates, until, of course, they actually had to try to get elected.

Save the Constitution, Skip the Bumper Sticker

2008-09-05T06:31:00.004-05:00

I signed the ACLU's "We Are Constitution Voters" petition since I have affirmed my agreement with all of its tenets through previous political actions, but asked them to skip sending me the bumper sticker.

I believe that no one -- including the President -- is above the law.
I oppose all forms of torture, and I support both closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and ending indefinite detention.
I oppose warrantless spying.
I believe that government officials, no matter how high-ranking, should be held accountable for breaking the law and violating the Constitution.
I believe that the Constitution protects every person's rights equally -- no matter what they believe, how they live, where or if they worship, and whom they love.
I reject the notion that we have to tolerate violations of our most fundamental rights in the name of fighting terrorism.
I am deeply committed to the Constitution and expect our country's leaders to share and act on that commitment -- every day, without fail.

CarboNation Fixation

2008-08-11T21:09:00.005-05:00

I took the "Break the Bottled Water Habit" pledge sponsored by the Center for a New American Dream, a mostly meaningless gesture since I don't drink plain bottled water, anyway. While most of my fluid intake consists of hot tea, I am sure that my not infrequent consumption of bottled sparkling water, and more than occasional indulgence in Diet Snapple as well as (I am ashamed to admit) Diet Coke also have 100X the environmental impact of drinking tap water. Probably more, actually, given the extra energy required to transport heavier glass bottles for Snapple and the additional extraction, manufacturing, and transport energy bound up in the extra ingredients in Diet Cancer, er Coke. Time to give up bottled beverages, really! Unfortunately, I'm not yet ready to do that because that would mean no fizzy drinks and I am psychologically addicted to carbonation. Perhaps I can wean myself off by setting up a home carbonation system? Of course, even if that would both save me money and reduce the pollution associated with transport, there's still the environmental problem of the carbonation itself, carbon dioxide--that now infamous greenhouse gas pollutant--released unnecessarily by my fizzy drink fetish!

The One Machine

2008-08-04T17:44:00.012-05:00

Thanks to JT @ TannerVision for pointing me to Kevin Kelly's intriguing TED Talk tracing our trajectory through its first 5,000 and into the next 5,000 days of the Web. Kelly's statistics of trace the growth of the One Machine of the World Wide Web rapidly assimilating all others:

5% of global electricity usage
240 exabytes storage
7 terabytes/second data transfer (equivalent Library of Congress transferred every 3 seconds)
55 trillion Weblinks (equivalent to the number of synapses in a human brain)
1 billion computer processors composed of 1 quintillion transistors (equivalent to the number of neurons in a human brain)
doubling every 2 years

Kelly argues that the combination of Web 3.0 (the semantic Web which allows us to take the granularity of the Web from hyperlinked pages down to the level of interconnected concepts through such technologies as XML & Web Ontology Language) and, a bit further down the road, the coming ubiquity of Web-enabled devices (via RFID & embedded wireless Internet), will soon give us an embodied Web, an Internet of things. Even now, Kelly shows that many of our separate devices are converging in this direction, with computers, cell phones, PDAs, digital TVs, Webcams, all acting as portals into and/or sense organs of "the cloud", the One Machine of the Web-enabled Internet.

Kelly's prognostications strike me as a likely first implementation of Gregory Stock's concept of Metaman, the global superorganism that we as a species are evolving, wired together through electronic nervous system of the Internet. As a single cell likely to be assimilated into Metaman, I sincerely hope its global brain develops apace with the physical construction of its body in such a way that protects my individual autonomy. It is certainly not hard to imagine an Orwellian version of an Internet of Things, with spying eyes and ears in every 3G GPS PDA camera phone tied back into the One Machine in an inescapable system of monitoring and control.

I am hopeful that we will avoid 1984. I think adoption of Web-enabled technologies will continue to be voluntary, not coercive, done for the advantages they bring, not foisted upon us by those in power. However, once in place, such technologies can still be co-opted by governments or other elites, highlighting the need for enforceable transparency and accountability and vigilance in protecting civil liberties. Those are the memes about our future relationship as part of the One Machine that I will seek to spread on the nascent noosphere of Web 2.0 even while version 3.0 and the Internet of Things are being built.

Radioactive Bananas & the Power to Save the World

2008-08-01T08:31:00.009-05:00

The radiation emitted by a single banana is far greater than the annual yearly exposure generated by an operating nuclear power plant.

An interesting factoid gleaned from a Long Now lecture by summarizing the book Power to Save the World, in which the author, Gwyneth Cravens, a former anti-nuclear activist, makes the case for radical expansion of nuclear power as a necessary step in averting a global-warming induced climate crisis. I found Cravens' lecture, co-presented with nuclear engineer Rip Anderson, listless, stilted, boring, and one-sided, but nonetheless worthy of attention for the comparative analysis of nuclear, fossil-fuel, and renewable energy sources in the light of the climate crisis.

As I have written before, I am not a big fan of nuclear power. I believe it has serious drawbacks as a source of energy, what with that toxic, long-lived radioactive waste, the requirement for elaborate safety mechanisms and stringent protocols to ensure containment of harmful radiation, the issues of uranium fuel enrichment and controlling nuclear weapons proliferation, etcetera ad nauseum. However, most of our current energy sources have serious drawbacks, chief among them for the majority being the amount of pollutants, in particular greenhouse gas pollutants, they produce. Nuclear power does have the singular advantage of an extremely low CO2 signature, and as such, in light of an impending global-warming induced climate crisis, might be the lesser of evils in our present options (chiefly coal, whose toxic pollutants from mining and combustion kill thousands yearly, constituting a public health threat, and are a leading source of greenhouse gases emissions), at least until we figure out how to overcome the technical limitations facing truly clean alternatives like solar, wind, and tidal energies, namely the lack of a viable energy storage mechanisms to allow constant energy output to meet demand from variable inputs (nighttime and cloudy or windless days).

As much as I applaud and wholeheartedly endorse Al Gore's generational challenge to repower America with clean, renewable electricity, I recognize that nuclear power, as a proven, low-carbon source of base load electricity, will likely play a large role in the short term as we make the necessary transition away from fossil fuels. I would hope that it find its place as an energy alternative with its current stringent environmental and safety regulations intact and without government subsidization, gaining its competitive advantage on a playing field in which greenhouse gas emissions are taxed for their true environmental costs.

Looking Back on the End of History

2008-07-31T17:45:00.008-05:00

In an intriguing and wide-ranging lecture for The Long Now Foundation, political scientist Francis Fukuyama defends the thesis from his well-known article and book, The End of History, of the arc of history toward democracy and freedom. As a believer in the idea (though not inevitability) of progress, I enjoyed hearing Fukuyama's arguments. I was especially intrigued by the potential practical policy implications for bringing about "the end of history" (in the Hegelian, not Singularian sense). If we believe in the ideal of liberal democracy in delivering human freedom and prosperity, how should we promote it in those areas of the world still mired in serious ethnic, political, and economic turmoil? While economic prosperity is correlated with liberal democracy, does that mean we should we concentrate on spurring economic growth to help the impoverished and subjugated (more often than not the same people)? Fukuyama argues, based on historical societal evolution, that political institutions ensuring rule of law and other basic governmental functions must first be in place to allow for such economic progress to occur. (See "Chapter 8: Poverty" of the FORA TV streaming video of the lecture for details.) I find these considerations especially interesting in light of the seeming failure of the neoconservative attempt to foist liberal democracy on one of those subjugated peoples in Iraq. Fukuyama gives us much to ponder, and in an era of continuing ethnic strife and terrorism, I think some reasons to be hopeful.

Imperial Impeachment

2008-07-27T11:42:00.002-05:00

NPR reports that the House Judiciary Committee is currently holding hearings on "The Imperial Presidency" investigating how the Bush administration has repeatedly overstepped its constitutional authority. Unfortunately, House Democrats refuse to put impeachment on the table as an option even though Bush's well-documented "high crimes and misdemeanors" are being openly discussed.

While I agree that with only six months left in this administration it would be hard to muster sufficient public support for an impeachment at this point, to my mind, it would be still be "better late than never" to hold the President accountable to the rule of law. From the false intelligence leading us into the debacle in Iraq to the NSA's illegal wiretapping program, to administration-authorized "enhanced interrogation techniques", there are certainly multiple grounds justifying impeachment proceedings. Elizabeth Holtzman made the case well back in 2006 & 2007 (The Impeachment of George W. Bush, High Crimes and Misdemeanors?), as did Bill Moyers (Tough Talk on Impeachment).

Repower America

2008-07-23T18:26:00.003-05:00

Thomas Friedman's idea of a national energy "moon shot" comes to national political prominence with Al Gore's spot-on speech. My favorite line: "Tax what we burn, not what we earn." Let us hope that when Obama becomes President, he will take this challenge as his own.

Virtually Saving the Earth?

2008-07-16T19:01:00.003-05:00

Having somehow missed out on the "fun" gene that keeps me, unlike many of my friends, from seeking out satisfaction from playing games, I've sometimes thought, "if only gamers would invest as much time, energy, and intelligence in solving real-world problems as in playing games, the world would be a better place." Having been involved in technology & education, I've thought along with many others, "if only there were a way to harness the natural inclination to play games to teach real-world skills, to harness the flow provided by gaming to engage students in learning, the world would be a better place". With Superstruct, the Institute for the Future (never heard of them before) fulfills both wishes in one massively multi-player on-line game! Of course, given the dismal fate of most "educational" games, I withhold judgment.

Now, if only I would invest as much time, energy, intelligence in solving real-world problems instead of reading & blogging about RSS feeds ...

FISA Failure

2008-07-15T19:00:00.002-05:00

All my previous ranting about the Bush Administration's NSA-run warrantless wiretapping program was for naught. Congress passed complex amendments to FISA granting immunity to telecommunications carriers who violated the existing FISA law and legitimated the NSA's program. Even Barack Obama voted for it. Thankfully, my other Senator, Dick Durbin, voted against it, as did my former Senator Russ Feingold, for whom I have great respect. I once again recycled verbiage in support of an ACLU campaign to paint the FISA amendments as unconstitutional:

In passing FISA 2008, I believe that Congress has abandoned two core principles upon which our republic is founded: the rule of law and our system of checks and balances.

According to the rule of law, no person, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. FISA was violated. Congress should not have granted anyone retroactive immunity but should instead aggressively investigate and see that justice is carried by holding accountable all those who have acted illegally.

A wise system of checks and balances demands that no branch of government may be allowed to gather to itself unchecked power for whatever good purpose it may be initially intended. The framers of our Constitution clearly understood the inevitability of abuse of such unchecked power. FISA was drafted specifically to allow the executive branch to engage in intelligence gathering with necessary secrecy while at the same time enforcing appropriate judicial checks to prevent abuse. Checks and balances are an essential feature of our republic and must be preserved to protect us against the corruption that unmitigated authority inevitably brings with it. Given its technology-neutral applicability to any communications medium and the latitude it grants for ex post facto warrants, I see no compelling reason to have amended FISA to allow additional unsupervised, classified wiretapping authority. While I accept that in an era of global terrorism certain nonessential privacies and privileges may need to be foregone in order to enhance our security, I demand accountability from those who would diminish our freedoms.

I am a Slow Genius

2008-06-05T17:36:00.002-05:00

The best take-away line from a WGBH Forum Network lecture given by Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slow, actually comes via an audience member, a mother recalling her son's words upon finally, after prolonged struggling, mastering a skill in his childhood: "I am a slow genius!" The phrase stuck with her through 26 years to share in the audience response section of Honore's presentation celebrating mindful slowness as an antidote to the too-hurried pace of modern Western life.

It stuck with me, too. As a devotee of efficiency, a disciple of Getting Things Done, an obsessive-compulsive about being continuously productive, I too often find myself anxiously rushing from one activity to the next or suffering from self-induced ADD from excessive multi-tasking, for fear I'm not moving fast enough to not fall behind, much less get ahead. But there's another part of me that wonders what this busyness is all about. That part of me knows that I've always been a tortoise, not a hare. That part advocates quality over quantity. That part understands that whatever genius I might have is revealed most fully when I am mindfully slow, not fretfully fast. That part agrees with Lao Tzu when he says in the Tao Te Ching:

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.

Singularity

2008-06-05T09:48:00.004-05:00

Technophile that I am, I found interesting the IEEE Special Report on The Singularity, which has a number of thought-provoking essays from multiple points of view and both pro and con Vernor Vinge's concept of the technological Singularity (rigorously expanded & popularized by Ray Kurzweil, among others, in his books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near [now a major motion picture, coming to a theater near you] as well as many lectures, including ones at the Stanford Singularity Summit and TED 2006).

Not being close enough to the research, I hesitate to pass judgment on the question of the development of strong artificial intelligence, the key upon which the singularity is predicated. Either way, though, accelerating information, biological, and molecular/nano technologies promise to make the mid-21st century a magical time to be alive. (As in the late, great Arthur C. Clarke famous Third Law, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Stand Firm on FISA

2008-05-13T20:36:00.004-05:00

Responding to the second of ACLU's alerts on behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Bush Administration with the U.S. House of Representatives leadership on changes to FISA, I recycled my previous letters into this soporific mash-up to my Representative and the House Majority Leader & Speaker.

As you know from my previous correspondence on the issue, I oppose weakening the privacy protections for U.S. citizens in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without compensatory accountability mechanisms. I understand that the Bush Administration is now engaged in "backroom" negotiations with the U.S. House of Representatives leadership to change FISA once again.

