More Fight, Less Fuel

Just now I've been reading the "Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on DoD Energy Strategy, subtitled, "More Fight Less Fuel."

The thing goes on and on -- 150 and lots of fancy seals. It's a little dry...

Finding #3: The Department lacks the strategy, policies, metrics, information or governance structure to properly manage its energy risks.

"There is currently no unifying vision, strategy, metrics or governance structure with enterprise-wide energy in its portfolio. DoD efforts to manage energy are limited to complying with executive orders, legislation and regulations ..."

I wound up at this report through a link on an AP article.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Think you're being gouged by Big Oil? U.S. troops in Iraq are paying almost as much as Americans back home, despite burning fuel at staggering rates in a war to stabilize a country known for its oil reserves.Military units pay an average of $3.23 a gallon for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, some $88 a day per service member in Iraq, according to an Associated Press review and interviews with defense officials. A penny or two increase in the price of fuel can add millions of dollars to U.S. costs.

The article goes on to say:

"Overall, the military consumes about 1.2 million barrels, or more than 50 million gallons of fuel, each month in Iraq at an average $127.68 a barrel. That works out to about $153 million a month.

Historically, these figures are astounding. In World War II, the average fuel consumption per soldier or Marine was about 1.67 gallons a day; in Iraq, it's 27.3 gallons, according to briefing slides prepared by a Pentagon task force established to review consumption."

The article is careful to say that this is a drop in the bucket compared to world oil consumption...
They have to say that? The American Military is consuming so much oil fighting in Iraq it is important to note they are not disrupting world energy flow...

"More Fight Less Fuel."
more fuel more fight
more fuel less fight
less fight less fuel

Reservations

Sometimes it's news that something is going along as scheduled.

WASHINGTON (AP)-- The Energy Department said Friday it would continue putting oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve even as crude oil prices remain above $100 a barrel.

It's sort of interesting to read this story -- it sounds like the Bush administration has been put in a position of having to defend their own continued acquisition of oil -- a stockpile practice begun after the oil embargo of the 70s, designed to buffer any economic havoc wreaked by rising oil prices.

As in now... so some in Washington are complaining that it's not a good time to be putting oil away.

"The administration's policy of diverting oil into the government reserve at a time of high prices has been criticized by some congressional Democrats. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has urged a suspension of deliveries to the reserve.

''Not only are taxpayers being fleeced by paying that much for oil, but the effect of taking valuable oil, like sweet crude oil, off the market has a disproportionate effect on oil prices,'' Dorgan has argued.

Energy Department officials have countered that the amount of oil being put into the reserve is too small to affect the oil markets, which globally consume 86 million barrels of oil a day."

I don't know -- an oil reserve seems like a good idea.

"Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes advocated the stockpiling of emergency crude oil in 1944. President Truman's Minerals Policy Commission proposed a strategic oil supply in 1952. President Eisenhower suggested an oil reserve after the 1956 Suez Crisis. The Cabinet Task Force on Oil Import Control recommended a similar reserve in 1970." DOE Website.

Continuing to save now also seems like a good idea.

The last time the reserves were used was after Hurricane Katrina, when US oil production fell sharply due to the storm.

What is it about us -- and I say this, not entirely sure who "us" is -- what is it about us that makes us feel so immune -- makes us so set in the idea that instant gratification outweighs the future? Getting elected or getting in the way of an election or trying to hold up the landslide of the future with two hands?

If anything seems clear now, it seems clear that things are going to get worse.

On the other hand, it's always important to follow the money -- here's a press release from November on the DOE website:

Washington, DC - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today awarded contracts to Shell Trading Company, Sunoco Logistics, and BP North America for exchange of 12.3 million barrels of royalty oil produced from the Gulf Coast for crude oil meeting the requirements of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Deliveries are expected to begin in January at a modest rate of approximately 70,000 barrels per day for a period of six months. The offers are in response to the Department's solicitation issued last month and represented the highest value of specification-grade oil for the Reserve.

Absurdity of Scale

Look at this!







Photos are all AP photos from a slide show here.

There's an amazing string of AP articles about an oil and gas company in Santa Barbara County. The article by Noaki Schwartz is great, laying out a long series of ironies and disasters. Kudos!

