Ecotopia

September 8, 2009

Tonight we will be looking at a social ecosystem—the American justice system. Our guest will be Amy Bach, an attorney and journalist who has just published a book called Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court. She spent five years visiting courtrooms all over the country, and offers a harsh indictment of how justice is dispensed—and that indictment includes just about everyone associated with the system, from judges to prosecutors to defense attorneys. She also has some ideas about how the justice ecosystem can be corrected.

Some Global News About “Blind” Justice

Wikipedia explains that:

Blind Justice is the theory that law should be viewed objectively with the determination of innocence or guilt made without bias or prejudice. It is the idea behind the United States Supreme Court motto “Equal Justice Under Law” and is symbolized by the blindfolded statue of Lady Justice which is the symbol of the judiciary. In ancient times an administrator would hear a charge and dispense the law as written. The Hammurabi code is the oldest and most famous example of what was called lex talionis, or an eye for an eye. The accused would literally sit behind a blind individual and an official would declare a pre-determined punishment without influence of opinion on the individual. […] The [Biblical books of the] Pentateuch, […] also advocate the concept of blind justice: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” (Lev 19:15, ESV) “You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike.” (Deut 1:17, ESV)

Nevertheless, the concept of “impartiality” has been subject to great argument in both classical times and our own.  Writing on Newsmax.com just before the confirmation hearings for  Supreme Court Judge Sonja Sotomayor, Susan Estrich argues: You Can’t Blindfold Lady Justice: Judges DO Make Law

Don’t tell anyone: This is the season when lawyers left and right cross our fingers behind our backs and solemnly swear that judges don’t make law.

Conservatives insist they adhere to original intent. Liberals insist they do no more than apply the commands of a living Constitution. Everyone recognizes that life experience matters, but no one wants to admit how that could be so, because judges [supposedly] don’t make law.

[…] Nominee Sonia Sotomayor is going to spend at least a few hours of her time before the Senate Judiciary Committee explaining away her comment at Duke a few years ago that the appeals court (as opposed to the trial court) is the place where policy gets made. […]

If you have any doubt that it’s true, however, consider the very current and important question of when warrantless wiretapping should be allowed for national security reasons, and whether warrants are required for conversations with foreign nationals suspected of terrorism ties, and if warrants are required, under what standards…

Now, consider the provision of the Constitution in which you will find the answers, the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

[…] About wiretapping, of course, the Founders did not say anything, as telephones had not been invented. The history of eavesdropping was invoked when the court was called upon to determine whether the Fourth Amendment protected a guy talking on a pay phone.

[…] It’s just that it takes judges — judges you may like, judges I may like, judges whom those on the left and right may unite to support, as I hope will happen here — to apply those enduring principles to technology our Founders couldn’t have dreamed of, in a world facing challenges that couldn’t even be described in their terms.

http://www.newsmax.com/estrich/Sotomayor_judges_law/2009/05/29/219443.html

But Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe, disagrees, arguing that President Obama has deliberately removed “Lady Justice’s Blindfold” and turned her into a tool of politics. He writes:

[The] obligation to decide cases on the basis of fact and law, without regard to the litigants’ wealth or fame or social status, is a venerable moral principle.

[Jacoby cites several of the Biblical passages we quoted earlier along with John Adam’s statement that]  “We live under “a government of laws and not of men.”

That is why the judicial oath is so adamant about impartiality. That is why Lady Justice is so frequently depicted — as on the sculpted lampposts outside the US Supreme Court — wearing a blindfold and carrying balanced scales.

And that is why President Obama’s “empathy” standard is so disturbing, and has generated so much comment.

Time and again, Obama has called for judges who do not put their private political views aside when deciding cases. In choosing a replacement for Justice David Souter, the president says, he will seek not just “excellence and integrity,” but a justice whose “quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles,” would be “an essential ingredient” in his jurisprudence. In an interview last year, he said he would look for judges “sympathetic” to those “on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless.”

[…With such criteria, what would remain of the rule of law? What would happen to “Equal Justice Under Law,” which is carved above the Supreme Court’s entrance? What would be left of the 14^th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” to every citizen?

Lady Justice wears a blindfold not because she has no empathy for certain litigants or groups of people, but because there is no role for such empathy in a courtroom. “Our constitution is color-blind,” wrote Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, in his great dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, “and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Harlan had supported slavery; he believed whites were superior to nonwhites. He had his empathies, but he confined his judging to the law.

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5568/lady-justices-blindfold

Blindfolded or not, it’s clear that many people think that Lady Justice has done them injustice. We Googled “miscarriage of justice” and came up with 866,000 hits, an extraordinary number of them being individual stories where people feel they did not receive justice.

The website, Citizens for Judicial Accountability reviews a book by social worker Karen Huffer, who has:

[…] found that many victims of the legal system suffer from [what she calls] Legal Abuse Syndrome, brought on by the abusive and protracted litigation, prevalent in our courts. According to Ms. Huffer you may be suffering from Legal Abuse Syndrome if you feel deeply disillusioned and oppressed as a result of your experience with the legal system; if you feel you were frustrated in obtaining justice; if you feel your dreams and plans for your life were torn from you by a system that is supposedly there to protect your rights and property; if you fear that the system will defeat you at every turn and there is nothing you can do about it, and if you feel that you have been victimized several times over, by the perpetrators, by lawyers, judges, bailiffs and other court personnel. As a consequence you may suffer from tension and anxiety, recurring nightmares you may feel emotionally an physically exhausted, numb, disconnected and vulnerable.

