Erik's Blog
December 22, 2008
Toxic Chemicals in Cook Inlet
Check this out:"Trustees for Alaska, representing coastal Native villages, commercial fishermen, and Cook Inletkeeper, charged in court today that the Environmental Protection Agency repeatedly manipulated and sometimes falsified pollution data to support its decision to allow the operators of 19 aging oil and gas facilities to dump increasing amounts of polluted wastewater into Cook Inlet.
In a brief filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Trustees for Alaska argued that EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson violated the Clean Water Act in June of 2007 when he reissued a permit allowing Union Oil Company of California (Unocal) and other operators to dump, among other toxic pollutants, 279 tons of oil and grease into Cook Inlet every year. Unocal’s Trading Bay Production Facility discharges about 95% of the pollution coming from the Cook Inlet facilities.
The facilities began pumping oil – and discharging pollution – in the 1960s. Most of the pollution comes from millions of gallons of seawater that is injected into the subterranean oil reservoir to maintain pressure but becomes contaminated in the process. As oil and gas are pumped to the surface, they are separated from the seawater, which is left with a toxic mixture of oil, grease, heavy metals, and other pollutants. At offshore wells elsewhere in Alaska and
throughout the country, EPA requires operators to reinject this toxic soup back into the reservoir, achieving “zero discharge” of pollution. Only in Cook Inlet does EPA allow the contaminated brew to be dumped directly into coastal waters.
As the oil reservoirs beneath the Inlet have been pumped nearly dry, more and more seawater is required to keep up the pressure – and more pollution is being dumped into Cook Inlet. Today’s filing by Trustees for Alaska cites EPA documents showing that the waste stream has doubled since 1999, and is projected to grow to nearly 10 million gallons per day during the 5-year life of the challenged permit.
To accommodate the growing torrents of pollution, EPA has relied on vastly larger “mixing zones” – areas of Cook Inlet at the end of each discharge pipe where high concentrations of pollution are allowed. The theory is that by the time the contamination reaches the edge of a “mixing zone,” enough dilution has occurred to render the water outside the mixing zone clean enough to comply with water quality standards.
The new mixing zones are as much as 10 times larger than those approved by EPA in 1999 – extending more than 2 miles from an outfall in any direction.
“Instead of telling the operators to recycle their wastewater – like they do everywhere else in the U.S. – EPA has labeled more and more of Cook Inlet as a waste dump for the exclusive use of these oil companies,” said Massey.
Today’s court filing charges that allowing the increased pollution violates “antibacksliding” provisions of the Clean Water Act, which is aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating water pollution."
- Excerpted from the Cook Inlet Keepers Press Release Dec. 16th. You can find it here.
Who knew that oil and gas corporations are allowed to dump heavy metals and other toxic chemicals into Cook Inlet? And that this in the only place in the nation it's allowed? Virtually all the fish I eat comes from Cook Inlet. How can we allow this sort of thing to happen, and naively believe it's not going to affect anything? This is just outrageous. They have "sacrifice zones" near the outlet of all this contaminated sea water that kills every fish that swims through it.
You can hear an Alaska News Nightly audio story about it here.
Please contact your elected officials about this matter.
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December 16, 2008
Gratitude and Fear
I've been considering this quote from Neitzche's Beyond Good and Evil lately:"What astonishes one about the religiousity of the ancient Greeks is the tremendous amount of gratitude that emanates from it -- the kind of man who stands thus before nature and before life is a very noble one! -- Later, when the rabble came to predominate in Greece, fear also overran religion; and Christianity was preparing itself."
(I love Neitzche if only because he puts it all out there. No mincing words or trying to be P.C. for him!)
This quote has got me thinking about the role of gratitude and fear in the religious life. My assertion is this: gratitude is a more transcendent, refined state of mind than fear. And thus harder to acheive. It takes a significant level of mindfulness to really be grateful for everything in our lives. But fear? Fear is one of the few truly primitive emotions we feel. Fear comes from our most instinctual mind. It is thus immeadiate and strong when it arrives. It enters our biology.
And fear inspires action (flight/fight response). As a social tool, fear is a much more effective means of control and power than gratitude. Religious leaders who can inspire fear in their followers can largely inspire them to action. The same cannot be said for gratitude. Revolutions do not start with a lot of really grateful people.
