Maher: American is the land of get nothing done

Bill Maher is distressed about America's lack of capacity to do good things and stop doing bad things. Our mechanism for meaningful change is completely broken.

Well, I hate to be a nudge, but why has America become a nation that can't make anything bad end, like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, the drug war, useless weapons programs - oh, and there's still 60,000 troops in Germany - and can't make anything good start, like health care reform, immigration reform, rebuilding infrastructure. Even when we address something, the plan can never start until years down the road. Congress's climate change bill mandates a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions... by 2020! Fellas, slow down, where's the fire? Oh yeah, it's where I live, engulfing the entire western part of the United States! We might pass new mileage standards, but even if we do, they wouldn't start until 2016.
What do we need?
a) leaders with balls, and b) a general populace who can think again. Barack Obama has said, "If we were starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense." So let's start from scratch.
I find Bill Maher to be especially insightful--he cuts right through the BS over and over. This particular article by Maher was especially well written.

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Friedman: It’s time for a gas tax, but we don’t have the guts.

According to Thomas Friedman's recent op-ed in the NYT, given that oil prices are way down compared to last year, it's time for a gas tax, but we don't have the guts. We don't have the guts to make hard decisions like France and Denmark, which have both dramatically reduced their dependency on petroleum. Further, a gas tax would also generate much-needed revenue.

Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally. Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.

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To get serious about sustainability, move back to the city.

According to Witold Rybczynski (writing in The Atlantic), it's time to get serious about living sustainably. Currently, we do that by going out to buy the latest and greatest gadgets for saving energy. There's a much better foundation for accomplishing this goal of living sustainably:

The problem in the sustainability campaign is that a basic truth has been lost, or at least concealed. Rather than trying to change behavior to actually reduce carbon emissions, politicians and entrepreneurs have sold greening to the public as a kind of accessorizing. Keep doing what you’re doing, goes the message. Just add a solar panel, a wind turbine, a hybrid engine, whatever. But a solar-heated house in the burbs is still a house in the burbs, and if you have to drive to it, even in a Prius, it’s hardly green.
Instead of putting little Band-Aids on the big problem, Rybczynski argues that we ought to move back to the city. We would save much more energy by prohibiting spread-out low-rise buildings than by pasting solar panels on them. "A reasonably well-built and well insulated multifamily building is inherently more sustainable than a detached house." He advocates three or four story "walk-ups," which don't require elevators. These can create sufficient density "about 50 people per acre, to support public transit, walk ability and other urban amenities." Another important approach is to focus on the way we construct our commercial buildings. When we combine residences with commercial and institutional structures, buildings consume 48% of our energy, more than any other sector.

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How’s your water quality?

The debate over tap water vs. bottled water will probably go on for quite some time. Many people believe that by purchasing bottled water, they are consuming better quality water than that which comes from the tap. Others argue that the environmental impact of bottled water is massive, and that bottled water is no safer than tap water. A report earlier this year from the Government Accounting Office claims that because public water supplies are regulated by the Safe Water Drinking Act and those regulations are enforced by the EPA, they are therefore safer than bottled water, which is regulated by the FDA-- and we all know what a wonderful job the FDA has been doing. But a new investigative report by the New York Times calls this conclusion into question.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses. However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.

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How peak oil affects food and everything else

Media Education Foundation has released a new documentary called "Blind Spot" which

explores the inextricable link between the energy we use, the way we run our economy, and the multiplying threats that now confront the environmental health and stability of our planet. Taking as its starting point the inevitable energy depletion scenario known as "Peak Oil," the film surveys a fascinating range of the latest intellectual, political, and scientific thought to make the case that by whatever measure of greed, wishful thinking, neglect, or ignorance, we now find ourselves at a disturbing crossroads: we can continue to burn fossil fuels and witness the collapse of our ecology, or we can choose not to and witness the collapse of our economy. Refusing to whitewash this reality, Blind Spot issues a call to action, urging us to face up to the perilous situation we now find ourselves in so that we might begin to envision a realistic, if inconvenient, way out.

You can watch a ten-minute excerpt here. By watching it, I learned that:
  • The U.S. now has more prisoners than farmers.
  • Corn ethanol is energy negative (making it uses more energy than burning it).
  • It takes 30 calories of energy to bring one calorie of lettuce from California to the average plate.
  • The average item of food travels 1,500 hundred miles to your plate.
  • The concept of peak oil (essentially, that we are running out of cheap oil), is still ignored or rejected by most businesses, governments and individuals.
See the related posts for more information on peak oil, as well as here and here.

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