This Vermonter's Endorsement of Bernie for President

I write to ask you to support Bernie for President. I am a lifelong Vermonter and watcher of politics.I've supported Bernie since he spoke at my high school over twenty-five years ago. 

In the fall of 1988, during his first run for Congress, Bernie talked to a packed cafeteria of students from Burr and Burton Academy, in Manchester, Vermont. He gave excellent advice to the young. Mostly he tried to inspire us to get off our tails and get involved. He talked to us as equals who should take up our appointed task of repairing the world. In a booming voice, he challenged us to join the movement already afoot to make the world a better place. He sounded like the Prophet Amos with rolled-up sleeves, calling for 'justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." He challenged us to protect America's political system by renouncing apathy. He said Democracy was a precious historical advancement in human civilization over the rule of kings and queens. And there was a fight on because the system was being dismantled by the rich and powerful. Sound familiar? It should! As Dr. Cornell West says, "Bernie is a long-distance runner for justice."

Bernie is a disciplined, enduring contrarian against establishment party politics. Bernie rose up the political ladder, simply winning election after election fairly, owing little to the party power structures. This independent attitude helped him work with any useful allies in Congress, like with Senator John McCain to protect Veterans. Bernie knows real people will be helped if gov't work gets done and so he's a "getter-dun" kind of guy. My friend Claire Boughton is a Vermont homeowner facing an eminent domain land grab for a fracked gas pipeline that Bernie also opposes. About Bernie's time as Burlington's mayor, she said "He wasn't against people, he helped people do a lot of things, whatever would come up. I liked that he was natural-looking, didn't dress fancy, hair the way it is and he's not concerned. He wasn't doing what other people wanted him to do, he was doing what needed to be done." Amen to that.

As a lifelong Democratic voter, I think the Democratic Party will be healed by nominating Sanders because he will return the party to serving the general public again. Democrats can do better than being complacent losers who are Wall Street's second favorite party. Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) turned the Democratic Party into the Republicans Party Lite, a pro-fracking, pro-NAFTA & TPP nightmare trade deals party. No wonder Hilary can get millions giving quick speeches to Goldman Sachs because Wall Street knows the Clintons remade the Democratic Party to serve them. And this election season, the Democratic National Committeee (DNC) behaved like the Clinton's Downtown Abbey butlers, hiding the debates and giving up the chance to build up the party during the primary towards a 50 state strategy. 

Hilary Clinton's campaign symbol perfectly expresses the DLC's pro-corporate, rightward drift. The H, with the red arrow going to the right, reads as taking the party towards the right (Red=GOP, right=conservative). They spent a lot of time, thought and money on this symbol, and this is what they came up with: an right-wing headed, vaguely phallic red arrow in an H that's shaped like a squat elephant. It's a symbol with all the pushy ugliness of Picasso's Cubism but none of the Dreaminess. 

But "enough is enough" on criticizing the Clintons. Correctly remembering the Clinton's place in recent Democratic Party history is completely fair, but piling on just is not how Sanders has asked his supporters to roll. Sanders is demanding a more civilized political culture, something Obama deserves credit for too. Meanwhile, Trump is showing all the class and restraint of an ill-tempered monkey hurling his feces thru the cage bars. 

I agree completely with this subtle observation about Bernie's character, made by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who wrote in "The Case for Bernie Sanders"  that "Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means to be a public servant. The Times remarks on his "grumpy demeanor". But Bernie is grumpy because he's thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest workers who've had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more or less all the time. I first met Bernie Sanders ten years ago, and I don't believe there's anything else he really thinks about. There's no other endgame for him. He's not looking for a book deal or a membership in a Martha's Vineyard golf club. This election isn't a game to him; it's not the awesome repulsive dark joke that it is to me and many others. And the only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely believes the system is not beyond repair. Not all of us can say that.  But that doesn't make us right, and him "unrealistic." More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders is focused on reality. It's the rest of us who are lost." 

Vermonters are crossing our fingers! Let's do this America. Keep your eyes on the prize and have some faith that we can still repair the world.

Obama Fracks His Climate Speech

President Obama is facing humanity's biggest problem with the right facts and language, and yet has polluted the whole thing by setting America on a development path that includes fracking for "natural gas."

The speech was bittersweet for a climate activist like myself who foresees runaway Climate Change causing human extinction.  I loved hearing President Obama sound like author Bill McKibben as he recited weather facts such as 2012 being the hottest year on record. I was inspired to hear the President say "I refuse to condemn your generation to a planet that's beyond fixing" and that the US would "lead the planet in a coordinated assault on Climate Change." At long last, a U.S. president spoke sanely and intelligently about getting Humanity on track towards long-term survival!!!  Hurray, praise be to God, may it be so!

And yet...  I've spent the last year studying the rape scene that is fracking and so there was no joy in Mudville.  Obama got it mostly right on Climate, but includes the false solution of fracking as "a bridge fuel", just as environmentalists become aware that fracking is the largest emerging public health crisis on the planet.

  

Fracking is wrecking America's water supply right now!  Large chunks of America are being made uninhabitable right now! Fracking is the most unpatriotic, anti-American activity imaginable: blowing up America's ground floor and ruining our water forever! If Chesapeake Energy's corporate empty-heads had Taliban-style beards instead of Wall Street suits, the military would be drone-striking their headquarters in Oklahoma City. 

Fracking is the creation of vast regions of Ghost Towns, where the water makes you sick and doesn't grow good food. Someday a fracked map will overlay America and the only land of value will be where they didn't frack. Fracked land will be filled with poor and sick people. This is the making of an ugly American future, a version of Stephen King's story about "The Children of the Corn" mixed with a splash of industrial cruelty.  President Obama's long-term legacy may be green-lighting this ecological disaster.

With fracking, there is no "government regulation" that can make it safe. Government merely pretends to "regulate" to provide a fig-leaf of cover and legitimacy for the rape scene. But fracking can't be done safely ever, no matter what. Fracking wrecks the water supply, bottom-line, case-closed, period. So any talk of regulating the industry is a falsehood, a lie, a great pretending that government's power is greater than it is over the laws of geology, water and methane migration.  

