Here’s an idea whose time should not have come: PLASTIC CANS. 
Canned fruit purveyors figured out that unlike baked beans or peas, the visual appeal of their produce could be a selling point. As a result, clear plastic bottles lend the appearance of an upscale alternative and command over three times the price -and social cost. What was a recyclable can, is now more plastic landfill. What was a safe container, will now leech plastic into your fruit.
I just got a notice that some inert substance is trying to come to life! Something called the Green City Coalition has sprung forward from the Sustainable Living Working Group and that it is all coming to life like Frankenstein’s monster! Here is the stated purpose of the creature…
Draft Mission Statement: ‘The purpose of the Green City Coalition is to promote an ecologically, economically and socially healthy city and county, for the benefit of present and future residents of the Pikes Peak region. We envision healthy, equitable and sustainable communities, both human and natural.’
Wow! Has a committee ever put forward a prettier announcement of its coming to life from inanimate matter? Instead of a brown shirt city we are to visualize whirled green peas! Well, actually not even that, really. Maybe Fort Carson can help out some in the greening of CS? With our help, of course…
MORE INFO—The next meeting of the Green City Coalition Steering Committee will be 6:30-8:30 p.m. on April 9 at the City Hall Academy Room, 107 N. Nevada Ave. For more information, contact Steve at sustain@ppjpc.org or (719) 632-6189.
Yes, if you can mutter the word SUSTAINABILITY, be there, or be square! This is so exciting! It reminds me of Austin, Texas, and oh YES, it is so ever green in that city… NOT.
Does this sort of vacuous nonsense really have much meaning? Or is it just a silly pretense to being some sort of counterpoint to Gazette newspaper editorials claiming that we should not worried about environmental issues at all?
I love the color GREEN! So do the Irish. So do frogs and alligators. So does the CIA. Let’s get a plan to recycle The Gazette and save Mother Earth!
We’ve all heard of Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, Custer Battles et al. Who are the other contractor / profiteer / mercenaries in Iraq? Here’s a partial list, sorted by most recent fatality.
Prolog Middle East, Wackenhut Services, Tetra Tech EC, DynCorp International, Armor-Group, L-3 Communications, Erinys International, Aegis Defence Services, CSS Global, BLP International, Odebrecht, Unity Resources Group, National Democratic Institute, The Sandi Group, Blue Hackle, Securiforce International, ECCI, Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc, The Olive Group, Falcon Security, Lear Siegler Inc, EOD Technology, Inc., Cochise Consultancy, Inc., AIM Group, MPRI, Tetra Tech, Genric, SOC-SMG, Hart Security Company, Torres International, Danubia Global Incorporated, Kroll Incorporated, MVM Inc., Triple Canopy, Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc, Titan Corp, GRS Security, Control Risks Group, USA Environmental Inc., Lloyd-Owen International, CTU Consulting, Kuwaiti company, Edinburgh Risk Inc, Qatar International Trading Company, Janusian Security Risk Management., Steele Foundation, Bearing Point, Inc., CLI USA, Global Risk Strategies Limited, Taehwa Electric Co, Gorkha Manpower Company, Eurodelta d.o.o, Omega Risk Solutions, Gulf Services Co., MayDay Supply, Morning Star Co., Soufan Engineering, Siemens, Ulasli Oil Company, Bilintur, Al Tamimi group, InterEnergoServis, United Defense Industries, Readiness Mgmt. Svcs., Johnson Controls, Gana General Trading Co., Al-Atheer, Granite Services, Inc., General Electric, Titan National Security Solutions, Environmental Chemical Corp. International, Control Risks Group, Yuksel Construction, Prime Projects International, Meteoric Tactical Solutions, Bidepa, SOMAT, Chemoprojekt, Ensto Utility Networks, Air-Ix, SAS International, Ultra Services.Irex Corp., Omu Electric Co., Washington Group, Proactive Communications Inc, ToiFor Kft, IAP Worldwide Services, Sub-Surface Engineering, Bechtel, National Response Corp. of Long Island, Tetra Tech EC.
This week Glen Canyon Dam engineers deigned to turn on their taps for the benefit of the Grand Canyon ecosystem. Environmentalists and academics call for the simulated flash flood to be conducted yearly, but the hydroelectric folk want to wait another several years to study the results. Relinquishing water to the Grand Canyon costs them millions in lost energy revenue. Can you bet that when the dam was first conceived, there would have been no question of threatening the health of the Grand Canyon.
Today conservationists have to beg for scraps where originally there was no businessman at the table. How many assumptions must we safeguard in anticipation that bean counters will eventually challenge the cost, regardless the original parameters?
It could no doubt be decided that ambulances would operate more cheaply if they waited for patients to expire before transporting them. No EMT training would be necessary, and insurance rates and gas consumption would be lower because with a deceased passenger there’s no need to hurry. Soon enough we’ll have accountants weighing in, not about whether to adopt a dead-body-only policy, but asking us to justify how live-bodies would merit the extra expense.