I think we have to be careful to recognize how fear plays into our religious discourse. I think the Bible largely preaches a message of gratitude and grace. Not fear. And so we must be diligent in examining how our religious leaders propogate fear and how that fear gives them power.
Likewise, we need to create a religious discourse about gratitude. What every happened to feasts and festivals? Do we ever really gather together to simply give thanks to God? A religious culture of gratitude is a culture of deep faith and deep contentment. That's what we should be striving for.
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December 11, 2008
A few more thoughts on corporate America
Thoughts stemming from the last few days:1. Corporate America is run, obviously, by CEOs, CFOs and boards of directors. Most of these people are paid primarily in stock options. So when tough times come, what is corporate America's first obligation? To save jobs or save stock prices? I can't help but think about this as we hear about the vast amount of layouts announced daily by big corporations. I'm not necessary saying that corporate leaders should suddenly become charity workers. I simply think the corporate system is -- and always has been -- broken. And many, many people are paying the price for that right now.
2. As the Obama transition team considers a potentially HUGE stimulus package for 2009, one has to wonder: Do they know more than we do? Are we on the verge of real and total economic collapse? Throwing this sort of money , repeatedly, into the marketplace seems like an almost desperate act. Acts of desperation on the part of our leaders makes one wonder whether we aren't teetering on the edge of an abyss we have yet to acknowledge...
3. The government has given hundreds of billions of dollars to financial instirutions already, but look poised to not loan 15 billion to car makers. Are the banks that much more important than the auto makers? Some say the collapse of the big three could cost 10 million jobs throughout the economy. I'm not saying we should bail out businesses that make stupid decisions. But it seems the gov't has already set that precedent by bailing out the banks. My big concern is, if the banks get bailed out but the automakers fail, people will start to see the bailout as only for whitecollar workers. This could lead to huge social unrest... bad for governement. Good for change.
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December 07, 2008
Considering Leadership
As a short follow-up on my post: Do we take God for his word? I've been having a lot of conversations lately about the concept of leadership. The church I belong to lost a very "hands-on" pastor a couple years ago. He set the vision and worked hard to make the vision a reality. But since that time, the church been adrift in terms of vision, future, or any real action. And this has perplexed me. Usually -- I thought -- when there is a leadership/power vacuum, people often fill that vacuum. That has not been the case at church and that's surprised me. Lately I've learned (and yes, I realize I'm behind the curve) that the vast majority of people are followers and not leaders. This is probably not a shocking revelation to most. But I'm surprised that so many people live so passively, so fearfully...so unempowered. (more on this later)The pastor today preached on John the Baptist. Literarily, it was a good sermon about living with courage, speaking the truth, and standing up to injustice. But like every Sunday it fell on mostly deaf ears. At staff meeting this week, I asked the pastors "The prophets, John the Baptist, and Jesus lived almost entirely outside of the religious institution and outside of the empire. How then, do you take that same message into the "belly of the beast" so-to-speak? How do you as a pastor living in the center of the empire and the center of the religious institution preach to the most priviledged people in the world? How do we remain faithful to the message?"
And while I wasn't entirely satisfied with their answers, one of the pastors said "In some respects, we're here to perpetuate the institution." That's one of the most honest statements I've heard from anyone in a long time...
So how do we remain faithful to a revolutionary message? How does that look different than "perpetuating an institution?" Much to consider...
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December 02, 2008
Terrorism, Technology, and the USA
** First, let me start by saying that I do not condone terrorism or violence. As a means of revolution, violence is essentially unimaginative and often ineffective.**Terrorism has, unfortunately, become a real political force in the past decade. It's not that terrorism did not exist before 9/11, but since 2001, it has become a much more potent political force for a variety of reasons. Most of these reasons have to do with the United States. Below is a list of reasons we are, in some respect, enabling terrorism as a political force.
1. Our bullshit foreign policy.
I'm not going to go into this deeply, as it should be evident to most. The Taliban and Saddam Hussein? Guess who helped them to power during the Cold War? When we f*** around with other countries' leadership, arm rebels who we think will be our allies, and then destroy them and their countries when they didn't turn out how we hoped, who do we have to blame but ourselves ?
