Category: Energy & Sustainability

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Peace and War, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice

By Shel Horowitz
This post is in three parts:

  • My Personal Poverty Story
  • What’s Wrong Right Now
  • Prescription to End Poverty

    • 7000 bloggers are joining together today to talk about one issue: poverty. I’m proud to be one of those 7000.

    My Personal Poverty Story
    Poverty is something I know something about, first-hand. In the 1970s and early 1980s, I was desperately poor, and for a portion of that time, on food stamps. I jokingly refer to those years as the “research phase” for my e-book, “The Penny-Pinching Hedonist.” But I didn’t just pinch those pennies. I squeezed them so hard it might have drawn blood, if pennies could bleed.

    When I got a job as a VISTA Volunteer community organizer, with the princely salary of $82 per week (and they let me keep getting food stamps), it was a major step UP the economic ladder for me; before that, I’d been working a single day a week in a neighborhood fruit store. I seem to remember that I earned $15 for those shifts, but that would have been below minimum wage even then, so it must have been more like $26.

    I do know that I thought long and hard about every discretionary purchase other than food; with the food stamps, I didn’t have to worry about that, at least. But if I could get around New York City by bike instead of subway, I did–all over Brooklyn, where I was living and where I was charged to build the local Gray Panther chapter, and lower Manhattan, where my community organizing office was. If I could find clothing at a thrift shop, I did–even if it didn’t fit quite right. I found entertainment like poetry readings, that didn’t cost anything. I read the books and listened to the records I already had, on a stereo I’d bought used while a college student.

    Even then, I knew I was lucky. All around me, I saw people who were trying to support a family; I had no dependents. I saw people being forced out of rent-controlled apartments so that landlords could quadruple the price under vacancy decontrol; I had found a small apartment in a warehouse district that I shared with a friend; my half was only $150, which meant that once I got the organizing job, I was able to earn back the cost of housing in less than two weeks and have the other two weeks’ pay to live on for the month. Before that, I’d been paying the rent out of small and precariously dropping savings since losing the entry-level corporate job that had brought me to New York. And even during that time of unemployment, I scraped by enough that I didn’t have to deal with the intimidating and humiliating welfare bureaucracy; the food stamp office was far more humane, according to my friends who’d been through the welfare system.

    Gradually, in the 1980s, I moved out of the city, started the business I still run, and eventually got to a living wage, and then out of poverty.

    What’s Wrong Right Now
    But I still get very angry when I hear politicians and toxic talk show hosts who have no first-hand knowledge of poverty ranting about welfare cheats while passing out massive subsidies to their friends and funders at the very top of the economic ladder.

    And it shocks me that we’ve allowed the disparity between the poorest and the richest to go totally haywire, much like the Latin American dictatorships we always heard about in the 1970s and 80s. CEOs take home nine-figure compensation packages, while poor and middle-class people lose their homes. This is not fair or just, and I’m hoping the current world-wide financial crisis will lead us to change those percentages. What would life be like if no CEO got more than 25 times the wages of a full-time employee making minimum wage, or for that matter, 25 times as much as the check that a welfare mom is supposed to live on while she supports her kids?

    Some companies manage to get by paying their CEOs much less than that! There are companies where the CEO makes only eight or ten times the lowest paid employee, and others, collectively owned, where every worker makes the same salary. Somehow, they survive and thrive and attract great talent. Because they have a mission they can believe in that’s not just about lining their own pockets.

    Okay, so I’m the one ranting now.

    Prescription to End Poverty
    But this is Blog Action Day. I’d like to finish with some action steps that we can take as a society, steps that address some (by no means all) of the systemic causes of poverty, and whose adoption will lift up the bottom. Changing these could take whole communities from poverty to abundance.

  • Switch to sustainable, renewable, nonpolluting energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and small-scale (non-invasive) hydro. Surely, if we can find $700 billion to pump into the financial system, we can find a few billion for a Marshall Plan-style initiative that would eliminate dependence on foreign oil, slash carbon emissions, create thousands of jobs, and put money in the pockets of rich and poor alike.
  • Retrofit all buildings with proper insulation, water-saving plumbing, and other sustainabiity measures. Again, this lowers costs, creates jobs, and reduces carbon as well as dependence on oil imports (and thus global warming).
  • Decriminalize the petty offenses that fill up our prisons, taking away income-earners, making it harder for them to get jobs again when they get out, and leaving their families with a huge financial burden. We have no business throwing people in prison for using drugs or feeling forced into prostitution. Dealing is one thing; it harms society. But using harms only the users and their families, as long as they don’t get behind the wheel or operate dangerous machinery.
  • Revitalize mass transit. Poor people get to work on buses and trains, and the more places transit systems reach, the more job opportunities for poor folks. Added benefits once again: reduced carbon, reduced foreign oil imports, reduced traffic congestion.
  • Urban community food self-sufficiency: an organic garden on every flat roof and in every vacant lot! Lowers food costs, boosts nutrition, freshness, and flavor, builds community, reduces carbon and more.
  • Adopt, finally, the sensible system of government-salaried doctors not beholden to insurance companies that has allowed almost every other industrialized country in the world to make health care a right, not a privilege. This is something we advocated for when I had the community organizing job with the Gray Panthers almost 30 years ago, and it’s still a good idea–and long-overdue.
  • Oh yes, and save poor and middle-class lives as well as vast boatloads of dollars by getting out of the illegal and unconscionable war the Bush administration lied its way into in Iraq. the $700 billion per year saved could provide seed capital to fund all the rest of it.