We think Communism came up against the harsh reality of human nature, look where Capitalism is hitting the wall. Inanity hath no rival like greed unglued. Smart people can build an institution, but if they don’t chains the managers to a strict constitution, heavy on the ethics and what to smart people would have been common sense, you can expect antithetical calamity.
Look at the rationalizations being made for global warming, toxins, inhumanity, disparity, war, torture. You could tell Alberto Gonzalez to his face, excuse me, but he’s got his boot on your foot, and he’ll respond impassively that it’s neither your, nor his, concern.
Winds have been blowing up dust from Gold Hill, in part due to a two month discontinuance of keeping damp the exposed 210-acre toxic mound. Neighbors are complaining, but have no fear, developer Bob Willard told the Westside Pioneer “I take responsibility for that.” That’s great. If years later health statistics point to an abnormal concentration of debilitating illness due to arsenic or lead, we’ll know where to knock.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Profit now at all cost later.
The State of Colorado authorized the Gold Hill development on a “brownfiled” site, the mound of tailings from the old gold-mill. Their proviso was that particular care be taken to, among other measures, keep the freshly disturbed tailings from being inhaled by the city’s residents.
For some reason, perhaps owing to the housing market financing problems, Willard decided to forgo the water trucks until someone complained. Oh, is that how enforcement of state instructions work? Open the can of worms, whether you have the means to stick around or not, don’t bother about the lid.
It looks as if the state will bear some fault for this too. But meanwhile the developer tells us he will bear full responsibility for his lack of diligence to safeguard community health. Is he planning to abscond to Paraguay with his takings before we all start falling sick?
I noticed something about the Rampart Range cleanup controversy but don’t know if I posted it here. A few months ago (before the Range became, as always, a sheet of impenetrable ice) there was a story in the Indy about it. Only, the focus was on Lead. Lead, it was pointed out by the Anti-environmental people, is hard to dissolve in water. Therefore it wasn’t in any way responsible for the sudden spike in toxins in the Manitou spirit-water.
What’s worrisome, though, isn’t the lead, (carcinogenic sure, but not as much as) Mercury.
As in, Mercury Fulminate.
Not pure mercury, but a tarnish or rust of mercury, mercury nitrate.
And, yeah, water soluble.
But the primers in those millions of rounds of ammunition popped off up there every year, the primers are made of mercury fulminate.
Some .22 caliber rounds have no smokeless powder at all, just mercury fulminate.
Remember when the Cowboy Star President, Ray Gunn, got busted in the head and shoulder with a .22? and there was a mini controversy about the ammo… because it had Mercury Fulminate in the slugs as well, making them Explosive.
And, of course, the AFA and Ft Carson have their gun ranges and rifle ranges as well.
Thing about mercury fulminate, it’s the most common detonator both for the shells which toss the projectiles, because it is SO very reliable (trust me, you strike that stuff with anything and it’s going to pop…) the explosive projectiles and the bombs released use it as a primer/detonator as well.
for the same reason.
Just before I came up here, some of y’all were in a dispute with Ft Carson over the ammunition waste metals.
The Army basically told everybody to STFU and it ain’t none of our damn business what kind of poison they’re pouring into our water supply.
Oh, and I DID mention this once… at Camp Casey one evening.
What the Army had said about “Our troops need to use the same types of ammunition in their weapons in training as they do in the Global War on Terror”… this is important… that includes the DU anti-tank ammunition.
That, you know, could be another reason they really really don’t want people to think about the CAUSES of cancer.
All around America there are bleeding hearted liberals running small businesses… small social service businesses. As a general rule, too, liberals don’t run businesses very well. They’re too damn dumbly soft and sweet, that’s why. So we can begin to understand why all these ‘reform groups’ (like the local area’s Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.. for just one example) don’t make much profit for the people they claim to be serving (even as they keep them out in droves from their social advocacy groups, run as small ‘businesses’).
Here is the type of thing I am talking about,
…from an article appearing in The Nation…
‘Check off the boxes, copy the paragraph from two years ago, mail it in. As an election year approaches, I again face the piles of questionnaires that progressive organizations use to evaluate public officials. Environmentalists, feminists, campaign finance reformers, housing advocates and labor unions have all come to rely on these lists of our positions–often on issues that never even come up for a vote. It should come as no surprise that, for the most part, all we get out of this cumbersome process is a long line of “checklist liberals” who answer correctly but do little to advance the progressive causes that underlie the questionnaires.’
The rest of this article can be found on the liberal’s very own Nation Magazine at Transforming the Liberal Checklist
OK, OK! So the rest of the article is not very good, much like the liberal organizations themselves, and The Nation Magazine is not very good, either. It was still a good and insightful first paragraph of an article at least!
And the commentary reminded me of all those fund raising letters, free stamps with animal pictures on them, and ‘surveys’ to find out my learned opinions, etc. Reminds me of all the wasted time sitting in meetings where bleeding hearted liberals talk about running THEIR small businesses. You see? The bleeding hearted liberals are most always the ‘owners’ of small socially aware businesses calling themselves community’ groups, which these groups having small office staffs then try to run the group like it was a church or tiny corner store of some sort.
