Let there be peace on earth . . .

The Fredonia Community House, Fredonia Alabama

Photo & message by me, tree lovingly decorated by Chris & J.J. Frickert

The Oil We Eat

I announced at the beginning of this bloggery that it would be to a large extent about “dirt” – that is, “what food is and where it comes from.” In this installment, I want to come back to that subject. In my usual round about way. First, an anecdote from John Muir.

In the spring of 1867, Muir began A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, setting out from his home in Indiana. In the book of that title, Muir reports from the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee, “This is the most primitive country I have seen, primitive in everything. The remotest hidden parts of Wisconsin are far in advance of the mountain regions of Tennessee and North Carolina.  But my host speaks of the ‘old-fashioned unenlightened times,’ like a philosopher in the best light of civilization. I  believe in Providence, said he. Our fathers came into these valleys, got the richest of them, and skimmed off the cream of the soil. The worn-out ground won’t yield no roastin’ ears now. But the Lord foresaw this state of affairs, and prepared something else for us. And what is it? Why, He meant us to bust open these copper mines and gold mines, so that we may have money to buy the corn we cannot raise.“

Muir’s ironic comment: “A most profound observation.”

About this story, two things. First, the acknowledgement that food comes from topsoil. Second, early evidence of the tendency in American culture to deny or ignore the fundamental importance of that First Fact of Food in the belief that money (aka Providence) can provide anything we need.

Indeed, the commercialization and industrialization of food in America has provided a marvelously bountiful and cheap food supply. But too much of it processed in the form of what Michael Pollan calls “food-like substances.” So we are the best-fed and most obese population on the planet. Moreover, even before processing, the nutritional quality of commercial, non-organic fruits and vegetables in the U.S. has steadily declined over the last 50 or so years. See “Still No Free Lunch: Nutrient Levels in U.S. Food Supply Eroded by Pursuit of High Yields,” at https://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/YieldsExecSummary.pdf.

This is not to say we should be trying to do without money or markets. But there are two kinds of food markets. At a farmer’s market (or a farm) the price or cost of food matters, but there are no middle-men, processors, distributors etc involved, and the taste and nutritional quality of the food are likely to be more important factors. If the food leaves the farm to go on the commodity market, on the other hand, it is essentially converted into money, its appearance or marketability, including shelf life, being valued above its taste or nutritional quality.

Note that this is true even when the farm produce goes to a regional wholesale market, where much of it is purchased by local businesses usually called curb markets but often calling themselves “farmers markets.” And true of food produced in contract arrangements with large-scale distributors or supermarket chains.

Getting back to First Facts, food comes from topsoil, and what food is is carbon. In various combinations with 30 or more other important elements, but still, mostly carbon. As are our bodies and other living organisms, plant or animal. As they grow, plants take carbon (as CO2) out of the air to build their bodies. But the soil is also a rich store of carbon (again in combination with other elements), providing the habitat in which the microflora and microfauna work to make the soil fertile. See https://www.leaf.tv/articles/carbon-based-foods-that-humans-eat/

Where does this carbon-rich topsoil come from? Well, it is a product of ancient sunlight. Just like its also carbon-rich cousins oil, coal and natural gas. Which have become in the last century or so an integral part of our industrial agriculture, supplying the energy needed to power our food supply system. And without which very little food would be grown, distributed, processed, stored, cooked . . . . .  or eaten. Scientific estimates of how much fossil energy it takes to put one food calorie on the table range up to 12:1.  Here is one of the more conservative estimates: 

Does it matter? Well, it took all of human history to about 1800 for global population to reach one billion. The fossil fuels have been major contributors to a human population explosion since then. We are now approaching 8 billion. And we are hooked on fossil-fueled food. How much longer will we be able to get our oil/food fix? Consider this chart showing oil discoveries since the last major oil-field discovery, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia. . 

Sad to say, the soil is also a non-renewable "resource" that is dwindling. See my post on September 13, 2013. 

How does your garden grow?

Bad? How Bad?

For example, here’s what long-time friend and mentor Alabama Senator Hank Sanders had to say this last week in his “Senate Sketches” newspaper article:

            I desperately called on my dear mother.  Across the chasm of her death nearly 20 years ago, she reminded me of what she said to me and to her many children nearly sixty years ago.  I felt her spirit moving within me.  I was strengthened.  Now, I can go on.

            I will share with you why I called upon my mother on this occasion.  However, before I share the why, I want to share with you what she said so many years ago.  At the time, we were nine children, a mother and a father living in a three-room house.  Mind you, not a three-bedroom house, but a three-room house – a kitchen, a middle room and a front room.

