Plan B 2.0 Excerpt #2 31 October 2006

More from Lester Brown’s book, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet in Stress & a Civilization in Trouble. Few other books, if any, capture the current situation we are facing more completely, nor offer more realistic, achievable solutions. My primary mission at present is to get as many copies of this book into as many hands as possible, by any and all means. If, for any reason you do not find this book to be the most important text you’ve read, I will personally refund the purchase price of the book.

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From Chapter One

The question facing governments is whether they can respond quickly enough to prevent threats from becoming catastrophes. The world has precious little experience in responding to aquifer depletion, rising temperatures, expanding deserts, melting polar ice caps, and a shrinking oil supply. These new trends will fully challenge the capacity of our political institutions and leadership. In times of crisis, societies sometimes have a Nero as a leader and sometimes a Churchill.

The central challenge, the key to building the new economy, is getting the market to tell the ecological truth. The dysfunctional global economy of today has been shaped by distorted market prices that do not incorporate environmental costs. Many of our environmental travails are the result of severe market distortions.

One of these distortions became abundantly clear in the summer of 1998 when China’s Yangtze River valley, home to 400 million people, was wracked by some of the worst flooding in history. The resulting damages of $30 billion exceeded the value of the country’s annual rice harvest.

After several weeks of flooding, the government in Beijing announced in mid-August a ban on tree cutting in the Yangtze River basin. It justified the ban by noting that trees standing are worth three times as much as trees cut. The flood control services provided by forests were three times as valuable as the lumber in the trees. In effect, the market price was off by a factor of three! With this analysis, no one could economically justify cutting trees in the basin.

A similar situation exists with gasoline. In the United States, the gasoline pump price was over $2 per gallon in mid-2005. But this reflects only the cost of pumping the oil, refining it into gasoline, and delivering the gas to service stations. It does not include the costs of tax subsidies to the oil industry, such as the oil depletion allowance; the subsidies for the extraction, production, and use of petroleum; the burgeoning military costs of protecting access to oil supplies; the health care costs for treating respiratory illnesses ranging from asthma to emphysema; and, most important, the costs of climate change.

If these costs, which in 1998 the International Center for Technology Assessment calculated at roughly $9 per gallon of gasoline burned in the United States, were added to the $2 cost of the gasoline itself, motorists would pay about $11 a gallon for gas at the pump. Filling a 20-gallon tank would cost $220. In reality, burning gasoline is very costly, but the market tells us it is cheap, leading to gross distortions in the structure of the economy. The challenge facing governments is to incorporate such costs into market prices by systematically calculating them and incorporating them as a tax on the product to make sure its price reflects the full costs to society.

If we have learned anything over the last few years, it is that accounting systems that do not tell the truth can be costly.

Faulty corporate accounting systems that leave costs off the books have driven some of the world’s largest corporations into bankruptcy, costing millions of people their lifetime savings, retirement incomes, and jobs. Distorted world market prices that do not incorporate major costs in the production of various products and the provision of services could be even costlier. They could lead to global bankruptcy and economic decline.

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Lost Tool of the Environmentalist: FURY 27 October 2006

When I think of a person who embodies the progressive power of fury, I think of the great Malcolm X, that furious populist street preacher whose rage-fueled sermons demanded the immediate cessation to the marginalization of his people. Imagine the arrival of the modern Eco-Malcolm, demanding an immediate switch away from the fossil-fuel based economies that marginalize not only entire continents but threaten our collective future. Do you think this person would be greeted with open arms by the intellectual elite who drive the U.S. environmental movement? No. He would be instantly marginalized, cast aside by the hyper-sensitive and politically correct, laughed off the stage in two seconds flat without regard for the billions who desperately need such a leader to save them from near-term ruin.

The U.S. environmental movement, to a sad degree, has been co-opted by a highly partisan (HUGE mistake) “landed gentry” who, armed with viable business models, seem more concerned with maintaining their prestige, their “popularity” among a slice of the population that is not growing despite the current media infatuation than doing real good. Even sadder is that they don’t see this, don’t understand it when a minority among them dissent, cry foul when these faux-elite criticize the more vehement members, put down calls for real, immediate progress (“incremental change is more acceptable and realistic” ), heap scorn upon third parties whose platforms and efforts mirror their own. There are no radicals among them, not a soul who will lead the fight for Lester Brown’s united “wartime” effort, nor lead a popular uprising to demand, not request, immediate and profound changes.