According to the fracking industries own studies, as documented in the film Gasland, 5% of the fracking wells fail immediately and start polluting the water supply with chemicals, radon 226, toxic waste water, and so on.  And over time, all the wells will fail, ensuring that in 50-100 years, every well will be leaking toxicity into the water! This is what Chesapeake and Exxon are doing right now!  Creating millions of wells, across America, with one inch of concrete to stop the methane migration into the water. 

Having mixed concrete before, I know this is bad design that will not function to protect the water. Sure, concrete will make a sidewalk, but even that crumbles eventually. Stick concrete a mile into the Earth, amidst shifting rock, and expect it to hold FOREVER? The whole process is a lie, B.S., a pretend head fake at legitimacy while they ruin America's water.  Everybody involved with fracking should acknowledge and atone for their sins, walk away, become whistleblowers and help us save America's water while there is still time.

We need a NATIONAL BAN ON FRACKING right away.  Someday we'll get one, as inevitably as methane migrates into tap water.  People will eventually see how bad fracking is. In the meantime, so much more water and land will be ruined.  While there are many places where a safe, successful human future is being derailed, fracking is the perfect crime of insane industrialism. Fracking is a Wall Street financial instrument where junk bond billions are laundered by being spent on massive, self-absorbed, industrial projects. Chesapeake Energy borrowed $800 million to get started, another example of how alienated capital causes alienated decisions. They are wrecking America's water for five minutes worth of gas. It doesn't get any greedier, shortsighted and selfish than that.   

Albany, NY has become the front lines in the fight to protect America's water from fracking.  On June 17th 2013, Don'tFrackNY.org gathered over 4000 people at the Capitol Building in Albany. An impressive and sustained NY anti-fracking movement has arisen that's made it politically impossible for Governor Cuomo to sign off on fracking for New York state.

A former truck driver for the fracking industry gave the days most inspiring speech.  He said the industry gets rid of toxic wastewater by putting it in trucks labeled for pure water and then spraying on Pennsylvania's roads to keep the dust down. As a driver, he was personally breaking the law doing this and so he called the government to report this.  He was threatened and told not to call back. He said "So I became a whistleblower! They want me to shut up but I'm not going to!" 

I love that President Obama is directing the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon pollution. (A president even talking about "carbon pollution" is progress.) Here is another action Obama can do without Congress: direct the EPA and the Justice Department to start enforcing the Clean Water Act laws already on the books.  True, fracking got started when a sociopath you may remember named Dick Cheney pushed thru the 2005 Halliburton Exemption "Get out of Jail Free Card" to the Clean Water Act. But the Frackers are illegally dumping waste water down municipal sewer drains across the country right now.  President Obama, before bothering to make new EPA laws, have Attorney General Eric Holder talk to that truck driver and end the lawless, wild-west mentality of the fracking industry. Enforce the laws already on the books!

Fracking is America's next big contentious, not-going-anywhere issue. Fracked gas requires a spiderweb of pipeline to take the volatile, hard-to-store fuel to places where it can be used. In Vermont, a utility named VTGas is trying to build a 41 mile gas pipeline thru people's farms and gardens using immanent domaine. (Rule of thumb: "Immanent domaine" is a legalistic mumbo-jumbo term that in real life translates to poor people lose their land's value when bullied around by rich companies and their stable of lawyers.) A group called Rising Tide Vermont is opposing the pipeline, and challenging Vermont's rubber stamping of this massive, pro-carbon development.

Finally, the real kicker, fracked gas isn't even cleaner than oil once you factor in the methane released during production.  Fracked 'natural gas' releases more greenhouse gases overall once you count the methane that leaks out of the wells.  So fracking is a lose-lose proposition: ruin the water and the sky.

I'm grateful President Obama is getting serious about Climate Change. I dislike having to write this critical article when Obama just advance the ball so far in terms of talking sanely about Climate.  Challenging coal production ain't nothing when West Virginia will never vote for anti-coal politicians. And check out the amazing graphics the White House released to explain the problem: http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/climate-action-plan. I have faith Obama will come around to an anti-fracking position eventually.  But since fracking is ruining the water immediately, we don't have time to coyly please-both-sides of the issue like with the Keystone XL pipeline.

Obama's Climate speech was great progress and yet still feels a day late and a dollar short.  This opinion is reflected on many environmental blogs and websites. The inclusion of fracking divided the environmental community's response. This is too bad because the Climate Movement is the natural constituency to support action on Climate Change.

Try to see Gasland 2, premiering in July on HBO. Check out Don'tFrackNY.org, AmericansAgainstFracking.org and see the film "Dear Governor Cuomo." Join the movement against fracking and let's save America's water.

Info for 1st Anniversery of Occupy

Here's a list of links and information for the 1st Anniversary weekend of Occupy Wall Street.

Main event website and schedule are at  http://s17nyc.org/schedule/

There's some housing lined up. Factory space in Brookyln has been secured as temporary housing, folks can get location if they sign up to go at:  http://s17nyc.org/support/registration/ 

Good overall event summary is at these sites:

http://interoccupy.net/s17nyc/s17-everything-you-need-to-know-update-important-info-share-widely/

 http://wiki.occupy.net/wiki/September_17th_NYC

Musical events are being organized by the Guitarmy.  Check out  http://www.guitarmy.org/   where you'll find a catchy updated 99% version of the miner classic "which side are you on?"

On Sunday morning Sept 16th, the Guitarmy brings it's music to the site of hydro-fracked gas entering the city. At 10 a.m. folks start gathering and at noon march from the Spectra Site to Foley Square to take part in the Occupy Anniversary Concert in Foley Square. Spectra Energy Pipeline Blast Zone is located at Gansvoort Street and West Street (the West Side highway), L/A train to 8th Avenue.