2. Our fascination with terrorism and it's entrance into American discourse
We can not deny that terrorism became a central issue in American discourse on 9/11. However, the problem with our obsession with terrorism is that it lends legitimacy to the acts of terrorism. Every crazy asshole with a bomb can become globally famous because of our obsession with and sensitivity to acts of terror. Their plight and ideology is instantly broadcast around the world on countless media outlets. Consider the recent attacks in Mumbai. Almost 200 people died, and it's a terrible tragedy. But during those same three days, thousands died in less dramatic ways. Across the world neglected, lost, and forgotten people died quietly from disease, hunger, poverty and war. No one will remember their names. By focusing obsessively on terror and terrorism we give immense power to terroists: the power to enter our discourse. They leave the fringe of society and make their home in the middle of it, entirely becasue they enter our social discourse.
Additionally, I've been thinking about where our fascination with terrorism comes from. And in doing so, I recalled Neitzche:
"After the fabric of society seems on the whole established and secured against external dangers, it is this fear of our neighbor which again creates new perspectives of moral valuation…The lofty independent spirituality, the will to stand alone, and even the cogent reason, are felt to be dangerous; everything that elevates the individual above the herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbor, is henceforth called evil; the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalizing disposition, the mediocrity of desires, attend a moral distinction and honor.”
In Beyond Good and Evil, Neitzche asserts that once a society has established itself against external dangers, it becomes essentially a passive society. This would seem to fit the USA. We have, in the past decade, condemned all forms of "extremism." But what is extremism except a held conviction of truth that inspires action? In a society where so few of us have beliefs or causes that we are willing to die for, I think we are fascinated -- and terrified -- of people who do. I think that is what keeps us glued to the screen. We are fascinated by a level of conviction, belief, and certainty that we find foreign and bizarre.
3. Our Technology
We have, through our techology, brought the conflicts of the world into our own homes, towns and cities. When the superpowers of the world have the technology to sense the heat of a body in the dead of night and rain down death from an unmanned plane thousands of feet in the air, people who would violently oppose the state have no choice but to bring the conflict into our cities and among our citizenry. No armed group would ever consider entering into direct armed conflict with the military of any developed nation. It would be suicide and highly ineffective. The battlefield is no longer a viable option for armed groups, and so they take the battlefield into the civilian world: the only place they stand a chance.
As the world's superpowers have developed weapons of mass destruction, we've created two conditions:
- "Real wars" fought among nations will be absolutely destructive
- Armed groups that hope to oppose any state are reduced to guerilla and terrorist tactics.
...good times.
Thailand: A case (hopefully) of revolution without violence
Finally, to reflect on the situation in Thailand. As it stands now, protesters have taken over Bangkoks two main airports without violence. Having barracaded themselves in, media reports indicate the airports have a sort of "carnival" atmosphere with musicians, people donating food and clean clothes.
It's a good old-fashion sit-in!
In the meantime the court has dissolved the ruling party and change might be on the way. Another case of imaginative, non-violent protests being more effective that violence.
Pray that the situation remains peacful.
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November 12, 2008
Social economy of scale
After having pussy-footed around long enough, I've decided to sit down and begin to seriously propose how we can revolutionize our society and economic system for the better:I've been reading a collections of essay from Wendel Berry recently. I'm sold on a lot of his ideas. Berry is not a hopelessy optimistic agrarian. He doesn't assert that the entirety of civilization must resort to an agrarian lifestyle. But he does present a compelling argument for the detruction of true community by various social and economic forces. In this sense , Berry is a prophet. His warnings and ideas penned in the 80's and 90's are perhaps more relevant today than they were twenty years ago.
But this is not a book review. I just wanted to give credit for the seed of my ideas:
In our economic system, we believe in a concept called the "economy of scale." In the simplest terms, economy of scale means that when you produce a lot of one thing, the price per item tends to go down. It's why McDonalds can sell us a cheeseburger that costs much less than if we made ourselves a hamburger. McDonalds produces on such a massive scale, that their productions costs per unit are extremely small.
With globalization, we've seen the idea of economy of scale reach almost unthinkable proportions. (For instance, I recently saw that 80% of America's hops are grown in the Yakima valley by only 40 growers. These farms are huge! As a beer lover, pray for good weather in Yakima!) While I hope to talk about economy of scale as an economic issue is a future post, my concern is this:
We tend to apply the idea of economy of scale to our communities.