Fury? There is no room for fury. There is no room for any real, strong, righteous emotions that may threaten the elite’s place within popular culture. Rocking the boat now would upset the fiscal projections of newly minted eco-empires. Losing the Earth is one thing, but losing advertising revenue is an entirely different issue altogether.

I’m calling you out. You know who you are. My words tear, just a bit, at what is left of the idealism that propelled you to give a damn in the first place. You fear fear. You despise fury. You’ve become the enemy and while it used to, it no longer keeps you up at night. History will show that you did nothing, that you effectively sat on your hands, your efforts never reaching beyond your beloved choir/demographic. You have been lulled to sleep by the accolades of a too-small band, your marching orders lost.

Fear not, your replacements have arrived.

Step aside.

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The most significant book you’ve read or I will buy it back from you at full purchase price: Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0  Trust me on this one, just order it. You’ll thank me later.

Lost Tool of the Environmentalist: FEAR 24 October 2006

Whatever happened to fear? It seems that, as a motivator for positive change, it has gone out of vogue. Indeed, in eco-blogs (David Roberts, the quite capable Grist.org staff writer who sometimes forgets that the fight for a sustainable world is apolitical and nonpartisan, recently penned a five-part series entitled Fear and Environmentalism that, like too many writings of the “eco-elite,” is rooted in the topical thought-trends of this same elite, shows little knowledge of the history of popular movements, and makes a number of egregious, errroneous generalizations) and articles all over the web, I read that scaring people is taboo. Instead, we are to focus on the positive, move ahead with proactive goals and implement creative changes. Don’t get me wrong, these are all important strategies, but the fact is that thus far they have resulted in incremental advances over the span of several decades. In the meantime, the levels of all-things-nasty keep climbing, climbing, climbing and our world continues to slide right on over the edge. We need to dig deeper. We need to freely employ motivators that directly engage genetic response mechanisms, that activate the universal code built into every cell of the human body. The Toyota Prius, over which we are currently going gaga, is heralded as one of the great “positive” steps. A terrific advance, it gets less than 80% of the mileage the Geo Metro achieved twenty years ago at nearly double the inflation-adjusted cost (”But it has airbags, a nav unit and a CD player” the pro-Prius camp replies, as if any of these things does anything to help stave off climate change). If the Prius, and it’s continued promotion of the same old auto-centric society represent positivity, give me fistfuls of fear any day.
It was fear not hope, that I feel after reading books by our greatest thinkers, people like Lester Brown, Lovelock, Kunstler, Lovins, Leggett, among others. While not entirely pessimistic, these writers clearly illustrate the dire scenario that is, without a doubt, our collective near-term future. For those of you familiar with their work, I ask you: Is it a future to be afraid of or a future to be desired? Would you rather have every last person on earth fear this future or embrace it? What do you think would be the result of the former? Of the latter?

It was fear not hope, that compelled the United Nations to create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change back in 1988. It was fear, not hope, that led the majority of the world’s nations to immediately pledge to halt or reduce carbon dioxide emissions following this panel’s first Scientific Assessment Report. The initial wave of fear of human and economic devastation that swept over world governments following this report led to the Kyoto Agreement and every major environmental agreement since.

It was fear not hope that pushed oil lobbyists and their partners-in-crime, the U.S. government to neutering the text of this report, squashing the Kyoto Protocol, and it is fear that keeps them active in blocking proposal after proposal on global environmental action.

Here’s my theory of why we fear fear: I blame it on G.W. Bush. Who else? The Bush camp’s six years of fear-mongering likely has much to do with this current aversion. Yet, it disheartens me to see that eco-intellectuals cannot or will not disassociate two entirely different campaigns and their strategies. Fear has been employed by great leaders, groups and movements throughout history. Fear is one of the primary human motivators and while we so often drape the word with negative connotations (one of the left’s weaknesses is its hyper-sensitivity to words, a sensitivity that shows very little regard for etymology, nor historic usage), it can instigate rapid and positive change like nothing else.

Climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, sums things up far better than I am capable. In an interview with Grist.org, Kolbert has this to say about the fear that hangs over all of us: ” I have kids. And I have a hard time imagining their futures. That is very painful. But even for me, do I imagine absolute disaster for the world during the course of their lifetimes? I’m not sure I do. I hold out hope we will avert that. It’s a heavy number as a parent. And it’s a heavy number for kids. Kids are increasingly aware of it; my kids certainly are. It hangs over them. Of course, when I was growing up the threat of nuclear war hung over us. I suppose it’s been a while since kids have grown up in a carefree world.”