The Guitarmy is also organizing on Sunday S17 to do music pop-ups around the city, gathering to play music on 99 streetcorners around the city.  Info at http://99corners.tumblr.com/  A pre-game rehersal for this event will happpen on Saturday 15th 6pm, with song teach-in and rehearsal social justice songs together at Washington Square Park. 

In the spirit of participatory democracy,  the Guitarmy website asks "Want to be part of the opening and closing act, aka the occupy guitarmy?" Learn these songs: Which side are you on, This land is your land, Wall Street your kingdom must come down, and "Frack You" Cee Lo parody

occupy guitarmy press release for event at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jNAI7rI32YQNDXbXZgex_1K1OPqTftrLJErbWYV28oA/edit?pli=1

twitter tags to checkout are 

 #spectrashdown @owsguitarmy @owsmusicgroup

S17 has a Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/events/407471409305638/

Resist the Fracking of NY's Water Supply and Your Future!

The Oil Companies are starting to wreck America's water supply with Hydro-fracking for "Natural Gas".  So let's face this fact: we live in a dark time. Terrible things are happening, things that future generations will cuss us out for.  We live when the ecological world that supports human life is being taken away from us. One way to resist our immoral era is to bear witness and say clearly "We are not fooled. We see what's happening. This must be stopped."  This essay seeks to bear witness to the evils of Hydrofracking and to encourage New York state to stay fracking free.

Hydro-fracking is the nickname for hydraulic fracturing, a process invented by those Titans of Massive Industrialism at Halliburton.  In essence, they explode one of the Earth's bottom floors to release 'Natural Gas" and siphon it off with wells.  The process is fiercely complicated, and involves millions of gallons of fresh water and toxic chemicals pushed into the Earth at extremely high pressure.  Fracking is like a marriage between a PhD professor in Geology and Dick Cheney: advanced geological information combined with amoral cruel pragmatic self-interest.  In fact, Cheney helped pass the "Halliburton Loophole" that allows frackers exemptions from the Clean Water Act. 

CBS News reports that Gov. Cuomo is preparing to allow Fracking in south-west New York. Fracking has been on-hold in NY for four years, and perhaps with political pressure, luck and God's grace, fracking will continue to be kept out. But money talks and the Extreme Energy companies have a lot of ca$h to throw at politician$.  Money buys propaganda like CNN's relentless 'Natural Gas' ads. Yet some people aren't fooled. This weekend, there was a massive rally in Albany by a group called Don't Frack With NY, where environmental groups and college kids made commitments to resist NY's fracking with non-violent direct action and civil disobedience.

Fracking's main problem is the wells leak.  The local ground water gets contaminated by the natural gas, the polluted water, and radioactivity.  The fracking industry claims to surround and seal the well with a solid concrete tube to protect leaking into the groundwater. Yes, let's fantasize...  imagine trying to pour concrete a mile down a hole where giant rocks are under intense pressure.  And then the concrete lasts FOREVER and protects the water for generations to come. That is delusion, a pretend design for a well, not a possible future.  Safe fracking is impossible.  

Even the oil companies admit to themselves they can't keep the wells from leaking.  In the new on-line film, The Sky Is Pink, activist/filmmaker Josh Fox shows the documents where companies admit that it's impossible to make permanent well casing to protect the water.  Fox made the film "Gasland"

which famously shows a man lighting his water on fire as it comes out of his tap.

Fracking is a sociopathic ruining of the Earth for short-term corporate profit.  It's only happening because of corporate/goverment collusion amidst a hurricane of money that buys politicians and a Nazi-like propaganda campaign that would make Gobbels jealous.  The GOP convention is tagged with the logo "America's Natural Gas" everywhere, from commercials to the front of Politico's pundits desk.  

  

Hydro-fracking is a very 21st century problem. Humanity has a lot of technical knowledge but not everyone is restrained by wisdom. Halliburton knows how to explode Mother Earth's bones and sniff the fumes, like half-bright boys playing with frogs and firecrackers. Somehow we humans must make these corporations behave in a way capatible with human survival.   

Hydro-fracking is so bad, so immoral that it deserves judgemental old-school Old Testament language to describe it: Evil, Abomination and Sin.  We cannot properly name the wickedness that's afoot with this project without all the fierce moralistic language of the past.  These words have become toxic through misuse in the cultural wars of late, but we need them to describe fracking.  Hydro-fracking is an Abomination, a grave Sin that anyone who encourages or takes part in will have to answer for when they meet their Maker.  Where's Elijah when you need him to talk about CNN's incessent "natural gas" ads?

Humanity is facing "the end of the world", or at least, the end of humanity, because the Corporations are more powerful than humans, they squish us like bugs, steal our water supplies, deny us a realistic response to the Climate Crisis. We are not, in any real way, planning for long-term human survival on this delicate Earth and that is stupid and wrong! We must organize like the Lilliputians and tie down Gulliver. We must save humanity and this Earth.  It's taken so much energy to get humanity here, we owe it to our honorable ancestors to not blow it now.    

Fracking will be the most environmentally contentious issue of coming decades.  Evidence of polluted water supplies will pile up. Then politicians who helped frack the water will be cast into the Lake of Getting Fired. If Gov. Cuomo fracks NY, he'll lose the political dynasty. 

Please write Governor Cuomo and tell him to keep NY un-fracked. Encourage your legislators to pass laws like Vermont's which outlaw hydrofracking.  Join the struggle to save Mother Earth from this cruel, blind system that is taking us towards extinction.  Join the effort to help humanity win a livable future. 

Let's Converge on Burlington, Occupy the Pipeline!

Please come to Burlington the weekend of July 29-31 for the biggest environmental protest Vermont has seen in years.  Activists are planning to "Converge on the Conference!"   On Sunday 2 p.m, we'll wear all black and make a human oil spill to symbolically say NO! to a Tar Sands Pipeline going thru New England. This weekend is a great opportunity to meet-up and say to the governors "we'll un-elect you unless you act on the Climate Crisis! And that means, no pipeline."

The Conference of New England Governors and Canadian Premiers meets at the Hilton Hotel above the waterfront in Burlington. Among the topics to be discussed is the Tar Sands pipeline that would run through most of these territories.  