www.legalabusesyndrome.com

Our Questions for Amy Bach

Part I:  The Book, Methodology, Findings

• The title of the book is Ordinary Injustice.  Please explain the title for us.
• You are both a journalist and an attorney. How did these two fields come together for you in the Ordinary Injustice project?
• The book is essentially four case studies of both court systems and individual attorneys (we’re impressed by the depth of these—long-term, not quick studies).  We obviously won’t have time to go into details of each of these stories, but perhaps you can give us an idea about how they fit together:
  • Robert Surrency—Greene County, Georgia (public defender)
  • Hank Bauer—Troy, NY (judge who takes the law into his own hands)
  • Miss Wiggs’s list–Laurence Mellen–Quitman County, Mississippi (prosecution)
  • Robert Breen—Chicago (prosecuting attorney who changed his mind and helped free innocent people)

[Please tell us the story of the Chicago “two-ton contest” and how it represents systemic problems.]

• Can you make the case that these four studies are, in fact, representative of problems with How America Holds Court?
• One of your premises is that “it takes a community of legal professionals to let a sleeping lawyer sleep.”  That is, one of the problems is a kind of cozy collegiality among attorneys and  judges that lets injustice happen. Please explain.
• You also talk about a kind of “blind”[in] justice, where the people within the system “don’t even notice the injustice.” (Prof. Alschuler, p. 115)
• What is “confirmation bias” and how does it affect attorneys, judges, and even juries?
• What problems do you see with the “adversarial” system generally?  What checks and balances (if any) does it provide?
• You write of “substantive justice,” a feeling (shared by many) that despite problems of funding, overwork, and rule bending, the guilty more or less are brought to justice. Is the system really so bad that overhaul is necessary?

Part II:  Remedies and Cures

• Your major recommendation in the “conclusions” chapter caught us by surprise! Please tell us about your proposal for data gathering and monitoring as a (partial) solution to ordinary injustice. What are the possibilities and pitfalls of this system.
• What is the role of nonprofit and other monitoring groups in keeping the justice system aright—e.g., ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, Southern Center for Human Rights.  Do they have a fighting chance?   Are there public versions of these agencies (e.g. Georgia Public Defenders Standards Council) that could successfully monitor the system?
• You don’t say much about lawyer’s fees in the book (You chiefly talk about feels in the Greene County chapter on Robert Surrency). But isn’t injustice really all about money? Isn’t it possible that lawyers have created such a high fee system that justice is out of reach for the poor?
• We’ve been interested in the “plain English” legal movement.  Hasn’t the legal profession created a linguistic quagmire that bewilders citizens and keeps the legal system in the hands of (high-priced) lawyers?   Can we imagine a legal system where ordinary citizens could read and understand the law or even state their cases without having a lawyer present?
• If you were the U.S. or a state attorney general, what immediate steps would you recommend to insure Ordinary Justice?
• What’s your next project?

The book is Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court, and it’s published by Metropolitan Books, a division of Henry Holt and Company.

Do-It-Yourself Ordinary Justice

• There is the Southern Poverty Law Center, now headed by former New York Times progressive columnist Richard Cohen.  Current projects mentioned on their website include:  documenting discrimination against Latino immigrants, a lawsuit bringing about reforms in a Mississippi juvenile detention center, and an analysis of racisim in the resurgent militia movement.

http://www.splcenter.org/index.jsp

• We are both card carrying members of ACLU which is famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for defending individual rights. ACLU is active nationally, and the Chico Branch just observed its first anniversary, a very productive year.  Their website includes a Civil Rights Submission Form where people can lodge complaints against the justice system, and ACLU will look into it.

http://www.acluchico.org/

• Amnesty International has an impressive record of looking into ordinary injustice on a global scale. Current projects for AI are include actions in Nigeria, Honduras, Iran, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, and the Sudan, plus a sharply critical analysis of Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia.  Amnesty International also invites activism in the form of letter writing, and is currently recruiting 10,000 concerned citizens to participate in its campaign to “free prisoners of conscience from jail and bring brutal human rights abuses to an end.”

http://www.amnestyusa.org/

• The Western States Center in Portland, Oregon, which provides support for activist groups in our region. The Center offers activist training and directly supports the work of a number of social justice organizations throughout the west. Their work also includes a number of environmental issues, including water in the west, air quality, and clean and renewable energy

http://www.westernstatescenter.org/

Playlist for Ecotopia #50

1. Here Comes the Judge    2:50    The Stuff    Pick It Up, Pig Boy

2. Judge and Jury      2:35    Micky Groome    Soul Rider

3. Here Comes the Judge    3:44    Peter Tosh    20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Best of Peter Tosh

4. Here Comes the Judge    2:35    Shorty Long    The Complete Motown Singles – Vol. 8: 1968

5. Lawyers, Guns and Money          3:01    Warren Zevon    A Quiet Normal Life – The Best of Warren Zevon

6. Weave Me the Sunshine  4:28    Peter, Paul And Mary    The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary

7. The Dicty Glide     3:19    Don Byron    Bug Music

8. Tobacco Auctioneer         2:36    Don Byron    Bug Music

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1 September 2009

Tonight we talk with master composter and vermiculturist Ward Habriel. He’ll introduce us to the whys and hows of using worms to improve your soil. We also speak to Jenny Marr of the Chico State Friends of the Herbarium, which is co-sponsoring a workshop with Ward Habriel.