Here, Kolbert neatly points out the flipside of fear: Hope. The great social commentator and poet Rob Base famously wrote, “Joy and pain, like sunshine and rain.” So, too, are hope and fear forever twined. Like Kolbert and millions of others, I fear for the future of my children and subsequent generations. Ask yourself, dear reader, if you are fearful to some degree of the future. Does this fear not compel you to make adjustments in your life, to educate yourself, to do what you can to provide the greatest amount of hope for yourself and others? Of course it does. Let us not deprive ourselves of an incredibly powerful tool. Applied correctly and in the right doses, fear of a parched, polluted and barren world may help ensure that such a world never exists.

(Coming Soon - Lost Tool of the Environmentalist: FURY)

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The most significant book you’ve read or I will buy it back from you at full purchase price: Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0  Trust me on this one, just order it. You’ll thank me later.

LENNY BRUCE - CENSORED AGAIN (Am I About to Be Offed?) 20 October 2006

My photo show goes up tonight (see post below). Included in the show is the work discussed below. Originally, this post was entitled “Happy Birthday, Lenny! You’ve Been CENSORED Again”. Curiously, the entire post was deleted within the past few days. Everything else on this site remained intact, aside from this post and the accompanying image. Could it be that attacking PR Web is creating problems? Do they have that kind of reach? By reposting, am I inviting Guido the Hitman? (apologies to my Italian fans . . . I’m not stereotyping, I simply know a man named Guido who happens to be a hitman.)

The image above depicts a poster-sized giclee print of a Polaroid collage entitled “For Kitty Bruce”. This work is a tribute to the genius of great Mr. Bruce, one of the greatest social satirists and comedians we’ll ever see. One of his bits was called “Tits & Ass” and it went something like this: “Why can’t you put tits and ass on the marquee?…Why not?… Because it’s dirty and vulgar, that’s why not!… Titties are dirty and vulgar?…Okay, we’ll compromise. How about Latin? Gluteus maximus, pectoralis majors nightly…That’s alright, that’s clean, class with ass, I’ll buy it…Clean to you, schmuck, but dirty to the Latins!”

In short, Bruce was asking why we, in the United States, censor the truth. After all, to advertise tits and ass on a strip club marqee is nothing but truthful. Very poignant today is Bruce’s observation, especially when one considers the legal limitations placed on, say war photos, reporting & discussion. The truth? What truth? The truth is what’s left over after the censors and lawyers get done molesting the facts.

Lest we think that these censorship issues affect only military issues, consider this: Just three days ago I received a call from PRWeb.com, a wire service that distributes press releases to thousands of news reporters. They informed me that the attached image of “For Kitty Bruce” was being censored! PRWeb, sanctimonious gatekeeper that it is, decided that the content is too “adult” and therefore needs to be kept far away from the eyes of the media. Excuse me? This release targeted adult members of the professional news media, not prepubescent editors of grade school papers.

HOLY CHRIST (blessed be his name) PEOPLE! Forty years after Bruce asks why we can’t say “tits and ass” in public, we still don’t have an answer. Our tongues are still bound. Freedom of speech, my ass.

“Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.” – Lenny Bruce

Technorati Tags: lenny-bruce, polaroid, kitty-bruce, tod-brilliant, pr-web, tits-and-ass, fuck-the-government

Genius of Lester Brown #1 10 October 2006

Over the past year, I’ve talked with many people who have read Lester Brown’s exceedingly vital book, “Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.” In every last case, the book has served as a huge wake-up call - even to those who are well-versed in the nuances of the environmentalist and sustainability movements. In my case, the book served as the inspiration for my fame and led to a susequent meeting in Washington D.C. with Lester Brown and Earth Policy Institute co-founder Reah Janise Kaufman where we agreed to form a unique partnership. In almost everything I do these days, “Plan B 2.0″ factors in somewhere. Starting today, I will periodically provide a little taste to you, my gentle and adoring readers, in the hope that you will pick up a copy so that you may finish the meal.

Lester Brown on Telling the Truth:

The central challenge, the key to building the new economy, is getting the market to tell the ecological truth. The dysfunctional global economy of today has been shaped by distorted market prices that do not incorporate environmental costs. Many of our environmental travails are the result of severe market distortions.

One of these distortions became abundantly clear in the summer of 1998 when China’s Yangtze River valley, home to 400 million people, was wracked by some of the worst flooding in history. The resulting damages of $30 billion exceeded the value of the country’s annual rice harvest.

