bill becker’s awesome climate deal series •

the lay of the political land

The lack of progress is not for lack of effort. A lot of negotiators, subject-matter experts and key staff on the Hill are sleep-deprived these days. Because of them, hope is not lost. They deserve our thanks.

At the same time, I know they will forgive us for keeping up the pressure for deals in Congress and at Copenhagen — not just any deals, but real deals.

planet-scale risks: “the time to plan is now”

We are rapidly approaching a time when the nations most threatened by climate change will regard coal-burning as an act of aggression and when nations will conflict over who gets dwindling supplies of finite resources.

just about the biggest thing that man has ever done

Runaway climate change is almost inevitable without specific action to implement low-carbon re-industrialization over the next five years… World governments have a window that will close between now and 2014. In that time they must establish fully operational, low-carbon industrial architecture.

the new green us

The evidence of a growing green marketplace is accumulating so fast, TIME believes we’re seeing “a new social contract among consumers, business and government”. I don’t know whether that contract really exists, but I am certain about one thing: It would be a very good thing if it did. So let’s write one.

thorough, informative, practical, big, awesome.

(for those reading this outside the USA: it’s true, the political situation in our country is insane. many are still fighting the cold war — some think hitler was a communist green — and the government is extremely corrupt. international deals have to be handled delicately.

at the same time: our pols are hamstrung by our electoral finance system. i think you have to push back, show the people who grease the wheels in washington that you won’t tolerate their backroom meddling in our common future. find ways to fight our domestic corruption for us and with us.)

sliding toward a ’shock doctrine’ presidency

obama goes to wisconsin to do some gunboat diplomacy on education.

“We cut and reallocated over $500 million in Wisconsin from education in the state budget, and we are jumping through hoops for $80 million in Race to the Top funds,” said Thomas J. Mertz, a history instructor at Edgewood College in Madison, and a parent of a Wright Middle School graduate who came out for the Books Not Bombs protest. “It just shows how desperate states are,” he added. “It’s like holding out a little piece of cake before the states and saying we may give you a bite if you jump through these hoops. It’s cake, not the bread the states need, because it’s targeted money for special initiatives.”

milton friedman rises from the grave to applaud. “that’s my kind of democracy, kid. keep it up.”

everybody loves barack.

(•)

Who’s to blame? The buck stops with the president. But did his economic advisers make it clear to him that the proposed stimulus was way short of what the math suggested we needed, even given what was known in January? Or was Mr. Obama really led to believe that his stimulus proposal was as bold as he claimed it was?

(•)

krugman adds

You can make a pretty good case that just employing a lot of people directly would be a lot more cost-effective; the WPA and CCC cost surprisingly little given the number of people put to work.

a pretty good case.

feet’re wet & somethin’s tuggin on ma line

right so last month dear me that was all it were i threw two lines out into fb & twttr & pritty much immediately recoiled from the clean well-lighted place for friends to the telegraphic darkness of the textosphere. cuz… it were new & diffrint & me i think i need 2 STFU most times which could mean doing permanent harm to my tongue, or applying my life’s great lesson, ‘the shorter the less disruptive.’

the new rules for quote marks are a game-in-progress. did u figure the rules yet? loosely they are: double quotes reserved for what is said or meant. single quotes for speculation, irony, and objectification. or whatever. this has a very good visual effect & offers intriguing variety.

don’t know why this feels like the first real entry since atwittering. just does does does does. maybe. maybe something’s clicked, i got the balance i wanted for a good start. now i know how much. now i know how well. and how to. kinda. how not to, too. wrote my 4-step plan and implemented it a little. except for tags right! ah ha haha that part was doomed.

now we now we have reached somewhere. while writing this i flipped through the day’s first twactivity and bounced one down the road. didn’t even think about it. now that work’s recommenced though i don’t think it was a good idea for present or future.

they call groups of twits a stream. all of this is all of that is telling me the moment doesn’t enrich itself, doesn’t become the good tomorrow, doesn’t fly on its own wings hey hey — and i can hear the voices of the good people of tomorrow asking what i was doing — no — there’s too many of us, line us up in the police station for the witness and they defnitly wouldn’t get to me before lunch!

maybe i’m playing my fat part in the vast soothing white noise generator of the revolution.

sssssssssssssssssss.