Now, why bother the Governors, tastefully meeting behind close doors to promote economic growth and bureocratic interbreeding? Because it's become a very successful organizing tactic to OCCUPY outside the doors of the rich and powerful as they gamble away our future. Occupying is irritating to the Elite. It is rude to occupy their doorsteps with scruffy sleeping bags and sincere concern for our dying planet. It shines light upon the on-the-downlow business-as-usual destroying of Mother Earth.

For example, we need LIGHT upon the Trailbreaker pipeline.  The Titans of Big Oil want to fix-up a 1950's pipeline that runs from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the Atlantic Ocean in Maine, thru Montreal, through 30 miles of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom and onward to Maine. (Good idea, boys. While yer at it, fix up an old Model T to keep an eye out for leaks!) 

Citizen's groups are stepping up to say "No Way!" 350Vermont.org has been leading VT's disobedience to Corporate Craziness.  Check out this photo pile of recent action touring the proposed pipeline route: http://world.350.org/vermont/take-a-virtual-tour-of-pipeline-corridor-in-northeast-kingdom/  People are organizing regionally at http://www.tarsandsfreene.org/   Schedule for Convergence at http://www.btvconvergence.net/wordpress/ 

For fun, check out this lovely, in-french video from some Quebeckies coming down to be in Solidarite: http://youtu.be/YDB9YOiyClM

After the Human Oil Spill at 2pm, the Occupy New England Regional Gathering will happen at 4 p.m. In the evening,  the U.U. Church is hosting a dinner and a teach-in about many issues related to the Conference.  Bread and Puppet Theater performs Monday at 11:30 near the Hilton.

Be there or Be pipelined.

Encouraging travel details for Occupy National Gathering

A friend on-site says the Occupy National Gathering is off to good start, "peaceful chill scene at encampment in Quaker Church parking lot, 500-700 folks, need more bodies, come on down, people!"  There's a full schedule of teach-ins by day on Independence Mall. Later in week, folks may try camping in front of some local banks. Philly cops reputed to be generally cool, but yesterday cop dickishness at intersection leads to 30 arrests. Dem mayor denying water access to encampment from fire hydrants, maybe trying to protect Occupiers from Philly's water supply. But by and large, it's a safe campout in the limelight. People should come down and be in support. Bring a tent if you've got one, a sleeping pad perhaps, or book a hotel room.  Yeah, let's travel to camp in a parking lot in Philly during a record breaking heatwave. Why? Because Occupy stands for cool things, like direct democracy and saving our planet from hydrofrackers. Because if we don't stop climate change is going to get 10 times this hot. Because Novelty in a dreary political time is good. 

more info:

http://www.occupynationalgathering.com/#

the Quaker Church camping is two blocks off Independence Mall at 4th and Arch Street at http://www.archstreetfriends.org/  

good articles:

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2321/399/Occupy_National_Gathering_Update.html

workshop times:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/occupy-philadelphia/schedule-and-announcements-for-monday-july-2/245456635557211

Is this it? Humanity, come on!  We can do better than this.  We can morph into an enlightened species, complete with healthy food/fuel and fun, and hey, why not?  We can manifest ECOTOPIA.

watch this and save the planet

XL pipeline = human extinction

If we don't stop Climate Change, we'll break the sky and humans will go extinct. That is what the science says. Runaway Climate Change means planet death. If one hasn't had a terrifying vision of human extinction from runaway Climate Change, one doesn't understand the science.

Climate activists have been reluctant to motivate people with grim visions of planet death, lest they get too depressed to get involved. Climate scientists tend to talk in sleep-inducing language that doesn't convey the emergency. We've been under-scaring the children. I understand not wanting to infect people with terribly sad visions of everything you love and care about dying. It's wicked sad that Humanity is on a doom course. Staring at these grim realities should make you weep occasionally like a little child. I understand folks wanting to live the culture of Make Believe and pretend it's the 1950's and America will still be awesome if we only stick with what's worked, so "Somebody put on a Kingston Trio record and let's get this party re-started!" But that's the past. Today is 2012 and we live in the Era of Climate Crisis and Vermont has no snow and last summer we had a hurricane!

The Keystone XL pipeline is a product of this ahistorical fantasy culture. Un-constrained by history, science or common sense, the radical oily corporationists want to build the biggest industrial project on the planet to painfully extract oil that we need to leave in the ground to survive as a species! Fossil fuel company executives should be seen as backwards, radical, extreme energy fundamentalist terrorists. If Exxon Mobil executives had beards, turbans and an unpopular religion, our society wouldn't have given them 9.4 billion dollars last quarter, but rather, we'd be ordering drone strikes in Dallas! These same oily terrorists are plotting to ruin America's water supply in the next decade with hydro-fracking.

Tar Sands oil requires 4 barrels of water to produce on barrel of oil. Native peoples of Alberta report that their lakes are dropping and people are getting cancer from contaminated ground water. People get run over by the massive industrial trucks clogging their country roads. Alberta is like a real life version of Pandora from the movie Avatar. The human costs is so high, and yet these sociopathic corporations put all these costs down as 'externalities' while winning all the poker chips for themselves. There is a touch of evil on the Tars Sands XL pipeline project, a heartless diabolic cruelty to the Earth and poor people.

Our society is spiraling towards a new morality and Law based on the truth of the Climate Crisis. Tim DeChristopher, Bidder 70.org, in jail now for disrupting an oil lease auction, should be seen as a hero for pushing on the Law to catch up to Climate science. There are growing calls for an International Climate Justice Tribunal, modeled after Bertrand Russell's International War Crimes Tribunal. These citizen processes prepare the way for full legal proceedings, and hopefully someday we'll see the Koch brothers at the Hague's International Criminal Court.