Here are some highlights:

• Of 21 refineries in California, Greka Oil & Gas Inc. is the fourth-smallest producer, but the state's biggest inland oil polluter, according to state officials.
• Over the past nine years, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department has responded at least 400 times to oil spills and gas leaks at Greka, resulting in fines, citations, federal and local prosecutions and investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency and state Fish and Game.
• From 1999 to 2007, the Santa Barbara Air Pollution Control District inspected Greka facilities 855 times and issued 298 violations. During that period, 203 Greka spills threatened or polluted state waters 20 times, according to Fish and Game.
• In January announced an environmental initiative dubbed Greka Green. But just a day later, it was hit with an 8,400-gallon spill.

The idyllic vineyard is the Firestone Vineyard, which was established by The Firestone family in 1972. For some reason I can't seem to figure out how big it is. But there's lot's of history and pretty pictures on their website.

Greka leases land from the vineyard.
Again, how much sense does it take? Oil. Food Source. Ugh.
Do people really not think that oil is dangerous? I just keep finding myself amazed at the decisions people will make for money.

I think it's interesting to note that the Firestone's sold the vineyard and much of the land last year. Another quote from the AP story:

"Brooks Firestone, whose family leases land to Greka, was one of two members of the county Board of Supervisors who blocked an emergency hearing on Greka in December. He said the staff needed more time to prepare, and warned board members not to become hysterical.

"To me, a huge event involving oil was the Kuwaiti oil fields that were fired by the Iraqi army in the first Gulf War, the 1969 oil spill in the channel, the Valdez tanker and the Normandy tanker," Firestone said at the time. "What is the meaning of this incident?"

Days later, on Jan. 5, Greka spilled more than 190,000 gallons of oil and contaminated water on the land it leases from the Firestone estate. Since that spill, Firestone has withdrawn from deciding matters related to Greka.

Firestone, an heir to the tire fortune, said it would be too difficult to calculate how much income he receives from Greka. On political disclosure forms, he said he owns only 9 percent of the vineyard land on which the Greka installation sits. Officials have to own at least 10 percent of a business to disclose income from it."

I'm amazed by this story.
At it's absurdity of scale, for one thing -- this little company respectively and all the power they have -- all the damage.
It's got everything -- right down to irony and government corruption.
I wonder about all the little companies in this country.
I wonder what will we drink.
When we have polluted the wine
and the rain and the rivers.

The Unwritten

When I teach writing -- comp, journalism, electronic media -- I teach that, basically, every piece of writing is the same: locate your Audience, Purpose and Tone. If you write based on those three things, your piece will work.

I realize this morning that there has been an element missing for the last two years as I teach this theory: Understanding.

The old adage of creative writing "write what you know" is compelling -- but even more compelling if you take it in terms of non-creative writing. I've been trying for the last few days to figure out how to help my students with this problem -- but it didn't really gel until I set out to learn about oil today.

Lack of understanding is often the problem in freshman English papers -- it's also often a problem in journalism articles.

So I'm going to do what you should never do -- write about what I don't understand. I'm not going to look any further, either.

An article yesterday in the Denver Post reports,

"Garden Gulch, a remote ravine north of the town of Parachute, has been the site of four spills and leaks from oil and gas drilling in the past five months."

To repeat: FOUR SPILLS IN FIVE MONTHS.

"New information pegs it as also being the site of a huge soil-erosion deposit that fell during the building of an oil-field pipeline above."

Okay -- what New Information? Photos? Reports? Whose?

There are two reasons this type of language occurs in any genre: confusion or secrecy.
(okay -- one more reason may be that a writer writes at 5 am with a 7am deadline -- this leads to all sorts of sloppy writing.) Confusion can come from not knowing enough, and also from knowing too much.

I still can't exactly understand what the problem is -- and what is missing in the article is what a soil erosion deposit means and what the effects of one are. After sitting with the article for an hour (it's pretty short) -- I think the issue is: a pipeline for oil and gas products was built somewhere over an important water source. When the pipeline was built it caused a bit of a landslide which deposited a bunch of soil into the watershed. This was not reported -- though it should have been by law. The pipeline has been leaking -- 4 leaks -- and the waste has simply been freezing -- but as spring is coming it is all about to defrost and make its way to the plants and animals. No one knows what's in the frozen waste. It's probably toxic.