eksssssspectayshhhhhhunssssssssss.

the more i read and write about it the more i will want to have written. the back and forth. little voice sez ‘go deeper.’ little voice always sez what will make me mad. shut up ya little fucker.

what i need to do is get my rifle and my furs and hit the river hard.

weekend double feature: COMPLIANCE IS A BITCH

Drag Me To Hell (2009)
The Devil in Miss Jones (1973)

‘the Republican and Democratic Parties have not delivered the most basic fundamental benefits of a productive economy’ •

the real news network celebrates the year since bush lost with a revival of their election-night talk with ralph nader last year also starring bill fletcher and tom morris. (the video pages have full/wonky transcripts.)

MORRIS: But Mr. Nader, with all due respect, don’t you think that what we’ve seen with this campaign is the awakening of the little people, of the masses, regardless of whether they’re supporting this one messianic sort of personality? How do you split the difference between a Ralph Nader who has always stood for the grassroots, for the common people, for the environment, for all these things—how do you split the difference between what Barack Obama is doing to get into the White House and what Ralph Nader represents? How do you split that difference if you’re Barack Obama?

NADER: Well, he did say you can’t get change unless you get people excited about change. But, I mean, that’s a very clever statement, because, look it, politicians have gotten huge crowds, roaring and roaring, and when they put down their last words, the crowds drift away, never to come back. That’s the problem. Look, is there a tenants’ movement in this country? Is there a poor people’s movement? Is there affordable housing? How many people are working for a full Medicare for all, right? The antiwar movement takes off every four years in deference to the Democratic nominee, so that’s gone. The military-industrial complex is exploding. It’s got half of the federal government budget. Now here’s my point. When he gets a status of president-elect, you’ve got to watch the signs: Who’s going to be his transition team? Who are going to be his appointees? And who does he invite? I guarantee you he will not invite me for a single meeting. That’s the litmus paper test.

FLETCHER: There was a fear of criticizing Clinton because, quote-unquote, “it would give ammunition to the enemy.” Well, look, folks, if Obama is elected, the enemy is going to be sharpening their knives. The right-wing populists are going to be out there; they’re going to be stirring things up. But the problem is that if we hold back in criticism of Obama, he will continue to move to the right. I mean, there’s just absolutely no question. And I think that Ralph is right that the rhetoric—and this is one issue I also disagreed with with Senator Obama: his rhetoric of accommodation, while rhetorically quite interesting and perhaps tactically useful, is ahistorical. And part of what I think is necessary from people like Ralph, from the labor movement, from others, is to emphasize that it really is struggle that brings about change. And struggle is very difficult, and it’s very unsettling for many people, but it’s what we have to remind people after this election.

FLETCHER: There are segments of the Democratic Party that will resist [helping unions] because of corporate influence. There’s no question about it. And part of the problem—and, see, this is absolutely where Ralph and I are on the same page, except for one thing. See, in order to move any of this, you need organization. You don’t need just the Ralph Nader candidacy, Cynthia McKinney candidacy, or any number of others; you need organization on the ground. We need to transform the union movement, right? We need to transform politics in these communities. And people, regular people can’t join something and feel like, “Okay, this is a means for me to bring about some sort of change in reality,” then you substitute one savior for another.

NADER: —So let me give you an example, with the trade union movement is stronger in Europe — out of the rubble of World War II, okay, through their trade unions’ cooperatives, multiparty system, people in Western Europe demanded and got for all their people, by law, universal health care, decent wages, decent pensions, paid four-week vacation, paid maternity leave, paid family sick leave, decent daycare, decent public transit, university—free tuition. Sixty-three years later, the Republican and Democratic Parties have not delivered the most basic fundamental benefits of a productive economy. That’s the difference. And all you can say, say, “We have to organize stronger unions, we have to do this and that.” The motivation is not there. The heads of the union are not the right heads of the union, with few [exceptions]. The key is: how do you motivate regular people who are getting stuffed every day, who are getting disrespected, underpaid, overcharged, ripped off? They die because they don’t have health insurance, 20,000 of them a year. Forty-seven million workers, Wal-Mart wages, $7, $8, $9, $10, under $11 an hour. How do you get them motivated? That’s the key—fire in the belly. Rosa Parks had fire in the belly. The workers in the sit-down strikes in the ’30s against the auto companies—fire in the belly. That’s what’s missing, and that’s what we have to locate and generate. Otherwise, you can have the best plans and the best strategies; nothing’s going to happen.