Soon, when humanity finally realizes how serious a pickle we're in, there will be a demand for justice and a call for heads on a plate. In 10 years, a history of advocacy on Climate will make you look like Nostradamus. And in 20 years, obstructionism in dealing with Climate will be a crime worthy of retro-active punishment. Government people who take money from the American Petroleum Institute in 2012 will someday have to answer for it in court. I look forward to the day when TransCanada's executives are afraid to go to Spain for fear of arrest.

Media people called Tar Sands protesters "environmental radicals" which got Bill McKibben asking "who are the radicals here?" The people who came to the protests were the kind of radicals who talk about Gandhi, eat organic and sing "This Little Light of Mine". The real radicals are the oil companies who are changing the chemical composition of the planet in a real time experiment on all of us, like nazi planet doctors. Que the Nazi accent: "Ya, ve have seen what happens when we break a bone 15 times in the same spot on gypsy prisoners. Now, the Reich will use it's technological prowess to make sky warmer so that the Homeland has climate as pleasant as Jamaica."

The Keystone XL pipeline and the Tar Sands are an immoral, ahistorical, radical experiment in Extreme Energy. Tar Sands mining is the ugliest, earth-hating kind of industrialism. They want to scrape off the skin of Mother Earth on an area the size of the Britain. Then they want to build nuclear power plants to heat the oil out of the sand. Then they want to ship it across the continent over the Agualla Aquifer, then sell it to China. Pure unhinged sociopathic Wall Street boardroom madness without a whiff of ecological literacy.

Please help get the US government off the teet of Big Oil. Please help advance laws that reflect the reality of the Climate Crisis. Please stand against the XL pipeline and the Tar Sands.

Stop "Smartmeters" for health and privacy

In this era of Climate Crisis, I loathe to argue against anything that might cut carbon, but the "Smartmeter" project is such a stinker on so many levels that I'm obliged. To summarize the problems: electro-smog pollution, corporate surveillance, propping up for Utility-based electrical distribution, (which by design don't really want to cut usage and therefore profits), undemocratic corporate pushiness, privacy and security for homeowners, and more.

Smartmeters have already been installed in California, creating so many problems that 40 towns to pass resolutions banning them. In Vermont, Central Vermont Power Service (CVPS) is rolling out a project to replace electric meters with so-called "Smartmeters" that essentially have a cellphone inside them communicating to cell-towers and creating an electric + information grid. CVPS says this will cut usage, create the infrastructure to support electric cars, and give the utility tools to manage the grid. The Federal Gov't set aside $69 million in Stimulus money for VT's smartmeter project, if they spend it before April 2013. I love that the government is trying to do big things for the environment and investing in technologies to cut carbon. But... with this project, the devil is in the details.

Smartmeters create security and privacy issues for the homeowner. It will be an easy system for computer hackers to get into, and then have detailed information about when you are home or not. And it will create a data trove that companies can "data mine".

This sounds sci-fi, but this is actually in the primary design of the system. Each electrical appliance emits a unique electronic signature, and the Utilities (+ whoever hacks it eventually) will know if/when you turn on your dishwasher, baby monitor, vibrator, and so forth. This electrical signature surveillance is currently being used against marijuana growers, so this isn't hypothetical. One could argue that Smartmeters are unconstitutional because the Bill of Rights says we have a right to privacy in our homes and in our papers. Why the heck should Utility companies have nearly omniscient knowledge about our private lives?

You may be familiar with the debate about Facebook and data mining. The same issues arise here. Will CVPS sell my data and I'll get ads for blenders or worse? Who will own the information after it's collected, me or CVPS? Will the husband paying the electric bill own the data, or will ex-wife be able to subpoena the electro-data-log into divorce court to prove the husband wasn't really watching football that night in question because the TV clearly wasn't on? Will parents of teenagers be able to surveil their daughters, and be able to say, "your lights turned on at 2 a.m. briefly, did you sneak out and see Johnny?" These are creepy scenarios of Too-Much-Information that will be created by this system.

The Wikileaks case showed that no data is eternally free from being hacked. If the US State Department can't keep emails secure, how is CVPS going to keep records secure? They can't. They'll collect five years of data, some hacker will bust open the file, sell it to criminal elements or dump it on the web and then everybody will know you are always out of the house on Sunday mornings for church and that's the time to steal the silverware. Cybersecurity is now in the Post-Wikileaks Era. Deeply secure data is nearly impossible. One of the best strategies is to NOT gather tons of data will be damaging WHEN it gets out. This has to be the State Department's new cybersecurity strategy: no paper trails people! (Telepathy only.)

Another scenario: hackers will crack the code on the EMF signal coming off the meter, sit outside your house for an hour and know that nobody is home and come in. (There's an App for that! It's called Smartmeter Criminal's X-ray Vision). CVPS says, "oh, well, we'll encrypt the signal." Good luck with that, they're trying to create a 'mesh network' of cellphones that talk to each other, and the last thing that system design wants is an encryption code of hundreds of 1's and 0's bouncing back and forth. But even if they did encrypt it, hackers are resolute. It only takes a day after Apple's new smartphone comes out that computer geeks ripe it apart, crack the codes and brag online about it.

Finally, the biggest concern is cancer from Electro-Magnetic Radiation (EMR). Radio-frequency pollution has been identified as a carcinogen since US servicemen in WW2 got cancer while working the radar stations. The European Union is leading the way in regulating cellphones because this technology is also unsafe. The science is a heavy mix of bio-medical information and physics, and it's hard to get across quickly. I encourage people to visit EMFpolicy.org for detailed scientific reports. I'll summarize some of the studies here. Cellphones cause brain cancer, so use sparingly. Pregnant women should not sleep near the Wi-Fi antenna or risk having an autistic child. Leukemia cases rise when living near cellphone towers, as with high-voltage electric lines and the Vatican's high-powered radio station. The brain's extremely complex, low-voltage electro-chemistry doesn't benefit from lots of additional random electricity. Smartmeters will be adding an intense electro-smog system into a world already going mad with unhealthy wireless devices. CVPS says the Smartmeters could be hard-wired with fiber-optic internet cables to eliminate the radio-frequency pollution, but then it would be too expensive to roll out. They'd rather ignore the health issues and pass the health costs onto the public.