Global News on Worm Composting

From ORGANIC (Ltd), a non-profit organisation, promoting organic and sustainable agriculture in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and the United Kingdom.  Michael Cheang has written “Wriggly Wonder – Culture of the Good Worm”:

Most people will squirm at the sight of worms, but one scientist thinks nothing about grabbing a handful of the wriggling creatures. She is on a crusade to clear the bad reputation of worms.  It is easy to locate Dr Hasnah Md Jais’ office in the vast campus of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang. Just ask for the […] (worm) lady and most USM staffers will point you in the right direction.  Since 2000, the associate professor has researched into vermiculture, which is the process of using earthworms to convert organic waste into fertiliser.

Malaysians are projected to discard nine million tonnes of waste annually by 2010. Waste disposal and clean-ups will cost more too, in future. Some common disposal methods are landfills, incinerators and composting.  Since almost 65% of our waste is organic stuff, Hasnah believes vermiculture (which is a type of composting method) can be an option – one which produces a valuable product, organic fertiliser. She says vermiculture allows consumers to treat their organic waste at source, thus reducing their reliance on other waste disposal methods.

Only 2% of Malaysians compost their waste. So Hasnah [Md Jais]’s goal is to expand the use of vermiculture. ”I hope Malaysians will be more aware of their own waste and treat it at source, because all the materials they need can be obtained from the soil.” For the public’s convenience, she plans to sell a worm-composting bin, together with a supply of worms. With these, people will have the means to manage their own organic waste at home.

Read more at http://organic.com.au/

From the website “Sustainability Matters,” on Aug 20, 2008 is this report that “Vermiculture key to reducing greenhouse emissions”:

Researcher Dr Rajiv Sinha said vermiculture had potential to combat climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that plague current landfill waste management programs.  “Methane and nitrous oxides from landfills are several times worse than CO2 as greenhouse gases,” said Dr Sinha. Dr Sinha has spent the past 25 years in India and now in Australia studying vermiculture practices worldwide.  He is now working to encourage governments, policy makers and landowners in Australia to adopt vermiculture on a commercial scale following the success of his trials in India where it has also enhanced the life of farmers.

Two studies in vermiculture published this year in The Environmentalist found worms were also useful in sewage treatment, or ‘vermifiltration’.

Worms reduced the biological oxygen demand loads by over 90% and total solids by 90–95%.  [In] an innovative study made at Griffith University [in Australia] researchers learned]:  “There is no ‘sludge formation’ which is a biohazard, unlike conventional sewage treatment plants which need landfill disposal at high cost.”

A second study supported the efficiency of worms at removing heavy metals, pesticides and organic micropollutants from soil, a technique know as vermiremediation.

“This has significance in Australia as large tracts of arable land are being chemically contaminated due to mining activities, heavy use of agro-chemicals and landfill disposal of toxic substances,” Dr Sinha said. He is currently studying the potential of greenhouse gas emissions from various composting systems with Dr Andrew Chan in a project done by Honours student Richard Middleditch. He is also studying the growth promoting values of earthworms and their vermicompost over conventional compost and chemical fertilisers.

From “The Standard” in Hong Kong, Jennifer Lai’s July 2008 article has written about how vermiculture is valuable for dealing with horse manure.

A sustainable waste management company is awaiting permission from the Town Planning Board to conduct vermiculture in an agricultural area. Since last year, Sunburst Biotechnology has been carrying out earthworm vermicomposting – the process of breaking down horse manure or other stable waste to produce organic fertilizer.  Sunburst had worked with the Hong Kong Jockey Club to recycle stable waste during the Good Luck Beijing HKSAR 10th Anniversary Cup – a prelude to the Olympic equestrian events – last August.  Sunburst director Tse Chi-kai said they have been in touch with the government since April this year, with the government asking them to submit a proposal for land-use rights at their Yuen Long plant. Asked whether their operation was under fire over land usage, Tse said they wanted the government to clarify whether vermiculture is in line with agricultural land use.

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=11&art_id=68815&sid=19806074&con_type=1&d_str=20080718&fc=8

Our Questions for Jenny Marr of the Chico State Friends of the Herbarium.

• Tell us about the workshops you are co-sponosring with the new Gateway Science Museum.
• We’ll be talking with one of your workshop presenters, master composter Ward Habriel in just a few minutes. Would you like to tell us anything about what to expect in his workshop.
• And how can people learn more about the workshops or sign up for one?

Our Questions for Ward Habriel

• So could you start by telling us just what vermiculture is?

• What does vermiculture do for your soil? In what ways is vermiculture superior to other forms of composting?

• Who can or should use vermiculture? How big a structure do you need for a small garden? For a small farm? (We’ll talk more specifically about how the bins are built and maintained a bit later in the show.)

• What sorts of worms do you use and where do you get them?

• How widespread is the use of vermiculture? Does it have a long history of use?

• How did you get started as a composter and a vermiculturist?

• How does this whole process work? What do you put into the worm bins? What do you take out?

• How do you keep it thriving and healthy? How might things go wrong?

• What advice do you have for someone who wants to get started in vermiculture?

Can you tell us a little more about the workshop you’re doing on September 19 for the Chico State Herbarium and the Gateway Science Museum?

Playlist for Squirmy Ecotopia #48

1. Waiting for the Worms    3:58    Pink Floyd     The Wall

2. Worms       1:03    The Pogues     If I Should Fall from Grace With God

3. Worms       2:05    Stanley Schwartz    Looking for the Perfect Bagel

4. Worms 7:23          Dino O’Dell & the Veloci-Rappers Dino O’Dell & the Veloci-Rappers

5. Worms       4:07    Yeasayer      All Hour Cymbals

6. Garden Song        5:34    MaMuse         All The Way

7. Weave Me the Sunshine           4:28    Peter, Paul And Mary      The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary

8. Nature’s Way        2:40    Spirit           Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus

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22 August 2009

Tonight we will be talking with the director and members of the Oroville Living History project, conducted this past summer.  Dusty Taylor, Dustin Rollins, and Thunder Her will tell us their experiences collecting the memories of Orovillians for the archives of the Butte County Historical Society.