Yes, the small office staff always begin to behave as if they were real owners of the store, much in the same way that some convenience store minimum wage workers will try to stop a robber of some sort or other, by risking their own lives over pennies that supposedly belong to the stock owners instead. These small would be owners can snarl and bite quite hard if given an opportunity to do so. They often overpower the petty ‘robbers’ of their unit with their forceful indignations than can border on madness of sorts. Some times they get popped for being so dimwitted, too.
So what to do about all the PEACE and GREEN and SOCIAL JUSTICE groups’ ‘leaders’ acting in our name? They operate much as the Democratic Party does, which is to impede rather than progress the people forward.
The runners of these small businesses calling themselves ‘peace and justice’ outfits, most often see themselves not as an elected group of leaders for exploited workers struggling for justice and peace, but as a group of independent networkers and business operators, forcefully headed for making more profit for their own personal businesses, the social groups. They spend more time being angry at any of the lower levels of the ‘co-ops’ managed by themselves than at the power elites that cause the social injustice they are supposedly fighting against. When angered by the lower elements, their faces can become quite bulldog-like.
Recently a certain word has come into great popularity with this sort of manager owner of social cause… that word being the word SUSTAINABILITY. Why so popular this word, and with these people? It is because it strikes a chord with the small manager/owner and his small manager/owner mindset. They want to know if their small business is SUSTAINABLE and if their position as head of the operation is SUSTAINABLE most of all? SUSTAINABILITY is their biggest goal of them all. And now of course, corporate America wants to help them become SUSTAINABLE.
This sort of group run as a small business with paid staff who think themselves owners is a very huge impediment to any real social action taking place. The main technique of ‘the owners’ who are salaried is simply to eat up other people’s time. They know that they can out last them in energy by simply doing this, and can come out on top when actual decisions are to be made. In other words, they are well positioned to stifle.
Like owners of any corporation, ‘the owners’ of supposed social groups get paid real money for their time while the volunteers do not. Is this the model of a social action group that will get things done? Most certainly not. Unfortunately though, it is the model structure for liberals and their do-nothing liberalism everywhere today in America…. small groups with a paid ‘leader’ or two, spouting ‘good things’, and doing next to nothing besides appearing to be seeminglygood people.
At the recent meeting of the executive board of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, it was totally noticeable that nobody there had anything of a working class background. In fact, the idea of justice for workers is totally absent from this group with ‘justice’ in its name. Being so church-like, this group throws the word in as if it were a bone to the lower classes so next to being sweet dogs in the eyes of these nice people. They were about as working class in composition as the ACLU is!… to give an idea of what the meeting was actually like. Nobody was ‘angry’, just sad. Or happy when seemingly a crumb from real power is thrown in their direction. And at this meeting it had been.
The City of Colorado Springs was going to let the group march in the St Pat’s Day Parade! All Hallelujah, Jesus! But that is about more than this little essay can talk about for the time being. Just let it be said, that liberals running small businesses that should be action groups make my heart bleed. Bleeding hearted liberals make poor businessmen and the conservative business men will tear them to part. Antiwar groups should not be run like they are small businesses. Probably enough said at this point.
If you’ve ever watched Six Feet Under, you have a sense of what happens to the body prior to a conventional funeral and burial. If this is an indignity that you are willing to suffer, and a price tag that you are willing to bear, so be it.
But consider for a moment the environmental impact of the typical funerary send-off.
After the funeral service, the body is sealed inside a metal casket or lacquered wooden coffin lined with plush satin and adorned with gleaming brass accessories. This is then lowered into a concrete vault and buried. The reinforced concrete tomb is covered with a ton of dirt, and planted with non-native grass which is kept artificially green with pesticide and weed killer.
A ten-acre tract of cemetery ground hides enough coffin wood to construct more than 40 homes, and contains nearly a thousand tons of casket steel and another twenty thousand tons of concrete.
Formaldehyde, the primary ingredient in embalming fluids and a known carcinogen, is another concern. Nearly a million gallons of embalming fluid are buried every year in North America, some of which eventually leaches out and runs into surrounding soil and groundwater.
Above ground, the local cemetery looks peaceful and pastoral. But below the surface it serves, to all intents and purposes, as a landfill of hazardous wastes and non-biodegradable materials. An affront to nature, to be sure.
A modern natural burial, wherein the body is returned to the earth to decompose naturally and be recycled into new life, is an environmentally sustainable alternative to existing funeral practices. The body is prepared for burial without chemical preservatives and is buried in a simple shroud or biodegradable casket that might be made from locally harvested wood, wicker or even recycled paper.
A completed natural burial preserve is a green place with trees, grasses, and wildflowers, which in turn bring birds and other wildlife to the area. It is a living memorial and leaves a legacy of care for those of us who respect the earth and understand our connection to it.
What could be more organic than to become a part of nature? Death does, after all, complete the circle of life. I would find it comforting to know that my body will someday enrich the soil and allow living things to flourish. Maybe a molecule of mine will end up in a berry eaten by a bird. More likely, I’ll be a nut eaten by a manic squirrel.