While I support strong protective national security measures as part of a holistic approach to combat terrorism, I, like the majority of American voters (as documented in the Mellman Group telephone poll), stand against any actions which violate fundamental American values and our national laws. As you are well aware, FISA regulates wiretaps involving U.S. citizens and provides a flexible judicial oversight mechanism for approving (even after the fact) surveillance through special classified courts. The NSA warrantless wiretapping program circumvented FISA. Congress should be exercising its Constitutional role as a check on executive power by vigorously investigating this violation of the law which was ordered by President Bush and which by precedent should be an impeachable offense, not retroactively rubber-stamping it by considering "compromise" legislation that grants retroactive immunity to the telecommunications providers who cooperated with the Bush Administration's unconstitutional NSA wiretapping program.

At this time, two core principles must be observed above all else. First, we must affirm the rule of law by acknowledging and enforcing the principle that no person, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. FISA was violated. We should not grant anyone immunity but should instead aggressively investigate and see that justice is carried by holding accountable all those who have acted illegally.

Second, we must uphold the Constitutional principle of checks and balances. I have no doubt that clandestine surveillance is entirely necessary to protect innocent Americans. While I accept that in an era of global terrorism certain nonessential privacies and privileges may need to be foregone in order to enhance our security, I demand accountability from those who would diminish our freedoms. We must proceed in such a way to ensure that power is not centralized and abused. We must maintain mutual transparency whenever possible and accountability in all cases. No branch of government may be allowed to gather to itself unchecked power for whatever good purpose it may be initially intended. The framers of our Constitution clearly understood the inevitability of abuse of such unchecked power. FISA was drafted specifically to allow the executive branch to engage in intelligence gathering with necessary secrecy while at the same time enforcing appropriate judicial checks to prevent abuse. Checks and balances are an essential feature of our republic and must be preserved to protect us against the corruption that unmitigated authority inevitably brings with it. Given its technology-neutral applicability to any communications medium and the latitude it grants for ex post facto warrants, I see no compelling reason to amend FISA to allow additional unsupervised, classified, wiretapping authority. Any legislation Congress approves must include independent review of surveillance authority to protect this fundamental principle which undergirds the stability of our republican form of government.

As I expressed in my letter of 17-February-2008, I was pleased when the House of Representatives stood firm against the Administration in its attempt to weaken the protections in FISA. I ask you once again to stand your ground and carry out your duty to check executive power. Remembering that no one is above the law, reject any bill that puts at risk or terminates lawsuits against telecommunications companies, as such legal action may be the only avenue to justice for crimes that may have been committed by telephone and Internet companies who complied with the prima facia illegal NSA requests for such wiretaps. Remembering that the viability of our democrasy depends upon limited power enforced through checks and balances, reject any bill which does not enforce appropriate transparency, oversight, and accountability.

Support S.J. 28

2008-05-10T09:35:00.002-05:00

Appended the following text to my endorsement of the Credo/FreePress/StopBigMedia petition to Congress to pass Senate Joint Resolution 28, co-sponsored by Senator Obama, which opposes the FCC proposal to significantly weaken rules prohibiting cross-ownership of newspaper and television broadcasting.

As markets tend toward consolidation and oligarchical control, consumer choice is curtailed & the public interest subverted. Given the vital role that a free and diverse media plays in informing the citizenry and enforcing government and corporate transparency, Congress must intervene to preserve the FCC media ownership rules that prevent consolidation, which serves only the interests of large media companies.

OCPD: A Contradiction in Terms

2008-05-05T20:44:00.014-05:00

No, not OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) but OCPD (Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder): Both sound bad, but Psychology Today highlights the significant difference between these two diagnoses. While I may have "a touch of" the latter (I am self-admittedly a neat freak, obsessively organized, and famous for my radially symmetrical salads), I fortunately am not afflicted with the former. Personally, though, as a "sufferer," I think OCPD needs a new name. First, it is too easily confused with OCD, the debilitating, repetitive thought-behavior malady. As the PT article indicates, OCPD personality traits can be the very ones than make individuals successful. Second, I find calling it a "disorder" incredibly ironic. Anyone with the "symptoms" of OCPD will tell you that it is entirely about order (I prefer the term "syntropy"), not disorder! Third, I do not find the name sufficiently descriptive. How about "picky personality type", or "hyperfussbudgetivia", or "perfectionomia", or just (à la the subtitle of this blog) "control freak"? That is a label I identify with, even if I might not wear it with the same pride as the equally appropriate appellation, "nerd".

On the subject of this blog's title, and apropos of OCPD, I took the "cyber" prefix in the multi-pun "cybernaught" in part from cybernetics, the engineering discipline of control and communication. Cybernetics derives from the Greek word kybernetes, meaning steersman or rudder, the control mechanism for a ship. Following William Gibson's coining of the term cyberspace and the popularity of the World Wide Web, "cyber" has come to be associated with all things Internet, this blog being one monumentally insignificant corner thereof. So, as a devotee of cybernetics and a control freak, I found "cybernaught" an appropriate name for this sojourner's little nothing of a contribution to the Web.

Voter's First Pledge

2008-05-03T17:07:00.002-05:00

Signed the Public Campaign Action Fund's Voter's First Pledge petition entreating the presidential candidates to support public financing of campaigns. Yawn.

Strengthen S. 2191

2008-05-02T15:18:00.007-05:00

Spurred by legislative alerts from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Action Fund (and in post hoc fashion, this one), I sent the following mash-up to Senators Durbin & Obama:

I am pleased to see that the U.S. Senate, following the lead of the rest of the world with the widespread international ratification of the Kyoto protocol, is finally rising to respond to the climate change threats created by anthropogenic global warming by considering legislation to cap U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. As your constituent, I urge you to strengthen S. 2191, America's Climate Security Act, coming before the Senate this summer.

As repeated reviews of scientific studies by the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have made clear, we must take action now to curb greenhouse gas pollution in order to head off major climatic change and its potentially devastating consequences. The longer we delay taking remedial action, the greater the climatic change, the more pronounced its impacts, the more dramatically we will have to cut emissions in future years to achieve the same results, the higher costs to do so and the higher the costs to recover from the consequences of storm damage, flooding, crop failures, water shortages, and forced migration, and resultant human suffering and political turmoil that may result from significant climate change.

I understand that uncertainty exists surrounding the economic impact of S. 2191, with different analyses invoking different assumptions leading to different conclusions. However, I do not believe we have to choose between a growing economy and mitigating climate change. With the right policy, we can do both. Further, to avoid the costs of climate change impacts and to stay competitive in the 21st century, we must do both.

To this end, please support amendments to the Climate Security Act that would:
Lessen the short-term economic pain to U.S. consumers of higher energy prices by applying credits against or reductions to personal income taxes, making the legislation revenue neutral;
Enforce hard, significant near-term cuts on global warming pollution with a specific, realistic, and aggressive timetable for a progressively decreasing cap;
Ensure that all forms of global warming pollution are covered, with no sectors or industries exempted;
Set standards for environmentally sound biofuels ensuring these interim energy sources actually reduce global warming pollution without threatening world food supplies;
Sets greenhouse pollution allowance quantities low enough & trading prices (&/or tax rates) high enough to avoid the mistakes of the EU cap & trade system & force real market competition for nonpolluting energy sources;
Force all technologies to compete on their merits in the open marketplace, without "picking winners" in advance through subsidies, tax credits, or other government handouts, in particular to nuclear power, which presents its own enormous set of environmental, health, safety, and national security issues.
Global warming may be the most urgent environmental and humanitarian threat facing the planet today. It also represents a tremendous market opportunity to create the clean energy economy of the 21st century.

As the largest of per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, America must shoulder its responsibility by taking meaningful action to protect the commons of the global climate. Please pass legislation that ensures we carry out this responsibility in such a way that compels the market to innovate, thereby stimulating the economy, increasing U.S. competitiveness, and creating new jobs.

Sincerely,
Keith Gillette

HCONRES305

2008-04-30T20:55:00.003-05:00

To kick off National Bike Month, I sent the following note to my U.S. Representative:

Representative Mark Kirk:

As we enter the League of American Bicyclists-sponsored 52nd Annual National Bike Month in May, I urge you to support House Concurrent Resolution 305, a Sense of Congress "recognizing the importance of bicycling in transportation and recreation".

In my daily bicycle commute to work, I realize tremendous personal advantages in the health and longevity benefits of regular aerobic exercise as well as in the financial rewards of avoided costs for automobile payments, fuel, insurance, and maintenance. Moreover, bicycle commuting accrues social benefits by reducing automobile traffic congestion, decreasing the demand for gasoline, & reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases.

My bicycle commute is made possible in part because a well-maintained bicycle path exists between the city in which I live and the city in which I work. Transportation infrastructure is a public good most effectively administered by government. For many of the reasons outlined in H. Con. Res 305, Congress should do all it can to see that bicycle transportation becomes an increasingly viable option for as many Americans as practicable. In particular, Congress should promulgate transportation policy that treats bicycle and pedestrian traffic as an equal to automobile traffic and facilitates intermodal transfer between bicycle and public transport. Please take the first step in securing the benefits of bicycle transportation for a larger segment of the American public by supporting House Concurrent Resolution 305.

Sincerely,
Keith Gillette

Ideology or Results?

2008-04-17T21:11:00.004-05:00

Responding to a Planned Parenthood - Illinois campaign, I sent my two cents to our Illinois chief executive, which I post here to my peril, exposing as it does my liberal leanings and, more damningly, my own sloppy thinking.

Governor Blagojevich,

In a laudable effort to reduce unwanted pregnancy the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among our teenage population, the Bush Administration has unfortunately let ideology trump evidence and mandated that Federal Title V funding exclusively support ineffective abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education programs. I urge you to put the health, safety, and education of our children first by joining the 17 other governors who have taken a principled stand against this misguided Federal policy by rejecting Title V funding and adopting a comprehensive approach to sexual education in Illinois.

The U.S. has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the Western world and fully one out of every four teenage girls in the U.S has a sexually transmitted infection. We can [see] clearly in these troubling statistics the failure of the current ideologically driven abstinence-only policy. As a society, we can't afford to continue to risk the futures of our teenage children by denying them the education they need to make informed decisions and to protect themselves from unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Research has consistently shown that comprehensive, medically-accurate sex education is more effective in protecting young people's health.

As a governor who has repeatedly stood up for health care, I urge you put young people's health first by rejecting Title V funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. While the expense may be greater for the state to fund sexual eduaction itself, our current programs amount to a waste of taxpayer dollars because they are ineffective and incomplete. Funding a comprehensive approach to sexual education would ensure that public funds are spent on programs that provide accurate information and actually protect the health and safety of our youth. Surely the actual reduction in unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease should be the true measure of our moral progress, rather than any ideologically pure but ineffective gestures we might make.

Investigate & Impeach (but if Imprisoned, Hold the Inhumane Treatment)

2008-04-16T18:37:00.008-05:00

I sent the following diatribe to by Senators & Representative in response to an ACLU campaign.

"We do not torture."

I am not sure who George Bush was referring to in that quote he gave in Panama in November 2005, but according to his public declarations on ABC News last Friday, he apparently wasn't referring to the government of the United States. As far back as 2002, top national security advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, explicitly sanctioned specific details of the CIA's use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques'. "And I approved," George Bush now says.

I'm sure there's an arguable semantic difference between 'enhanced interrogation techniques' and 'torture' or 'prisoner abuse' or 'inhuman or degrading treatment' in the same way there's a semantic difference between having 'sexual relations' and 'receiving fellatio'. However, that does not mean that such purported semantic distinctions in the least obviate the need for thorough investigation and, as the evidence warrants, impeachment.

President Bush admits that he and his top advisers played a key role in creating a national policy of what may well amount to torture, a policy enacted by the CIA in covert kidnapping and interrogation, in the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and the mistreatment of Guantánamo detainees, a policy that has not only harmed those against whom it was practiced, but has also violated fundamental American values, diminished our standing in the world, reduced our effectiveness as a leader in the promotion and protection of human rights, probably violated both domestic and international laws, and very likely made us less, not more, safe, since coerced testimony is often fabricated and therefore useless, and in so handling our prisoners, sent the message to our enemies that torture and abuse is acceptable, leaving U.S. citizens open to the same treatment.

I implore you to use your constitutional power to check executive branch abuses. Specifically, I request that you work to:

1. Appoint an independent prosecutor and support other necessary efforts to hold President Bush and other administration officials accountable, in authorizing U.S. involvement in torture, for violations of The War Crimes Act and other relevant laws.

2. Condemn continuing Administration efforts to conduct military commission proceedings allowing the use of evidence gained through torture.

Our republic is founded on the notion than no one, not even the President, is above the law. Congress must take these steps to protect the rule of law, ensuring that violations of law will not be allowed to stand, and that such fundamental betrayals of American values will not happen again. The American people expect you to protect not only our lives, but our Constitution, our laws, and our national ideals.

Deep Thoughts #2 - The Wheel & The Chisel

2008-04-12T20:19:00.006-05:00

While my prose may sometimes be passable, I have no talent for poetry. Unfortunately, that doesn't keep me from trying now and again. A few thoughts rolled around in my mind in the shower after zazen today. My apologies in advance.

In this Genesis spoke well:
We are born from the earthen clay.
But it is ours to mold
into the likeness of God.

Even in our youth
must we work the clay,
daily throwing ourselves
upon the wheel,
with each turn,
through the motion of our feet
and the guidance of our hands,
a fitter vessel crafting.

If the clay should harden
into frozen stone
before the final turn,
and we find ourselves
misshapen, imperfect,
not fit for the final glaze,
let us not despair.

Rather, take we chisel in hand,
and slowly chip our defects away.
For just as David emerged
from his flawed marble
a masterpiece,
so shall we.

Still Feeling Gored

2008-04-10T21:03:00.006-05:00

I had a hard time watching Al Gore's stirring addendum to An Inconvenient Truth without still feeling anger over the 2000 election. What an unconscionable waste the last 8 years have been for this country: Wasted time in taking action against the insidious threat of the climate crisis; wasted global goodwill after the tragedy of 9/11; wasted lives lost and billions spent in the shameful debacle of the Iraq war; wasted moral authority in the flouting of American values from programs of warrantless spying, sanctioned torture, and suspension of habeas corpus.