Listen to the show.

Background on Oral History

This might, initially, seem a bit removed from our usual topics on this program, which often focus on environmental issues.  But we see oral history as being central to an “Ecotopian” vision of the world, a meeting place of the ecosystems we explore on this program.

John Rouse once wrote in the magazine Media and Methods: “We are all storytellers, and our lives are the stories that we tell.”   We are spinners of yarns, for the most part “true” in our minds, but nevertheless turned into stories that, in turn, come to represent our world.

So just as witnesses at an accident scene present very different “fictions” to the police—all “true” in the witnesses mind, storytellers sift, interpret, and create a narrative. In fact, a truly “objective,” comprehensively detailed report of experience—what Donald Graves calls the “bed to bed” catalog of events—is pretty dull reading. We want our storytellers to separate the wheat from the chaff, the essential from the nonessential, to condense their experience into a good yarn.

In fact, we’ve probably all had the experience of the compulsive storyteller who doesn’t condense and extrapolate, but just starts talking, talking, talking.  Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner is about a guy who has a story he must tell, and at one point, desperate to be free, Coleridge’s narrator says, “Unhand me, greybeard loon!.”

So oral historians have an interesting task: On the one hand, they want to collect detailed memories, but they often edit and select, preparing focused stories, the sort you hear on  Story Corps, broadcast by NPR.  Since 2003 this independent nonprofit has recorded 50,000 stories that will be archived in the Library of Congress to celebrate the lives of everyday people.  www.storycorps.org

And you hear good oral history in Ira Glass’s “This American Life” on NPR,  where stories are clustereed by themes to crreate what they describe as “movies for the radio.”  Sometimes these are told by well-know people like David Sedaris, but they are often from everyday people who have extraordinary stories to tell.

www.thisamericanlife.org/

As many listeners know, these contemporary oral history projects are part of a rich tradition of oral history that goes back to the Federal Writer’s Project of the Great Depression.  We read from the home page of that project, whose documents are now part of the Library of Congress:

The Federal Writers’ Project materials in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division are part of a […] collection titled The U.S. Work Projects Administration Federal Writers’ Project and Historical Records Survey. The holdings from Federal Writers’ Project span the years 1889-1942 and cover a wide range of topics and subprojects. Altogether, the Federal Writers’ holdings number approximately 300,000 items and consist of correspondence, memoranda, field reports, notes, graphs, charts, preliminary and corrected drafts of essays, oral testimony, folklore, miscellaneous administrative and miscellaneous other material.

Well over one-half of the materials in this record group pertain to the American Guide, the sobriquet for the critically acclaimed state guides. The remainder of the material reflects other areas of interest that developed as the project grew in maturity. They include a rich collection of rural and urban folklore; first-person narratives (called life histories) describing the feelings of men and women coping with life and the Depression; studies of social customs of various ethnic groups; authentic narratives of ex-slaves about life during the period of Slavery; and Negro source material gathered by project workers. In addition, drafts of publications and intended publications are included. These publications express concern with the direction America was taking and with the preservation and communication of local culture. Titles include Hands That Build America, From These Strains, Lexicon of Trade Jargon, and Pockets in America.

The Federal Writers Project had its origins in FDR’s new deal, where (and we continue to quote from the Federal Writer’s Project home page):

The plight of the unemployed writer, and indeed anyone who could qualify as a writer such as a lawyer, a teacher, or a librarian, during the early years of the Depression, was of concern not only to the Roosevelt Administration, but also to writers’ organizations and persons of liberal and academic persuasions. It was felt, generally, that the New Deal could come up with more appropriate work situations for this group other than blue collar jobs on construction projects. […] The Writers’ Project, later characterized by some as the federal government’s attempt to “democratize American culture,” was approved for federal monies in June, 1935. […] As the Project continued into the late thirties, the director was powerless to stop increasing criticism by reactionary Congressmen who were intent on shutting down the enterprise. In October 1939, the Project’s federal monies ceased, due to the Administration’s need for a larger defense budget. After 1939, emasculated, the Project sputtered along on monies funded to the states, closing completely one year or so after America’s entry into World War II.

http://memory.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpafwp.html

The struggles of the Writer’s Project have also been told in a wonderful feature film, “The Cradle will Rock.”

So the connections with an Ecotopian vision are pretty clear: Oral histories provide a network, a sense of community, and history that, if we are wise, can guide us into a better future.

Our Conversation with Dusty, Dustin, and Thunder

• Please tell us about how you became involved with the project. What did you think when you first heard about it?
• Did you have any oral history or interviewing experience before you began?  What did you learn about how to do good interviews?
• Who were the people you interviewed?  How did you locate them?  They were all interesting people, but are there stories that you found especially interesting or enlightening?
• During the past week, you did some audio editing of the interviews. How easy or difficult was that to do?  What sorts of decisions did you have to make as you edited the tapes?
• You brought along a sample of an interview—Let’s play it.
• Play interview tape.
• As you reflect on the project, how do you think oral history helps us understand our community?  Did you personally learn some lessons from your interviewees?
• The products of the project will be placed with the Butte County Historical Museum—tell us what you know about when and how they will be available.

www.buttecountyhistoricalsociety.org/

Do-It-Yourself Oral History

We come now to the do-it-yourself part of the program, and as we talk about oral history, we sort of have to say, “Do what we say, not what we do.” For we both have regrets that we never quite got around to recording interviews with our grandparents (we would have had to use an old fashioned reel-to-reel recorder) or our parents (whom we could have gotten on cassette).