Most Americans exist completely apart from the natural order. We live in artificial dwellings, are transported by artificial means and “nourished” by artificial foods. We wear high heels, mask all body odors, prepare meals in toxic cookware, wrap our bodies in synthetic materials. We pop pills to feel better and lose ourselves in electronic black holes to assuage boredom. Many of us live lives of isolation, like lone wolves, instead of in community with our fellow human beings.
Some of the more visionary among us provide suggestions for improvement. No more plastic bags! Wear hemp clothing! Eat organic! Bike to work! Use crystals to deodorize! Give free hugs! Such solutions are mere band-aids on a gaping wound. They are unable to stem the flow of blood, but they somehow make us feel better.
My children are learning about the benefits of recycling. Period. The conversation should be expanded. Instead of taking our cans to the curb, why not vow never again to drink anything that comes in a can? Or, even better, any beverage besides water. Let’s teach our kids that canned and bottled beverages are inherently unhealthy for the body, as well as detrimental to the environment. With a more holistic approach, the need to recycle would become less urgent, and the children would be better educated and healthier.
A holistic solution to energy conservation and national obesity can be found in the home thermostat. Many of us have turned down the heat to conserve energy. Good for the planet, no question. From a more holistic perspective, is it natural for man to live in a tightly climate-controlled environment? It isn’t. But our bodies have adapted to this artificial reality over time and we feel impelled to preserve it. So while we may turn down the thermostat, we bundle ourselves up to maintain the status quo.
I like to keep my house cool, about 60 degrees. I wear t-shirts and drink ice water and my little kids, with barely an ounce of body fat amongst them, play in their underwear, completely impervious to the cold. Remember that human beings are not dependent on the environment to determine body temperature. It is set biologically and will be maintained naturally in nearly all situations. If the outside temperature is hot, we sweat and our metabolism slows down so our bodies don’t overheat. This makes us feel sluggish; hence, the lazy summer day and dog days of summer weather characterizations. If the outer temperature is cooler, the body maintains heat by increasing the rate of metabolism and converting fat to energy. We build a fire within. Not only do we get warmer, we get thinner and more energetic to boot! Over time our metabolic rates are reset at a higher level, and we no longer feel the cold. We are warmed by our own energy source, not by a polyester sweatshirt.
Think about what it means to live naturally, like cave men. Get familiar with the workings of the body. Ponder what the planet was before man imposed his artificial intelligence upon it. Then attempt to conform to that which is natural wherever you can. What is good for the body will be good for the mind and the spirit, and is bound to be good for the environment.
I enjoyed the buzz over the past decade as the Pikes Peak Derby Dames built their DIY franchise, as if a regional roller derby team had simply been an oversight of misplaced heritage. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why the WWWF of the 70s had gone the way of the spitoon.
This poster appears to depict a supine woman relishing the attentions of leprechaun droogs intent on mayhem, or -dare I suspect- her own rape murder?
I heard one Dame interviewed on local radio. She joked about a cat fight at the City Auditorium event the night before. Asked what being a roller derby queen meant to her, she answered “Everything! It’s a lifestyle!”
To be fair, she is probably referring to the full time job the dames have undertaken to enliven this city. At local events the Derby Dames always make an appearance to promote their upcoming bouts. The message is no more ever than frivolity and empowerment. But is the gladiator ring the greener pasture for those across the gender gap?
We can joke about mud wrestling, but marauding gangs of teenagers already cross our streets and schools intent on violence. Hair pulling being the least of the injury.
Did the zeitgeist of the 70s, newly health conscious, concerned for the environment, and sensitive to social issues, lose interest in the roller derby for its cartoon violence and promotion of an adolescent gang banger ethic?
The sport might have lost its television coverage, but roller derby teams have sprung up a quarter century later all on their own. As much as we might hold ourselves to higher standards, and hope to discourage gang violence, the ape urges are strong. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl. The Salvation Army knows this struggle better than anyone, you can’t always keep a bad man up.
Ask the average American if advertising influences kids decisions and they will say that YES IT DOES. Ask them if advertising influences their own decisions and the overwhelming majority will deny that advertising effects their decisions in the least. Nobody wants to think of themselves as childlike, so they give out this childlike response!
So it is election time. What do we see all the American children doing? We see them responding to ‘democracy’ marketing just like little children in front of an advertising for a ‘Happy Meal’. Barrack Obama is the young person’s candidate, the CHANGE guy, the ‘we can all get along together’ man. Hillary is the ‘women first’ candidate, the ‘stick by her man’ woman. All the Democrats are into ‘democracy’ marketing because liberals, like conservative American, are little tiny tots. Slick Willy was the ‘First Black President’ even! Al Bore is Mr. Environment (forget about all those toxic computer items he pushed for the longest time) and Jimmy is the Man of Prayer Peace Center Guy! Madelyn Albright is Ms. Stop the Genocide woman!
