Cross Sections

I've been meaning to get around to figuring out where the candidates stand on these issues -- though I have to say I've been somewhat removed from the whole election thing this time around -- as much as I feel it is an ultimately everything changing event that is about to happen.

Instead I have been reading a very interesting article from the Yale Climate Forum about why the environment and global warming are not an issue in this election.

A Gallup Poll in November had asked Americans to list the top ten issues that were most important to them - and environmental issues ranked 10th.

In its analysis, Gallup wrote:

"On the prominent global warming issue, most Americans take it seriously as a problem. At the same time, only about 4 in 10 Americans believe that immediate, drastic action is needed to deal with global warming, and just 28 percent say there will be 'extreme' impact of global warming in 50 years if efforts to address the problem are not increased."

That, in a nutshell, may explain why the climate change issue has not received sustained attention by reporters and editorial writers covering the presidential election, or from the candidates themselves.

One of the major goals of this project was to begin to fill out a picture that we usually only glimpse in tiny pieces. To try to understand how different ideas cross -- cross sections of the newspaper, cross sections of society -- cross sections of our daily lives.

Because the globe's warming climate is driving long-term changes and many of them are incremental, the story is difficult and often tedious for the news media to track, said Richard Somerville, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a coordinating lead author for the latest series of IPCC Reports.

Another report I've been reading this morning was a roundup of a number of different polls from around the country regarding issues of import for this election. In many of these polls the environment wasn't even an issue. Still the war in Iraq and the price of oil were consistently among the top issues weighing on people's minds. Hurricane relief, health care, homeland security.

All of these things, it seems to me, have oil at their core.

We are so fragmented in the information we obtain; we are so compartmentalized in the way we look at our lives. Moment to moment, task to task, thought to thought.

POLL:

"Now I'm going to read to you a list of issues that the U.S. Congress may address. Which one of the following issues do you think should be the top priority for the U.S. Congress to address: [see below]?" If "All": "If you absolutely had to choose, which one issue would you say should be the top priority?"
				.
		%
	War in Iraq	26
	Health care	13
	Immigration	9
	Economy/Jobs/Unemployment	9
	Social Security/Medicare	8
	Terrorism/Homeland security	8
	Education	6
	Gas prices	4
	The actions of the executive branch/the President	3
	The environment	1
	All of the above (vol.)	13
	Unsure	1

Lately I feel like I've been taking some liberties -- writing about coal once or twice -- writing about wildlife or the environment without specifically having oil itself as my topic. I've allowed this to enter in because I don't think that compartmentalizing works. Coal is an issue because of peak oil. The pending extinction of many animals is due to oil exploration, refining, burning. The fact that yesterday felt like spring -- that tornadoes and hurricanes are multiplying...

Oil.

My real fear in the election though is that it's about to get really ugly. I fear that whichever democrat wins is about to feel wrath the size of a sunami, and that when the American public sees either candidate in the lead of a white male vice president, they haven't a chance in an oil refinery of winning.

That when it comes down to it, people only think about what they see, what they are afraid of and what is easy -- the rest falls into the realms of forgotten.

For The Birds

A new study is looking at long-term effects of oil spills, as monitored through birds.

"Seagull blood shows promise for monitoring pollutants from oil spills," according to a new study from the American Chemical Society. Following seagulls months and years after oil spills, a group of scientists is marking the rise in pollutants in the birds' blood. Among other things, these pollutants (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) are known to cause cancer and damage DNA. I dont' think I knew DNA could be damaged...

While oil spills quickly kill large numbers of seabirds and other animals, scientists do not fully understand the non-lethal biological effects of these spills, the Spanish researchers say.

The article in the ACM journal opened with that canary in a coal mine metaphor, again. Since I first wrote about that phrase last fall, I've seen it come up over and over again. Language travels through society like birds -- flocking and gathering and crying through the air.

This new study is crucial, of course. We look at things in such a short term perspective, we forget to look out, into the future and the past for understanding.

At the same time, while I think this will certainly prove an important study, there seems something so off with the way we look at and talk about these things. The birds -- the birds are not dying to show us when we are killing ourselves... we are killing the birds!


Photo from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

When the Cosco Busa cargo ship spilled 58,000 gallons of oil off San Francisco bay two months ago, within a week over 1,500 birds were dead or dying from the effects. While I have been familiar with photos of oil covered birds for decades, I didn't really know what the actual effects were -- I guess I thought the birds would then suffocate. I still imagine that's part of it -- but more. They lose their waterproofing. (Another irony...) They become incapable of faring cold and water. Listen to rescue workers discuss the scene on NPR here.

It is an overwhelming disconnect -- this one between us and the life -- the earth life -- we are part of. The overwhelming disconnect. As ever, when I feel that drowning in the person-ness we live in, I turn to poems.


Eagle Poem

by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadly growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright �© 1990 by Joy Harjo. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
From the Poetry Foundation Website.

Backwards

Backwards: at or towards the back or rear. in a manner or order or direction the reverse of normal.

I looked up the definition of this common word this morning because I wanted to try to get at the relationship between actual movement and the nature of movement. I guess I need to pull out the OED, but at least this is a start -- in any event, the idea of powering things with coal seems "backward" in both regards.