Recalling the wasteland of the past 8 years, which has left us in the midst of creeping economic recession, I find it difficult to muster optimism when confronted by the evidence for rapid climate change and the disconcerting uncertainty such change entails. Nevertheless, Gore's message is a hopeful call to action that should be watched & shared.

The silver lining of the dramatic reduction of the north polar ice cap, the "logo" of Gore's presentation, is just that it is dramatic. We have been, in our "culture of distraction", unconcerned with global warming because, even at its massively accelerated rate compared with historic epochs, it's been too slow for our dim human responses to pick up as a threat. Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert makes this point well in his provocative and telling LA Times article, "If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming." We have been like the proverbial frog in the heating water, prepared to boil to death instead of leaping out because the change in temperature from one degree to the next has not been sudden enough.

Let us hope the rapid dissolution of the polar ice cap will be the trigger to finally shock the U.S. public into leaping--leaping into action to impel Congress to put a price on greenhouse gas pollution. (Preferably, in this economic climate, a revenue-neutral one, as Gore advocates in his presentation.) If we can muster the will to do that one thing, then we don't have to count on the selfless heroism of this generation. We simply need to count on people and corporations to do what is in their own economic self-interest, a far more reliable outcome than widespread voluntary self-sacrifice. As noble and stirring as Gore's call to environmental heroism is, my optimism lies with our capacity to solve this problem when environmental costs show up in the prices we pay so that people understand not just abstractly, but in practical, monetary terms the impact that their actions have on the global commons.

Fighting Regression

2008-04-10T17:43:00.004-05:00

A recent press release announces a joint American Civil Liberties Union & National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers program to defend the Guantánamo Bay detainees in the military commission hearings underway, part of the ACLU's effort to combat the Bush administration's regression in respecting human rights in its suspension of habeas corpus, and employment of secret evidence and evidence coerced under torture.

Chicks Dig Descartes

2008-04-07T18:57:00.010-05:00

“That whole deep existential torment,” she said. “It’s good for getting girlfriends.”

I smirked at this quote from a New York Times article reporting that the numbers of philosophy majors are rising out of proportion to overall college enrollment.

Because as an undergraduate I couldn't summon the self-discipline to master the calculus sequence required for a computer science degree at UW-Madison, I ended up with a B.S. in Philosophy. (No, that's not redundant: Sometimes B.S. stands for Bachelor of Science and only some philosophy is navel-gazing bullshit.)

At the time, the standard joke about getting a degree in philosophy was that it really taught one how to ask the essential questions, like, "Do you want fries with that?," a query indicative of the expected employment for a philosophy major.

Now it turns out that getting a degree in philosophy is some kind of trendy phenomenon among college students, who recognize the value of the critical thinking, analysis, and logic skills that study of philosophy can impart, as well as of the worldview-broadening that can occur from studying multiple metaphysical systems. According to The Guardian, employers are increasingly agreeing with this assessment of the practical value of philosophical training.

Even better, as the opening quotation from the New York Times article alludes, the painful existential crisis fomented by having one's foundational assumptions about reality repeatedly demolished and reworked by the most brilliant thinkers in history is apparently a chick magnet. When I think about it, there may be some truth to that assertion, as I did start dating my wife in the middle of my own personal crisis, though I'm not entirely sure whether it was more of a crisis in confidence from failing calculus or a crisis of faith in the foundations of my worldview from taking to heart Humean skepticism. In either case, I guess I owe a debt of gratitude to my professors.

Frankly, though, I'm more impressed with the prospects for teaching philosophy to students younger than your average undergraduates, convinced by the incredibly articulate voices of the 13-year old students featured on an Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Philosopher's Zone radio episode outlining an innovative philosophy and reason curriculum taught at selected Queensland high schools. Would that more students spoke so well or thought so clearly!

But I will settle for increased numbers of philosophically trained college graduates. Perhaps this promises greater opportunity for meaningful conversation, something I miss since so few of my current neighbors seem to have pondered Plato or cogitated on Kant, pretentious activities to which I am sometimes still prone.

The Future of a Delusion

2008-04-01T22:27:00.012-05:00

It is entirely reasonable to have no religious beliefs, and yet be friendly to religion. It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonise religion.

I was struck by this excerpt from from The atheist delusion, an article in the March 15th, 2008 issue of The Guardian by John Gray, Professor of European thought at the London School of Economics. Gray's commentary, reacting in part to the sales success of the 4 Horsemen of the Counterapocalypse (previous commentary), treats the shortcomings of the wave of anti-religious sentiment represented by the "4 Horsemen" (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchins, & Harris), arguing that (as he characterizes them) such evangelical atheists have much in common with the religious they rail against, from the proselytizing impulse to the very principles of secularism from which they proceed, principles which flow from precepts inherited from certain religious traditions.

One of those principles is belief in progress, the movement of society toward perfection, which Gray sees as a foundationless assumption inherited from the Christian Whig tradition. He further explores this anti-progressivist viewpoint in an engaging LSE lecture, Utopian Hope and Apocalyptic Religion (based on his book, Black Mass) posted as a podcast on UChannel. Gray argues that while we have clearly experienced progress in science and knowledge, we see no such certain progress in morality or history in general. One need only survey the last century, arguably the bloodiest in history, to find grounds for Gray's assertion. Even a quick look around the world as it is today, from Guantánamo to Darfur, serves up some additional support.

Even so, I find myself disagreeing with Gray on this fundamental point. If we take the sweep of human history into account, we have had our share of unconscionable lapses, but on the whole, I take us to have made progress not just in material terms, but also in standards of behavior. Here, I am influenced by both religious (Teilhard de Chardin) and secular (Robert Wright, among many others) thinkers, who believe there to be historical evidence for such progress, as I gave thanks for last year. I do not discount Gray's critique however, as I do see these lapses of progress evident in our current state of affairs and, further, I do not want to become locked into any sort of dogmatism, whether progressive or not, as I believe dogmatism to be our real enemy. As Gray rightly points out, while atheists often rail against religion for inspiring bloodshed, some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed by secular regimes, the Nazi nightmare being the canonical example. The zealotry of the Nazis was not inspired by blind religious faith, which I do not deny can be the source of malevolent action, but instead by a different sort of dogmatic commitment.

It is that blind zealotry that the new atheists take aim at in their books, and I am highly sympathetic to their cause, as I do think that in large part their attacks on religious fundamentalism are well-founded, both in terms of the history of crimes against humanity justified on religious grounds (see the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the current wave of jihadism), and in terms of the veracity of the beliefs on which these actions were founded. Any sustained dose of critical reasoning and logic call into question much received religious doctrine across most faiths. However, I think Gray would agree that there are other forms of fundamentalism that have proven equally if not more toxic: Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism leap to mind immediately. Gray argues that our present neoconservative universal democratization is another. While I find that last claim harder to swallow, the closed ideological impetus behind it is deeply troubling.

The thread that connects, it seems to me, is dogmatic belief, whether religious or not. The danger arises when one believes one possesses The Truth, whether it be God-given, or derived from some other totalizing belief system. When in possession of Truth, we are confident to act on a grand scale, ignoring that which does not fit neatly into our belief system. Often that which is ignored (subjugated, enslaved, or exterminated) is other people. In the context of the certainty of the Truth, those other people can be objectified and dealt with as less than human. It is the certainty of belief that is the true delusion.

Though I see myself as seeker of truth, driven by my INTJ personality type to systematize, to totalize, I like to think that my single dogmatic commitment is that commitment to anti-dogmatism best summarized in the first line of the Tao Te Ching:

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

Lao Tzu opens his spiritual masterpiece by telling us that all his words to follow must not be taken as literal, final Truth. He reminds us that we can possess provisional truth only: That which can be conceptualized and articulated is the static and incomplete representation of a dynamic whole which cannot be fully captured in thought and language. Part of the ridiculous title of this Weblog is drawn from this view, as articulated the Buddhist saying that "all instruction is but a finger pointing to the moon." Zen Buddhism, in particular, sees reality as lying outside of the realm of words and concepts, which only point to the larger reality they represent, but do not capture, and must not be mistaken for.

Following Robert Pirsig, I see this realization as an essential underpinning of the scientific endeavor, as well, in that scientific truths are written in pencil, always able to be erased, revised, & rewritten in the light of new evidence and better explanations. Contrast this to religious precepts, which are metaphorically chiseled into stone, or in the case of the 10 Commandments, literally so (or at the very least literarily so). Science has the commendable feature of recognizing the provisional nature of its truths, while not devaluing what current truth it does possess.

Gray's fundamental point is that, contrary to the hopes of the evangelizing atheists, religion is not going away and is in fact on the rise, despite the large doses of logic and careful reasoning put forward with not inconsiderable rhetorical skill by the Four Horsemen and many others. In this phenomenon, I am called to contemplate Ken Wilber's conjecture in Integral Spirituality on the psychological role of religion, explaining both its continuing sway and pointing toward its enduring social value: that it resonates with the developmental stages through which every human must pass during our time on earth:

Every human is born at square one and begins his or her unfolding from there, moving from archaic to magic to mythic and possibly higher, and if the world's mythologies were not a repository for these early-level beliefs, every human would have to reinvent them anew. Part of the saga of the role of the world's great religions is that, in at least some ways, they are the vehicle for these necessary (and unavoidable) stages of human development.

One might call Wilber's view incredibly patronizing, both of human nature and of religious significance. Still, it is probably a nobler view of both than that of religion as human wish-fulfillment as Freud presented in The Future of an Illusion. Regardless, it does present a perspective on religion that recognizes value in its various traditions while still contextualizing and limiting its role such that it no longer foments the violence for which it has been criticized. Of course, to accomplish this contextualization, Wilber calls for what for many traditions amounts to a radical overhaul, specifically, disclaiming metaphysical assertions. This amounts to, I think, removing religion's dogmatic claims to Truth.

The prospects for such a transfiguration of religion seems to me an even trickier of a problem to work out than that of excising the equally entrenched and dangerous dogmatism from secular systems of thought. But as a believer in progress, I suppose I must hold out hope that this sort of reform is possible and, I think, at least in the case of religious dogmatism, more likely than the wholesale dismantling of belief systems called for by the evangelizing atheists.

Complex Transformation SPEIS Comments

2008-03-21T10:44:00.004-05:00

Responding to a Union of Concern Scientists Action Alert to generate public comments on the Environmental Impact Statement for the Department of Energy "Complex Transformation" (formerly "Complex 2030") plan to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons capability, I submitted the following letter (with UCS-mandated closing paragraph) to Theodore Wyka, Complex Transformation SPEIS Manager:

Dear Mr. Wyka,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the DoE "Complex Transformation" plan through the mandatory Environmental Impact Statement public comment period. I support the plan's initiatives to downsize the nuclear weapons production & maintenance complex, eliminating unnecessary redundancies.

However, I oppose the Complex Transformation where it seeks to re-initiate the unnecessary & destabilizing capability to develop & manufacture new types of nuclear weapons. The United States still maintains thousands of nuclear weapons from the Cold War period and has thousands more in storage, more than sufficient capacity to maintain a clear nuclear deterrent for the foreseeable future.

I concur with former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger in their published assertions that the U.S. should aggressively pursue a world free of nuclear weapons: "Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America's moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations. Without the bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible."

The expansion of capacity to create new nuclear weapons called for in Complex Transformation clearly constitutes actions inconsistent with this vision of a world free of nuclear weapons & counter to our immediate interest in stemming their proliferation to other nations. Expansion sends the wrong message to other nations both by instilling a false confidence in the capacity of nuclear arsenals to increase national security and by increasing the incentives to produce them in order to counter U.S. nuclear expansion. The calculus of nuclear deterrence in a multipolar world is far more complicated than in the bipolar Cold War nuclear stand-off. We must ensure that our present actions are consistent with protecting our long-term security interests of global nuclear disarmament.

Instead of recreating the capacity to produce new, unnecessary nuclear weapons, the DOE should focus on shrinking the still-oversized nuclear weapons complex and on maintaining the safety and security of our existing weapons arsenal as the size of our nuclear stockpile is reduced.

The Butterfly and the Moth Eaten Tapestry

2008-03-19T17:59:00.007-05:00

I certainly hope something like this hopeful view of the social, technological, and environmental transformations remaking our world is the operative metaphor for our present historical moment. While I am skeptical of its sponsor, the Institute of Noetic Sciences, for lacking rigor in its approach, I respect the intent and vision of this video.

I am reminded of a metaphor used by Tim Allen, a favorite college professor, in which he compared our present place in history as one caught between the changing of two wall hangings, representing the conflict of worldviews. The first worldview, the mythic traditionalist understanding of the world and our place in it, is an intricate tapestry that has become threadbare and moth-eaten over the centuries. The once beautiful, seamless picture of the world depicted in the tapestry, with its clear, unchanging, stable place for humanity, at home under king and God, has steadily deteriorated with the passage of time, from the belching pollution of the industrial revolution, the flitting, gnawing, insatiable moth of consumer appetites, and the universal acid of scientific understanding. Many cling to the old tapestry as beautiful and comforting and lament its deterioration, finding repulsive the pocky, mottled, disconnected scenes presented to view by a tapestry left in tatters under the forces of modernity. These caretakers of the tapestry want to patch it, to stitch it back together, to make it whole and beautiful once again. What they fail to realize is that there is a new tapestry, even more beautiful, even more seamless, and of even stronger weave, being woven behind it to take its place. We are beginning to see this new tapestry show through in places where the old tapestry has worn the most. This new tapestry portrays vast and awe-inspiring vistas charted by scientific exploration, on a weft and warp of reason and logic, with a golden thread which connects us to one another and to the world through compassion, dignity, and respect. This new understanding we are coming to, this new tapestry we are weaving, while in many ways different from the old one, offers no less grandeur, and no less significance, than the threadbare one it replaces.