Chevron owns the land -- and they didn't know anything about the problem.

"Photographers for environmental organizations mistakenly identified the formation in that photo as the remainder of the four spills from wells that created a million-gallon frozen "waterfall" into the gulch. That gulch is home to Parachute Creek, the source of irrigation and livestock water for downstream landowners and the entire town of Parachute."

Okay -- here I'm wanting to point out a problem I see:

Chevron owns the source of irrigation and livestock water for landowners and the entire town.
Okay -- hindsight, 20/20 all that -- but what did they think was going to happen? The oil and gas giant was going to put vitamin C in the water?

The writer says, "The saga of the Garden Gulch spills and deposits does hold an element of confusion."

Some of it is the writers creation. There is no one official from the local government on record -- there's no one from Chevron on record. There's a pipeline builder identified as unidentified. She may have been on deadline -- worried about getting scooped -- there are a lot of pressures that go into this type of story which is trying to uncover something people do not want uncovered...

Some of it sounds like extreme negligence on behalf of the oil people. The spills went unreported -- the erosion was also supposed to be reported and wasn't.

And more than that -- the system is set up to protect certain things and certain practices.

Get this: "Fluids used in drilling and stored in pits are kept secret under federal rules"

What?!

Here we are, right. The Federal Government. You don't really have to go much further.

The fact is that the government looks out for the oil companies and the oil companies look out for their money. And whatever you think of any of it -- of the endangered polar bear, of tankers in British Colombia, of being able to travel to California or to work off of your feet -- whatever you think of any of it, the no one is really looking out for the effects of it all.

Audience, Purpose and Tone.
If the audience is the public -- the people who drink and who raise the cows -- if the purpose is to keep in the dark and the tone is to placate or to keep in the dark --
someone is writing well. The laws. The brochures.

The unwritten.

Post Script:

Whatever problems I have complained about in this article I would like to deeply and sincerely thank Nancy Lofholm of the Denver Post for writing it. The most important role of the journalist is to uncover the covered -- it is absolutely through articles like this that education and change occur.

Miles and Miles and MIles

When you go to the library of the Central Intelligence Agency on-line a cursor writes the title across the top of the page and makes a noise that sounds and blinks like a very old computer.

The alphabetical list of world pipelines by country is listed in kilograms.
First I am annoyed because last I checked, saved that week in second grade, we as a country aren't metric.
Next I'm relieved to imagine that our government is also concerned with the rest of the world.
Next I wonder if the whole list is set up to be unreadable. There are different categories of pipelines which seem to change from country to country and don't seem to be constructed in any sort of a parallel list. Reporting years vary. I also wonder if I have just set up some red flag for myself simply by looking for oil stats on the CIA website. When I was little I wanted to be a spy.

The United Arab Emerates list is: condensate 520 km; gas 2,908 km; liquid petroleum gas 300 km; oil 2,950 km; oil/gas/water 5 km; refined products 156 km (2007)

In 2006, the US had 244,620 km of pipelines for petroleum products and 548,665 km of natural gas ones.

Thanks to a handy little on-line calculator metric conversions are easy:
The US has 152,001 miles of pipelines for petroleum products.

The entire country is only 3.7 million miles square. I wonder how this can be right or if I have simply read the whole site wrong.


www.landholt.com


mynetbiz-online.com

I'm thinking again about the conference where cardio-vascular surgeons and oil refiners got together to brain storm.

I don't want these pipelines to be our veins.
I don't want oil to be our blood.

I am thinking that the ruins of of ancient Greece are quite beautiful. ((I saw an opera set outside as in the ruins many years ago -- the sun went down as live horses were marched across the stones.))
I am thinking that the ruins of now will not be.

I am thinking that I will be glad when this year is done.

One Thing.

I've been getting overwhelmed.

There are lots of stories. There was an oil spill in the Dominican Republic over the weekend, and another in Nigeria. In UAE, where one country recently created the first zero carbon emission community, another has just contracted for a Six Flags theme park. I said yesterday that lately one story doesn't seem enough. A hurricane of stories. A glacier. A tsunami.