            When things got real bad, our mother would call us together in the front room.  We had only one chair in the whole house.  She would sit in the chair and make us children sit on the floor in front of her.  She would go quiet until she had our full attention.  Then she would say:  “Children, things are always kind of bad with this big po’ family and all.  But they are real bad now.”  She would go quiet for a long moment, causing us to focus even more intently.  Then she would continue: “But don’t y’all worry.  I am at my best when things get bad.”  It was powerful.  It forged our strength.  It prepared us to engage struggle.  It lifted our spirits.  It gave us hope.  Even today, this memory brings tears to my eyes, trembling to my being, and hope to my heart.

            I called upon my mother on Wednesday morning when I heard that Businessman Donald Trump was now President-Elect Trump.  I went really deep inside myself.  I could sense the hard times coming.  I had to call on my dear deceased mother to help me through the moment. 

Hank goes on to enumerate. But we get the picture, eh? The Bad seen from the perspective of millions of Americans on the far Left-Out side of the political spectrum.

Of course, many (yes, too many) other millions who could also be fairly described as left-out actually voted for Businessman Trump.  It’s like another whole level of Bad.

But understandable, since the alternative would have been a vote for Business-As-Usual Empire-building, including risk of nuclear war with Russia, at the expense of 99% of our millions on whatever side and to whom whatever promises were made.

Deplorable, eh? However, one piece of bad news I’ve come across in the last week or so, supposedly having nothing to do with politics, puts all that electoral badness in deep shade. Folks, here is the really Bad News:

The U.S. Geological Survey says it has found the largest continuous oil and gas deposit ever discovered in the United States.

On Tuesday, the USGS announced that a swath of West Texas known as the Wolfcamp shale contains 20 billion barrels of oil and 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. . . . As NPR's Jeff Brady reported, the amount of oil in the Wolfcamp shale formation is nearly three times the amount of petroleum products used by the entire country in a year.

Why is this bad news? The answer comes only in the last paragraph of the article:

Producing and using the newly discovered oil and gas will also contribute to climate change, since both oil and gas emit greenhouse gases when they are extracted and burned using current technology. The U.S. has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions economywide 26 to 28 percent by 2025 under the Paris climate agreement, which went into effect earlier this month.

That this part of the news is tacked on at the very end of the article is another level of bad news. By that placement the writer (or editor) is telling us this is the least important  aspect of the news.

So we have very bad news presented as mostly good news. That bias is obvious in the opening paragraph saying the newly discovered oil & gas resources are “nearly three times the amount of petroleum products used by the entire country in a year.”  A more realistic wording might be something like “despite being the largest petroleum discovery ever, the Wolfcamp shale would provide only about three years of total U.S. petroleum consumption.”

But the saddest and baddest part is an apparent total lack of awareness of the realities of our Energy Situation: Our entire civilization was built on incredibly cheap, easy-to-get oil (and natural gas).  In the mid-20^th century it took burning as little as one barrel of oil to get 80-100 more barrels out of the ground. And for most of the 20^th century we could count on always getting more next year than we had this year, driving ever-increasing economic growth.

But all that’s over now.

Shale oil requires fracking, which causes serious environmental damage (a cost not included in corporate accounting), and has an Energy Returned on Energy Invested ratio not of 80:1 but maybe 8:1 – and often costs way more to get out of the ground, recently averaging around $60-$70 a barrel, than the market will bear. Right now West Texas Intermediate crude is selling for $45. 58. And the sidebar articles on that NPR story are about Bust arriving at the shale-oil Boom towns of North Dakota and Montana.

Further, world crude production has basically plateau’d since 2005. The economic “growth” reported since then being mainly produced by cutting interest rates to near zero, creating an enormous tower of unpayable debt.

I like to put The Situation this way: The beginning is near.

That is, the beginning of a return to a realistic outlook on How Things Work, no longer imagining that never-ending “growth” on a finite planet could be possible, and realizing that the fossil fuels were a one-time gift we have basically squandered by treating that magical gift as though it was just another “resource” subject to market supply & demand etc.

What am I talking about? Consider that the energy contained in a barrel of oil enables us to get physical work done today that would take a typically fit adult human at least ten full-time work years to accomplish. At minimum wage, we would have to pay that human at least $150,000. But we allow that barrel of oil to be sold on a commodity market for $45.58. It is insane.

Gail Tverberg just day before yesterday put up a convincing piece titled, “The Energy Problem Behind Trump’s Election.” Check it out at: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/11/17/the-energy-problem-behind-trumps-election/

Other sources:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/16/502337471/usgs-announces-its-largest-oil-and-gas-discovery-ever

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/02/29/the-break-even-cost-for-shale-oil/#7476068de792

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-04-13/did-crude-oil-production-actually-peak-in-2005

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4315

9/11/01 Fifteen years out

The Auburn UU Fellowship humanists group holds their potluck and discussion meeting tonight, and I plan to go. Jim Newton is to lead a discussion on "Anatomy of the Deep State" by Mike Lofgren

http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/

I sent the following to Jim Newton, under the subject line "Deep State doings." The Deep State article is good, but it does not get to the actual deeds of the Deep State, and I would put at the top of that list the murder of JFK and the 9/11 attack. 