An administrative judge on Friday affirmed a controversial permit granted to Longleaf Energy Associates LLC for a coal-fired power plant in southwestern Georgia, the first to be approved in the state in 20 years.

This from Energy Law 360 -- which, it turns out, costs $3,000 a year after the first trial week -- so it's only headlines from here on out.

The language of the story --

The Energy Law headline reads:
Ga. Judge OKs First Coal-Fired Plant Permit In 20 Yrs.

The headline in the article in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution reads:
Environmentalists Lose Bid To Stop Coal Plant.

Language -- Energy Law puts the issue in context -- history -- they put it into the legal realm with the word permit.
Atlanta Journal and Constitution puts the emphasis on the negative -- they get the environmental issue right up front.

The thing about headlines is -- they are often misleading -- they are almost never written by reporters, and it is their job to get you to read the story, not to report the story. Still they can often give away a lot about emphasis and goal.

This from the legal abstract:

VIII.
That granting this petition will prevent waste, avoid the drilling of unnecessary wells, promote orderly development and protect coequal and correlative rights of all owners in the Mobley Creek Field.

Coal. I sort of try to imagine the pollution of Dickens' streets magnified to the level they would be given our daily energy requirements now. In the last few days I've been noticing a cropping up of stories about nuclear energy plants. It's scary -- there would be the hope that we would move forward with our new understandings about global -- environmental and resource -- energy consumption. What if that's not where we are headed at all?

We go back to what is known -- places, objects, people -- what we know how to do, where we know we can find fuel and power. We go back despite the dangers -- despite the known effects. What is known is always less scary than the abyss of the future we can't fathom or recreate.

Backwards.

In my pursuit of definition this morning, I came across a site where a guy recorded Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven" in both directions. You can listen at http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm
I'd always heard about this, but never heard... very strange... I swear language and information have a life of their own...

Forward
“If there’s a bustle in you hedgerow, don’t be alarmed, now, it’s just a spring clean for the May queen. Yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there’s still time to change the road your on.”

Backward
Oh here’s to my sweet Satan. The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan. He’ll give those with him a 666, there was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.

That's Entertainment

Two days ago, after spending half the night up with a screaming, in-pain child, this household did something entirely decadent it almost never does -- we all sat around (for kind of a really long time) in our pjs watching Saturday Morning cartoons. If you haven't tried it lately, I highly recommend it...

The best cartoons are on Discovery Kids. In one of our favorites, "The Future is Wild," a group of kids flies through the future, searching through space for a sustainable energy source for earth. Last week they landed somewhere (I haven't quite got the show down yet...) where there were dinosaur-like beasts lumbering around. The kids honed-in on a tremendous energy source and followed their equipment (and a horrible smell) to a gigantic dinosaur graveyard...

This reminded me of a trend I've been noticing lately:
Oil is all over the arts.

Movies, TV, Theater... I think this may be as big a deal as Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize; I really do. It's easy to ignore the news and the world -- but once things move onto the stage and screen, awareness is infiltrated. Connection and communication are never stronger than in the entertainment industry, because nobody has to work at anything... When we are distracted by what we truly enjoy, our bodies take over and our minds open.

Furthermore, it's perfectly possible that no progress can be made without a little fun!

Happy New Year.

By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published in The New York Times: December 26, 2007

“There Will Be Blood,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic American nightmare, arrives belching fire and brimstone and damnation to Hell. Set against the backdrop of the Southern California oil boom of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, it tells a story of greed and envy of biblical proportions — reverberating with Old Testament sound and fury and New Testament evangelicalism — which Mr. Anderson has mined from Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!” There is no God but money in this oil-rich desert and his messenger is Daniel Plainview, a petroleum speculator played by a monstrous and shattering Daniel Day-Lewis.

***

★ ‘PUMPGIRL’ This fiercely observed, unsentimental work by the Irish playwright Abbie Spallen alternates the monologues of three downtrodden figures: a female gas station attendant, her oafish lover and his neglected wife. The powerfully acted, bare-bones production emphasizes the staggering force of good storytelling (2:00). Manhattan Theater Club at City Center, Stage II, 131 West 55th Street, (212) 581-1212. (James)

***

‘TINGS DEY HAPPEN’ An engrossing one-man show about the Fulbright year its author and performer, Dan Hoyle, spent in Nigeria; in the spirit of theatrical journalism, it is at once a travelogue, a cultural survey and a good introductory course in oil politics. But it is the people the audience meets who raise the exercise above a guided tour (1:25). Culture Project, 55 Mercer Street, SoHo, (212) 352-3101. (Hampton)

***

By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ

Published in The New York Times: December 19, 2007

The Hungarian cartoon feature “The District!” is a last-minute shoo-in for the title of 2007’s most original animated film, no small triumph in a year that also included the releases of “Persepolis,” “Ratatouille,” “Beowulf” and “Paprika.”

The movie is a sexually explicit, scabrously funny portrait of multiethnic European urban culture, similar to Ralph Bakshi’s early-1970s adults-only animated movies “Fritz the Cat” and “Heavy Traffic,” but richer and more coherent than either of those. It’s set in contemporary Budapest, where a group of streetwise Hungarian teenagers use a time machine (invented by their school’s resident nerd genius) to travel back to the prehistoric era and bury mammoths beneath what will eventually become their city’s streets.