But with the wealth of digital equipment out there you can avoid our error and do really neat oral history projects inexpensively and with high quality.

At KZFR, we use digital recorders that only cost about $200, have great microphone sensitivity, and record directly onto a memory chip that you can slip into your computer.

The big thing is just do it. Instead of vowing to get granny on tape, set up a time:

• Family visits and holidays.
• Hospital or nursing home visits.
• Birthdays, anniversaries.

Other technologies:

• A lot of oral historians also use home video cameras to record interviews.
• And if you have a computer at home, it probably already includes audio and video editing software that allows you to tighten up the interviews and maybe insert some commentary of your own.
• You can also use PowerPoint software to do neat stuff that can include audio and video clips as well as photographs.
• And many families are creating entire websites using the Jumla program or WordPress (which we use for Ecotopia), programs that make it easy for you to put up texts, photos, audio, and video.
• Plus as former English profs, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention writing. Although many people have a something of a block on writing or are nervous about grammar and spelling, with a little encouragement many older (and younger) folks we’ve worked with can get hooked on journaling (the written form of blogging) that can produce material you can edit or use as is as part of your family history.

If you need to learn more, there are a number of web sites that will help you get started including:

www.genealogy.com/

http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html

and

www.genealogy.about.com

Just google for “oral history” or “family history” and add “how to” to the search term.

Playlist for Ecotopia #48  Oral History

1. Reckoner  4:50    Radiohead          In Rainbows

2. Tell Me a Story     2:08    Frankie Laine And Friends     20 Great Tracks

3. Story of My Life    3:19    Rich Cronin        Billion Dollar Sound

4. Story of My Life    3:10    Chris Hoch    Shrek – The Musical (Original Broadway Cast Recording)

5. Tell Me a Story     4:08    Krista Detor     Mudshow

6. Weave Me the Sunshine           4:28    Peter, Paul And Mary          The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary

7. A Place Called Home     3:43    PJ Harvey   Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

8. The Story   3:31    Ani DiFranco      Ani DiFranco            Alternative

9. House You’re Living In   4:18    Voices On The Verge      Live In Philadelphia

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18 August 2009

As we drove in to the studio today the average gas prices at the pump were about $2.89 per gallon.  Our guest on tonight’s Ecotopia predicts that an eventual rise to $20 per gallon is inevitable. Chris Steiner, a staff writer for Forbes magazine has written some bad news/good news scenarios as gas goes up—to $6, to $10, to $18–and he’ll share some of those prophesies with us.

News for Gasaholics

We’ve been monitoring news stories about the price of gas this week, and they are a dime a dozen, much less than gasoline.  From the Vallejo Times-Herald comes a typical story on gas prices in California:  Gas prices up, leveling off

Gasoline prices have leveled off after a slow upward climb over the last week, according to the latest report from AAA Northern California.  However, prices at the pump are up 16 cents from last month with the average price statewide at $3.05 per gallon, AAA reported.  In Vallejo, the average price of gas is $3.03 per gallon, up 15 cents over last month.  Gas is 10 cents higher in Benicia where the average cost of a gallon is $3.13.  Most cities in California are now above the $3 per gallon mark, and the state’s average gas price is the third highest among all 50 states, the AAA reports. But that is considerably cheaper than what motorists were paying last year when the average price of gas in California was $4.12 per gallon. […] The national average price of $2.64 is up by 12 cents, which is still $1.17 cheaper than the national price on this date last year — $3.81.  The recent oil rally, AAA analysts say, is based on optimism over the economic outlook nationally and overseas. The weak dollar has also encouraged investors to purchase oil, the agency noted.  The cheapest gas in Northern California can be found in Chico, Marysville, and Modesto while Eureka had the highest average price at $3.30.  Springfield, Mo. has the least expensive gas in the country at $2.38 a gallon.

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/news/ci_13051772/news/ci_13051772

Up, down, leveling, declining—who knows what it will cost to fill the tank.  Last December on Ecotopia we interviewed Antonia Juhasz, author of a book called The Tyranny of Oil, and we reached the general conclusion that fluctuations in gas prices contradict everything we learned about the free market in our high school economics class—supply and demand just doesn’t explain what’s going on with oil worldwide. In fact, world wide oil consumption is actually down—perhaps due more to the economy than conservation–yet prices still waver unpredictably. (You can listen to that show or read the script  at www.ecotopiakzfr.net. Look in the archives for Ecotopia #11.)

To toss gasoline on the blaze, we want to read from a provocative guest editorial in this week’s Chico News and Review, where Steve Thompson, Chairman of the Butte County Republican Party, argues that

“Money from offshore drilling could have saved many social services,” but the Democrats in the state legislature refused to permit drilling off Santa Barbara that could bring the state $100 million this year and a potential $1.8 billion over the next 14 years. Enough,” [he says,]  “to have covered the programs for abused and neglected children, as well as community services for the elderly.”children, as well as community services for the elderly. How many IHSS workers could be hired with the $100 million that Democrats tossed away so callously? […]

His recommendation?

Open the gates and remove the shackles. Put restraining orders on the regulatory agencies and let people once again make money. Get government out of the way so that our economy can rebound. The abundant wealth created in newly opened markets will provide more than enough tax revenue for those dependent on the system.

Put more succinctly, Drill, baby, drill!!!