The Republicans are skilled at Mr Tough Guy, Mr, Protector, Mr Family Values stuff. Yes, I know that the family values are more like those family values of Ted Haggard, the Pope, and Pat Robertson, but still…. America has a lot of sick, sick, sick families out there that this marketing approach appeals to.
Ask yourself, does this marketing act add up to DEMOCRACY, capital letters? Or is it just Gunsmoke, brought to you by…? the Devil himself? You so smart that all this propaganda doesn’t influence you any? Add it all up then.
The kids are still on Christmas break and are starting to show definite signs of cabin fever. To stave off a domestic implosion, we took a trip up to the Denver Art Museum yesterday. The DAM recently opened a spectacular addition designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect chosen to rebuild the World Trade Center site. But I had an ulterior motive. I’d recently read about the DAMs 16,000-piece assemblage of pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial art, including one of the world’s largest collections of Costa Rican artifacts, nearly 2,000 items, donated to the museum by Denver businessman, Frederick Mayer, and his wife. I wanted to check it out.
We’re planning a trip to Costa Rica. Although not much is known about pre-Columbian Costa Rica in comparison to the high cultures of Mexico and South America, recent excavations have uncovered numerous artifacts, including jade carvings. Jade is green and pretty and shiny, perfect for an art lover of my caliber, so I wanted to see it for myself. Call it a bit of research before hitting the craft markets in Sarchi!
Sure enough, Eric and I lost ourselves in a huge room filled with thousands of artifacts. Stone, ceramic, textiles, gold and, oh yes, jade. After an hour or so, we’d barely made a dent in the pre-Columbian collection. Vowing a subsequent visit to the Spanish Colonial galleries, we left to collect the kids before their art experience became Night-mare at the Museum.
As always, looking at ancient artifacts leads me into lofty reverie of past worlds and bare-chested warriors. But this time I couldn’t help but wonder about Jan and Frederick Mayer as well. Certainly amazement and appreciation for their commitment to art and to philanthropy. But really, how on earth had one couple managed to collect this much art from a small Central American country? And why aren’t many of the beautiful pieces residing in Costa Rica, teaching and providing inspiration to Costa Ricans? Especially because Costa Rican pre-Columbian history is not nearly as well-documented as that of its neighbors.
Costa Rica has taken significant measures to protect their natural environment from exploitation. Nearly 20% of the land is set aside for preserves, parks or refuges of some sort. But after my trip to the Denver Art Museum, I’m thinking that perhaps Costa Rica should endeavor to protect other national treasures, especially art created by the hands of largely unknown ancestors, from passionate and well-meaning American oilmen.
I will visit the museums in San Jose and let you know how they measure up against the breathtaking Denver Art Museum, with its encyclopedic collection of pre-Columbian Costa Rican artifacts–and hopefully return with a few shiny jade replicas of my own!
There’s an interesting trait of human nature I see playing out on the ever opening expanses of the Internet. It’s evident in dramatic relief too in Second Life. I suppose it’s the combination of man’s entrepreneurial spirit and the Protestant industrial ethic that promotes work as fun.
While the Internet and virtual worlds offer play of unlimited horizon, I find I am less likely to encounter a playful cricket than I am Aesop’s ant. And here’s where I see this dynamic playing out.
In Second Life we’re all building. Building, building. Mortgaging to buy more land, to terraform, to implement designs, the quicker to await the vast unwashed. Everybody’s doing it, but that’s the game, to build. Buy and build, actually.
On the web everyone’s building blogs, pages, platforms, venues, waiting for the bon-vivants and their big-spending ways. Build it and they shall come seems to be the prevailing assumption.
Build it and they shall come only applied to the ghost of Shoeless Joe. In Second Life and on the Internet, we all want to be builders.
There’s something too I think of the Gold Rush spirit, this time wise to the adage that the real fortunes were made not panning for gold, but in selling the picks and shovels. So we lay siege online, squirreling away what we can, situating ourselves to better sell the tools as the public rushes in. But the incoming masses need not follow a trail west, nor flee lands of less opportunity. The virtual world expands for all. We can all homestead, we need neither rail nor city centers. Room for all. How do you make a buck, where’s there’s no need for a middle man?
In Second Life what I see are new worlds unfolding, neighborhoods, theme parks, entire high concept environments, growing in all directions except more populous. I’ve even seen tract housing, like urban sprawl, except there’s no burgeoning migration. The Second Life universe is a boom town on its outer reaches, without the resources which will eventually be needed to support it. In this case, even just others to show interest.
Here’s a survey for the Blog Reader Project survey. If you want to invest the interest.
We’ve all seen those garbage trucks going around in circles, with big signs painted on them that say that their landfills (dumps) are pristine centers for wildlife! Such an ethical and ecologically concerned company is Waste Management! This below is what the CEO of this fine company pulls down in salary with his BS about ‘Keeping America Beautiful’ and other such Waste Management Inc. PR.
David P. Steiner
Chief Executive Officer
Waste Management Inc.
The proxy statement for Waste Management Inc. uses the new SEC executive compensation rules.