    • So there you have at least part of my prescription to create jobs, reduce costs, lower pollution, and shift our country’s trade and overall deficits. What are your ideas? Please post them, and let’s get started!

    While this post is copyright 2008 by Shel Horowitz of https://www.principledprofit.com, I hereby grant permission to reproduce the post in its entirety in any medium as long as attriubtion is included, and to link to the post without restriction.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability

    Here’s another entry in the Alice-In-Wonderland contradictions of our world: An auto-industry trade group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, launched a national campaign to cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, caled Eco-Driving.

    All well and good–except that this is the same group that bitterly resisted attempts to achieve a fleet average of 52 miles per gallon by 2030.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People

    Found both of these links in the How Online blog–found the juxtaposition quite telling:

    First, an inspiring (and long-overdue) article on MarketWatch about how people are seeking MBAs not just to acquire personal wealth but to make a difference in the world. I could quote many parts of this terrific article, but I’ll pick just one:

    “The New Green Focus for Future MBAs” headlines Greenbiz.com. And, it’s the most popular story on the site. At the same time, a new poll by Experience Inc. shows more students are hoping for a job with a green-minded company. The poll says 81% of students believe there is value in working for an environmentally aware company, while 79% would likely accept a job at an eco-friendly company over a conventional one.

    “In a few short years, eco-friendly practices have gone from being new-fangled selling points to becoming essential requirements, with states vying with each other to offer incentives and legislation that promote green technology and business. While the corporate world is scrambling to devise strategies to address sustainability, business schools across the country have been incorporating it into their curriculum for the past several years, both in response to student demand and in line with industry trends,” Greenbiz says.

    But the same page of the same blog links to another story (International Herald-Tribune) that shows, once again, the same-old-same-old of too many giant corporations just doesn’t work. and deceptive business practices have cost General Motors, and its auditor, Deloitte & Touche, over $300 million combined:

    Under the settlement, GM would pay $277 million to investors, while its auditor, Deloitte & Touche LLP, would pay $26 million, pending approval from U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen in Detroit.

    The two-year-old class-action lawsuit claimed that GM misstated and mischaracterized its revenue, earnings and cash flow, artificially inflating the company’s stock price and debt securities.

    Let’s hope those green and ethical MBAs of tomorrow remember that they know better when they’re presented with opportunities for fraud.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability

    Talk about head-in-the-sand behavior! Apparently June 12 was Carbon Belch Day:

    Proud of their antisocial behavior, these ninnies wanted to be as environmentally destructive as possible that day, asking people to

    oppose U.S. participation in the Kyoto treaty or any such successor agreement, mandatory domestic limits on CO2, and any federal or state carbon “tax” or “cap-and-trade” system — including the current Lieberman-Warner bill.

    One could make a good case for opposing Lieberman-Warner on the gorunds that its cap-and-trade system is essentially a giveaway to polluters–but that’snot the argument being made here.

    What’s next: Celebrate Racism Day with the KKK?

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability

    Pretty cool! If it turns out to be true, anyhow.

    The world’s first zero-net-energy city is being planned for (of all places) the United Arab Emirates, just outside Abu Dhabi.

    Solar power, in the form of photovoltaic panels, concentrated solar collectors, and solar thermal tubes will provide 82% of the citys energy needs.

    An additional 17% of the citys power will come from burning composted food waste in a highly efficient method that developers say will emit greenhouse gases at a rate 10 times lower than if the food were allowed to decompose in a landfill.

    The remaining 1% of the citys energy will come from wind turbines.

    This is the same UAE that is on a massive, insane-looking skyscraper binge in Dubai, creating a beautiful modern city but one that is anything but carbon/energy-neutral.

    Hmmm!

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Politics

    The U.S. Senate did two idiotic things regarding energy policy yesterday. In both cases, Democrats were unable to get the 60 votes needed to stop a Republican filibuster.

    First, they voted against a windfall oil profit tax that would fund alternative energy. OK, I can understand the logic of rejecting a windfall profit tax on the big oil companies; the argument could be made that this would ultimately lead to higher gas prices and more foreign oil imports. But this time, the oil companies could avoid the profit tax by investing those runaway profits in much-needed renewable energy technology.

    But for the life of me, I can’t see the argument against extending tax credits for homeowners installing renewable energy.

    According to the New York Times, the Democrats’ energy package (not dead but on hold, currently)

    …would require electric utilities to obtain 15 percent of their electricity from wind, solar or biomass energy by 2020.

    But the energy bill would make profound changes in other areas as well. It would require car companies to increase the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks to 35 miles a gallon by 2020. It would also require a huge increase in the production of renewable fuels for cars and trucks and require the federal government to set tougher efficiency standards for electric appliances. The measure would also give the government more power to prosecute “price gouging” by oil companies.