Mr. Thompson punctuated that last sentence with not one, but three exclamation points!!!

http://www.newsreview.com/chico/hometopm

If you prefer conservation to consumption, you probably were interested in the announcement by General Motors last week that the new hybrid Chevy volt may get astronomical gas mileage.  From the press release at volt.com

WARREN, Mich. – The Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle is expected to achieve city fuel economy of at least 230 miles per gallon, based on development testing using a draft EPA federal fuel economy methodology for labeling for plug-in electric vehicles.  The Volt, which is scheduled to start production in late 2010 as a 2011 model, is expected to travel up to 40 miles on electricity from a single battery charge and be able to extend its overall range to more than 300 miles with its flex fuel-powered engine-generator.  “From the data we’ve seen, many Chevy Volt drivers may be able to be in pure electric mode on a daily basis without having to use any gas,” said GM Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson. “EPA labels are a yardstick for customers to compare the fuel efficiency of vehicles. So, a vehicle like the Volt that achieves a composite triple-digit fuel economy is a game-changer.”

Within hours of the announcement, Automobile Mag dot com editor Eric Tingwall challenged the GM’s 230 mpg estimate: He wrote:

[…] we’re not buying it.  For a vehicle like the Volt […], 230 mpg doesn’t make any sense. In fact, any mpg rating that attempts to combine the efficiencies of the electric and gasoline powertrains doesn’t make sense for a range-extended electric vehicle like the Volt. Some consumers, who diligently charge their Volts and drive less than 40 miles, may never fill their cars with gas. And others, who drive on cross-country road trips, may only see 40 gas-free miles before covering the next 2000 miles with the help of the gas engine. For those very long drives, the real-world mpg number will effectively become the fuel economy of the gas engine – maybe around 40 mpg.  So we’ve now got Volts returning infinity mpg and 40 mpg….

http://blogs.automobilemag.com/6542278/editors-soapbox/why-the-chevy-volt-shouldnt-be-rated-at-230-mpg/index.html

And we’d like to know how the electricity for daily recharging of the Chevy Volt is generated. How many electric miles do you get for burning a lump of coal?

Our Questions for Christopher Steiner

Chris Steiner is a senior staff writer for Forbes magazine and the author of a new book, $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.

Part I: The book and your predictions

• You open your book with a description of “Bill,” your typical American suburbanite. How is Bill representative of the petroleum culture?  So what’s going to happen to Bill, his family, and the rest of us in coming years? How do you see their lives and lifestyle changing?  What’s the time frame for the rise to $20 per gallon?
• What tools or measurements did you use to forecast the rise of gasoline prices to $20?  [On this program, we’ve had several discussions about how the price of gas is actually set. What are your thoughts?  Is this capitalism and the free market?  supply and demand? the middle eastern oil cartels?  speculators and profiteers?]
• You suggest that rising gas prices will result in:
  • a skinner America
  • the end of the big yellow school bus
  • the disappearance of Las Vegas and Disneyland.
    How do you get to those kinds of conclusions?

• Here in Chico, Wal-Mart has proposed expanding its current store to create a Super Center. What do your predictions have to say about Wal-Mart and other big box stores?
• You believe that the airline industry is already on the brink of collapse.  What is its future as gas prices rise? How will we get from here to there if the planes disappear?
• Your book generally points in directions that the “greens” support—localization, wind and solar power.  Yet you also see a major place for nuclear energy in this picture, which leads to several questions:
  • Several people we’ve interviewed on this program say that nuclear energy is so costly it will price itself out of the market.  You seem to think that the price of gasoline will actually make nuclear affordable. Please give us your thoughts on that.
  • You also seem to think that nuclear energy has gotten something of a bad rap as dangerous and ecologically unsound.  How do you reach those conclusions?
  • Wouldn’t new nuclear energy require vast restructuring of the grid, in apparent opposition to the kind of localization that you predict in your book?
• What’s the worst case scenario you envisage as gas prices rise?  Will we love or be at war with our neighbors?

Part II:

In the first part of the interview, we talked mainly about your predictions. In this segment, we’d like to hear from you about how people can best prepare for the future.

• The subtitle of your book emphasizes that the “the inevitable rise in the price of gasoline will change our lives for the better.” How do you reach that conclusion? What’s your best case scenario for the future?
• How do you see the current U.S. military efforts in Iraq and Iran, as well as our concerns about Iran, fitting into the future scenario?  (Might war, in general, become too expensive for the power nations to pursue?)
• There have been widespread predictions that “green jobs” and green industries can provide a boost to the economy. Does this seem to you to be true?  Would you advise young people to major in “green”?
• Is our current economic stimulus package going in the right direction?  Should we bailing out auto companies if the future does not include the SUV? Are there better ways in which we could stimulate the economy?
• Might not our government intervene to moderate or subsidize gasoline prices to maintain the status quo?  Surely Wal-Mart and the auto makers and all sorts of corporate megabusinesses will not leave the scene without asking first for government support.
• Suppose petroleum were an unlimited resource. Do you think people might implement the kind of life style changes you predict without that pressure?  In short, is humanity smart enough to save the planet without the petroleum crisis?
• How can people today prepare for the future you predict? Please give us any recommendations you have for further reading, research, or action.