After several weeks of flooding, the government in Beijing announced in mid-August a ban on tree cutting in the Yangtze River basin. It justified the ban by noting that trees standing are worth three times as much as trees cut. The flood control services provided by forests were three times as valuable as the lumber in the trees. In effect, the market price was off by a factor of three! With this analysis, no one could economically justify cutting trees in the basin.

A similar situation exists with gasoline. In the United States, the gasoline pump price was over $2 per gallon in mid-2005. But this reflects only the cost of pumping the oil, refining it into gasoline, and delivering the gas to service stations. It does not include the costs of tax subsidies to the oil industry, such as the oil depletion allowance; the subsidies for the extraction, production, and use of petroleum; the burgeoning military costs of protecting access to oil supplies; the health care costs for treating respiratory illnesses ranging from asthma to emphysema; and, most important, the costs of climate change. 36

If these costs, which in 1998 the International Center for Technology Assessment calculated at roughly $9 per gallon of gasoline burned in the United States, were added to the $2 cost of the gasoline itself, motorists would pay about $11 a gallon for gas at the pump. Filling a 20-gallon tank would cost $220. In reality, burning gasoline is very costly, but the market tells us it is cheap, leading to gross distortions in the structure of the economy. The challenge facing governments is to incorporate such costs into market prices by systematically calculating them and incorporating them as a tax on the product to make sure its price reflects the full costs to society. 37

If we have learned anything over the last few years, it is that accounting systems that do not tell the truth can be costly.

Faulty corporate accounting systems that leave costs off the books have driven some of the world’s largest corporations into bankruptcy, costing millions of people their lifetime savings, retirement incomes, and jobs. Distorted world market prices that do not incorporate major costs in the production of various products and the provision of services could be even costlier. They could lead to global bankruptcy and economic decline.

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Like I said, just a snippet. But enough, I hope, to get you thinking. There is more to come. Believe me, this is just warm-up material.

Photo Show in Wine Country - Lots of Wealthy White People Likely to Attend 8 October 2006

Before I made the life-changing decision to become a celebrity activist, I had a real life — a mellower, in many ways more complete and fulfilling life. Part of that life involved indulging in something of an obsession. Okay, truth be told, I had several obsessions, some standard some not-so-standard, but I’m only going public with one:

Polaroids.

That’s right, I have a Polaroid camera fetish. My fellow Pola-fetishists understand completely this bizarre and twisted fascination with Dr. Edwin (my middle name, no less) Land’s creations. For the rest of you, I offer a glance into this world with a public showing of a portion of my Polaroid camera collection (the world’s third largest) as well as some of the works these wonderful tools helped me create at Flying Goat Coffee/Gallery in Healdsburg, California. The opening reception is scheduled for 20. October 2006. I will be in attendance if you’d like an autograph or photo op.

From the press release:

The works, which explore a wide range of subject matter including the 3rd Reich, comedian Lenny Bruce, New York City’s subway and suffering animals, consist of poster-sized giclee prints printed upon archival watercolor paper. Each piece is strictly limited to three prints and will be paired with a copy of Lester Brown’s seminal “Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.”

Located in the heart of California’s premier vineyards, Flying Goat Coffee/Gallery is considered one of the world’s top coffee roasters, winning multitudes of awards and receiving consistently high marks from Coffee Review, the world’s leading coffee-buying guide. In addition, Flying Goat, cofounded by artist and designer Maura Harrington, is known as the area’s only truly contemporary art venue, offering its space to both local and international artists.

The photos will be up for two months, so if you’re in Sonoma County before the end of the year, I invite you to drop in and take a look at the evidence of my life as it was before it collided with the demands of fame.

Pictured (L) “For Kitty Bruce” - Polaroid SX-70, guerilla theater marquee manipulation, food dye, collage.

Pictured (R) “Dog Trapped in Car on Hot Day” - Polaroid SX-70, suffering animal (I saved the dog, don’t worry).

Away With You! Go To SUSTAINABLOG! 6 October 2006

I haven’t made a habit of posting a direct link to the content of another blog as the sole content of my posts. I feel this leaves you, dearest reader and comrade, a bit slighted as you are clearly here to enjoy the unique insight of a celebrity, delivered with a heady amalgam of charm, wit and grace. However, today I will break with tradition to point you directly to Jeff at Sustainablog’s recent post in praise of conservative columnist, Kathleen Parker, as it illustrates perfectly the need to recognize that our fight for a sustainable future is an absolutely nonpartisan effort. We must recognize the efforts of people not politicians (though these may well be one and the same). JEFF’S POST CAN BE FOUND HERE.