And so I take a deep breath. One thing about oil everyday for a year.



Today I learn.



According to the National Energy Technology Laboratory U.S. oil production uses 10 barrels of water for each barrel of oil produced.



photos copyright Jennifer S. Flescher 2004

There Will Be No Other End Of The World

Okay -- here's kind of a crazy story. Well, it seems crazy to me, not being a geologist or an oil refiner.

The National Energy Technology Lab (NETL), owned and operated by the Department of Energy, "supports DOE’s mission to advance the national, economic, and energy security of the United States." All they do is study coal, oil and natural gas.

February 28, about two weeks ago, NETL sent out a press release about the furthering of a new program "sequestering" dangerous carbon dioxide gas. What does that mean? Does it mean that the emissions won't get to read the newspaper for two weeks? Will have to stay in a seedy motel and miss work?

No. It means they are injecting CO2 gas into holes in the earth to see if this would be a viable mean of storing the negative product of our emission-filled lives -- holes formerly filled by oil and coal.

There is the added benefit that by injecting oil basins with the gas it is possible to extract more oil than could previously be retrieved. Displacement as opposed to suction, I presume.

So they are doing this -- in Michigan -- to see how the gas will react.

This from a separate DOE website:

"In an enhanced oil recovery application, the integrity of the CO2 that remains in the reservoir is well-understood and very high, as long as the original pressure of the reservoir is not exceeded."

Umm... as long as...

Youtube has a bunch of videos of Co2 bombs going off. Soda bottle size bombs that explode and make some holes -- in earth in buildings...

"The Norwegian oil company, Statoil, is injecting approximately one million tonnes per year of recovered CO2 into the Utsira Sand, a saline formation under the sea associated with the Sleipner West Heimdel gas reservoir. The amount being sequestered is equivalent to the output of a 150-megawatt coal-fired power plant."

Yesterday I went on a walk in the woods with Sara, a veterinarian turned science professor. She showed me various different signs of spring -- mating bird songs and snow specked with snow fleas. These little jumping creatures have a life cycle of about two days. All they do is wake up, mate eat and jump. I said I wanted to write about them, but she said they were too beautiful to be written about with oil. Then we saw a red plastic gas jug littering the woods. I argued it was not simple to think of backing up our lives -- undoing transportation and mechanization that has altered the lives of humans. Maybe I'm just jealous that she gets to go to Florida next week and I don't.

I feel like I've been very disjointed lately -- almost like one story a day doesn't express what I want to right now -- it's an avalanche of stupidity -- a genocide of shortsightedness and greed and impossibility...

I do stupid things all the time. I set off on endeavors that are clearly misplaced from the start that pose the potential to cause harm...

Still,

They are experimenting with filling the earth with gas.

NOTE: March 13 -- yesterday someone told me that CO2 is inert and would not be dangerous in this capacity. I have to track someone down to tell me about it now...

There's no place like now

A few days ago I wrote that I was playing a bit of an energy game -- one that projected future fuel requirements based on the current state of affairs.
It seems I'm not the only one...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — War in Iran. Gasoline rationing, at $5 a gallon. A military draft. A Chinese takeover of Taiwan. Double-digit inflation and unemployment. The draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

This is where current energy policy is leading us, according to a nightmare scenario played out

played out where, you might ask -- in a basement while mom fixes a snack and a group of 12 year old boys take turns with a joystick? Oil Shockwave...

as a policy-making exercise here on Thursday by a group of former top government officials.

Far into the future?
2009.

The ignition for the game was $150 a barrel oil.
Oil yesterday closed above $100. It had hit $100 but hadn't closed there before.

The factors in the game included sanctions against Iran, instability in Central Asia and the political situation in Venezuela. I don't know what the Story in central Asia is -- guess I should figure that out tomorrow.

The group was led by the national security adviser, played by Robert E. Rubin, secretary of the Treasury during much of the Clinton administration. At one point, weighing a variety of unpleasant options, Mr. Rubin said in near despair, “This wouldn’t be this big a problem if the political system a few years ago had dealt with these issues.”