The best current summary of the evidence that the three 9/11 skyscrapers (Twin Towers + Bldg 7) were brought down not by the hijacked planes or fires but by controlled demolition (and thus the official conspiracy theory advanced by the U.S. Gov was fraudulent): http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-911-truth-movement-15-years-later-where-do-we-stand/.  See also Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. 

About JFK, I recommend the book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

By James Douglass. On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1439193886

Highly recommended by Ray McGovern (retired CIA). Other reviews: 

“Douglass presents, brilliantly, an unfamiliar yet thoroughly convincing account of a series of creditable decisions of John F. Kennedy—at odds with his initial Cold War stance—that earned him the secret distrust and hatred of hard-liners among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA. Did this suspicion and rage lead directly to his murder by agents of these institutions, as Douglass concludes? Many readers who are not yet convinced of this ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ by Douglass’s prosecutorial indictment will find themselves, perhaps—like myself—for the first time, compelled to call for an authoritative criminal investigation. Recent events give all the more urgency to learning what such an inquiry can teach us about how, by whom, and in whose interests this country is run.” --Daniel Ellsberg, author, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

In JFK and the Unspeakable Jim Douglass has distilled all the best available research into a very well-documented and convincing portrait of President Kennedy's transforming turn to peace, at the cost of his life. Personally, it has made a very big impact on me. After reading it in Dallas, I was moved for the first time to visit Dealey Plaza. I urge all Americans to read this book and come to their own conclusions about why he died and why -- after fifty years -- it still matters.” -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 
“Right now, I ask all of you—please please, read JFK and the Unspeakable! I cried all night reading it, and didn’t sleep a wink. It is a book that could make us stand up and change the world, right now. Maybe we can save the world before it blows up. Really” —Yoko Ono

“A remarkable story that changed the way I view the world.”—JAMES BRADLEY, author of Flags of Our Fathers
“Arguably the most important book yet written about a U.S. president … Should be required reading for all high school and college students, and anyone who is a registered voter!”—JOHN PERKINS, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman 
“The best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance … But don’t take my word for it. Read this extraordinary book and reach your own conclusions.” —OLIVER STONE, director
"Jim Douglass has unraveled the story of President Kennedy’s astonishing and little-known turn toward peace, and the reasons why members of his own government felt he must be eliminated. This disturbing, enlightening, and ultimately inspiring book should be read by all Americans. It has the power to change our lives and to set us free."—MARTIN SHEEN
“JFK and the Unspeakable is an exceptional achievement. Douglass has made the strongest case so far in the JFK assassination literature as to the Who and the Why of Dallas.”—GERALD McNIGHT, author of Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why

A one-hour video presentation by Jim Douglass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srstQVfVNEM

David Ray Griffin on "911 Miracles"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3caIG0SMHXE

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth:

http://www.ae911truth.org/

Note: Judy and I in 1998, as outside coordinators of Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty (phadp.org), published an essay by Jim Douglass entitled Compassion and the Unspeakable in the Murders of Martin, Malcolm, JFK and RFK, basically an edited transcript of an invited address Jim gave as the keynote speech at the 1997 annual meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society. This little 16-page pamphlet turned out to be the precursor of Jim's big book on JFK. 

Today is Earth Overshoot Day

Last year  my Earth Overshoot Day post was put up on August 13. I said, "The day marks the estimated calendar date when humanity’s demand on the planet’s ecological services (which produce renewable resources and assimilate wastes) outstrips what the Earth can supply. This means that for the rest of the year, we are taking more than is regenerated, operating in Overshoot." In 2014, Earth Overshoot Day was August 19^th. We first went into Overshoot in the late 1970s, and since then the day has crept ever earlier on the calendar. We are now using the ecological resources of just over 1.6 Earths, according to: http://www.overshootday.org/. 
I have to add that this is a very conservative and optimistic assessment. Other scientific analyses indicate we are even further in overshoot.

What's wrong? There is one simple and should-be obvious fact that shows how out of touch with reality our entire industrial/technological civilization is: 
One barrel of oil contains an amount of energy that enables us to accomplish in one day what it would take a normally fit human male ten years to do. At 8 hours/day, 40 hours/week, 50 weeks/year. Just at minimum wage, that would come close to 150 thousand dollars. Yet we allow this almost magical but non-renewable replacement for human (and, okay animal) labor to be sold on a commodity market for $40 per barrel. Or $140 per barrel. Whichever, it is insane. 