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The most significant book you’ve read or I will buy it back from you at full purchase price: Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0 Trust me on this one, just order it. You’ll thank me later.

Why We Enviros Will, Sadly Enough, Fail to Achieve Our Goals in Time: Part One 1 October 2006

Here’s why we will fail:

We expect a revolutionary movement to be executed through traditional hierarchies, systems and structures.

Don’t get me wrong, we will make advances. There will be a switch, however uncomfortable, away from oil to assorted renewable energies. There will be new economies that promote and encourage sustainable living. There may even be introduced sustainable models of agriculture and food production that will snap the vicious cycle of poverty-starvation-disease in some portions of the world. However, these things will happen at the last minute, by utter necessity - they won’t happen in time. That is, it won’t happen before we are faced with, to paraphrase ever-controversial writer James Howard Kunstler, “chronic strife and resource wars among all nations” or as Kunstler succinctly puts it in his provacative book, The Long Emergency, “world-altering forces, events, and changes that will interact synergistically, mutually amplifying each other to exacerbate the emergence of meta-problems.”

Unless we adopt a “BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY” motto and attitude and embrace revolutionary change through revolutionary actions, systems and structures, we will ultimately fail to stave off a host of impending disasters brought about by climate change, resource wars and the cascading effects of collapsing societies. In the United States, our hands are tied by a two-party system. Neither party is going to move swiftly to enact legislation that will bring about a rapid end to, say, an oil-based economy. And, unfortunately, too many in The Movement have been brainwashed into believing that we must work within the current system only. Bullshit. Party-faithful “radical” organizations like MoveOn have co-opted the revolutionary spirits of an entire generation. Has everyone forgotten the H. Ross Perot in 1992? Laugh if you will, but take a hard look at what he did. He was leading the U.S. Presidential campaign by a substantial margin with only four months to go. A little more polish, one less nationally televised meltdown, and U.S. politics would have been reshaped. Then again, maybe he never had a chance. Yet, after his meltdown, after he withdrew, then jumped back in again at the last minute, he still drew 20 percent of the vote. Twenty percent in a three-person race is more than respectable; it’s incredibly frightening to the status quo. Which is exactly why the rules were changed for all future third-party challenges.

My point? As I see it, Perot took advantage of a disenchanted U.S. citizenry mired in the midst of an economic slump. With his purported business savvy and straight-shooting shtick, this prototypical self-made man convinced millions that political experience was a hindrance to running the country. What was needed wasn’t more politicians, but more businesspeople who knew how to run a business! And millions of people ate it up. He saw a weakness and he exploited it beautifully. Certainly, he was cracked, but. . .
Perot’s method can be replicated.

In the very near future, people in the U.S. will see plainly that their government has no idea how to protect its citizens from the myriad dangers of environmental change. Too, they will note that their government is inextricably linked to the agents responsible for the impossible situation. Enter our third party. Enter a party who will see this weakness and exploit it much like Perot. Only this time, we’ll have better funding (Bill Gates and Ted Turner can each toss a cool billion into the pot), a much better network and take advantage of much improved communications technologies. The creative community, thousands of writers and graphic designers, will craft the world’s finest propaganda. We will have the backing of scores of noted economists, scientists and theologians. In short, we will have our ducks lined up so neatly, our history lessons learned so thoroughly, that we will have a fighting chance at introducing real political change. Remember, we need only elect ten Senators here in the U.S. to forever wield the all-important swing-vote. That swing-vote means real power. It means the power to introduce “radical” legislation and have it passed. It means the power to elect a President. It means the power to swiftly change the course of human history, before Kunstler’s book plays out as prophecy.

And this illustrates why we won’t make it in time. Too few in The Movement can envision such a fantastic scenario. Too many label it unrealistic. You can never have a third party in the United States. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that? I’m certainly glad that southern slaves didn’t give up when they were told “You can never have freedom.” I’m also glad that women around the world didn’t give up their fight when they heard, “You can never have the vote.” Damn, what about Nelson Mandela? He must have heard, “You’ll never get out of this jail, n*****” about a million times. Well, he did get out of jail and then some.

You can never, my ass. You may never, but I will.

(feel free to comment)

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The most significant book you’ve read or I will buy it back from you at full purchase price: Lester Brown’s Plan B 2.0 Trust me on this one, just order it. You’ll thank me later.