That, too, is a hopeful metaphor, and one I hope reflects our moment in history.

Intel Atom to Make 1:1 Computing Mainstream?

2008-03-10T11:12:00.002-05:00

CIO reports that more than 25 low-cost laptops based on Intel's Atom microprocessor are due on the market by mid-2008. As I've lamented before, I see the majority of laptops on the market today too expensive & too fragile to put into the hands of middle school & high school students without major planning & support. With the release of durable, low-low cost alternatives like the Asus Eee PC & the OLPC XO-1, I've seen signs of that changing. Now the trickle appears to be turning into a steady flow. With a range of options costing less than US $300, 2008 & 2009 may be the years when 1:1 computing in primary & secondary education becomes mainstream.

Earth: The Sequel Coming to a Planet Near You Today!!!

2008-03-10T09:41:00.006-05:00

Since Environmental Defense, whom I've referenced in my political action Weblog entries many times, seems to be one of the 4 readers of my blog (yes, I'm counting myself in that total & hello, Jon & Paul), they sent me an advance reader's copy of Earth: The Sequel, the new book by EDF President Fred Krupp that's been released today, March 10, 2008.

While the title smacks of a sci-fi Hollywood B-movie, I think this is an important book. It highlights renewable/clean energy projects gaining momentum around the U.S. & across the globe, highlighting key features of the technologies, as well as the economics of launching them. Not surprisingly given EDF's long political history on the issue, the book trumpets cap & trade greenhouse gas pollution legislation as the key lever in getting these clean energy sources into production and spurring technological innovation to create new ones in order to stave off the worst effects of global-warming climate chaos. Interestingly, the book eschews command & control energy policy such as the Renewable Energy Standard (RES), which mandates that utilities purchase a particular percentage of electrical energy production from certain renewable sources. This appears to be something of a reversal for EDF, as I seem to recall receiving action alerts from them urging me to support RES in national legislation, which I have declined to do because, as I've argued before & Earth: The Sequel rightly points out, this approach focuses on process, not performance. A cybernetic analysis of government vs. market decision-making capabilitiy clearly shows that the government does not possess the requisite variety to make fine-grained process decisions & should instead concentrate on the setting the goal, letting individual actors (the market) determine the means.

I've only slogged a few chapters into the book in the week I've had it & I wish I had more enthusiasm for it than I do, because it focuses on an important topic that interests me & comes from an organization I support. However good I find the content, however, the presentation leaves my flat. While I found Natural Capitalism, a book close in theme with its emphasis on market-based approaches to solving environmental problems, both brimming with interesting content and well-written, I find Earth: The Sequel to fall short on the latter point. The descriptions of solar & wind projects would be well served by an illustration or two (simple line drawings would go far to explain the projects the book tries to describe), and the vignettes of the entrepreneurs trying to launch these projects need more personal detail to support the hyperbolic adjectives too often used in a rushed attempt to bring to life the stories of these worthy energy projects.

Those stylistic criticisms aside, I think the book should be on the reading list for anyone interested in energy policy, global warming, and clean-energy investing. Here's hoping it lights a (CO2 emissions-offset) fire under Congress to actually pass cap & trade greenhouse gas pollution legislation & sets us on the path to Thomas Friedman's vision of U.S. energy independence through massive innovation in clean, renewable energy.

2008 Presidential Election Results Already Programmed Into Voting Machines

2008-03-03T13:16:00.005-06:00

Listening to a UChannel lecture exposing multiple serious security flaws in paperless electronic voting machines from Diebold & other manufacturers strengthened my opinion that our current implementations of this promising but insecure technology are too vulnerable to abuse to be trusted for this vital role, until a scoop at The Onion (via Dremocracy) reminded me that it's all a pre-programmed conclusion anyway.

Integral Politics & The Social Psychology of the Culture Wars

2008-02-24T12:27:00.008-06:00

In this 2007 New Yorker Conference presentation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents his fascinating research identifying 5 distinct psychological foundations of moral sentiments. (I touched on Haidt's work briefly in a previous post.) In Haidt's model, self-identified liberals use fewer values (care/harm & fairness/justice) in making moral judgments than do conservatives (who also employ measures of ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity).

These differences explain why liberals are in general more tolerant (much more is allowed when only harm & fairness are at stake) than conservatives, making liberal philosophy much more conducive to a diverse, pluralistic society. However, it also reveals the blind spot liberals have to the limits to productive freedom and the importance to social integrity that "conservative" values bring.

I am curious how this research fits within the framework of "Integral Politics". While Haidt does not speak of these values as developmental in any way, they can easily be construed to fit within the psycho-social developmental models (like that of Lawrence Kohlberg) employed by integral theorists, with the sacred/profane distinction associated with primitive power god belief systems, the restricted in-group/outgroup identification associated with tribal/ethnocentric "us vs. them" thinking, the deference to authority linked to traditional conformist culture, and the concept of justice representing a more abstract, rational understanding of individuals as autonomous, rights-bearing entities, and the the harm/care dimension reflecting a postconventional universal compassion.

Haidt believes in the primacy of moral intuition rather than reasoning in making moral judgments, leading me to suspect he does not embrace the developmentalist project. He instead argues that these moral sentiments are biologically conditioned by our mammalian brains or socially selected in response to cultural exigencies. In this presentation, Haidt gives an explanation for U.S. voting patterns (a proxy for liberalism/conservatism) based on exposure to cultural diversity as determined by geography. This explication supports at least an adaptationist understanding of these value systems, with a liberal justice-based morality proving more adaptive to diverse cultural milieus than conservative values. A quick look at ethnic conflict around the world would tend to support that view.

Regardless of whether these values fall within a developmental spectrum or lie on a horizontal plane, Haidt's research does support the integral project on two counts: (1) As he states explicitly, the "liberal value" of justice must provide the overall framework of social relations to ensure the protection of individual rights and allow individual freedom; (2) the "conservative values" must not be jettisoned unthinkingly, but held as additional constraints on acceptable behavior in order to preserve the integrity of society and maximize the possibility for individual human flourishing.

In the interests of full disclosure, here are my results from the"Moral Foundations Questionnaire" instrument on YourMorals.org, a research collaborative among Haidt & 4 other social pyschologists. (My scores are green, the average liberal is blue, the average conservative red.)

Protect America Act Expires, World Does Not End

2008-02-17T19:44:00.004-06:00

I added the following personalized thank you to the ACLU's message to U.S. House leaders who let the "Protect America Act" expire in order to allow full debate on FISA legislation.

Thank you for defending the freedoms of Americans and supporting the cause of government accountability by not conceding to President Bush's call for immediate passage of flawed FISA legislation.

While I accept that in an era of global terrorism certain nonessential privacies and privileges may need to be foregone in order to enhance our security, I demand accountability from those who would diminish our freedoms. We must proceed in such a way to ensure that power is not centralized and abused. We must maintain mutual transparency whenever possible and accountability in all cases. FISA was drafted specifically to allow the executive branch to engage in intelligence gathering with necessary secrecy while at the same time enforcing appropriate judicial checks to prevent abuse. Checks and balances are an essential feature of our republic and must be preserved to protect us against the corruption that unmitigated authority inevitably brings with it. Given its technology-neutral applicability to any communications medium and the latitude it grants for ex post facto warrants, I see no compelling reason to amend FISA to allow additional unsupervised, classified, wiretapping authority. Further, I see no reason to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications providers who complied with prima facia illegal NSA requests for such wiretaps in the past.

Allow U.S. citizens to demand accountability for past misdeeds, ensuring that the rule of law is upheld, by not granting retroactive immunity for telecommunications carriers, and ensure government accountability going forward by granting appropriately flexible, but checked, wiretapping authority in any future FISA legislation.

FISA Fiasco Foregone Conclusion?

2008-02-07T20:37:00.000-06:00

The ACLU thinks Senate passage of FISA 2007 with retroactive immunity for telecommunications carriers involved in the NSA warrantless wiretapping program as well as weakened checks on government surveillance is now a foregone conclusion & is turning its attention to the House. Futile as it may be (the votes may already be over as I write this), I sent the following to my Senator, Barack Obama:

In an editorial in this past Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, said, "Our ability to track and monitor terrorists overseas would not cease should the Protect America Act expire. If this were true, the president would not threaten to terminate any temporary extension with his veto pen ... For this president, fear is an easier political tactic than compromise. With FISA, he is attempting to rattle Congress into hastily expanding his own executive powers at the expense of civil liberties and constitutional protections."

I hope your votes on S.2248 (FISA 2007) and its amendments currently before the U.S. Senate will prove out the faith I placed in you this past Tuesday when I cast my ballot for you in the Illinois Presidential Primary. I know that your Senatorial counterpart, Dick Durbin, opposes immunity for telecommunications providers who complied with the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless wiretap program and also supports amendments to S.2248 preventing "reverse targeting" of Americans (bypassing the need to obtain a court warrant in order to spy on U.S. citizens by surveilling foreign, not domestic, communications).

Senator Feingold & others have proposed amendments to FISA to protect our civil liberties, enforce government accountability, & allow action against illegal wiretapping. I was disappointed by your "abstain" vote today on one of Senator Feingold's proffered amendments. I hope that your future votes on this bill will reflect a commitment to the integrity of our rights.

As my past communications to you on this issue made clear, while I accept that in an era of global terrorism certain privacies and privileges may need to be foregone in order to enhance our security, I demand accountability from those who would diminish our freedoms. We must proceed in such a way to ensure that power is not centralized and abused. We must maintain mutual transparency whenever possible and accountability in all cases. FISA was drafted specifically to allow the executive branch to engage in intelligence gathering with necessary secrecy while at the same time enforcing appropriate judicial checks to prevent abuse. Checks and balances are an essential feature of our republic and must be preserved to protect us against the corruption that unmitigated authority inevitably brings with it. Given its technology-neutral applicability to any communications medium and the latitude it grants for ex post facto warrants, I see no compelling reason to amend FISA to allow additional unsupervised, classified, wiretapping authority.

Senator Obama, as you cast your votes on S.2248 and its amendments, please ensure that transparency and accountability remain enshrined in law and carried out in practice even as we protect our nation against terrorist & other serious security threats.

Superclass++ or Superclass-- ?

2008-02-03T12:15:00.001-06:00

As a computer nerd, the word "superclass" denotes for me the object-oriented programming taxonomy that allows a child ("sub") class to inherent properties & methods from its parent or "super" class. David Rothkopf, in an insightful lecture delivered at Middlebury College introducing his forthcoming book, uses the term with the definite article to denote the roughly 6,000 or so people who constitute the ruling elite of our planet. These are the 1-millionth of the global population, the executives of multinational corporations and top government and military officials, 94% male and predominantly white, who have transnational decision-making power affecting the billions of the rest of us. The only inheritance evident in this superclass is the financial kind, in the multi-billions of dollars passed to their heirs, perpetuating the elite lineage.

Rothkopf doesn't see a conspiracy theory in this growing hyperconcentration of power, nor does he see anything necessarily Orwellian about its operation, but he also doesn't think it puts us in a doubleplusgood place. Rather, he argues that we have gotten ourselves into this situtaion through a prevailing wisdom (perpetuated by the power elite) that prizes freedom and national sovereignty at the expense of justice and fairness. Further, the lack of democratic accountability in the current system allows the interests of the superclass to supersede those of the public at large. This is evidenced by the increasing disparity between the haves and have-nots, including the billions of people trapped by geographic determinism, born into abject poverty with no system in place to allow them to work their way out. In the end, this unchecked inequality allowing billions to suffer while a tiny minority profits enormously, make the current superclass system unsustainable.

While he doesn't explicitly call for democratic world government, his analysis of the interests and actions of the superclass clearly underlines the need for stronger transnational institutions with democratic accountability, ends that I support heartily.

Sunday Morning Silliness

2008-01-25T14:54:00.000-06:00

A note from Environment Illinois prompted me to sign a League of Conservation Voters inspired petition to pester the Sunday politico show hosts to make global warming a campaign issue for candidates. As much as I'm sure others want to know the candidates' takes on hypothetical professional sports match-ups, I'm afraid I'm more interested in substantive policy debates related to the important issues facing our nation. Yeah, I'm boring like that.

Fission Frisson

2008-01-19T12:24:00.001-06:00

A question from a friend prompted me to write this brief opinion piece on nuclear fission as an energy source in the context of the climate crisis.

The question of nuclear power has become increasingly controversial among environmentalists. During the 1970s, ’80s, & ‘90s, environmentalists seemed fairly uniformly against nuclear power because of the radioactive waste it produces, which remains highly toxic for hundreds of years and potentially dangerous for millennia. Recently, with the upsurge in concern over a potential climate crisis due to greenhouse-gas induced global warming, a growing minority of environmentalists have become vocal supporters of nuclear power because it produces no greenhouse gas pollution. The waste it does produce is localized and contained. Given the enormous environmental & economic threat that the climate crisis presents, these environmentalists have been willing to accept nuclear power as the lesser of two evils.

Part of this increased acceptance has been due to proposals for increased nuclear waste reprocessing, which allows some nuclear waste to be converted back into nuclear fuel, reducing dramatically the amount left to store in the Yucca mountain national nuclear waste repository (if it ever opens, given the political opposition that has pushed it 10 years past its original projected opening date & the latest projections which still give us 9 years to go). Reprocessing nuclear waste was done in the past by the U.S. to create plutonium for nuclear weapons, but France employs it to re-feed its reactors, & the Bush administration has proposed employing waste reprocessing to create plutonium to power (yet to be built) new sodium-cooled nuclear reactors. It sounds promising at a first glance, but Frank Von Hippel of Princeton has compelling analyses regarding the economics & safety of these schemes that make me skeptical. For good perspective to both sides of the argument of nuclear power, I highly recommend the listening to the well-balanced debate between Peter Schwartz & Ralph Cavanagh, sponsored by The Long Now Foundation as part of their excellent Seminars on Long Term Thinking (SALT) lecture series.