In 2006, David P. Steiner raked in $5,601,287 in total compensation according to the SEC. However, according to the AFL-CIO’s calculation method*, he raked in $6,541,198 in total 2006 compensation.
With all the pro Green rhetoric coming out about subjects like the supposed Fort Carson ‘sustainability’ projects, etc., it pays to keep a sceptical eye on these corporate Green cons. Interestingly, Waste Management Inc. supposedly promotes the FreeCycle Movement. You can see how effective that is by judging how little actually gets recycled here in Colorado Springs where those Waste Management garbage trucks roam the streets boasting of how ‘Green’ they are.
If they are so Green, then why haven’t they used their influence to get the Colorado Springs City Council to come up with a real recycling program? Worth mentioning, too, is that their HQ is Houston, Texas, which is hardly the pristine center of environmentalism. In fact, that city is a toxic dump.
Oh, and if you want to go out to one of those ‘wildlife refuges’ built by Waste Management Inc’s fine endeavours?… then check out this one in California. Wetlands Landfill Expansion
Are “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” a rather convenient way for the large investment companies (now that they’re all jumping on the bandwagon) to step forward, in lock step with the Congress, and find the ways in which they can become the “players” in the unfolding “crisis” and have a new tax that will, of course as always, be a burden most on those who can least afford it?
Or are they really concerned about the planet? Was Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” more of an investment talk aimed at these owners of capital getting in on a carbon tax and trading scheme, rather than a real debate that gave time to the dissenting scientific view? And, is the dogma now that CO2 and greenhouse effect are really driving the race toward ownership of emerging large alternative energy companies in which the corporations will likely win? Calling CO2 a pollutant is deception. It is what trees and plants thrive on.
Ethanol has now become the new “savior” in our effort of curbing the import of foreign oil. But ethanol is net-energy. That is, it takes more energy to create it than it gives back, besides the agricultural mess it will lead us to. How is it in past earth warming cycles, man’s absence was a causation? Seemingly impossible. Is the Solar cycle part of a natural global warming process? Why aren’t we moving instead to form citizen owned solar and wind utilities that will help the vast majority to utilize these energies without the huge up front costs usually associated? Or unless implemented immediately and widely, would it be all for naught as the worlds energy needs will never be affected by alternative energies? In other words, how do you replace the 85 million barrels of oil a day the planet uses? Not to mention the tons of coal and millions of cubic feet of natural gas?
Gore’s 7 good foot soldiers steps to reduce Co2 “pollution” is almost Hitlarian. Don’t think, just do what I say …from a spineless politician who wouldn’t stand up (and told others not to) for an investigation into the 2000 stolen election.
Capitalism will overtake any real discussion of problems we face and destroy dissenters who offer up real solutions to energy use that are owned by the populace at large. And once they’ve taxed us for carbon they will figure out a way to tax the sun or wind for those who take advantage of it for their homes. Yes, reduce your use of oil, gas, coal, etc… but beware who really benefits from this mostly un-debated scare of global warming.
What do we get for behaving as they want us to? A cleaner world? But no monetary gain for us? If our government was really serious about this the tax incentives would come back as in the 70’s and much bigger this time. And in all states. But that would hurt the oil-energy companies.
Some interesting articles and comments for your consideration:
Denial
By Frank Furedi, Spiked Online
“The charge of denial has become a secular form of blasphemy … The heretic is condemned because he has dared to question an authority that must never be questioned. Here, ‘overwhelming evidence’ serves as the equivalent of revealed religious truth, and those who question ‘scientists of unquestioned reputation’ — that is, the new priestly caste — are guilty of blasphemy … ‘Denial’ has become part of a secular inquisition that stigmatizes free thinking.”
Preaching the Climate Catechism
By Lorne Gunter, National Post
“Since 2003, the upper layer of the Atlantic has lost 25% of the extra heat it had built up in the past three decades…The broad consensus among solar scientists is that the Earth’s warming is almost entirely explicable by increased solar activity that began about 100 years ago, and which will end around 2020…But these inconvenient truths would be bad for the cause…”
Lehman Brothers contemplate and study profitability of Climate Change
Austrailian carbon credit purchase. Who owns the wind farm in China? Not the citizens.
In college, when asked where I was from, I would proclaim, “I’m from Colorado Springs!” Eyes would light up in recognition. “Isn’t that…?” “Yes,” I would nod. Nestled at the foot of Pikes Peak. The inspiration for America the Beautiful. Home to Garden of the Gods, the Air Force Academy, NORAD, the Olympic Training Center. I could proudly claim them all.
My how times have changed. Still happy to reside in Colorado, I do not readily admit that I live in Colorado Springs. When my secret is uncovered, eyes narrow with suspicion. “Isn’t that…?” “Yes,” I say as my shoulders sag. Focus on the Family, New Life Church, Ted Haggard, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin.
My home town, my slice of purple mountain majesty, has become ground zero for war profiteers and religious zealots.
Although we don’t know many of them by name, they have a profound impact on our community. They shape local politics. They vote down cultural and environmental initiatives, and deny tax support for helping organizations. They control school boards and change school curricula. They chase away our artists and our young idealists. They drive our gay population back into the closet. And they profit from the spilled blood of our children.