Do-It-Yourself

There are lots of places on the web that can tell you how to get better gas mileage, whatever you drive. One of these is is http://www.fueleconomy.gov/, a site run by the Environmental Protection Agency, which includes good info—mostly commonplace info–on:

Fuel economy and driving tips

Hybrids and flex-fuel vehicles

Ways to rate your own vehicle’s fuel efficiency

But we also thought it would be interesting to look up the answer to a claim that we’ve heard since we were kids, and for which there is some positive evidence.  The questiion is, “Can Cars Run on Water?”  Here’s an answer from the Earth Talk section of The Good Human Web Site:

There are a number of online marketing offers of kits that will convert your car to “run on water,” but these should be viewed skeptically. These kits, which attach to the car’s engine, use electrolysis to split the water (H2O) into its component molecules—hydrogen and oxygen—and then inject the resulting hydrogen into the engine’s combustion process to power the car along with the gasoline. Doing this, they say, makes the gasoline burn cleaner and more completely, thus making the engine more efficient.

But [some] experts say the energy equation on this type of system is not, in reality, efficient at all. For one, the electrolysis process uses energy, such as electricity in the home or the on-board car battery, to operate. By the laws of nature, then, the system uses more energy making hydrogen than the resulting hydrogen itself can supply, according to Dr. Fabio Chiara, research scientist in alternative combustion at the Center for Automotive Research at Ohio State University.

Moreover, Chiara says, the amount of greenhouse gases produced by the vehicle “would be much larger, because two combustion processes [gasoline and hydrogen] are involved.” Finally, there is a safety consideration for consumers who add these devices to their cars. “H2 is a highly flammable and explosive gas,” he says, and would require special care in installation and use.

The electrolysis process could be viable in saving energy if a renewable, non-polluting energy source such as solar or wind could be harnessed to power it, although capturing enough of that energy source on board the car would be another hurdle.

Researchers today put more focus on using hydrogen to power fuel cells, which can replace internal combustion engines to power cars and emit only water from the tailpipe. And though hydrogen is combustible and can power an internal combustion engine, to use hydrogen in that way would squander its best potential: to power a fuel cell.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are gaining traction, but commercialization of hydrogen fuel has not yet been accomplished. “The potential benefits of fuel cells are significant,” say researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). “[H]owever, many challenges must be overcome before fuel cell systems will be a competitive alternative for consumers.”

The state of California operates a “Hydrogen Highway” program that supports development of hydrogen fuel cell technology and infrastructure. And many companies are working on ways to produce, store and dispense hydrogen. Cars powered by fuel cells are in prototype stages now, nearing production.

While we all wait to see how that shakes out, the best choice today for high mileage and low emissions is still the gasoline/electric hybrid car. http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2009/08/09/can-cars-run-on-water/

References: Center for Automotive Research, http://car.eng.ohio-state.edu; NREL, www.nrel.gov; California Hydrogen Highway, www.hydrogenhighway.ca.gov.

Playlist for Ecotopia #47: $20 Per Gallon

1. In My Merry Oldsmobile      2:31   Bing Crosby Classic Voices 5

2. Beverly Hillbillies Theme Song (Ballad of Jed Clampett)    2:30   Roger Bass Man Kurt     So – Low!

3. Only So Much Oil In The Ground (LP Version)          3:50   Tower of Power    Urban Renewal

4. North Sea Oil (2004 Digital Remaster)   3:12   Jethro Tull        Stormwatch

5. Giant (from the Warner Bros. film, Giant)        3:15   Warner Bros. Orchestra     Movie Music: The Definitive Performances

6. Weave Me the Sunshine      4:28   Peter, Paul And Mary       The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary

7. Route 66 3:29   The Cheetah Girls      Route 66 – Single

8. Route 66 3:01   Natalie Cole      Unforgettable: With Love

9. Route 66     7:12   The Brian Setzer Orchestra     The Ultimate Collection

10. Route 66        3:03   Buckwheat Zydeco     Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire

11. Route 66        2:57   Beegie Adair   Martini Lounge

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August 11, 2009

In the past several weeks, we have speaking with people about a range visionary and even utopian thinkers and explorers: we heard about about Henry Ford’s ill-fated utopian community in Brazil; we talked with the skipper of the Plastiki, who is setting out to explore the technology of recycling and to alert the world to the dangers of plastic; we’ve heard from leaders of the California Conservation Corps with their vision of reclaiming the land and offering job training to young people; and we’ve interviewed Chico leaders in the permaculture movement, with its aim of creating a sustainable, post-industrial society.

For this program, we  depart from our interview format and simply read some writings by and about visionaries. We read from some of the better known older utopias—those of Sir Thomas More and Francis Bacon—some more recent, like 19^th century feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman and 20^th Century science fiction writer Ursula LeGuin. And we read about visionaries a diverse as John Muir and a mother and daughter who sell hotdogs in Denver. And we even read about a vision of an America of the past from the dome car of the California Zephyr, which used to run from Chicago, down the Feather River Canyon, to Oakland.

The Readings

The title of our show is taken from Ernest Callender’s 1973 utopian novel describing a new nation, consisting of northern California, Oregon, and Washington, which has seceded from the U.S.   Reporter William Weston from the U.S. based Times-Post is the first journalist invited to visit Ecotopia. In tonight’s program break the cardinal rule of the book report, and tell you how the book ends.  Weston sends all his notebooks and reports back to his editor and tells the boss he is not coming back:

• Ernest Callender. Ecotopia. New York: Bantam Books, p. 181.

The genre of Utopia was originated by Sir Thomas More in 1516, about an island—Utopias are often isolated geographically—with a social structure of communal, sustainable level. Here’s a passage from Book II, Of Their Trades and Manner of Life:

• Thomas More. Utopia. First published in 1516. 901. New York: Ideal Commonwealths. P.F. Collier & Son. The Colonial Press. This book is in the public domain, released July 1993 by the Internet Wiretap. Prepared by Kirk Crady (kcrady@polaris.cv.nrao.edu) from scanner output provided by Internet Wiretap.