btw this is why i want a simultaneous country, not a new party. we’re never free to have what we want to have, but we should make the rule — fast — that we can want what we want.

me? hey, look, i got no money, i got no social chops, no flow, i’m nuts. some kid emails me “try leading by example” — like a jilted mentor told me 15ya — i say back, “yeah, you’re right, i should shut up; i don’t like fighting, i don’t like talking with people, i feel sick. virtually the only thing i do like is when we identify our desires — the world we really want to live in, not our personal paradise, but the real place, big, complicated, political, scary in a good way — and go for it, dream it, make it, feed it, talk it into real, like we were walking in the park, it’s so natural.

“—i can’t do those myself. most of the time my brain’s exploding, i barely know who i’m talking to. i’m no anchor or gibraltar or dynamo.”

people avoid switching strategies, consciously, subconsciously. that’s a good game plan unless you don’t know what you want. without the lines drawn it’s a wreck — the default strategy is for personal comfort. inclusion. praise.

what good is the praise of toads?

not even a decent paycheck.

(•)

Obama had a chance, coming into Washington after a big rout of Republicans last year, to set out an agenda of major progressive change. He could have called for expanding Medicare to cover all Americans. Instead he handed health reform over to Congress and immediately put out the word that he was open to compromise with Republicans, thus dooming reform from the outset. He could have announced a thorough review of America’s two wars, and then set in motion a withdrawal form both Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead he dithered on Iraq, and added troops in Afghanistan, assuring that both these disasters inherited from the Bush/Cheney administration became his own disasters, which will now drag on through his whole term. He could have declared a global climate emergency, and announced a job-creating crash program to develop renewable energy in the US and to make the US a leader in renewable energy R&D. Instead, he did almost nothing in this critical area. As for the economic crisis, he could have taken a progressive stand against the abuses of Wall Street, ordered a criminal investigation of the banking class, broken up the big banks and established a new regulatory system to put an end to the era of casino capitalism. Instead, he put the bankers in charge of Treasury and poured trillions of dollars into the largest banks, allowing them to grow even bigger and more predatory.

(•)

Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents on just two issues: global warming and the clean energy transition. If the world doesn’t stop catastrophic climate change … then all Presidents, indeed, all of us, will be seen as failures and rightfully so.

In that sense, what team Obama has accomplished in the year since he was elected is nothing less than an unprecedented reversal of decades of unsustainable national policy forced down the throat of the American public by conservatives.

in the long run we’re all dead.

“historians” have that habit of forgiving elites their subtler mistreatments of the populace. at the century scale, absolutely, tending to nature and re/depowering civilization — very big — truly things that leave lines in mountains. finer details like the budget-busting failure of the american hybrid health care system (‘privatized health, socialized illness’) won’t appear in the geological record.

unless of course the blatant, callous, loopy unfairness of some proposals riles people to refuse good strong medicine that has earned corporate blessing.

tck tck tck indeed.

‘A Medicare-for-All system succeeds by doing away with the private health insurance industry.’

The powerful insurers, understandably, don’t like this idea. Yet despite waves of deceptive and misleading propaganda about the purported horrors of government-run insurance, the people do like the idea of Medicare-for-All — polls show it is supported by a majority of the public. But insurance industry dollars have spoken louder than the people’s voices. And so Medicare-for-All hasn’t been given a serious hearing in Congress. Speaker Pelosi should at least enable a clean up-or-down vote. Call (202) 225-0100 and urge her to do so.

Robert Weissman of Public Citizen wants that first vote. He thinks (and I think) this change is fair, cost effective, medically sound, democratic, necessary, overdue, and “inevitable.”

‘I will say [I] think part of the problem is that Transition looks very different in the US

than it does in the UK — that doesn’t explain his attacks entirely, but I do think that thus far, US Transition looks a lot more like affluent people having seed swaps than not. My hope is that with time, things start looking more productive — but I’m still left with the larger question of how well Transition will work in places where Rob isn’t around to carry the banner — how much charismatic leadership is at the root of things.