While nuclear power certainly provides a win in reducing greenhouse gas pollution, I think its downsides still outweigh any incremental benefits garnered from reduced greenhouse gas emissions. The risks of nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear accidents go up with expansion of nuclear energy, especially with the highly concentrated fissile materials produced in the reprocessing scenarios. Further, we still don’t have a viable solution for waste storage. In my opinion, in an environment of resource constraints, any production system without a closed loop is a non-starter. The Union of Concerned Scientists has produced a report outlining the major issues surrounding nuclear power, which delves into many of these issues in detail.

While I am obviously arguing against investment in the expansion of nuclear power, I would not take direct steps to shut it down, given that it accounts for 20% of the U.S.'s electricity production. Instead, I would argue for two macro-level policy changes to determine the future of nuclear energy: (1) Enact a comprehensive cap & trade system phasing down greenhouse gas pollution (or a carbon dioxide tax having the same effect) to mitigate a global warming-induced climate crisis. (2) Phase-out the fuel extraction & production subsidies for the petroleum & nuclear industries to create a level playing field for alternative (and by policy step #1, nonpolluting) energy sources. I believe that these two policies, along with the safety & security requirements already in place, would allow the market to effectively sort out the rationality of nuclear energy vs. other energy sources. I have a feeling that Lester Brown, author of Eco-Economy, would be proved right in his dismissal of nuclear power as economically uncompetitive if the costs of waste reprocessing & containment are put on the producers where they belong (Plan B 3.0, p.214).

My Torturous Prose Demands Special Prosecutor

2008-01-16T21:19:00.000-06:00

Reinforcing my previous post supporting a special prosecutor to investigate the CIA torture tape scandal, I sent the following message to my U.S. Senators & Representative in support of the ACLU's call to action (their annoying boilerplate in italics):

The CIA torture tape scandal is yet another black mark on the reputation of United States and another reason the people of American and the world have lost faith in the integrity of our government. For that faith to be restored, we must have a full, public accounting of what happened and everyone involved in criminal acts, regardless of political position, must be brought to justice.

Given the Department of Justice's role in the development of an illegal program of torture and abuse, it cannot be trusted to conduct this investigation internally. Instead, Attorney General Mukasey must appoint a special counsel to lead a thorough and independent investigation to uncover not only who destroyed CIA tapes of interrogations but also who authorized, ordered, and carried out any alleged criminal acts of torture. Those acts may be more serious crimes than the destruction of the tapes and therefore must not be beyond the scope of an investigation.

I have voiced my opinion to Attorney General Mukasey directly on this matter and I now call on you, as my elected representative, to bring your influence to bear. Our nation is founded on the notion that no one and no purpose is above the law. Please see that the full facts of this case come to light in a thorough and independent investigation. The American people expect you to protect our Constitution and our national ideals. Please discharge your responsibility by seeing that justice is impartially executed in this case.

Again, please keep the pressure on Attorney General Mukasey to appoint a special counsel -- someone with real independence and transparency who can undertake a comprehensive investigation not only into the destruction of videotapes, but also those who may have authorized, ordered or carried out criminal acts of torture and abuse.

For more detailed arguments on this important matter, please read the ACLU's letter to Congress at:

http://www.aclu.org/independentprosecutor

Secular Spirituality & The Identity Politics of Atheism

2008-01-15T19:06:00.000-06:00

Sam Harris, philosopher, neuroscientist, author of The End of Faith & Letter to a Christian Nation, and one of the four horsemen of the counter-apocalypse (more on that group in a previous post), delivered a thoughtful keynote address to the Athiest Alliance International 2007 Conference in which he argued (to a roomful of self-identified athiests) that for people who reject the claims of religion to accept the term "athiest" is a counterproductive exercise, akin to those who don't believe the claims of astrology calling themselves "nonastrologers" or those who don't harbor prejudice against people of different ethnicities advertising themselves as "nonracist". Harris correctly asserts that the life & death issues that end up truly dividing many religious believers from nonbelievers (fundamentalist fueled terrorism, abortion policy, stem cell research prohibitions) are too important to be compromised by either the divisive identity politics of labeling which allows the reflexive identification & rejection of the "other" or the relativistic pluralism which allows dangerous religious doctrines to go unchallenged under the guise of politically correct multicultural sensitivity. Instead, Harris, argues, secularists should reject simple labels, whether it be atheist or Brights or whatever) & insist on addressing specifics of belief, always emphasizing reason & evidence. Such an approach allows athiests (hard to avoid the word in practical use, whatever Harris recommends) to ally themselves with religious moderates in the cause of combating the extremists who pose the greatest threat to civil society through acts of terrorism, as well as with the majority of Americans who support stem cell research regardless of their view of the reality of the soul, etc.

Harris's view also allows room for a nondual spirituality stripped of metaphysical claims & therefore consilient with scientific reasoning. In his Q&A exchange with philosopher Daniel Dennett, Harris hints at a view of consciousness that at once encompasses our current neuroscientific understanding of brain functioning and the traditional Buddhist/contemplative tenet of the self as illusory. Somewhere in there I see the glimmer of a tie-in to Douglas Hofstadter's view, treated in I Am a Strange Loop, of our experiences of ourselves (our "I") as the result of a "strange loop" in our neurally-constructed representation system, the articulation of which resolves the dualist mind/matter conundrum.

I'm still plodding through Hofstadter's book though, and not nearly as smart as any of the thinkers listed thus far, so I'm not in a position to pontificate on a resolution to dualist thought. Suffice it to say, listening to the good sense emphasizing reason & evidence in Harris's lecture was sufficient to prompt me to add The End of Faith to my Amazon Wishlist (right behind Daniel Dennett's Breaking The Spell, which was there already due to my affection for Dennett from his previous books, especially Darwin's Dangerous Idea & Consciousness Explained), and to make me subscribe to Harris's soon-to-be-launched Reason Project, "a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society" which features such intellectual luminaries & personal thought-leaders as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, & Steven Pinker.

Gitmo's Gotta Go

2008-01-07T20:37:00.000-06:00

Six years of detention with no trials or convictions? Human rights violations alleged by the Red Cross & Amnesty International?

Siding with the likes of Colin Powell for reasons outlined in my previous post on the topic and reinforced by listening to a fascinating lecture How Good People Turned Evil by psychologist Philip Zardino, designer of the infamous Stanford prison experiment and author of the Lucifer Effect, I signed the ACLU's petition to close Guantánamo Bay detention camp and set myself a task reminder to wear orange this Friday in support of the January 11th day of protest.

Urban Aesthetics

2008-01-02T19:50:00.000-06:00

Because I harbor an deep distaste for design that sacrifices either function or form, I enjoyed author and social critic James Howard Kunstler's edgy TED Talk on the Tragedy of Suburbia. Kunstler calls U.S. suburban sprawl "the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known." While he comes across with too much gloom & doom without sufficient focus on positive solutions for my taste, I still applaud his energy in attacking the automobile-centered, wasteful ugliness of suburban America and the despair-inducing effect of what passes for architectural and urban "design" and the myopic vision that so commonly sacrifices form for function or vice versa.

Kunstler's slide show highlights examples on each side of the form/function imbalance. The January 2008 edition of Alan Scrivener's rambling Cybernetics in the Third Millenium e-Zine features many more, including Frank Gehry's MIT monstrosity, which appears to have forgotten the function of keeping the rain out (and whose form seems beyond silly to my sensibilities anyway). On the other side, typically forsaking any aesthetically satisfying form for (narrowly defined) efficiency of function, one finds the big box stores and cookie-cutter residential developments that typify our stupefying suburban sprawl. Here any sense of aesthetic interest largely consists in tacked-on bric-a-brac like vinyl window shutters that serve no purpose, classical columns that support nothing, and other artificial ornament completely superfluous to the structure of the building.

I hold out hope for a human-centered, genuine form-follows-function design that respects aesthetics as much as efficiency, sustainability as much as cost, and social integrity as much as personal freedom. Surely there must be designers and architects out there capable of marrying the unified design harmony of Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture (yes, he had his own leaking roof problems, but one control freak to another, I've liked the unity and detail of every Wright building I've entered) with the structural efficiency and inherent geometric beauty of R. Buckminster Fuller's tensegrity engineering (where's my Dymaxion House? it's been 60 years!) in the context of the vast vision of Paoli Soleri's arcology (the same Arizona trip that took me to Wright's Taliesin West brought me to Arcosanti & yes, it is weird, but fantastically weird), in the context of new urban design understanding informed by the constraints of ecological energetics, centered on human ergonomics, and aided by genetic algorithm design simulations.

I'm no doubt trying to maximize too many interrelated variables, but clearly something must change in our architecture and urban design if we are to avoid ecological disaster and social disintegration. I think that change will only come about when the economics of energy demands efficient design. When the costs of degrading our environmental commons are factored into the price we pay for energy & materials (ala Natural Capitalism), perhaps we will see designs that counter our current tragedy of suburban architecture. I hope they come with good taste, as well.

Mammal Meat Moratorium

2008-01-01T21:26:00.001-06:00

I've been decreasing the amount of red meat I consume for years, with my consumption basically reaching zero over the past year. Reflecting on a thought-provoking Princeton University lecture series on Food, Ethics, and the Environment, and an aside on the "size of animal souls" in Douglas Hofstadter's fascinating book I am a Strange Loop, I decided to make it official and swear it off altogether, including all mammal meat, red or not.

It took a confluence of three factors to bring me to the decision to deliberately curb my carnivorous habits beyond the already internalized social norms (such as abstaining from domestic animals), so I thought I'd take a moment to record my reasoning.

1. Health

I had begun decreasing my consumption of red meat primarily for health reasons. While I was swayed by the research associating its intake with with heart disease and cancer, it was probably more an attempt to restrict caloric intake to lose fat than disease prevention that drove my earliest restrictions. However delicious my standby favorites of patty melt and Reuben sandwiches tasted, they were loaded with calories that were edging me toward obesity. Combined with the increased health risks, I moderated my consumption more than a decade ago and shifted to a greater proportion of leaner meat dishes.

2. Environment

Increasing environmental awareness led to a second decrease in red meat consumption. Transportation, housing, and food choices comprise about equally 70-80% of our individual environmental impact (EIPRO, 2003). Among food choices, the most land, water, & energy efficient, lowest environmental impact diet is clearly vegan, with red meat eating on the opposite end of the scale. Within meat consumption, water use, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions fall into a clear continuum, with beef, fish, pork, lamb taking 2-20X the energy to raise per calorie provided than eggs, dairy products, and poultry. The spread of energy efficiency is an order of magnitude greater when compared with pure plant foods (Eshel & Martin, 2005).

While I believe that a truly sustainable agriculture does include animal husbandry (ruminants turn marginal "unproductive" grasslands into human-usable calories and fertilize the fields to boot), the fossil-fuel intensive, corn-fed, antibiotic & hormone abusing, methane-belching, toxic manure heap, factory farm Meatrix we have created is clearly unsustainable, with the raising of large mammals solely for the purpose of meat consumption topping the list of offending practices.

3. Ethics

The final factor precipitating my decision to remove mammal meat from my diet is the ethical qualm I have developed regarding eating higher animals. On the one hand, as an evolved omnivore, I consider meat eating natural. On the other hand, I recognize that not everything natural is best. While I have not deliberated deeply the moral status of animals, a few salient points stand out from casual consideration. First, it appears to me that all animals have developed enough nervous systems to be capable of suffering. Second, some animals have more developed nervous systems than others.

The first point is of significance only insofar as animals suffer in the process of coming to my plate and to the extent that one considers suffering bad. On the latter point, I side with the Buddha. From what I've learned of factory farms, especially the lives of pigs and poultry, who live their entire lives in cages too small to turn around in, I believe significant suffering is involved. That's not necessarily an indictment of eating meat, but clearly an condemnation of our current factory farm system, and one that has prompted me to switch to cage-free eggs and hope for a systemic turn to what Michael Pollan has clumsily termed "humanocarnivorism".

The second point is more crucial to the fundamental question of whether it's morally acceptable to eat meat at all. To my mind, the issues are complex and the questions often disturbing. After all, what makes it acceptable to eat a pig but not a dog or a cat? They're all domesticated. The pig is thought to be as intelligent as the dog and some people do keep them for pets. What's the dividing line beyond arbitrary social convention? I'm not sure.

For myself, I've decided to draw a new dividing line at the class mammalia. I'm not convinced that meat is murder. (If I were starving, I'd certainly consume a cow or any other mammal to survive, but I don't see the likelihood of having to realize that value judgment.) However, I am increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of eating higher animals simply for taste, because I see in them a gradation of moral standing less than the personhood of humans but greater than neurologically lesser developed animals. The value imbued in these creatures lies in the increasing interiority, the inner space of self-aware experience, described by philosopher Ken Wilber, which I see as coextensive with the inherent increasing value-in-the-world Robert Pirsig ascribes to evolutionary advancement.

I sense a slippery slope in this reasoning, so I don't know that this dividing line will stop at a moratorium on mammals, but for now I'll say so long to burgers & bacon and limit myself to edible aquatic animals and those delicious descendants of dinosaurs, chickens & turkeys. (Does than make me a dinosaurivore ... ?)