The Government regulators are asleep at the switch, brow-beaten into ineffectiveness by corporate propaganda against regulation and so the public is unprotected. Further, the FCC makes money for the gov't selling off slices of the electromagnetic spectrum, and so it's a conflicted party that shouldn't really be in charge of setting the standards of safety. Smartmeter advocates say "they meet FCC standards" as if that should end the discussion of safety. But the FCC standards were created 30 years ago, based only on measuring thermal (heating) ionizing radiation on a 200 pound adult male. Kids have thinner skulls and cellphones cause their brain tissue to heat up much faster. Further, non-ionizing radiation at lower levels is increasingly linked to biological impacts. The neural-nets of the brain, that vast web of wiring where little charges of biochemical electricity jump from synapse to synapse are designed to work in an absence or vacuum of electricity, and increased ambient electricity from these devices is linked to creating blockages that cause cancer. The government is grossly negligent in protecting us against electro-smog pollution, and it's time for the citizenry to stand up and say, "enough already!"

Some Vermonters are opposing the Smartmeter system. A group called STOPSMETERS.ORG has gotten the issue on the agenda at two Town Meetings in March, when we'll ask our towns to "opt-out." We demand the Utilities wait on installation until the citizens have been able to vote on the issue. We encourage lawmakers to create legislation to insist that the Utilities address our concerns about safety, health and security. Indeed, Vermont Senator Bob Hartwell's bill S214 is doing just that! We encourage our national politicians to re-direct that lovely stimulus money that was earmarked for smartmeters, (that $69 million, thanks Rep. Peter Welch, but, how 'bout we put it towards solar panels?) Our efforts to stop the Wi-Fi-ification of our planet feels like being a little Dutch boy with his finger in a dyke, but we have to start somewhere. Let's start with blocking an Orwellian corporate technology that will surveil us and make us sick in our own homes. Join us in opposing Smartmeters, and more broadly, the invisible 21st century plague of electro-smog.

a film I made in DC this fall

Invitation to the Climate Party

Dear Climate Allies,

We are creating a Climate Party to OCCUPY OUR GOVERNMENT to get solutions to the Climate Crisis. We've registered CLIMATEPARTY.ORG to host our activities on-line. As Tim DeChristopher said recently "Our challenge is not a technical one or an economic one: it's a political one."

The Climate Party's first General Assembly is this Sunday Nov. 6th, starting 10 minutes after the end of the upcoming Tar Sands Action, estimated to be 5:40pm. We're meeting to the middle-left side of Lafayette Park, if you were turning away from the White House. We'll reconvene for a 9 pm evening session over pints at Harry's Restaurant (436 11th St NW, http://www.harryssaloon.com/).

From this humble beginning, we'll create a political movement that swears eternal opposition to Tar Sands Oil. Since the Climate Crisis will be with us for the rest of our lives, we can afford to spend time building political infrastructure to help us Win Our Victories. Let us begin the discussion about creating a Political WIng of the Climate Movement.

The Climate Party will take a multi-tracked approach to pushing the political system. We will create a national third party, support candidates in other parties who are Climate Champions, create a Climate Policy data base to push doable Climate Legislation, host Climate Culture events in DC to bring the truth to the political elite, create support networks for Climate Champions, create a DC Climate Activist Hostel to bring more climate voices to the Capitol, create a Congressional Climate Caucus, fundraise and more.

First, we'll create a Climate Citizen & Politician Alliance to be a support network for Climate Champion Politicians, like Rep. Paul Pinsky of Maryland who was arrested at the Tar Sands Action in August. You may never have heard of Paul and that's part of the problem. We need to support our Climate Allies by volunteering for their campaigns, supporting them financially and amplifying their message. The young people who went to Powershift need jobs supporting the campaigns of Climate Champions. We'll create a support network that brings together Climate Politicians and Volunteers.

Second, we'll support you when you run for office. If you were willing to get arrested in front of the White House, you are brave enough to be in the US Senate. We will "storm the bastille" of our oily government and elect 10,000 Climate Champions. Please be one of them. We will encourage a new generation to run for office by DOING POLITICS DIFFERENTLY. We ONE PENNY from FOSSIL FUEL CORPORATIONS. Many people refuse to enter politics because they think it will require them to become corrupt, phony liars. We will not require you to wear a tie or wear your hair slicked back. We will create a party of authentic, down-to-earth, big-hearted humans. We will do politics in a way that doesn't sell our souls, but rather, makes our souls shine.

Third, the Climate Party will be creative to put the Climate Crisis at the forefront of the national political conversation. We must break the unholy silence on the Climate Crisis in DC. We must stop letting the Political Class get away with "shuffling the deck chairs of the Titanic" with their delusional arguments about budgets while the sky is being broken. First and foremost, DC politicians will take the Climate Crisis seriously when we start winning 50 seats in Congress. Additionally, the Climate Party aspires to host a series of awesome Climate Culture events in DC, such as Grizzly Bear rock show with Dr. James Hansen speaking at the set break. We'll give away tickets to congressional staffers until everybody on Capitol Hill understands the dire seriousness of Runaway Climate Change.

Fourth, the Climate Party will stake out advanced positions on Climate, far ahead of what is "conventional wisdom" in DC. We will push serious, realistic Climate Public Policy. We will compile a database of doable Climate Policy options to give good politicians something to work with, like "Complete Street" legislation, carbon taxes, enforcing existing EPA standards, writing new standards commensurate to the problem, signing the Kyoto Protocol, banning Tar Sands oil like the E.U., and ending fossil fuel subsidies. We will advocate for Public Policy based on Ecological Intelligence and the Precautionary Principle, and so we'll oppose "green-washing" non-solutions like the so-called "Smart-meters" based on radio-frequency pollution.

The author Terry Tempest Williams was debating war with a conservative senator. He asked her "which of your beliefs would you be willing to die for?" and the question caused her a lot of contemplation. Eventually she decided that the real question was "what would I live for?" Going to jail in protest is like a minor dying. But what can we dedicate our lives to that will make even more change? We can occupy our government with good people who know about the Climate Crisis so we can get human civilization on track to survival.