— Sharon Astyk (in a comment)

ok i was going to and maybe still will this week i hope talk with a friend about these many layers of doing, not doing, public process, and big frikkin’ change in years-not-decades.

internationally negotiated climate agreements—

it’s been in all corners of the brain this month about who the fuck “we” are and how different 02030 is from what “we” imagine.

—are fast becoming obsolete for two reasons

visions of the future, also “unevenly distributed”.…

that ‘astyk’ linked article, the essays linked inside that, in body and comments, the comments on the link-linked steffen essays, all of that… i feel like… “now we’re talking.”

(i also made a comment, a little stupid, a little provocative)

(•)

Can we change fast enough? When thinking about the enormous need for social change as we attempt to move the world economy onto a sustainable path, I find it useful to look at various models of change. Three stand out. One is the catastrophic event model, which I call the Pearl Harbor model, where a dramatic event fundamentally changes how we think and behave. The second model is one where a society reaches a tipping point on a particular issue often after an extended period of gradual change in thinking and attitudes. This I call the Berlin Wall model. The third is the sandwich model of social change, where there is a strong grassroots movement pushing for change on a particular issue that is fully supported by strong political leadership at the top.

(•)

when i begged off talking about this formally it was because i’ve developed an allergy to discussing things that i can see are deeper than is my understanding of them.

it’s an allergy. people suffer allergies, we don’t cure them.

transition stuff is done earnestly and energetically. tracking the comments on the reply, someone referred to a very recent debate about (dis)organizational issues at the land-mass scale.

• why we don’t need formal agreements for national transition hubs
• why we (do) need formal agreements for national transition hubs

it occurs to me that transition itself needs to have a disaster plan, and that disaster would be that unless transition-experienced people are ready to hit the road and teach and help as it all goes down, lots of people wouldn’t gain from that experience, they’d just get et by circumstances.

there’s way too many more people in the world today than anybody’s grassroots plan of peaceful intervention can account for, i think.

a couple real good open.gov pieces on huffpo •

low-angle view:

In McKibben’s words, “there’s no way we could have done this even two years ago, before the web, now firmly connected to cell phones even in remote regions, was built out.” Like other effective modern day campaigns, technology played a critical role from start to finish — from communications to logistics to reporting and media — but was neither an end nor a strategy onto itself. At the end of the day, this crew understood that people are ultimately motivated by other people, not by technology.

So the 350 team prepared organizing guides, broke down the event planning process into nine clear steps, organized trainings all over the world, listened and communicated in more than 17 languages, spent a good part of their days on the phone (ok, skype) with organizers, and ultimately split up and went straight to every region of the planet to begin spreading the word and identifying local partners, local leaders, and support. They even sent McKibben on an exhausting global speaking tour that rivaled that of a U.S. presidential candidate running for global office.

They did all of this organizing faster and more efficiently by utilizing technology. In fact, as McKibben said, it’s unlikely that 350 could have even left the station at a time with any less global connectivity. “We know that the internet is far from perfect,” McKibben said. “We’ve lost contact with organizers for days at a time as the system has gone down in one poor country after another. And we had all kinds of reports from African and Asian cities of organizers sneaking into the one 5-star hotel in town to nab a little wireless so they could send us photos.”

However it should not be overlooked that 350.org’s organizing efforts relied heavily on tried and true organizing principles — electrified with modern tactics. 350 coordinators crafted a simple and easily communicated message, built capacity through a variety of in-person and remote trainings, produced useful materials in multiple languages, and most importantly invested in one-on-one communications in an era where bulk communication via email lists and social media can seem so effortless.

bird’s-eye view:

The resurgent progressive movement needs to think more long-term, come together quickly, and systematically build a Progressive Legislative Exchange to share and hone a steady, perpetual stream of the best, actionable ideas that progressives and liberals, near and far, have to offer for public and private sector problem-solving.

the size of the quotes reflect both article length and my judgment on the writers’ mental picture of 2030.

(•) high-angle view:

At first, [creative commons's idea for sharing eco-patents] might seem more restrictive than the Eco-Patent Commons, but the increased flexibility (companies are free to charge fees or not, and can put restrictions on uses) might mean that more companies will take part and that, in the end, more green patents will be widely used.

@yokoono vs @AlexSteffen (true story mix)

11 things you can do to stop global warming now

green is in and everyone has their favorite eco-tips. here are mine.