Think about it for a second. Our personal communities often transcend (trangress?) physical boundaries. We can be "friends" -- in a Myspace sort of way -- with people far beyond our neighborhood, town, country, or even continent. And while I am strongly suspicious that any real community is created by these online communities, the fact that we have so many ways to connect suggests we do all of them poorly. Why would we spend so much time communicating with people across the globe when we don't know our next door neighbor? The shear economy of scale of our social sphere necessitates that many of our relationships are shallow, short-lived, or purely digital. To bring in our McDonalds metaphor again, you may be able to get a lot more burgers at McDonalds for the price of a home-made one, but they sure don't taste as good.
Wendell Berry asserts that when one has meaningful connections -- meaningful community -- with the people and the land around oneself, one begins to treat his neighbors and the land better. One becomes an involved, participating member of a real community. This sense of ownership compels one to make decisions not only good for oneself, but good for the people and land around oneself as well.
more to come...
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November 08, 2008
Do we take God at His Word?
We sit in the throne of empire -- the throne's legs are those wealth, priviledge, apathy, and excess. Throughout the Bible we find God, the prophets and the Messiah constantly speaking against these pillars of empire. And so it's always interesting to see how pastors address their congregation. Many of the readings in the standard lectionary are harsh criticisms of injustice, wealth, and priviledge. Much of our lectionary is dark, judgemental, and damning of our lifestyle. Consider this past week's OT reading:Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, 22I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep."
-from Ezekiel 34
If we take God at His word, this text has profound implications on our lives. We are the fat sheep. And there's a million ways every day we "push and butt" our weaker neighbors/countries/cultures. This passage alone ought to inspire a tremendous discourse on politics, economics, and culture. In what ways to we push and butt our neighbors? How do we stop? How does our global system need to change in order to become just?
Alas, I've never heard a clergy member begin a serious discourse on such things. And I've never seen a congregation pour themselves into answering such deep questions. It's too uncomfortable; it makes us squirm.
There's a reason the prophets were killed. There's a reason John the Baptist was not a member of the priestly class. There's a reason they hung Jesus on a tree. Speaking the truth is dangerous work. One does not get paid for speaking the truth, one gets killed for it.
May we all live and speak a little more dangerously.
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November 04, 2008
Beginning to reimagine...
Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I've had several conversations with friends and families regarding the economy. And the one conclusion I've come to is this:
Solutions are not going to come easily.
In one of these conversations, myself and an old high school aquaintence were considering what it would take to make our economic system healthy. And while we did not agree on everything, we both agreed than any sort of "fix" would require a dramatic shift in the American lifestyle. One of us posed the question, "Are Americans able and willing to make any sort of big change in their lifestyle?"
It's a profoundly important question to ask. Does our collective behavior have an inevitability to it? Is our collective behavior entirely the effect of economics and government? Or can we as a society educate and inspire ourselves to act dramatically for change? I suppose one's answer would depend on one's optimism or cynicism regarding human nature. But this is an extraordinarily basic and profound question. If our collective or "herd" behavior is purely the result of economic realities and government oversight -- if we truly live under the "tyranny of the masses" --we should be looking at increased government intervention for our salvation. But if we believe that our collective behavior can be significantly shaped by moral and ethical forces, our last best hope is social revolution.
I don't have an answer for this question. But I'm leaning toward optimism. And thus revolution.
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November 28, 2008
More thoughts on the economy
After having reviewed my previous post, I'm not sure that I agree with myself about everything. But I did want to pick up and continue one point from the previous post:Free-market capitalism centers itself upon growth. The prevailing theory is that economies either grow or shrink; they are never static. But here's the problem, here's the elephant in the room:
The global economy cannot grow forever. There are finite resources. And while we may not see the limitations of our resources now, there is a day when our consumption WILL consume that last pund of iron, the last cup of fresh water, the last barrel of oil, or the last (place resource here). It's a dramatic scenario, I'll grant you. But human consumption cannot keep up it's pace. The math just doesn't add up.
(If we think technology will save us, we're putting an immense amount of faith in the god of machines. More to come on this in my upcoming essay The Technology of Decline)
There are very optimistic capitalists out there that believe that we're a long, long way from encountering the limits of our resources. And they believe that free market captalism is THE answer to the worlds problems. According to these people, the ultimate goal of capitalism, the final result of all our efforts, it to create a wealthy, well-educated, global society. A society that looks like America. (This is where free market capitalism intersect cultural colonization). But let's be realistic. Where have all of the most undesirable jobs in the US gone? Where are the American textile workers, the American steel workers, the American electronics manufacturers? Where are the assembly lines of industrial America? There gone. But the products aren't gone, are they? We can still by cars, clothing and computers. We've sent these jobs -- essentially dehomanizing tasks of mass production -- to what we term the "developing world."