Please join us. Support this new action by donating online, helping us compile a library of articles on Climate&Politics and on Climate Policy, running for office, signing our email list and offering your service to the Climate Party. The Climate Party starts out as a shoe-string, ragtag crew, but we are right to obsessively focus on the Climate Crisis, and in ten years, our Climate-centric approach will seem prescient, and we'll be a force in national politics. We have a long row to hoe. We invite good allies to join us as we go the distance. We join together in this endeavor not knowing how it will go, but knowing that it needs to be done.

We invite the Divine Source to bless our endeavors with success, fun and victory. May we be the human species coming into Ecological Balance with Mother Earth so Humanity continues gracefully into the future.

Onward and upward!

My Public Comment to State Dept. on the XL Pipeline

The Keystone XL project is wicked for many reasons: an ecological gash across North America, a commitment to dirty carbon energy for 100 years, displacing Indigenous peoples, allowing ahistorical industrial madness by dissociative corporations, and insuring the destruction of Mother Earth and human civilization by a Runaway Climate Crisis.

I accuse the XL Pipeline project of being "AHISTORICAL". It is outside the sweep of history, it is disconnected from the ecological realities of 2011, it is disconnected from current science, history and rationality. The XL Pipeline would go thru the Ogalla Aquifer, at a time when fresh water is becoming scarce. We are living during a Climate Apocolpyse, when the newspaper everyday reports evidence of the rapid change of our planetary ecosystem due to carbon pollution, and yet the XL Pipeline would produce 3 times more CO2 than regular crude oil.

I accuse the State Department and the US Government more broadly of negligence of duty to protect the citizenry from Climate Collapse.

I bear witness to the "revolving door" between government and business, and encourage the State Department to stop allowing former employees to be employed by Big Business in endeavors that undermine our country's safety and sovereignty. The State Department should investigate the corrupt relationship documented here at Democracy Now:

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/6/naomi_klein_keystone_xl_oil_pipeline .

The XL Pipeline is like a mad fantasy of 19th century industrialists, with 21st century technology, but without the 21st century's understanding of Ecology, Climate Science, and Indigenous History.

The XL Pipeline will endanger our country by being a terrorist target atop our largest aquifer. It will endanger our country by creating a strip of ecological damage down the center of the North American continent.

There are Indigenous People's living amidst the Tar Sands project. They get run over by big trucks, get cancer from poisoned water, watch their lives erode amidst ecological devastation. The First Peoples have suffered so much. Our Planet's very survival depends on learning their wisdom about respecting Mother Earth. During the Tar Sands Action this summer, I made this short film that brings forward their voices:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOYU9IF-mVE

If the XL Pipeline is approved, we will mobilize to support a candidate for President that is a true Climate Champion. The Obama Administration's lack of action on the Climate Crisis is unacceptable. We don't have four more years to wait for action. If the Obama Administration is at all serious about addressing the Climate Crisis, the XL Pipelines should be cancelled right away.

I was arrested at the White House protesting the XL Pipeline because I understand the Climate Science. If we don't mobilize to stop this problem, we are NO PLACE. Everything valuable and beautiful in this small planet will be ruined because we will have ruined our sky. If you feel I'm being poetic or rash, I encourage you to study the climate science much more closely. The Climate Science is very clear: more carbon, more heat = disrupting a tightly wound atmospheric system = floods, hurricanes, ecocide.

Please, people, get on board. Provide some leadership and help save the planet before it's too late.

sincerely,

Theo Talcott

Manchester, Vermont

Last day for public comment is Oct 7th: at http://www.keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/clientsite/keystonexl.nsf/CommentFset?OpenFrameSet

Advancing VT Climate Legislation and Climate Leaders

Vermont has a historic opportunity to lead America in responding to the Climate Crisis. Governor Peter Shumlin spoke as a true Climate Champion during the 350.org's Moving Planet rally in Montpellier on Sept. 24th. How can Vermont's vibrant Climate Movement support legislators in creating aggressive and effective Climate legislation?

We need to start playing "The Inside Game". Climate activists have gotten used to being "voices in the wilderness" and lonely Cassandras. That was before "The Wakeup Call" of Hurricane Irene swept away covered bridges and excuses for inaction. Our political leaders are agreeing with us now, and so the Climate Movement enters a new phase. We can make ourselves useful and help 'getter dun' in the legislatures.

After Shumlin's speech, I found myself asking "by what miracle did we wind up with a Climate Champion governor?" And then I asked, "what does the governor do again? How much power does he actually have? What could the Vermont state legislature really do?"

This are the right questions because State Government is smaller and has less tricks it could pull off. Like Washington DC, Montpellier is a place where people talk about budgets and we shouldn't delude ourselves with magical thinking that somehow our elected leaders can flip a switch and Solve the Climate Crisis. The problem is REALLY BIG. Probably bigger than the Federal Government could deal with, even if it wasn't being run by oil companies. Bigger than the United Nations, whose best effort so far, the Kyoto Protocol, hasn't even caused the overall levels of Carbon going into the atmosphere to decrease.

Still... State Governments are useful as "Labratories of Democracy". We can work up solutions in the tiny state lab, and then scale them up for the nation and planet. So let's imagine Vermont passing aggressive climate legislation that helps governments of the world begin to effectively and legitimately respond to the Climate Crisis.

Like...

1. Developing methods for collecting Carbon Taxes. We need to put a price on Carbon. Taxes on Carbon should drive down the amount emitted. Think of it as Sin Taxes for the 21st Century. The political climate in Washington is so knee-jerk anti-tax in rhetoric that leadership on Carbon Taxes needs to come from the states. We could do a real service to the nation by getting the ball rolling and figuring out how to do it. We don't' have to reinvent the wheel. Other countries are already experimenting with carbon taxes, especially those smart northern european ones. Carbon Taxes might replace income taxes. How about a penny per gallon gasoline tax and the money raised buys solar panels to go on the schools?