Carol M. Browner, the Democratic former head of the Environmental Protection Agency who played the secretary of energy, chimed in, “Year in and year out, it has been difficult to get a serious energy policy.” She and others noted that previous Congresses failed to act on auto mileage standards, efficiency measures and steps to replace foreign sources of oil. Michael D. McCurry, President Clinton’s former press secretary, who played a senior counselor to the fictional new president, said that energy issues were barely discussed in the 2008 campaign.

I'm not sure what piece is so alarming -- the proximity of the panic date -- the extreme and yet entirely plausible circumstances -- or, more than all that, the fact that private companies and retired government officials are enacting awful scenarios simply to try to get some attention -- and that the answers over and over revolve, in the future, of someone saying no one did anything now.

In the game, now is foregone...

Thursday’s exercise, the organizers acknowledge, was a bit of a stunt to publicize the issues and nudge Congress and the presidential candidates.

A few minutes ago, my alarm went off. I was downstairs and it went off loudly with an annoying rock song and scared the life out of my 7 year old daughter who had climbed into my bed for protection. I wonder what the world will look like for her.

I wrote a a friend I was feeling vulnerable yesterday...

Vulnerablity is a funny thing -- we can feel it and strong at the same time -- regard and disregard concern at the same time.

He didn't answer.

I don't know -- maybe I want to give someone in Washington a pair of ruby slippers:
There's no place like now; there's no place like now; there's no place like now.

Corruptors of Governments

The other day I mentioned in passing the law suit that temporarily bars Venezuela from control over its own oil supplies -- the order passed down freezes 12 billion dollars in assets.

I've been avoiding Venezuela. I'm not sure I can do it any more justice today. As if to underscore that fact I clicked on a link to "current local time in Caracas;" It's 6:29 am there -- which is exactly a half an hour off of the time here. Good Grief.

I was told last year that Venezuela was the biggest story not being looked at in oil world-wide. Venezuela, one of the largest oil suppliers in the world, I was told, is letting their fields languish in pursuit of it's socialist ideals... putting money into social programs and such at the expense of the oil fields. "Isn't that a good thing?" I said at the time; feeling silly even as the words came out.

The latest law suit with Exxon has to do with Chavez attempting to exert control over their own oil reserves -- asking Exxon and others to abandon billions of dollars of investment.

The problem with this story is that I don't trust the reporting. That is my least favorite situation to be in. For the most part I spend a lot of time trying to convince people that the American press is an amazing institution -- but occasionally I do feel like I'm reading non-thinking pop-language soundbites at best -- government propaganda at worst.

Venezuela’s government has been seething since Exxon recently won orders in British, Dutch and American courts freezing as much as $12 billion in Venezuelan oil assets abroad — refineries and other oil-related infrastructure that Venezuela owns. Venezuela vowed to overturn the decisions before arbitration over Exxon’s attempts to win compensation for its nationalized oil project.
By Simon Romero, NYT

Seething? Vowed? It has seemed clear over the past few months in trying to delve into this story that Chavez is turning into a cartoon.

"I'LL GET YOU MY PRETTY, AND YOUR LITTLE DOG, TOO!"
I watched the Wizard of Oz this weekend with 6 kids between the ages of 5-7.

Chavez, for his part, is certainly an easy target -- the propaganda he spews aids the image...

“I speak to the American empire, because that’s the master,” Mr. Chávez said. “Continue, and you will see that we won’t send one drop of oil to the empire of the United States.” Referring to Exxon, he said, “They are imperialist bandits, white-collar criminals, corruptors of governments, overthrowers of governments.”

The issue is language again, and how do we trust people who are so clearly trying to tell us what to think... so clearly communicating with words intended to elicit feeling, not thinking...

The problem inside Venezuela is that there is still an extreme food crisis.

The problem outside Venezuela is that world oil prices being effected.

I guess one question is whether or not socialism can exist at all in this globalized world -- and how on earth that works in a country so enmeshed in the oil market.