1. buy peabody energy and shut it down

2. change water pricing so what meat animals drink comes out of our bathing allowance

3. plant an old growth forest

4. buy america one million electric buses and trolleys for its next birthday

5. scrap your car and with the metal build nice folding electric bicycles, with baskets, for all your neighbors

6. scrap your neighbors’ cars and build a wind turbine

7. for all houses and buildings, flip a coin. heads is an extensive retrofit. tails… is death. dismantle the structure, carry away every piece for better uses, and the owner(s) get awesome friendly ultragreen living/working quarters in a better location in exchange. 2 out of 3 tosses is ok. 5 out of 9 is too many.

8. to manage the waste stream, big polluters and trash producers automatically get a new house, built with whatever comes out the tailpipe of their organization

9. give everyone a pedal zeppelin

10. stop blowing people up

11. eat food, not much, mostly plants; drink grain spirits

what are your favorite tips?

want to be bored by website minutiae? read on

the time has come to begin thinking in a very casual mode about how the links are organized on this site.

currently they are arranged — no, really, they are. shut up — approximately according to how likely they are to have forced me to write something. so it’s like — ranked — from, say, red orange yellow blue, to green? or maybe that’s how they started and then there were jokes about that, and, sort of, thematic articles, tonal stuff like ‘fatima the spinner and the tent’ or ‘the man who planted trees’ that are both lessons i’m not learning but i really really want to learn.

in much the way, by-the-way, that i have been making a real dent in one of my two copies of the worldchanging book, and learning that i love skimming books and each quick pass is a little more informative. that’s news i can use.

what’s about to change with the links is i’m about to add several dozen new ones. i’m switching from the ‘nothing but sources’ approach to begin using concentrated willpower, aka NGOs and other group efforts, to stand in for (and hopefully realize; i’m much too busy to audit the work) domestiforeign policy of the pirate country (‘plunderkeel’ for now, by me) from this geographic perspective.

yeah, i know, right, it’s hard to live in the USA and be into the whole economies of scale thing, and the need for coordinated industrial solutions to earthly dilemmas thing, it’s hard to have a whole strategic whatchacallit that is all of forward-thinking, pluralistically present-sensitive, individuated, and functions as something like a shadow-gov policy. base. thing.

especially if you have like maybe, generously, half the attention span (and read speed) of a mid-pack lawyer. and don’t go to cocktail parties.

what i’d like to do is something like this: get some useful categories, i’d like them to be globally useful, and then fill them with US-centered-but-not-exclusive groups that are on a good track and aren’t fake. i am well aware that what i want from the next decade and this quarter century are not what many big membership orgs think practical — i really don’t know how we’re going to resolve this tension between mammoth fundraising shortfalls and the need to lead plastic rich people to the water of the future that is in danger because they’re incredibly fucking wrong.

‘flattery will get you nowhere,’ sense two. (hello! have you http://tr.im/readplanb?)

truly… i’m not quite settled with the twitter-jotting thing, using it as a scratchpad makes me feel guilty, everything makes me feel guilty, everything makes me feel guilty, but i am closing in on doing the comparison shopping of the non-insane, non-revolving political parties and use their platforms to build a shambles of my own which of course nobody else needs to worry about let alone adopt.

that’s progress.

(•) ’scratchpad’ no, doodlepad. there’s nothing like del.icio.us happening with @pludk. it’s totally unsearchable by subject. it’s… chewing.

http:/peterbrooks/theemptyspace/firstparagraph/

i can take
any empty
space and call it
a bare stage.

a man walks
across this emp
ty space whilst some
one else is watch
ing him and this
is all that is
needed for
an act of
theatre
to be en
gaged.

yet when
we talk
about
theatre
this is not
quite what
we mean.

red
curtains,
spotlights,
blank
verse,
laughter,
darkness,
these are
all con
fusedly
superim
posed in a
messy
image
covered
by one
all-pur
pose
word.

we talk
of the
cinema
killing the
theatre
and
in that
phrase we
refer
to the
theatre
as it was
when the
cinema
was born

a theatre
of box
office,
foyer,
tip-up
seats, foot
lights, scene
changes,
inter
vals, mu
sic, as
though the
theatre
was
by
ve
ry
de
fi
ni
tion
these and nothing
more.