They and their ilk put George W. Bush in the White House. They continue to support our country’s assaults on sovereign nations in order to advance their narrow ideologies and line their gaping pockets. The shame I feel when people discover that I am from Colorado Springs is the same shame felt by many Americans traveling abroad. “We are from the United States,” they mumble. Ground zero for war profiteers and religious zealots….
My friend belongs to the Pikes Peak Inter-Religious Clergy Alliance. The members are from a diversity of denominations, but feel united by their common stand on social issues. Progressive issues actually. “We would have included Progressive in the name except for its connotation of Palestine-Israel advocacy.”
I love it.
Here’s what Wikipedia describes as the tenets of progressivism, a political movement started at the dawn of the last century, and its accomplishments:
Democracy
. Ballot initiative
. Direct primary
. Direct election of U.S. Senators
. Referendum
. Recall
. Secret ballot
. Women’s suffrage
Efficiency
. Professional administrators
. Centralization of decision-making process
. Movements to eliminate governmental corruption
Regulation of large corporations and monopolies
. Trust-busting
. Regulation
. Socialism
. Laissez-Faire
Social justice
. Development of professional social workers
. The building of Settlement Houses
. The enactment of child labor laws
. Support for the goals of organized labor
. Prohibition laws
Environmentalism
. National parks and wildlife refuges
John Howard, Australia’s political dinosaur, is finally dead due to the effects of Global Warming. He lost the election for Australian Prime Minister, and the reason why is that…
like our own local idiots at The Gazette editorial pages he was a political dinosaur who pooh-poohed Global Warming as being of any real concern to him. But it killed him in the end.
In the land most effected by the Ozone Hole and Coral Reef Destruction, drought, and extinction of wildlife, John Howard insisted on mouthing off the same old prescriptions for yet more disaster. Plus, he was a political whore in bed with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfield.
In the end though, Global Warming finally caught up with the dumb bastard. See John Howard Asleep on Climate Change, where Australian Labor nails him on the issue.
Here is Howard’s mistaken belief… Climate not main challenge: PM. As we can see from the election results, this dinosaur was absolutely mistaken.
Like with the Gazette editorial staff, some political Dodo Birds will either have to evolve or just go extinct. In Oz, Howard is now dead. In Colorado Springs, the paper is just less read.
Excessive amounts of energy used in the US brings floods to Bangladesh and drought to Sudan. What it doesn’t bring, is much concern from the US public about the destructiveness of its economy on other peoples. See Thousands stranded without aid in Bangladesh after cyclone hits.
Everybody says they’re for helping out the environment these days, and yet nobody seems to be for protecting the environment that much. After all, who is going to say they are for dumping a pile of personal refuse into the middle of the city park, so to speak?
The most prolific talkers about the need to save the environment are the supporters of the world wide Green Party Movement. This political movement was formed because neither the Marxists nor the capitalists of the world seemed to take the issue seriously enough. Still, today the real issue is, does the Green Movement itself take saving the environment all that seriously? Unfortunately I think that the answer is really… NO, it does not. Why is that conclusion warranted?
Let’s take a look at the energy companies and the Green Movement, for example, and what do all the Green supporters always seem to advocate? They basically seem to advocate nothing. They usually talk about finding new non-polluting energy sources and turning to that as replacement for oil, coal, and nuclear. They advocate that individuals use less energy personally. They advocate less personal consumerism, but they don’t advocate much any real change in the structure of who runs the energy businesses, which is in private hands.
Is that really advocating for protecting the environment in a serious manner?
These energy companies are monstrous in size and are the major multi-nationals in the world. Can their structure just be allowed to stay as it is now, and the earth can be protected by that? Are these energy companies in private hands going to respond to reason and turn to ‘clean’ fuels in lesser amounts? We have to keep in mind that the rest of the multi-nationals demand humongous amounts of energy to be supplied to them for production, transportation, and sales.
Demanding that individuals reduce personal consumption while humongous multi-nationals should merely remain organized as they are is not a serious plan to combat ecological disintegration. Where is the Green Movement’s call to take these companies out of private hands and control their management so that profit making is not their single orientation? Have we missed something here, because allowing private ownership of multi-national energy corporations is not going to conserve Earth?
The Greens have to do what many countries have had to do in the past to be a movement that can seriously change the world. Many countries when confronted by huge multi-nationals that wanted to merely loot national resources and make a profit off that, nationalized these companies. They took them over and took back some of the loot taken into private hands by the super rich. It was necessary to do so, just as it is still necessary to do this with today’s humongous energy conglomerates. In short, the Green Movement must stop just making demands that individual peons change their consumer habits, and demand that energy multi-nationals be nationalized.
The Green Movement, to save Earth’s ecology, has to change from being a group of nice individuals talking intellectually about good things, and become a Movement that has serious demands that can actually effect serious change if implemented. Nationalize the energy multi-nationals now!