Waiving the Waiver

2007-12-20T07:04:00.000-06:00

Environmental Defense is sponsoring a protest of the EPA's recent denial of California's request for a Clean Air Act waiver to set its own higher automobile Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to reduce greenhouse gas pollutants. Both California & the EPA's moves affirmed by the supreme court's summer decision acknowledging the EPA's authority to regulate such global warming pollutants. The EPA claims that the newly passed U.S. Energy Bill already sets higher nationwide CAFE standards, so it struck down the waiver request to avoid a "patchwork of local regulations".

I didn't bother to sign-on to the Environmental Defense protest. While I don't necessarily agree with the decision, I'm not a fan of CAFE standards. In my untutored opinion, the U.S. Energy Bill is morass of government regulation that does little to advance the cause of stemming greenhouse gas pollutants. I think the bill to push strongly for is the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would put hard caps on greenhouse gas pollutants & institute a market for trading carbon dioxide credits. The bill passed out of Senate Committee on December 5th & appears to have a bit of momentum behind it.

I believe that once we get hard emissions caps in place, we won't have to worry about micromanaging renewable energy percentages or fleet economy standards. The market will take care of those details in the most efficient way it can find. Until those caps are in place, however, there's nothing to stop simple economic growth from increasing the total output of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere even with higher CAFE standards in place, making both the California & the national CAFE standard increases of marginal consequence.

Neutral Nonsense

2007-12-17T13:20:00.000-06:00

Putting some of my money where my mouth is, yesterday I gave my second (tax-deductible) contribution to LiveNeutral to offset my annual household greenhouse gas pollution, as calculated from the number of miles driven on our 2000 Subaru Forester, the number of kilowatt hours summed from last year's ComEd bills, and the number of therms in my North Shore Gas annual summary. LiveNeutral is one of a number of greenhouse gas pollution offset providers, some nonprofit, some commercial, which allow individuals to purchase credits which fund renewable energy, carbon sequestration, and other projects which proportionately compensate for one's own emissions. LiveNeutral buys credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange, while other providers sponsor their own greenhouse gas pollution offset programs.

About all this act does is greenwash me for another year. Such voluntary programs, however noble, will not solve the likely growing climate crisis. Only when the cost of such greenhouse gas pollution is built into the price of energy through mandatory caps on emissions will reductions significant enough to stem global warming occur.

Experts Agree: Everybody Just Like You is Reading this Limited Time Blog Entry, Freely Given to You by a Really Nice Guy You Like! Will You?

2007-12-16T13:11:00.000-06:00

Don't miss out on this unique educational opportunity! Read on ...

While shoveling snow today, I had the pleasure of listening to a Princeton University UChannel podcast of a fascinating & useful lecture given by Professor Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion on 25-January-2007 at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in which Professor Cialdini outlined 6 principles of persuasion that his survey & experimental research has demonstrated to be the most effective modes of influence for affecting human behavior:

Reciprocity: create an obligation by giving first, then asking for behavior;
Scarcity: present opportunity as rare or dwindling in availability, phrase in terms of loss of positive benefits if choice not made, highlight unique features;
Authority: make appeal from legitimately constituted (knowledgeable & honest) expert, build trust by offering weakness of proposal first, then pivoting to strongest argument;
Commitment & Consistency: specifically ask for agreement;
Liking: spend time building common ground & interests, make appeal from someone like the target audience or show that others like the target are doing the same thing, segmenting market as necessary;
Consensus: present the social norm in such a way that marginalizes the unwanted behavior and shows the preferred behavior as normal.

The last point I found especially interesting, as one can readily see the error of many public service marketing campaigns which actually promote the behavior they intend to reduce by increasing its social acceptability in dramatizing its incidence, a tragic mistake for which Cialdini provides empirical evidence & illuminating examples. I also thought the importance of consensus bolstered the case for the "broken window theory", which while it has been discredited as significantly causative factor in influencing unsocial behavior in general, certainly must play a role in influencing the prevalence of like behavior.

While it won't make you a marketing expert overnight, I highly recommend that anyone with the responsibility to influence others listen to the podcast or read the transcript. (All of your friends are doing it.)

MalFISAnce

2007-12-13T18:48:00.000-06:00

Since I have a nasty cold that has mostly robbed me of my speaking voice, I chose to respond to the ACLU's call for calls by instead sending e-mail messages to my Senators Obama & Durbin as well as Senate majority leader Harry Reid:

I understand that the Senate will very soon take up legislation addressing the Bush Administration's "warrantless wiretapping" program operated by the National Security Agency. I want to express my support for the work done by Senator Durbin & others on the Senate Judiciary Committee attempting to call the Administration to account for this prima facia illegal program and for the committee-approved legislation which refuses to grant immunity to telecommunications providers who violated the law by complying with the NSA's illegal wiretapping requests.

While I support strong protective national security measures as part of a holistic approach to combat terrorism, I, like the majority of American voters (as documented in the recent Mellman Group telephone poll), stand against any actions which violate fundamental American values and our national laws. As you know, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) regulates wiretaps involving U.S. citizens and provides a flexible judicial oversight mechanism for approving (even after the fact) surveillance through special classified courts. The NSA warrantless wiretapping program circumvented FISA. The Democratic Congress should be exercising its Constitutional role as a check on executive power by vigorously investigating this violation of the law which was ordered by President Bush and which by precedent should be an impeachable offense, not retroactively rubber-stamping it by considering legislation such as the current Intelligence Committee bill or the "Protect America Act".

At this time, two core principles must be observed above all else. First, we must affirm the rule of law by acknowledging & enforcing the principle that no person, not even the President of the United States, is above the law. FISA was violated. We should not grant anyone immunity but should instead aggressively investigate and see that justice is carried by holding accountable all those who have acted illegally. Second, we must uphold the Constitutional principle of checks and balances. I have no doubt that clandestine surveillance is entirely necessary to protect innocent Americans. However, no branch of government may be allowed to gather to itself unchecked power for whatever good purpose it may be initially intended. The framers of our Constitution clearly understood the inevitability of abuse of such unchecked power. Any legislation Congress approves must include independent review of surveillance authority to protect this fundamental principle which undergirds the stability of our republican form of government.

Please carry out the will of the American people and your Constitutional duty an a check on the power of the executive by holding investigations into the FISA violations and ensuring that any new surveillance legislation passed by Congress includes appropriate oversight and accountability.

Special Prosecutor for CIA Tape Destruction

2007-12-11T10:28:00.000-06:00

I signed the ACLU's petition calling on U.S. Attorney General Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes in order to avoid legal action against its operatives. To the ACLU's boilerplate, I added:

Our nation is founded on the notion that no one and no purpose is above the law. Please see that the full facts of this case come to light in a thorough and independent investigation. The American people expect you to protect our Constitution and our national ideals. Please discharge your responsibility by seeing that justice is impartially executed in this case.

C3: BYOB

2007-12-06T11:21:00.000-06:00

Since we already use reusable bags for shopping, I signed this month's "bring your own bag" pledge for The Center for the New American Dream's Carbon Conscious Consumer program. We have a bag of cloth bags collected from various conferences in the back of the car & have trained ourselves to grab them when we head into the grocery story. Remembering to bring them into other types stores has been more of a challenge, but we're able to cut our plastic bag waste tremendously. Those we still collect get reused around the house for various purposes, donated to neighbors for dog doo duty, or brought back to the grocery store plastic bag recycling bin.

Now if we could just get those grocery baggers to understand that cloth bags are far stronger than either paper or plastic bags & pack them accordingly...

Congressional Climate Crisis Challenge

2007-12-05T19:54:00.000-06:00

Showing my best environmental ethos, I recycled some text I wrote for my last rant on global warming to call on my Representative Mark Kirk to see that the House play catch-up with the Senate on cap & trade legislation, per the latest action alert from Environmental Defense.

This week and next, leaders from industrialized nations around the world gather in Bali to plan the next steps beyond the Kyoto Protocol in reducing greenhouse gas pollution to stem the coming climate chaos and its potentially devastating consequences. The United States must take our cue from the 150 corporate signatories of the Bali Communique, who recognize that the scale of this looming problem puts its solution beyond the scope of individual good intentions and in the arena of decisive government action. When even corporations recognize that a legal framework for addressing greenhouse gas pollution is in their self-interest, we know the time has come to act. As the top contributor to greenhouse gas pollution, the U.S. must demonstrate leadership on this front. The U.S. Senate Public Works Committee has come to this recognition, having just passed the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. I urge you as my Representative to see that the House now turns its attention to this issue. Please request that the House leadership heeds the call of responsible corporations and follows the lead of the Senate in introducing and passing its own compatible cap and trade legislation as soon as practicable so that our economy may begin making the necessary adjustments to limit greenhouse gas pollution while we still have time to avoid the worst effects of climate destabilization.

We should not see the imposition of controls on greenhouse gas pollution as a purely reactionary or negative measure. The transition away from fossil fuels represents a tremendous opportunity for America. We still have the world's largest economy and retain an enormous capacity for innovation. Agreeing to limit greenhouse gas pollution aligns us to lead the world in creating the next generation of clean energy sources, spurring growth in our own economy through the creation of new industries, as well as increasing our national security by lessening our dependence on foreign oil with all the financial, military, and political entanglements that entails. Please see that Congress takes on this urgent legislative challenge to lead the world to a more secure future.

No Regulatory Roll-Overs

2007-12-03T19:45:00.000-06:00

I signed Public Campaign's petition to stem regulatory concessions to industry lobbyists with the following submission:

Sunday's New York Times article, "Business Lobby Presses Agenda Before ’08 Vote", highlighting the increased pre-Presidential election lobbying activity already underway, prompts me to petition you as a Congressional leader to heighten your vigilance in protecting the public good from the narrow interests of moneyed lobbyists. It's critical to maintain sensible regulations that defend the shared commons of the environment, ensure consumer safety, and strengthen our working families, not only for the role such regulations play in protecting the public good, but also to demonstrate the integrity of our democracy against the corrosive influence of special interest lobbyists and the political access the campaign contributions from those they represent may have purchased. I urge you to prevent any regulatory roll-overs to industry lobbyists that run counter the public interest and to work for Clean Elections public campaign financing that will strip the undue control these moneyed interests have over government policy.

Bully for Bali

2007-12-03T08:33:00.000-06:00

Prompted by a call from Citizens For Global Solutions, I wrote the following letter to the editor to the Chicago Sun-Times:

This week and next, leaders from around the world gather in Bali to plan the next steps beyond the Kyoto Protocol in reducing greenhouse gas pollution to stem global warming and its potentially devastating consequences. We must take our cue from the 150 corporate signatories of the Bali Communique, who recognize that the international scale of this looming problem puts its solution beyond the scope of individual good intentions and in the arena of decisive government action. When even corporations recognize that a legal framework for addressing greenhouse gas pollution is in their self-interest, we know the time has come to act. As the top contributor to greenhouse gas pollution, the U.S. must demonstrate leadership on this front, reversing our isolationism in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, which has lessened our standing in the eyes of the international community, by agreeing to mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

We should not see the imposition of controls on greenhouse gas pollution as a purely reactionary or negative measure. The transition away from fossil fuels represents a tremendous opportunity for America. We still have the world's largest economy and retain an enormous capacity for innovation. Agreeing to an international framework on greenhouse gas pollution aligns us to lead the world in creating the next generation of clean energy sources, spurring growth in our own economy through the creation of new industries, as well as increasing our national security by lessening our dependence on foreign oil with all the financial, military, and political entanglements that entails. Let us bring this forward-looking orientation to the Bali talks and lead the world to a more secure future with responsibility and optimism.

Losing weight as easy as getting off your butt?

2007-12-01T14:28:00.000-06:00

ABC News reports on a study at the University of Missouri showing that prolonged sitting causes ingested fat to be taken up by adipose tissue rather than being burned as fuel, both because the fat doesn't stay in blood vessels passing through muscle tissue, where it could be burned, & also because lipase, the enzyme responsible for breaking down fat, is severely inhibited by long periods of sitting.

As an IT professional, I work at my desk the overwhelming majority of the workday, performing much of my work on my computer. Because I have been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome (and probably also have ulnar nerve syndrome as well, given recent numbness in my ring & pinky fingers), I am sensitive to ergonomics.

In an attempt to minimize my CTS/UTS symptoms by improving my posture & varying my work position, I have been using a sit/stand sit/stand workstation using my laptop, a wireless keyboard & mouse, and Ergotron's excellent LX Desktop Notebook Arm, which easily adjusts from sitting to standing viewing heights with a simple push.

I added an optional Ergotron extension and keyboard tray to the same post to raise the keyboard off the desk when I'm standing. Unfortunately, typing transfers vibration to the post, causing the laptop screen to move while I'm typing, which is not ideal. To compensate, I bought an inexpensive grey yoga brick to place on my desk under the keyboard tray, which absorbs most of the vibration while keeping the keyboard at an appropriate standing typing height.

Yes, I get lots of strange comments ranging from "Do you work standing up?!" to "It looks like I'm on the deck of a spaceship!" to "I feel like I'm in a dentist's office." To which I sometimes feel like replying, "Good. Interrupting my work should make you feel like you just visited a dentist."

In any event, since I've adjusted to using the standing workstation often, I'm pleased to know that getting off my butt is having the double-benefit of increasing my fat metabolism in addition improving my posture to manage my repetitive stress injury symptoms.

Getting Better All The Time

2007-11-17T17:49:00.000-06:00

It seems the world is always going to hell in a handbasket. The news headlines proclaim it daily. More dead in Iraq. Another suicide bombing in Gaza. Genocide grinds on in Darfur. We seem to live in bloody times indeed. Enough to make one believe the end times are really near.

Headlines aside, however, the empirical evidence points in the opposite direction. While far from perfect, violence has decreased through the millenia & even now, with all the anecdotal support to the contrary, we are in a more peacable world than humankind has ever known. That's the hopeful conclusion Harvard Psychologist & public intellectual Stephen Pinker reaches in his intriguing March 2007 TEDTalk lecture "A History of Violence".