Want the full story? Go to http://www.themonkeytrap.us/ and watch Nate Hagens' presentation, A Guide to Being Human in the 21st Century. Nate got an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago, had a successful career on Wall Street but quit because money wasn't making him happy, took time out to think about and read up on things, went to the University of Vermont and earned a PhD in natural resources. He now lives on a farm in Wisconsin. But teaches a course at U Minnesota titled "Reality 101." Nate knows what he is talking about. 

Spending $4 million per hour for 30 years – to guarantee nuclear annihilation

Since the building is still standing, this scene – a child jumping rope – had to have been miles from the epicenter of the Hiroshima bomb. Yet the intensity of the blast radiation permanently etched her shadow on the wall. 

This sent as letter to the editor at Valley Times-News, August 5, 2016 –

To Bomb or not to Bomb?

I don’t now remember the exact date, but about this time in the summer of 1956, with Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) on my mind, I asked a Japanese friend what she remembered about WWII. We had both been children during the war, but old enough to remember things, especially by 1945.

Midori told me she remembered strafing, but no bombing.

I was an electronics tech (E-5) serving aboard the USS Hamul, AD-20, stationed at Yokosuka Naval Base. YNB had been the main base of the Imperial Japanese Navy, but I had been taking it for granted as the main U.S. naval base in the Western Pacific. (It still is, home port of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan.)

What Midori said made me think again about YNB. Looking around from the signal bridge of my ship, I saw a lot of new construction, yes. But also a lot of really old and obviously unbombed facilities.

YNB guards the entrance to Tokyo Bay and surely had to have been high on the U.S. list of potential military targets. Including possible targets for an atomic bomb. They would have been able to see the mushroom cloud from Tokyo. By 1945 the U.S. had total air superiority over Japan. We firebombed the major cities and dropped atomic bombs on two mostly civilian cities.  Did we never bomb the main base of the Imperial Japanese Navy at all?

It took me years to fully deal with that question or face up to the implications of possible answers. I was a very patriotic and idealistic young man.  On discharge from the Navy I took a job for a year as a “missile guidance technician” for what became Lockheed-Martin. I went back to college to prepare for a career with either the CIA or NSA, majoring in mathematics and taking a year of Russian history and two years of Russian language.

Eventually, I changed my career path (becoming a college English teacher, for one thing). And began to seriously look for answers.  Here’s what I found:

On April 18, 1942, one of the Doolittle raid bombers (remember the movie Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo?) dropped one bomb on YNB on its way to Tokyo. Skip to July 18, 1945, when Admiral Bull Halsey ordered a dive-bomber attack primarily aimed at the battleship Nagato, which had been Admiral Yamamoto’s flagship in the attack on Pearl Harbor, but then was out of diesel fuel and helplessly moored off to one side of YNB. The base itself was largely undamaged. I think the strafing Midori remembered was probably strafing to suppress anti-aircraft fire during this attack.

Top-level U.S. planners early in the war decided to spare YNB because it would be needed as a key U.S. “forward defense” base in preparation for WWIII, against Russia or possibly China. Such “forward-thinking” preparations are apparent in government records, memoirs and diaries of top U.S. military and government officials of the time, especially in regard to possible use of The Bomb.

Top admirals and generals, including Eisenhower, MacArthur and even Curtis LeMay, almost unanimously maintained that there was no military necessity to use the Bomb at all to force Japan to surrender or to “prevent the loss of millions of American lives in an invasion of Japan.” That myth was later fostered by government and media and vehemently believed by most of the American public.

Top U.S. government officials were focused far beyond Japan on an anticipated long-term global struggle for power. President Truman’s closest advisor, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, for example, in May of 1945 “did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war [but that] our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.” (I’m quoting from The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, by Gar Alperovitz, 1995.)

But the Bomb we “demonstrated” at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was a mere toy compared with the level of devastation that would be wreaked by even one of the thousands of nuclear weapons today in the hands of seven nations.

Even more scary: the U.S. is conducting a “modernization” of our nuclear arsenal that will cost an insane $4 million per hour over the next thirty years, the plan suggesting that our strategists imagine (insanely) the possibility of a “winnable” nuclear conflict. And, as I pointed out in my letter to the editor in last Wednesday’s Times-News, we are now threatening Russia with what looks to them like preparation for a nuclear first-strike. Taking the world again to the brink of nuclear disaster.

It’s time to end the global struggle for power.  We desperately need a global struggle for peace.

More info at ananuclear.org and at orepa.org.

Photo at: http://ohfact.com/interesting-facts-about-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-bombing/