Think that costs too much in the long run? Then think some about how these companies have directed the spending of $2 1/2 trillion dollars PLUS into occupying Iraq and Afghanistan? Save some money and help save the planet from non-sustainable production directed by private owners looting Earth for private profit.
We are living the end of cheap oil, and bio-fuels are being proposed by multinational corporations and the Pentagon as an ecologically sound alternative to fossil fuels. But are they really?
When we factor in the conditions of the already degraded landscape of modern industrial agriculture we can see that bio-fuels will accelerate the destruction of land without being able to put a significant dent in energy needs.
George Monbiot addresses this issue some in his commentary The Western Appetite for Biofuels Is Causing Starvation in the Poor World Or check out this United Nations report.
We must be careful when the mass wasters of natural resources get behind a supposedly GREEN ‘solution’. We must ask ourselves if their ‘reforms’ and solutions’ actually improve things, or will they just lead us deeper into the abyss of economic and ecological collapse the world now faces?
Tom Warren feigns being a folksy, bearded, hippy ranger-ranch type, and is the perfect Pentagon GreenGo pimp to be in charge of the public’s manipulation by the military to put Fort Carson expansion into place in Pinion Canyon.
He heads up DECAM and talks ‘environment’ a lot, while pushing for the Pentagon’s toxicity to be implemented into the local area.
‘Aw Heck’ he seems to exude smilingly, ‘We’re going to become the best Wild Life refuge in The Land!’
Sure the Pentagon will be, Tommy. They always are for sure. I’m sure that the wildlife are doing just great out at Chernobyl, too. And out where all the Depleted Uranium has been dropped in The Balkans and Middle East. And the wildlife certainly must love the Pentagon’s Agent Orange spread all over in SE Asia, since it keeps the human predator population down.
You’re right, Tommy, the Colorado birds and deer need the Pentagon to take it all over! And be sure to help us be efficient in energy use for folk out there on base, Comandante Tommy.
What an act, and what an actor! We pay the tax dollars, and they then buy the comedy routine by military GreenGo propaganda pimps, like this guy, Tommy Warren. What suckers the American taxpaying public certainly are to do this!
I had a chance to meet this snake in person last week, and talk about a corn ball. He offered to waive the fees if any of us wanted to be sucked into the inside of his ‘sustainability’ act that was playing inside the Crowne Plaza Hotel that week. We preferred to protest planned Pinion Canyon expansion by the military outside in the street instead.
Go Army! Be all you can pretend to be! How silly some of this corporatized pretend Green stuff coming out actually is. After he gets done here, Maybe Tom Warren can apply for the PR pimp position out in Amarillo for the Pantex atomic bomb factory there? He would be perfect talking about how irradiation keeps the beef all sanitary and what not. The Pentagon, land for many uses… blah, blah, blah.
For more about Tom’s work to keep suburbia from encroaching on Fort Carson (poor Fort Carson!) and bird habitat read about Comandante Tom’s contributions here… Save the rare birds, sez Tom Warren. by making your local military establishment grander!
For Tom Warren’s military connection see name #11 on Fort Carson military list here. What a con artist this guy is pretending to be part of the civilian community! This seems to be the new thing where police and Pentagon people come to community meetings out of uniform and play like concerned civilian community types.
Nobody cares. And that is just plain stupid. The prisoners in the US’s gulag of prisons are treated like pieces of crap and denied adequate medical care, and they in turn get sick, get worse, and even come back out into the communities with their jail bred diseases.
Then who gets the bug? The get tough on crime nitwit does. The families of the get tough on time nitwits do. We all do, simply because bad jails with bad or nonexistent medical care breed infectious diseases that later pass into the communities.
Alternet published an article touching on this issue which is educational about the tough on crime nit wit mind set that gets us all more endangered instead of made safer. For Women Behind Bars, “Health Care” Can Be Deadly
The Fort Carson Fourth Annual Community Sustainability Conference is playing in town right now, and is part of The Pentagon’s green baloney program.
You might want to take in some of the last sessions over at the Crown Plaza Hotel off of Circle & I-25,and offer up your suggestions that the military use solar power to deliver their future hydrogen bombs and that they now move to require all soldiers to become vegetarians while doing military service, etc., etc. lol… This idea that the US military is part of any sustainability effort is quite laughable one would think?
Unfortunately, there are always some gullible, yet ecology oriented people who will always buy into even the most outlandish notions put forward by those who hold power in our society. But really, what’s the use of pushing for a more ecologically oriented military? Are we really interested in a more Greenly done destruction, since the job of the military is simply to destroy other peoples’ economies? Or did some of the Colorado Springs local community want to forget about that?
Sustainable? How ’bout the US military just cleaning up all the toxic messes they have already made across Planet Earth? I suggest that they start with SE Asia and then head westward.
We can give all our soldiers in uniform sticks with hooks on the end so that they can go around walking through the fields picking up land mines and depleted uranium fragments, and give them suction devices too to help clean up Agent Orange and other chemical weapons residuals that they have used in the past that might be found in leaves and dust that children with deformities now play in.
Dear Pentagon, we urge you not to litter.