    This is incredibly shortsighted. It increases dependence on foreign oil, increases demand, and contributes to the myth that our current energy supplies are limitless. And then people wonder why it costs $70 to fill up their SUVs, and why they can’t even sell those SUVs.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability

    Water is complicated. I recently wrote an article in my Monthly Frugal Fun Tips about why most people drinking bottled water should be switching away.

    Of course, there are situations when you need bottled water–such as if your water happens to be toxic.

    I found this AlterNet interview with Bottlemania author Elizabeth Royte on the water controversy to be thorough (considering its relative brevity), readable, and understanding of the depths of complexity.

    Here’s a brief excerpt, a “taste,” if you’ll pardon the pun.

    I just did a story for the New York Times Magazine about Orange County’s toilet-to-tap program, where wastewater is being reclaimed for drinking.

    At first I wondered — if people know that they are going to be drinking this water again, it would be nice to think that people would take better care of what they put down the toilet, like would we switch to biodegradable cleaning products, would industry use nontoxic materials, would farmers cut their use of pesticides? Then I realized that is a false hope, because everyone is relying on the technology to clean it up, and it might even have the effect of letting polluters off the hook while we are spending $29 billion a year to run this very high-tech plant, and it gets everything out, so why should we bother. That’s the “faith in technology” problem.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary

    General Motors just announced that it’s considering discontinuing the Hummer line.

    Quite frankly–I’m delighted.

    Out of all the people who buy SUVs in general, I’m guessing somewhere between five and ten percent actually need one:

  • People who live (or have a second home) on bumpy dirt roads
    Border Patrol agents
    Extremely tall people who don’t fit easily into small cars

    • There might be a few other categories but I can’t think of them at the moment.

    Not one of these people actually needs a Hummer!

    Extreme even among SUVs, Hummers get terrible mileage, hog more than their share of natural resources, block other drivers’ view of the road, and are wildly overpriced in my opinion.

    The 2008 Hummer H3, maybe the most fuel-efficient in the brief history of this GMC division, gets 14-15 miles per gallon. Some of the older models get 9.

    I don’t think any responsible person could justify a Hummer.

    By the way, if you’d like to know how it happened that SUVs went from almost a non-category to such major market dominance, read It’s the Crude, Dude, by Linda McQuaig. It wasn’t an accident, but had a lot to do with U.S. government policies that allowed these monsters to bypass fleet-wide passenger car fuel efficiency regulations.

    Also, for a nice piece contrasting the Hummer with, of all things, Prius, here’s a cool article in Slate.

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    By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability

    Safe energy vs. nuclear energy is something I know about. When I was a college student in the mid 1970s, I did a school paper on whether nuclear energy was safe. Though I came in with a more-or-less open mind, I was shocked and horrified by what I found. The more I researched, the worse it got.

    Among the hundred or so good reasons NOT to use nukes:

  • Safe storage and disposal of deadly wastes must be maintained for approximately 250,000 years–in our disposable, throwaway society where most items don’t last ten years and almost no human-made objects exist from longer ago than 25,000 or 30,000 years. This is ten times as long!
    Safety of the plants themselves, both during normal operation (radiation releases) and during accidents or terrorist attacks
    Net consumption of energy: counting the entire fuel cycle of mining, milling, transporting, processing, transporting again, use, and waste handling, nukes actually consume more energy than they create–so all those other risks don’t even have a benefit
    Skewed laws such as the Price-Anderson Act, which insulates the nuclear industry from all but a tiny fraction of the potential liability, and massively subsidizes the premiums for even that minuscule level of insurance

    • True energy security involves renewable, nonpolluting, decentralized technologies such as solar wind, small-scale hydro, and geothermal–coupled with innovative engineering that slashes our energy consumption, of the sort Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute have been proposing for 30 years. Even here in cloudy, cold New England, I have both solar hot water and solar electric (photovoltaic) systems on the room of my house, which was built in 1743. If we can do it here…

    So when I got a mailing from the respected environmental group Friends of the Earth saying that the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill is fatally flawed because it opens the door to new nukes, I wanted to share that message with you.

    Tell your Congressional representatives.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Other, People Helping People, Politics

    Fascinating and far-ranging interview with European philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Democracy Now this morning.

    He covered war, energy, US presidential politics, and much more. But the statement that really got to me was:

    A true act creates the conditions of its own possibility. That is to say, it appears impossible, you do it, and the whole field changes: it’s possible.

    He went on to cite President Nixon’s opening US relations with Maoist China, and postulated that if Obama becomes president, he will seize a similar window with Cuba.

    But this concept has reach far beyond international relations. In sports, the 4-minute mile was an unassailable barrier for decades; once Roger Bannister broke it, many people followed quickly. In science, it was unthinkable in 1955 that a human being would walk on the moon before 1970. In energy and the environment, the work of Amory Lovins and others show new ways of reinventing society as a more earth-friendly place (see my article here). And in business ethics, I like to hope that my Business Ethics Pledge campaign will make a similar difference in the consciousness that ethical business is actually more profitable.

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