Robert Wright, referenced by Pinker in the essay, reaches the same conclusion and provides a game-theoretic explanation of this development in his excellent book Nonzero, summarized in a dryly humorous TedTalk Wright gave in February 2006.

In considering the historical arcs of increasing sociability & lessening cruelty, I wonder how these trends play into the thesis introduced by psychologist Clare Graves and expanded on by Don Beck in his book Spiral Dynamics and by philosopher Ken Wilber in his Integral Theory conception of altitude, that not only does individual human consciousness follow a developmental arc leading from ego-centric to world-centric, but the same progression flows through the population to increasing numbers throughout history. Is this expansion of consciousness an interior reflection of the logic of nonzerosumness? Are the social advances we have made caused by interior changes in awareness or are interior changes allowed for by the lessened savagery in our social milieu? (I'm sure Wilber would say the interior and exterior co-create each other & are "tetra-evolving".)

Regardless of the answer, Pinker & Wright clearly give us something significant to be appreciative of as Thanksgiving approaches.

Alternative 1:1 Student Computers

2007-11-17T09:19:00.000-06:00

I have started a comparison page of low-cost, ultralgiht alternatives to corporate or consumer-class laptops & Tablet PCs for consideration in 1:1 student computing programs.

Fair Elections Action Week

2007-11-14T21:50:00.000-06:00

In support of Fair Elections Action Week, sponsored by a coalition of campaign reform organizations including Public Campaign, I signed the Fair Elections Now petition, & contacted my U.S. House Representative Mark Kirk, encouraging him to cosponsor the Fair Elections Now Act.

Dear Representative Kirk:

I understand that Representative John Larson will soon introduce to the House the Fair Elections Now Act, a voluntary public financing bill modeled on Illinois Senator Richard Durbin's Senate legislation of the same name. I ask that you join with your fellow Illinois congressman in supporting campaign finance reform by accepting Representative Larson's invitation to cosponsor this bill.
If passed, the Fair Elections Now Act would provide voluntary public funding for congressional campaigns based on the "Clean Elections" model adopted for state elections in Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Vermont, and a growing number of municipalities. Clean Elections systems provide full public funding, including capped matching funds against any privately financed candidates, to qualified candidates with sufficient grass-roots support who agree to forgo private contributions and abide by spending limits.

Such campaign finance reform promises to do much more to clean up the "culture of corruption" in Congress than the modest ethics reforms Congress passed last year in the wake of the Abramoff & Delay scandals. Clean Elections laws address the underlying, systemic distortion of our political system by monied interests that is inherent in the campaign finance system as it currently exists. The corrosive influence of large political donations undermines the integrity of the "one person, one vote" principle upon which our republic is founded. It amplifies the agenda of the rich and of corporate interests at the expense of the common good, as the lobbying scandals that brought down Abramoff & Delay clearly showed, and a review of much legislation, especially our national energy policy, sadly proves out.

Clean Elections allows campaigns to focus on the issues voters care about, not how much money a given candidate can raise. It frees candidates once elected from being beholden to the interests of those who bankrolled their campaigns so that they may act in the public interest. It allows them to focus while in office on the issues facing the people rather than on the next cycle of fundraising for reelection.

Thank you for advancing meaningful campaign finance reform by cosponsoring the Fair Elections Now Act.

OLPC in the U.S.: Give One, Get One

2007-11-12T19:59:00.000-06:00

Today I had the privilege of meeting Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder & former Director of the MIT Media Lab. Dr. Negroponte gave a press conference at the Thompson Center in Chicago, at which he launched the 2-week Give One Get One fundraising campaign for his ambitious One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, which seeks to address global poverty through education by providing a laptop computer to children in undeveloped countries. Illinois Lt. Governor Pat Quinn introduced Dr. Negroponte at the press conference. Quinn is a supporter of 1:1 computing, having sponsored the Illinois Connect technology immersion pilot project bringing laptop computing to 7 Illinois public school districts, following the lead of high-profile public school laptop programs in Maine & Michigan.

Based on OLPC pilot projects, Dr. Negroponte believes that laptops can be an educationally and socially transformative tool with the long-term potential to lift these children out of poverty by engaging them in learning through the interactivity of personal computing and providing access to the enormous store of human knowledge now available freely on the Internet.

I have been following OLPC since Dr. Negroponte publicly announced the project. I have been interested for a variety of reasons, including OLPC's humanitarian vision, my general curiosity about technology, as well as my own selfish interests, since I have run laptop programs in education at both the high school and elementary levels for the past 6 years.

My experience running these programs has taught me two things. First, the benefit of the technology for education is maximized in a 1:1 environment where each child has access to his or her own computer. Shared resources (computer labs, laptop carts, or a few workstations in a classroom) can be made to work, but the technology does not become a natural part of learning. Computers remain cleaved from the core content of the classroom. When resources are shared, barriers to use are erected and the technology is seen by teachers as an add-on, as separate from the subject content they care about imparting, and therefore used less than optimally or in superfluous ways. Except for the truly dedicated early-adopters who will go out of their way to incorporate technology appropriately into instruction, most teachers will use technology only minimally, not taking advantage of the technology-rich environment in which in most of the U.S. find ourselves. Not only is this a missed opportunity for the student and teacher in finding more effective and efficient means of learning, as well as a waste of resources, it also creates a disconnect for students, who typically use the technology fluidly outside of school for recreation (gaming), social contact (social networking sites, IM, text messaging, cell phones), but are limited to carefully prescribed uses of technology for formal learning (largely word processing & classroom presentations). While certainly not guaranteed in a 1:1 computing environment, I believe that the promise of technology as a tool to enable learning is much more likely to be fulfilled when computing is ubiquitous, ever-present, & accessible without artificial barriers. This, of course, is the premise of OLPC, one they are attempting to prove on a global scale.

Having run a 1:1 laptop program, I also know that the arrangement is also not without its downsides. The distraction factor alone of having such a rich, engaging device at hand can be overwhelming for a child. (Of course, it can for an adult as well, a lesson learned from many laptop-enabled meetings. Those are topics for another day, however.) In my opinion, the more significant downside to 1:1 programs is the unsuitability of current devices to the task. That's the second lesson I've drawn from my experience running laptop programs. Currently available laptops, designed for the corporate or consumer markets, are ill-suited for use by children. They are too fragile, too bulky, and too expensive, with too little battery life. There are exceptions, of course, but most attempts to address these problems have succeeded only in fixing one at the expense of exacerbating the others. A subnotebook computer might be light, but it becomes more expensive & more fragile. It may be ruggedized, but then it becomes bulkier & more expensive. Or it may be cheap, but then it's bulky and still breakable. Anyone who has supported school laptop programs knows how often one is replacing keys on keyboards that have "mysteriously" popped off or sending in for repair laptops that have suffered breakage due careless drops or compression in overstuffed backpacks, or replacing batteries that have been discharged one too many times, or just fixing the myriad of niggling errors that modern complex operating systems (read: Windows) pop up daily. The churn of equipment and drain on staff time is wasteful, expensive, and distracts from the learning process. And given these realities, I do understand why most teachers have not yet embraced the promise of "anytime, anywhere" laptop learning.

But I believe that OLPC is changing all that. The technical wizards who designed the OLPC XO laptop have addressed all of those core concerns head-on, and by initial accounts, very successfully. The XO is light at just a bit over 3 pounds, and child-sized, with thoughtful ergonomics like a built-in handle and a convertible mode for e-book reading. It's been designed to be spill-proof, dust-proof, & drop-proof. (Plus the keyboard is a single sheet, so missing keys are a thing of the past.) It's got excellent power profile & can be charged with a hand-crank (now separate) or traditional AC adapter. And, of course, it's cheap. While it's no longer the $100 laptop (though Dr. Negroponte insists that production improvements will allow it to attain that price point as production scales), it's still almost an order of magnitude cheaper than many corporate-class laptops.

Of course, there's no free lunch. As has been well-documented in the blogosphere, XO performance much less than that of the typical corporate laptop (or even the cheapest discount outlet consumer computer). Though high resolution (at least in its monochrome mode), the screen size is small (7.5") by U.S. standards and the processor, memory, & storage specifications are minimal. Further, the unit is not expandable, except for the 3 USB ports. While the difference in performance is perhaps not the same order of magnitude loss that its dramatically lower price might imply, the XO is clearly not a straight laptop replacement. Of course, OLPC never intended it to be one. For their target, the design trade-offs make perfect sense. Running Sugar, OLPC's custom, Linux-underpinned operating environment, performance is perfectly adequate. For the XO's target users, most of whom have probably never used a computer, Sugar will provide tremendous functionality.

However, most of us in the developed world who are eyeing the XO hardware with envy because of its superior, child-centered design are entrenched in Windows and/or Mac OS conventions and software. While I did not have enough time with the XO today to form a solid opinion of Sugar, I suspect that most users of established operating systems would probably find it limiting, or at least a barrier to adoption because of its departure from established user interfaces and applications. While some U.S. schools (like Illinois own Forest Park School district, which has committed to providing the XO to all of its fifth grade students) are, regardless of differences Sugar presents, willing to make the leap and take advantage of the brief window of XO availability in the U.S. afforded by Give One, Get One, I don't know that this number will be great, especially given the tight 2-week timeframe for jumping on the bandwagon.

However, it seems to me that given its child-centric design, the XO platform has a great deal going for it and it presents a tremendous opportunity even for schools already committed to Windows. While Dr. Negroponte says that the computer could technically run Windows, I suspect that performance would be unacceptable for most users and that most of the limited local storage would be consumed by the operating system alone, severely limiting local application installs and user data storage. However, the XO's integrated WiFi and minimal local computing power would seem to make it a nearly ideal "thin client" device. A school with a robust wireless network and capable server infrastructure could run Windows Terminal Services on central network servers and deliver a complete application environment with enormous data storage capacity with minimal network bandwidth requirements if one could install a Remote Desktop Protocol client on the XO. While this approach fails to leverage the research & effort OLPC software engineers have put into the Sugar user interface, it dramatically lowers the barriers to adoption of the XO hardware in developed countries by potentially allowing schools to deliver very nearly the same computing experience that students and teachers are already accustomed to receiving, but on the low-cost, lightweight, child-friendly XO hardware. (The cost and performance could be increased by the adventuresome by delivering a virtualized Linux desktop environment instead of a Windows environment by running NoMachine's NXServer instead of Windows Terminal Services, as the startup Academic Computing Environment [ACE] project is promising to do.)

One can imagine the school's virtualized desktop environment extending to the student's home if the school permitted secure Terminal Services connections through its Internet firewall and the child's family had its own a wireless Internet connection in which the XO could participate. The student would then have a seamless computing environment accessible at home and at school (and at the local WiFi-enabled public library or coffeshop or T-Mobile hotspot). In this scenario, the XO is most useful when connected to the Internet, but provisions for off-line use for limited purposes may be possible if OpenOffice and or other compatible applications could be installed locally on the internal flash drive or even a student-provided USB flash expansion drive.

As I said at the outset, I have been following OLPC for my own selfish reasons because I have seen the promise of 1:1-enabled learning but been stymied by the very same technology it is currently delivered on. At first touch, the XO appears to solve many of those problems, so I'm keenly interested in finding a way to integrate it into our school's existing environment. If using the XO as terminal services client is feasible, I would love to pursue it and I think others in developed countries may as well. Beyond this selfish interest, however, I believe that more widespread adoption of the XO could be beneficial for the OLPC program. While not core to its mission of helping the poorest children of the world, the use of the XO in the schools of developed countries could still benefit OLPC, either by funding its core operation through an extension of the Give One, Get One program (even at $399, the XO is still cheaper than nearly any laptop computers schools would purchase), or by providing a supplemental market, which, if managed tightly, may steady the demand needed by the XO's manufacturers to maintain the price-point needed to make the unit affordable in lesser developed countries.

Certainly, there are other devices currently shipping (the XO-inspired ASUS Eee PC comes to mind) or on the horizon (such as Intel's ClassMate PC and Via's PC-1 reference designs) that may fill the same niche as the XO for the U.S. market could and may be easier to integrate with existing computing environment, either through native operating system or superior suitability as a terminal services client. However, none of these options offer the XO's compelling hardware design, nor the global humanitarian benefit of adopting the XO, nor the possibilities for cultural enrichment and global understanding through student-to-student pairings of the children on either side of the Give One, Get One giving equation that Dr. Negroponte indicated the program would attempt. It's certainly difficult to put a price tag on these latter benefits.

It is, however, easy to see that it's an exciting time to be involved in education & technology...

The End of Oil

2007-11-07T22:08:00.001-06:00

A friend pointed me to the Wired magazine article "The End of Oil is Upon Us", reporting on the International Energy Agency's latest annual World Energy Outlook, whose projections on the impact of India & China's exploding energy reinforced for me the necessity of Thomas Friedman's call for a national moonshot-level initiative to achieve energy independence. Unfortunately, such an initiative lacks the pay-off moment of seeing Armstrong setting foot on the face the moon to galvanize public support. Until we find the "human face" for energy policy like we did for space policy, I fear we will not have the will to make the hard political choices, like increasing incentives for alternative energy research and phasing-out fossil fuel subsidies, that will allow us to avert an energy & environmental crisis. While Apollo missions off the ground thanks to the efforts of thousands of professionals at NASA & its private contractors, it was he astronauts who were the heroes of the space program, providing its public face. Who are the heroes of energy independence?

1:1 Student Computing Devices

2007-11-07T14:25:00.000-06:00

Having started & managed a 1:1 student computing program at a boarding high school, I have experienced the promise & perils of ubiquitous student computing. While the benefits of having a computing device in the hands of every student should be obvious in the 21st century, the form factor limitations (size, weight, battery life, durability) and cost of adapting corporate or (shudder) consumer-level laptops to the needs of primary education gives 1:1 programs serious dowsides.

