How to really kick the fossil fuel habit

If you’d like to hear some upbeat ideas and inspiration for weaning ourselves off of oil, watch this video of Amy Goodman’s round table featuring Sierra Club Exec Director Michael Brune and Rocky Mountain Institute Scientist Amory Lovins. Whereas many people have harshly criticized Obama’s recent speech regarding the Gulf tragedy, Lovins sees a significant policy shift. He notes that President Obama is now seeking to end our addition to all fossil fuels, not just oil. Second, he heard a new approach to consensus building:

[H]e pointed out that this has cost—our dependence on fossil fuel has cost not only to our economy but also to our national security and our environment. And I think that starts a new conversation of a new kind in energy policy, because we’ve always supposed people had to want the same things we wanted in energy for the same reasons. So if you had different priorities than somebody else, you couldn’t agree on the outcome. What the President started to do here is to say, let’s focus on outcomes, not motives, and then we can build a strong consensus. Whether you care most about national security or environment or economy, we ought to do the same things about energy. And if we do the things we agree about, then the things we don’t agree about become superfluous.
Lovins mentioned several effective techniques for reducing our use of fossil fuels. For example, we can use “freebates,” whereby those who insist on purchasing less efficient products are hit with surcharges that directly flow to reducing the prices of more efficient products. France used this approach regarding automobiles two years ago and cut the sales of inefficient cars by 40%. Doing things like this will “align the incentives, which will change behavior.” Lovins also stresses that more states need to use the energy utility model employed by California and Oregon, whereby the utilities are rewarded by cutting our use of fuel rather than by selling us more fuel. He further indicates that most of the electricity we use is completely wasted. He is a big fan of “net metering,” whereby those who produce more electricity than they use (e.g., by use of solar panels) can make money by running their meters backwards and selling that energy to their electric utility. A dramatic illustration of what we could look forward to comes at the 38 minute mark, where Lovins describes his own 4,000 square foot incredibly energy efficient home near Aspen. Of course, many Americans will hate these ideas. They will see nothing by deprivation, and they’ll fail to see the immense benefits for making big changes in how we make and use energy. Bob Cesca senses this too, and suggests that this is why President Obama ended his speech by asking Americans to pray, rather than telling us to get ready to make changes in our lives.

The president wrapped up his address Tuesday night by asking Americans to pray for the victims -- both human and environmental -- of the BP oil spill. I thought it was a strange way to end his first Oval Office address during a national emergency insofar as praying makes the situation appear too big for conventional solutions. As though all that remains between us and a sea of oil is the Hail Mary. This morning it occurred to me that this was the only thing he could really ask Americans to do.Why? Simply stated, it doesn't require any effort to silently invoke spirituality while stopped at a traffic signal . . .

What should Obama have done rather than invoking supernatural beings?
Instead of prayer, the president could have asked us all to make sacrifices towards the goal of weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels. Maybe he should have asked for sacrifice. It probably wouldn't have hurt. But it would have been mostly ignored. Americans simply don't do "national sacrifice" anymore.
I’m concerned that Cesca is correct, but I still hold out hope. I suspect that the reason that so many American resist doing anything is because they don’t want to be doing something while others are doing nothing. They don’t want to be seen as suckers. Therefore, our aim should be to make it clear that we’re all going to do this together. We’re need to let everyone know that we're all going to hold hands and jump in.

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The rot at the core of American conservatism

Peter Daou argues that the anti-environmentalism espoused by the political right wing is not only wrong-headed; it is dangerous:

Of all the wrongheaded ideas proudly trumpeted by America's right, anti-environmentalism occupies a unique position: it is at once the most devoid of a rational or moral foundation and the most dangerous. It is selfish, crass, illogical, willfully blind, a denial of the undeniable reality that humans are pillaging irreplaceable natural resources and spewing filth into the air and water and soil at unsustainable rates. Green-bashers stubbornly negate what is directly before them. There is no moral imperative underlying their belief (or lack thereof). It's about unbridled hostility at the suggestion that we must all make shared sacrifices. It's about refusing to acknowledge that the environmental movement has been right to sound the alarm. It's about laziness. And greed. And irresponsibility. And colossal shortsightedness. Green-bashing exposes the rot at the core of modern conservatism.
The reason this conservative attitude toward the environment is dangerous is that it would leave us unprepared for the quickly approaching transition from oil to post-oil. It would be an economically and socially dangerous transition even if we planned well for it. I've argued before, and I still maintain, that the right wing uses its anti-environmentalism as a badge of group identification (among other things). In short, I don't believe that most right-wingers are truly against the green positions that they publicly disparage. I'm not convinced that most right-wingers have actually thought their positions through (e.g., most conservatives don't realize that there's only enough oil in Alaska to run the U.S. for six months, which makes "Drill Baby, Drill palpably absurd). I believe that when conservatives shout down green positions, they are actually shouting up their membership in the right-wing herd. But how can someone take a policy position contrary to the facts without a straight face? See the Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias, which refers to the fact that "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it." Thus, many people are ignorant of the fact that they are ignorant, thus freeing them up to pontificate to others and to run for Congress in good conscience. We're surrounded by this, and we're fed "news" media stories that flout this conflict pornography (featuring know-nothings shouting at people who do know something) in order to sell commercials. Note that self-critical fact-finding and careful analysis is not treasured anywhere in this process. See also, this earlier post on tortucanism.

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Who elected British Petroleum to be our government?

No one elected BP to run any level of American government. But we are a government by the money, not the People, so that is a big invitation to British Petroleum to control entire beaches to prevent the news media from from reporting the full extent of the damage resulting from the Gulf of Mexico oil leakage. Mother Jones reports. In the meantime, most Americans passively sit and watch, along with our politicians, giving a well-documented irresponsible company endless opportunity to operate in relative secrecy while 65 miles of delicate Gulf Coast ecosystem has been ruined by oil. If a "terrorist" with brown skin from the Middle East had caused all of this immense damage, we would have declared yet another "war." But it's a bunch of Caucasian men wearing suits who crapped up the Gulf waters and beaches, and they have given huge amounts of money to Congress, so it's all so very very different . . . And keep in mind that this disaster does not simply affect the Gulf Coast. Did you see the photos of the oil-soaked pelicans? The "White Pelicans" aren't simply "Gulf Coast" birds--they migrate all the way from the Gulf Coast up to Minnesota--it has been quite the spectacle to see them passing through St. Louis twice each year. We'll see how many survive to fly next year. And that's merely one species. There is no reason for trusting that BP will do the clean-up job correctly, putting the environment before its profits. From the Mother Jones article (above), we've seen that BP will "fix" the problem by hiding information. News is now breaking that the oil has now penetrated 12 miles into the Louisiana marshes. I'm feeling sick about this disaster and sick about the lack of action by our federal government--Why is the Obama Administration continuing to defer to the "government" of British Petroleum? As soon as the first drops of oil escaped into the Gulf waters, this was no longer BP's disaster; it became an immense American tragedy. You've heard of "too big to fail." Lots of bank money is making sure that we will continue to have "too big to fail banks." If these Gulf oil rigs are too dangerous to fail, we shouldn't have them either (here's the obvious alternative). But no logic, no evidence and no earnest well-directed passion to preserve the environment will overcome huge corporate election contributions. I'm feeling the frustration of Chris Matthews:

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The stench of secrecy.

According to the Environmental Working Group, most perfumes, colognes and body sprays don't disclose that "many scents are actually a complex cocktail of natural essences and synthetic chemicals – often petrochemicals." This is getting to be a predictable story: The manufacturers are keeping these ingredients secret despite the fact that consumers should have access to the dangers and potential dangers of the chemicals.

The average fragrance product tested contained 14 secret chemicals not listed on the label. Among them are chemicals associated with hormone disruption and allergic reactions, and many substances that have not been assessed for safety in personal care products.

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