Essential Human Elements

Robert Bateman, Canada
Antarctic Evening – Humpback Whales

I'm still needing art. And I think it's interesting -- at a time when there is so much money being generated by and for oil in this country alone -- that there is no money for the arts. Some of this is a philosophical issue of what we choose as our values and what is important -- other is just logistics. Artists can't afford to do their work and live in this culture. In talking about funding for the arts -- and I include poetry and performance in this term -- we have to look at the role and purpose in art. Politics? Entertainment? Meaning? If we starve the arts what conversations do we end...

Yesterday, Andrew C. Revkin of the New York Times bemoaned the lack of initiative in this country. Hard to imagine I could possible be more cynical than a New York Times reporter, but really -- we don't even back the UN...

Following the environmental tenants of that organization is this statement:

Internationally co-ordinated work on the environment has been led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), since its inception in 1973. UNEP has provided leadership and encouraged partnerships to care for the environment, for example, through Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) which have addressed issues such as species loss and the need for conservation at a global and regional level. UNEP has created much of the international environmental law in use today.

The three environmental principles of the Global Compact are drawn from a Declaration of Principles and an International Action Plan (Agenda 21) that emerged from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) held in Rio de Janerio in 1992. Chapter 30 of Agenda 21, identified that the policies and operations of business and industry can play a major role in reducing impacts on resource use and the environment. In particular, business can contribute through the promotion of cleaner production and responsible entrepreneurship.

The UN is a supporter of the arts in this endeavor.

"Science informs the mind, music and the heart but art connects with the human spirit," said Achim Steiner, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UNEP.

I love that. The human condition, right -- great art explores the human condition. Maybe that is part of what makes this particular topic so compelling, and so easy to integrate in terms of aesthetics and politics in a way that doesn't alienate one from the other -- demise is not foreign to the soul at all...

Steiner goes on to say: "We urgently need to empower all three of these essential human elements if we are to rise to the challenge and seize the opportunities for economic, environmental and social renewal glimpsed through the lens of climate change."

25% of the worlds oil reserves are believed to reside in the Arctic.
The icebergs are melting at a rate that far exceeds all expectations.

For UN World Environment Day 2007, the Natural World Museum in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme produced an exhibition that addresses the theme of Climate Change from a global perspective - the melting and thawing of ice, snow and permafrost are environment-altering changes taking place around the world- from the Andes to the Himalayas to the melting ice caps of the Poles. "Change" the transition that occurs from same to different, the moment of transformation, a change of position or action. Change used in reference to our environment can describe the transformation of material substance -- from ice to water, liquid to gas - the changing conditions of our rivers, our rapidly melting glaciers,, and the overall changes in the earth's climate. Change requires organisms and organizations alike to adapt to new environmental conditions. Metaphorically, change can also refer to the transformation of society's mindset to act in a positive way individually and collectively to work toward a more sustainable future.
Press release from the Natural World Museum.

The Exhibit will be at the Field Museum in Chicago from April to October of this year.
I want to go.

Percentage of Fault Allocated

I couldn't even look at this at a normal hour today -- I'm at a bit of a loss, feeling like I've stumbled into some sort of gap in the project and also my own history that I'm not sure how to handle...

Anyway, I started looking through the NY Times cross referencing Brooklyn and lung disease. The thing is, I'm not really versed in computer assisted reporting, and the kind of project about Brooklyn I'm contemplating... well... I'm not sure I'm up for it.

February 26, 2007 The violinist and composer Leroy Jenkins, one of the pre-eminent musicians of 1970s free jazz, who worked on and around the lines between jazz and classical music, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 74 and lived in Brooklyn.

Larry Fink, 2005

Leroy Jenkins playing with the reunited Revolutionary Ensemble.

The cause was complications of lung cancer, said his wife, Linda Harris.

link

*

Donald M. Halperin, a former New York state senator who represented shorefront neighborhoods of Brooklyn for 23 years and then served briefly as Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's housing commissioner, died on Monday in Brooklyn. He was 60.