Prompted by seeing a Samsung Q1 Ultra on display at CDW’s Business Solutions Center a few weeks ago, I have been looking more closely at “ultra-mobile personal computers” (UMPCs) as potential student computing devices to replace our aging laptops in carts & as more cost-effective & student-sized solutions for a potential upper elementary 1:1 computing program in my current school.

Fujitsu LifeBook U810
Given our school's relationship with Fujitsu, we today received a demonstration unit of the Fujitsu LifeBook U810 convertible UMPC tablet, also priced at $1000. While very small, the screen is incredibly sharp. Like the other UMPCs, it runs a full version of Windows XP Tablet PC edition.

Samsung Q1
The Q1 runs XP Tablet edition just like our full-size Fujitsu & Acer Tablet PCs & has a touch sensitive screen that requires no special radio stylus. While I found the split thumb keyboard on the Q1 difficult to use, the size may be appealing for a highly portable student tablet. At a $1000, 25% less than the cost of a full-size Tablet PC, the device is much more cost-effective than our current equipment model.

OQO Model 02
Another competitive device is the OQO Model 02, a UMPC which has a slide-out keyboard, much more practical than the split-keyboard Q1, but also more expensive at $1300, making the small form factor usability compromises not worth the cost savings when compared to traditional Tablet PCs.

ASUS Eee PC 4G
The ASUS Eee PC 4G (review) is larger than the Samsung Q1 or OQO Model 02 and lacks the Tablet PC functionality, but still much smaller & lighter than traditional laptops, and at $400 each, incredibly affordable. While a departure from our model of full-featured Windows-based computers (it can run Windows, but has limited internal storage, so local application & document storage is less than what we’re used to), this type of device, if coupled with a Windows Terminal Server to deliver a complete application & data storage environment over the network instead of stored locally on the laptop, could provide a low-cost ubiquitous computing platform in our wireless network environment.

OLPC XO
At $400, the Eee PC is still more than twice the cost of the much-anticipated $180 (formerly $100) XO tablet from Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child Foundation, which is now shipping. This design is even more of a departure from our current Windows platform standard than any of the preceding units, but bears close watching, as it’s designed for education from the ground-up & Negroponte’s group has ambitious plans to ship millions of these units to developing countries around the world.

Intel ClassMate PC & Via pc-1
Also worthy of watching are Intel’s ClassMate PC & Via’s pc-1 projects, which are laptop reference designs conceived with children & low cost in mind. Also like the XO, these are being piloted internationally first, but I would think we should within a year or two see US availability of these or similar designs.

The emergence of these & other similar devices make me believe that we are on the cusp of seeing low-cost portable devices of the size, functionality, & price to be nearly ideal 1:1 student computers.

C3: Cold Water Wash

2007-11-06T06:35:00.000-06:00

Since we wash our clothes in cold water almost exclusively already, I signed this month's "cold water wash" pledge for The Center for the New American Dream's Carbon Conscious Consumer program. We also buy (phosphate free) powdered laundry detergent since I assume it's more efficient than transporting the extra water in liquid detergent from the manufacturing plant to the store, saving some transit emissions there. Now if only I weren't too lazy to hang my clothes out to dry instead of using the dryer, I'd actually be making a difference! We'll have to wait for the old Kenmore to die before splurging on one of those hyperefficient front-loading laundry machines, too.

Nobel Nudge: Greehouse Gas Cap Now!

2007-10-21T09:41:00.000-05:00

Spurred by Environmental Defense's "Operation Climate Vote" & informed (but not deterred) by this Reuter's article on the ineffectiveness of the European Union's greenhouse gas cap & trade program, I sent the following message to my Congressmen & the speakers of both the U.S. House & Senate.

The Nobel committee's recent decision to award the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change & Al Gore the 2007 Peace Prize for their work on synthesizing & disseminating the research on anthropogenic global warming has catapulted the topic of global warming & its likely negative consequences to the forefront of international awareness. Yet even with several bills introduced ^ time running short on the legislative calendar, Congress has not yet scheduled a vote to reduce our greenhouse gas pollution contributing to global warming. As the largest of per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, America must shoulder its responsibility by taking meaningful action to protect the commons of the global climate.

I believe that a well-designed emissions cap & trade system and/or carbon tax represent the highest-leverage & least-intrusive methods of meeting this enormous challenge. A recent analysis by MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change indicates that none of the draft legislative proposals to enforce limits on greenhouse gas pollution would significantly dampen U.S. economic growth over the next 50 years. With little to lose through appropriate action and much lose through continued inaction, the U.S. must take this opportunity to display leadership in effectively reducing our greenhouse gas pollution. Once the U.S. has joined Europe & the majority of the international community in committed efforts to combat global warming, we will be in a position to use our enormous influence as global leaders to ensure that China, India, & other rapidly developing countries take similar steps to be responsible world actors.

As a concerned citizen, I (once again) urge you to work to pass legislation in both houses of Congress that:

Sets a hard & progressively decreasing cap on global warming pollution with a specific, realistic, but aggressive timetable for reductions;
Ensures that all forms of global warming pollution are covered, with no sectors or industries exempted;
Sets standards for environmentally sound biofuels ensuring these interim energy sources actually reduce global warming pollution; and
Sets allowance quantities low enough & trading prices (&/or tax rates) high enough to avoid the mistakes of the EU cap & trade system & force real market competition for nonpolluting energy sources.

With only weeks left in the legislative calendar & every moment adding tons of additional greenhouse gas pollution to the atmosphere, there is no time to lose. Please move forward aggressively on passing effective legislation to limit our greenhouse gas emissions.

Recycling Rational/e

2007-10-18T19:04:00.000-05:00

In his article "Think Globally, Act Irrationally: Recycling" for The Library of Economics & Liberty, Michael Munger, Chair of Political Science at Duke University, makes a prima facia persuasive case against mandatory municipal recycling programs based on the negative economics of this most widespread of environmentalist practices. As a committed recycler (I pack home my plastic cottage cheese containers in the bicycle pannier bags because my employer only recycles paper & aluminum), I read Munger's article with interest but a bit of apprehension.

Munger argues that the environmentalist's credo of "recycle, regardless of cost" amounts to harmful lunacy: Those who support mandatory recycling even when it is cheaper to dump at least certain classes of recyclable waste into a landfill and harvest virgin resources for new production are imposing an unnecessary economic burden on their fellow citizens, thereby placing a drag on the economy. Further, these recycling zealots ultimately act counter to their espoused values of protecting the environment because the higher costs of recycling indicate that more energy & resources are required to recycle than to dispose of waste & manufacture new, imposing harm on the environment. In the "Eight Great Myths of Recycling" (PERC Policy Report 28, 2003), cited by Munger, Daniel Benjamin makes an even more compelling case for the anti-mandatory-recycling thesis that Munger advances.

As an advocate of an economic approach to environmental protection, these arguments resonate with me. I agree with the central economic argument advanced in these articles: If recyclables were a resource, companies would pay us to take them back rather than citizens footing the bill through taxes or waste management fees. Personally, I would much prefer that the market took care of recycling materials rather than municipalities. That only a small number of materials are currently recycled by private firms without government mandates indicates that the practice is somehow flawed. However, I remain unconvinced that "Recycling is Garbage" even if the economics don’t currently support the practice.

Now, I'll admit to a certain nonrational basis for that judgment. I hate waste. I grew up in a low income family and was inculcated with the ethos of frugality and reuse from my grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression. Moreover, my obsessive, neat-freak personality makes me averse to waste heaps. I find reuse and recycling much more emotionally palatable than trash. I am drawn to quality management practices like Lean and 5S in part because of their emphasis on the elimination of muda (waste). I avoid the use of the term “trash” (something unwanted, worth little or nothing) in preference to the word “waste” just to emphasize that the material is not just (worthless) trash, but that it represents waste.

However, those personal/ity quirks aside, I believe there are solid, rational, and economic grounds for not dismissing recycling, perhaps not even mandatory recycling, at least at the present time.

First, as my UW-Madison systems science mentor Tim Allen taught me, recycling is the only sustainable solution to dealing with waste. The simplest systems analysis proves this indisputably. Take the following input-processing-output system:

input = natural resources & energy
processing = manufacturing production
output = products, waste heat & waste material

It’s obvious that without recycling to close the loop & bring the waste material back into the resource category of the system’s inputs, waste material stocks will increase without limit & that finite natural resources will decrease without limit until the system’s context can no longer support the load & the system collapses.

It is significant to note that much of the waste material we produce today will not degrade in any short period of time, leaving us with a mountain of 2 million more plastic bottles every 5 minutes, as artfully illustrated by Chris Jordon’s visualization included at the head of this blog entry. When not reused, recycled, or disposed of safely, this long-lasting waste poses a multitude of environmental threats, especially to marine life.

Now the skeptic will argue both that (1) proper disposal will eliminate the environmental threats at a lesser cost than recycling and (2) our civilization is no where near its limits in the I/O system I described & until we are, it’s irrational to pay more/use more energy to close the loop. I recognize some validity in both points. First, while not environmentally neutral, properly maintained landfills will sequester waste to prevent the most deleterious environmental consequences. Second, we’re not going to run out of landfill space anytime soon & except for fossil fuels, our consumption of other nonrenewable resources is not close depleting the Earth’s supply. (Technological optimists such as me will argue further that even when we reach the point of exhausting the Earth’s resources, we still have the moon & the asteroids even in our local solar system to mine for resources and the vastness of space to dump waste. While I agree, I won’t speculate on the potential economics of those endeavors.)

That said, the underlying systems point remains: recycling is the only sustainable solution to dealing with waste. That is why we see a series of intricately evolved closed-loop systems in natural ecosystems. Waste from one natural process becomes the input to another process to create a seamless interconnected, interdependent whole. The waste oxygen emitted by plant respiration becomes an energy input for animals. The waste CO2 emitted by animal respiration in turn provides the energy and material input for plant respiration. No muda, only harmonious cycles. Thankfully, a small but growing number of manufacturers are taking the Lean-thinking “zero waste” philosophy to the next step (the Natural Step), engineering in their manufacturing processes the ubiquitous recycling inherent in natural processes.

While this systems view provides a useful theoretical lens to understand the necessity of recycling, the economic realities arguing against recycling remain. However, I believe there are two reasons to call into question Munger’s economic analysis.

The first is unfair competition. As detailed in the Grass Roots Recycling Network’s 1999 report Welfare for Waste, the United States taxpayers spend billions of dollars each year subsidizing the timber, mining, and energy sectors. (Lester Brown of the Earth Policy highlights other environmentally destructive subsidies in both Eco-Economy & Plan B 2.0.) These subsidies for virgin resource extraction create an unlevel competitive marketplace for recycled substitutes. While these subsidies may have been in the national interest when they were instituted, I believe they now represent wasteful and destructive corporate welfare, counter to our vital interests both in free market capitalism and environmental protection. Further, they represent a double wasting of taxpayer’s money, as the Federal income-tax derived outlays to fund virgin resource harvesting end up making local taxes higher to fund the now more costly municipal recycling programs that have difficulty marketing against their subsidized competition. If you want to talk about economic irrationality, this is the place to start! However, I’ll stop there, only adding, as I have argued before, that I believe government subsidies to be dangerous instruments because they often become autopoietic. The bottom line is that any holistic economic analysis of the merits of recycling must take into account the market-distorting effects of these subsidies, calling into question any conclusions reached by analyzing only recycling’s current cost-competitiveness.

The second reason to question the irrationality of recycling is the exclusion of externality analysis. An externality, in economic terms, is a cost not built into the price of a good or service. Like The Library of Economics & Liberty's "10 Key Ideas" economic primer page which lists under the topic heading "Externalities" only "Coming Soon", Munger's analysis excludes consideration of the externalities of virgin material harvesting and waste disposal. For example, I am interested to know whether the environmental clean-up costs of leaking landfills are included in their operational costs or whether the burden is shifted to taxpayers through EPA cleanup programs.

More significant than any potential pollution remediation costs, though, are the ecosystem service costs not currently included in any market pricing for goods produced from virgin resources. Functioning ecosystems provide vital supports to human civilization, supporting food supplies, filtering water, decomposing biodegradable wastes, sequestering carbon, etc. The cost to replicate these essential services artificially would likely equal or exceed the entire output world economy. (See the Nature article “The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital” and the must-read Natural Capitalism by Hawken, Lovins, & Lovins.) However, few if any of these shared-services costs are built into the costs of resource harvesting that may degrade the quality of these services. (Strip-mining & clear-cutting come to mind as salient examples.) Our continued existence depends on these ecosystem services. Until we fully value their costs into the price of goods, either through regulatory environmental protections which result in decreased virgin resource availability or higher extraction costs through more selective harvesting regimes or through some form resource-extraction taxes which offset the costs of any resultant environmental remediation required, we will not be able to judge the relative economic viability of recycling vs. virgin resource extraction.

When both virgin resource extraction subsidies are eliminated & ecosystem services are valued into resource costing we will be able to judge the irrationality of mandatory recycling. In those circumstances, I would support the repeal of mandatory recycling laws & leave it to the free market to ensure that whatever waste society produces is recycled or disposed of as efficiently as possible. Until then, however, I think that recycling simply amounts to making the best of a bad situation.

Information R/evolution

2007-10-17T17:07:00.000-05:00

In a similar vein to the Did You Know? slideshow from Shift Happens (and the updated Did You Know 2.0 multimedia presentation), which highlighted the demographic transformations occurring in the 21^st century, I found quite thought-provoking Michael Wesch’s Information R/evolution video (as well as his earlier The Machine is Us/ing Us), both focusing on the spreading societal impact of digital media.