2. Vermont should "sign the Kyoto Protocol." The United States has not signed the only meaningful international treaty on Climate created by the United Nations. Instead, every year the US goes to the 'Conference of Parties" (who actually have signed the treaty), and roadblock progress. In Copenhagen and then Cancun, the US has a track record of self-absorbed obstructionism. The Climate Movement should force the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and take up a LEGALLY-BINDING commitment to cut national levels of Carbon.

This isn't to say that Kyoto is perfect. (Overall, carbon levels have continued to go up since it was begun.) But it's the start. We need even stronger, fiercer globally concerted laws and action to avert the worst that the Climate Crisis could bring us. The US should at least get on-board with the relatively weak Kyoto "Commitments to reduce carbon levels."

Vermont could symbolically sign Kyoto (it's really a treaty that the US has to sign) and agree to take on the Commitments to reduce carbon levels. Vermont can start abiding by the Kyoto Protocol and hopefully US will someday do the same. Vermont can befriend the international Climate Negotiations and introduce our country to this useful ally. Vermont should send delegates to next round of international negotiations, in Decemeber, in Durbin, South Africa, with the intention to getting Vermont to abide by the Kyoto Protocol.

3. Vermont could get serious about creating 'complete streets' and promote bike lanes and public transportation. "Green Island" in Bellows Falls could get start support. And so on.

What Climate Legislation do you want to see?

I'd like to propose a few actions to help the Climate Movement to get political.

A) Let's have forum/symposium soon that brings together legislators and Climate Activists to discuss what is possible. Let's host a "Forum on Potential Climate Legislation for Vermont" will chew on our real options.

B) Let's create a Citizen & Politician Climate Alliance. Citizens and Public Servants can work together for Climate Justice. Citizens offer: work on campaigns, funding, advice, education to politicians, etc. Politicians get dedicated volunteers, some street cred, and help promoting legislation to the general public. "Cooperation and reciprocal good will are necessary for any important work" said spiritual teacher Mirra Alfassa. How can we cooperate with good will with the Climate Champions who are in power? We don't want to be "precious" about our outsider activism. Perhaps hipper to be in the streets with signs and slogans, but more truly useful to engage with the political process and really affect meaningful change.

C) Encourage Climate Activists to run for public office. We try to move from beseeching those in power to BEING THOSE IN POWER. We need to elect 10,o00 Climate Champions. Will you run for Senator?

The goal of the Climate Movement is to save the planet from Runaway Climate Change. We need to start using the tool of Government for this purpose. The Political Class is waking up to the Climate Crisis, at least the smart ones, like Clinton, Bloomberg, and Shumlin. Let us find ways to be in support of our elected allies who understand the "fierce urgency of now" of the Climate Crisis.

Climate of Private Obsession

I spent much of the winter thinking and writing about the Climate Crisis. I organized with climate activists who all agreed it was a major problem. Then Spring came like flicking on a light switch and I dropped back into my body to work like a horse on a friend's farm. Suddenly, I'm back in a world where people don't know or aren't concerned about the Climate Crisis.

It's a relief. Who wants to always be thinking about 'The End of the World'? Not me. I want to think about Girlwalk videos, Further shows at SPAC and growing garlic. Caring about Climate feels like a private madness, a pet peeve, a dark private vision of planet death, especially when surround by people who are blithely unconcerned.

On April 7th, I attended a meeting for the State of Vermont's effort to create a Comprehensive Energy Plan. I was surprised to find very little talk of the Climate Crisis. It was an energy conversation that could have happened in another era on another planet. And these were smart gov't people.

So, clearly, the Climate Movement is still in the movement-building phase of "raising awareness" and "creating mass consciousness" and "making sure the public knows there is a problem".

The Climate Movement hasn't achieved mass consciousness because the science is so complicated that it's easy to refute. Like 5th graders, Climate Deniers have just said "Nah-uunuhh" and Climate Scientists are forced to mumble back "No really, arctic ice samples gives us a very clear record of the relationship between carbon in the atmosphere and temperature. More carbon, more temperature." Climate Deniers say "Oh, yeah?!!" And around it goes, a stuck debate between PhDs and tweens about the proper atmospheric composition if we want to preserve life on earth as we know it.

The Climate Movement must get better at explaining the science. It's not enough that Bill McKibben and James Hansen understand the mechanics of the problem. We need 8th graders who can explain the carbon/temperature connection to their Senators. Someday I’d like to make videos of citizens explaining the Climate Crisis to legislators.

It took me about two years to eat, digest and understand the Climate Science. In total, it's complicated: planetary chemistry, geological records. But in summary, it's not too complicated: more soot in the sky, more heat held in by the greenhouse effect. We need to get millions more people understanding the Climate Science so that creating a Zero-Carbon society becomes a priority.

The Climate Crisis has a time-lag. The Biggest Effects are still far-off in the future. The planet is taking some time to adjust to the new atmospheric composition of (currently) 390 PPM (parts per million) carbon. Already we are experiencing big changes, but the changes haven't deeply settled in. If it was 390 PPM for 100 years, we'd probably have no ice-caps. In Cancun, the last time it was two degrees warmer, the sea level was two feet higher. The changes are happening now in miniature, but in a few years, they'll flesh out. Already we are seeing big changes: hottest year on record, record snowfalls and rainfalls, Pakistani floods and Russian fires. I mean, damn, we're in the middle of it now.

So, why the indolent indifference, people? What is it going to take to get on with the business end of creating a carbon-neutral society?

Probably more folks like Tim.

The story of Tim DeChristopher is encouraging because he has challenged the prevailing societal indolence with Gandhi-like ethical sturdiness. He punked an illegal Bush-era sell-off of public land to oil companies and effectively blocked the auction. Follow the story of this brave prankster Earth Protector at bidder70.org. We need more people able to act on what their heart's know to be true.

May humanity bravely face the Truth and save the sky, the Earth and ourselves.