Life in Frncis Bacon’s 1626 New Atlantis was so good that the Atlantans tried to shoo visitors away from the shore of their island and give them 16 day visas!  The Atlantans, however, do nurse the narrator back to health and show him and his crew the House of Salomon, which is essentially a research university for the betterment of life on Atlantis:

• Francis Bacon. The New Atlantis. 1626.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard Classics, 1909. Volume 3, pp. 172-173.

We’ll fast forward a several centuries and read from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1915 utopian novel Herland.

• Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland. Exact date of writing not known, but the “author” of the text gives it as 1915.  New York: Pantheon, 1979.

And here’s a short passage from Ursula LeGuin’s 1974 Science Fiction novel, The Dispossessed:

• Ursula LeGuin. The Disposessed. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

Here’s a vision of a lost utopia from Bruce McGregor’s and Ted Benson’s book Portrait of a Silver Lady: The Train They Called the California Zephyr. This excerpt is called “Father’s Magic Carpet.”

• Bruce McGregor and Ted Benson. Portrait of a Silver Lady: The Train They Called the California Zephyr. Boulder, CO: Pruett, 1977. p. 207.

Susan: From Amity Shales comes this description of Franklin Roosevelt’s utopian vision for the Tennessee River Valley. (You may recall from our interview with Greg Glandin that Henry Ford had also had his utopian eye on this valley, but was thwarted by congress. But during the depression, Washington decided to get into the River business and create “a river utopia.”)

• Amity Shales. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. New York: Harper Collins, 2007. pp. 173-4,175-6.

Here’s an episode from the life of visionary John Muir. Growing up on a marginal farm in Wisconsin, he mostly spent his days in grueling labor, but he developed a passion for reading, mathematics, and invention even if he had to get up in the middle of the night. This passage suggests some of the traits that led Muir become arguably the greatest nature visionary:

• Thurman Wilkins. John Muir: Apostle of Nature. Norman, OK: Oklahoma University Press, 1955. pp. 24-25.

Like John Muir, another visionary who was able to put his utopian views into action, was A. S. Neil, who in 1921 established Summerhill, a model for progressive educatiion that is still running today.  Summerhill’s web site today opens with a quote from Neil, who asks you to:

Imagine a school…

Where kids have freedom to be themselves…>

Where success is not defined by academic achievement but by the child’s own definition of success…>

Where the whole school deals democratically with issues, with each individual having an equal right to be heard…>

Where you can play all day if you want to…>

And there is time and space to sit and dream…>

…could there be such a school?

We read a bit more about Neill’s vision in this passage from his 1960 book, Summerhill:

• A. S. Neill. Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing.  New York: Hart, 1960.102-103.

As we’ve seen in the case of John Muir, visions are accompanied by hard work. Here’s a great story about street-level visionaries from Kitchen Table Entepreneurs by Martha Shirk and Anna Wadia. It’s called, “Moving Up: One Hotdog at a Time.”

• Martha Shirk and Anna Wadia. Kitchen Table Enterpreneurs.  Cambridge Center, MA: Perseus, 2002. pp. 1-2, 20-22, 25-26.

Why do people do visionary, utopian work? The psychiatrist Robert Coles has written “a witness to idealism” in his book  The Call of Service.  In a chapter on Young Idealism, Coles explains how he came to understand his own passion for public service.

• Robert Coles. The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. pp. 174-177.

Idealists, visionaries, and utopians are often regarded with great skepticism. You may remember from H. G. Wells’ 1915 The Time Machine (either the book or the film), that the Time Traveller’s efforts are regarded with great skepticism by his circle of friends. Having shown his buddies a miniature model of the time machine—which disappears in time, but everybody thinks it’s a trick—he takes them out to the lab to see the real thing;

• H. G. Wells. The Time Machine. 1915.

Filby may wink, about the time machine, but in our time, a theoretical physicist named Paul Davies has written a book on how to build a time machine. For the layperson, he explains much of modern physics—relativity, uncertainty, curvature of time and space—and then has a chapter suggesting how a worm hole time machine could be constructed and explains how it would differ from Wells’s machine and would differ from some of the problems encountered by Marty McFly in Back to the Future.

• Paul Davies. How to Build a Time Machine. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2001. 91-92.

We have just one do-it-yourself item tonight for all you northstate utopians.  Check out “Utopia: the Game” http://utopia.swirve.com/index.php which says:

Welcome to Utopia, a world where reality and dreams come together, a world where the lowliest of peasants can become the world’s greatest heroes. A world unlike any other that you may have experienced now stands before you. Any peasant can become Lord of their own province, but only the greatest can survive. Being a leader in the world of Utopia will challenge your every skill and demand your careful attention. Without diplomacy and tact, you will never rise to the respect the people demand of you. You must decide when to be ruthless and when to be compassionate. Will you run an empire of might or magic? Perhaps one of cunning and betrayal? Alas, it is almost impossible to do them all. Every decision, every challenge will be yours and yours alone.

Playlist: Ecotopia #45  Utopians and Visionaries

1. Beautiful Day       4:08    U2    All That You Can’t Leave Behind

2. Glorious                 5:19    MaMuse   All The Way

3. The Road to Utopia                     4:54    Utopia    Adventures In Utopia

4. Utopia        4:58    Alanis Morissette    i-Tunes Originals – Alanis Morissette

5. Life Uncommon   4:57    Jewel      Spirit

6. Weave Me the Sunshine           4:28    Peter, Paul And Mary      The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary

7. Kodachrome         3:31    Paul Simon

8. Joy To The World 3:16    Three Dog Night       Three Dog Night – The Complete Hit Singles

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