What a lovely name, "developing world!" It conjures up images of potential, of growth, of progress. But no mistake, the developed world needs someone to make us the products we use. We've become wealthy enough as a nation that we've found cheaper means of production abroad -- namely, exploited people willing to work dehumanizing tasks for the chance to live a little bit more like Americans (hmm... another intersection of economics and cultural colonization). We don't actually want the developed world to become developed because all of a sudden we lose our cheap labor and thus our cheap goods. When everyone in the world has the ability to choose not to work in dehumanizing circumstances, the basic labor of mass production stops. Free-market capitalism's dirty little secret is that it needs a class of impoverished people without any other choice that to become an apendage of the mass production system. When we start paying American's minimum wage to the workers who manufacture our computers, toys and clothes, we suddenly become unable to afford our previous lifestyle. Our lifestyle depends on an impoverished class.
So, what does this have to do with a growth economy? The growth economy is a farce, at least as a vehicle for social progess or real human betterment. Not only is it unsustainable from a resource point of view, it's also unable to create an equitable and just society in any large context.
Now I realized the above ideas aren't fleshed out fully -- I'm using this blog as a way to toy with ideas-- but if we can agree that:
A. Our current economic system is fundamentally unsustainable in regards to resources.
B. Our system relies on cheap labor and thus a subjugated class.
WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE?
The short answer is there is no current alternative. We need to create one. But that's precisely why a financial meltdown might be a good thing. It's a perfect opportunity to look at building the system from the ground up. I've heard many people say, for instance, "there's no going back from globalization." I would append their statement to say, "there's no going back from globalization without a lot of pain." Excellent then! We're in a lot of pain! Now is the time to start thinking deeply about what a future economic system might look like. What would normally be an impossible task of revolutionizing an entire economic system has become possible. The powerful and vast mechanisms of our current system are on the fritz. What better time to throw a monkey-wrench into the entire machine, send it to the scrap-yard, and begin again?
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November 20, 2008
Oct. 14th --This might hurt a little...
"Financial ruin! Depression! Collapse! Meltdown!"
Just a few words we've been hearing from countless news sources lately. But let me offer a different view:
A serious depression and/or economic collapse might be the best thing to happen to American culture, and perhaps the American economy in some time. And here's why: American capitalism, for a while now, has turned into a monster. The original goal of free market capitialism was to reward the ingenuity of real people creating real products to meet real needs. But this had not been the case for some time now. The "new" goal of free market capitalism is self-preservation and self- interest. Capital in the marketplace seeks to create more capital, more wealth. But when the real needs of an society have been met, there is no place for that capital to go except into supplying and meeting false needs (all the useless shit we own), and moving money around in synthetic and "unreal" ways that creates more capital (credit default swaps, derivites, and short-selling). The system looks to have failed. And it gives us an amazing opportunity to rebuild the system in the way it should be built.
Free-market capitalism is not, by it's nature, bad. It has been an amazing force for innovation and technology. The fundamental problem with our economic system, however, is that our's is a growth-based economy. It always seeks to grow, for when in stops growing, it starts contracting. What we fail to realize is that growth unchecked is cancer. A system based on growth for survival and self-preservation does not ask, "How should we be growing? Is growth ever destructive? Is there a point where the global economy has grown as much as it possible can, that growth must stop?" These are fundamental questions that lie at the foundation of our economic system. But they are questions we rarely ask.
Most living bodies grow until they reach their proper limits. They stop growing and start sustaining; their fundamental goal has changed. If cells in a body continues to grow unchecked, we call that cancer. And cancer leads to poor health or death. It is the same for populations of living beings. When a population exceeds its proper limits, disease, famine, overconsumption and subsequent scarcity make the population decline. What crazy idea then, that our economy can continue growing into perpetuity! Nothing in nature, history or science suggests that this is possible. And yet our entire economic system is founded on this one principal, this one goal.
What if the fundemental goal of our economy changes from growth to sustainability? Would would that mean? What would that look like?
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