The cause was lung cancer, said his wife, Brenda Halperin.
link

*

COMPANY NEWS; CIGARETTE MAKER FOUND PARTLY RESPONSIBLE IN MAN'S DEATH
Published: December 19, 2003
link
A New York jury said yesterday that Brown & Williamson, the maker of Lucky Strike cigarettes, was partly responsible for a Brooklyn man's death from lung cancer. A six-person jury at New York Supreme Court in Brooklyn said the man, Harry Frankson, who smoked cigarettes for more than 40 years, was 50 percent at fault for his illness, while British American Tobacco, which has operated in the United States as Brown & Williamson, and other defendants held the rest of the blame. The case was brought by Gladys Frankson, Mr. Frankson's widow. The jury will reconvene on Jan. 7 to determine punitive damages. It awarded the plaintiff $350,000 in damages, which will be reduced by half because of the percentage of fault allocated to the plaintiff. The company said it expected the case to be reversed eventually.

I've talked a lot over these last few months about responsibility --
I think that cigarette companies do have a responsibility for selling -- making money on -- administering toxins. Tobacco is one of the only ingestible carcinogens still for sale in this country --
People also have a responsibility - that of choice and free will...

The Brooklyn spill happened, was not cleaned up and was not revealed. If the worse case scenario were true in, and lung disease skyrocketed in Green Point -- is still skyrocketing -- what does that mean? And to smokers? Would the oil companies then owe a percentage of the fault of death? Would cigarette companies be off the hook?

I still just can't quite get my mind around it --
the biggest oil spill in the country --
unnoticed
unattended to...
Could you examine the birds of Brooklyn? Are there any birds left in Brooklyn?

Out the kitchen window in the apartment where my father grew up you could see the tomato plants in the back few feet of yard...
food grown of toxic soil...
permeated
ingested.

Untitled

A few days ago I wrote about a man suing a defense company for endangering his life and the lives of his colleagues (many of whom are dead) from exposure to toxic waste. Today I cam across a somewhat similar article -- only the workers were scuba divers, and the accused is the Norwegian government.

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- A group of deep sea divers sued the government Monday, saying that working at extreme depths in the early years of Norway's offshore oil boom ruined their health and violated their human rights.

The so-called pioneer divers were sent to extreme, sometimes experimental depths while working on offshore oil installations in the 1970s and 1980s, according to a government commission that studied the case.

It's dark and quiet and lacking of sleep on the couch in my living room this early morning. I'm thinking about responsibility... how responsible are we to each other -- how responsible are we to ourselves... are we responsible for what we do to each other? Gown ups -- employers -- lovers -- cohabitants of earth...

The divers have often been called the forgotten victims of an industry that has made Norway a major oil exporter and one of the world's richest countries.

In his opening remarks, attorney Marius Reikeraas said some of the divers were sent to depths of 1,300 feet as recently as 2002. The safe limit is now set at 590 feet.

Is responsibility really addressed by punitive damages? By shame? When the Exxon case comes to the supreme court the question will be whether or not the court should clear all damages awarded against the company. Does this help or hurt anyone? I think it may simply all live in the realm of the dollar -- the realm through which nothing of real value is addressed.

These are lives. This is the earth. We are pushing ourselves to extremes intolerable to human life.

Maybe these cases are what we need to cripple the industry -- like the smoking industry -- come to think of it, has the smoking industry been crippled at all? Maybe it's a "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's." The profits are the spoils and the cause of the danger and the use of people and the land -- so all that we can do is take away profits.

Still, it seems like there must be some other way to deal with ourselves and the land and the place we find ourselves in.

At the risk of sounding entirely heartless and cruel, wouldn't experienced divers know that what they were doing was entirely unsafe? Why did they do it, then? Was it money or excitement? Are we really children to our paternal bosses? Are we really incapable of extricating ourselves from anything we find ourselves in -- a situation by which we are endangered? Not to say that a family crippled by the loss of a father in a job which found oil should not be supported by the company/government which benefited -- certainly they should be. But it feels like something else is being requested -- some implication of blame it really seems to me like we all share...

What are the tools of manipulation? Lies, Bribes, Bullying... Information is withheld. Riches are offered -- be them monetary, physical or psychic...

Months ago I went on a Buddhist retreat based around the prayers and principles of loving kindness meditation. My 5-year-old son says the prayer every night. There are monks in the mountains of Tibet doing the same -- praying for the peace of the world.

May all beings everywhere be safe. May all beings everywhere be happy. May all beings everywhere be healthy. May all beings everywhere live in ease.