The End of the World

It’s the end of the world, but only as we know it. How do you feel?

The end of the world is nigh. I don't think we'll be wiped out by space aliens, overtaken by zombies or even destroyed in an all-out nuclear war. Also, when I say "the end of the world," I mean it more in the REM sense: It's the end of the world as we know it. I don't, however, feel fine.

For over 100 years now, the human race has transformed the way it exists on this planet through the availability of cheap oil. The detrimental effects of the "happy motoring era," as writer James Howard Kunstler calls it, were predicted at least as far back as Orson Welles's never-properly-completed film The Magnificent Ambersons, which noted that the onset of motor vehicles had displaced the sense of community that had been a binding force in American culture prior to that. Welles's film was about much more than just that, of course, but that certainly was one of the key points.

I started to become aware of the destructive impact of the automobile after reading Kunstler's two magnificent books The Geography of Nowhere and Home From Nowhere, both of which make powerful cases for a return to a more sane and sustainable lifestyle, with people living in human-scaled communities which they can mostly navigate on foot. The obvious benefits of walking to and from work, home, school and local businesses almost go without saying, but at this late date most people have become so fully invested in the idea of their car as their main mode of transportation that it never occurs to them what the rates of heart disease, obesity and other illnesses might look like if we had all spent the past century walking everywhere.

I don't walk everywhere, but living half a block from a shopping center that includes a supermarket, video store, pizza shop, Chinese restaurant and more, I walk as much as possible. The April, 2005 accident that destroyed my last car opened my eyes a bit, and I decided the day that happened that I would not buy another car. For the six years previous to that accident, I had paid over $600.00 a month for my wife and I to each have our own car, but I was also commuting 100 miles a day to work in Albany. These days my wife and I both live less than five miles from our jobs, and while my not having a car of my own is occasionally an inconvenience, the cash savings are substantial. I also like knowing I am no longer contributing to the environmental problems and other issues associated with owning and operating a motor vehicle.

In addition to the environmental impact of the automobile era, Kunstler's most recent (and I think most important) book, The Long Emergency, also introduces a much more pressing issue into the mix, that of the peak oil phenomenon. Maybe you've heard about peak oil, and the fact that we're very likely running out of the fossil fuels that have so changed the planet in the past century. Optimists like to posit a future in which mankind has come up with an alternative fuel that will allow everyone to keep scooting around in their cars all day long, all week long, all year long, all their lives.

But a cursory understanding of peak oil shows that the chances of that happening have long since passed. Perhaps if an intense effort was made across the planet to conserve fossil fuel and create new sources of energy 50 or 75 years ago, there would be hope that mankind could mostly get through the end of the cheap oil era with its lifestyle mostly unchanged. I think it's pretty clear that that window has long since slammed shut, though. Virtually every alternative, from solar power to hybrid automobiles, depends largely on the continuing availability of cheap oil. And most optimistic theorists turn a blind eye to the growing hunger for cheap oil in other nations, especially China. Their increasing reliance on automobiles and the unbelievable mass-production mega-industry in China makes them the nation to watch in the Global Oil Sweepstakes.

And anyone who thinks high technology will rescue us from a lack of oil is probably unaware that everything from cell phones to home computers are made of plastic, which is made of -- you guessed it -- oil.

I used to think that America and the countries that have emulated its example could probably go on another 25 or 50 years before the scarcity of oil had a negative impact on the lives of the average citizen. Now I tend to think we have five to ten years at best before our lives are irrevocably altered by the end of the cheap oil age.

I don't have a lot to offer in the way of analysis or suggestions. For that, I would ask you to read some of the books mentioned above, as well as the one I read this week that got me started thinking about writing about all this: Deep Economy by Bill McKibben.

The worst estimated end-result of the end of the cheap oil era really does look like the end of the world: Kunstler, I think it was, predicted that only one out of every six people would survive on this planet after we stop extracting oil out of the ground. Not run out of oil, but stop extracting it. Because you need oil to power the machines that suck it up out of the earth. And at some point, it will take more than a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil from the ground. At that point, obviously, there is no profit whatsoever in continuing to drill for oil. The point is somewhere down the slope from the peak of oil extraction, a time many believe has either already passed or very soon will. And that worst-case scenario? Five billion people could be dead within this century. In fact, it seems likely that this planet never could have sustained the numbers it does if not for cheap oil, which has essentially provided most people in affluent nations with the equivalent of thousands of workers, labouring away for them without complaint.

Think for a moment how many people and how much time it would take to get a message across the country if you didn't have internet and cell phone technology. How many people and how long would it take to carry your entire family six states away on vacation? People living in countries with cheap, available oil are the luckiest and wealthiest people on the planet. But the luxuries we enjoy come at a price. The mis-allocation of resources across the planet means that while Americans sip lattes in air-conditioned Starbucks locations, across the globe others live in miserable conditions, with not enough to drink, not enough to eat, and no hope in sight for an equalization of conditions. No hope other than the almost-certainly inevitable end of the cheap oil era, a global market correction that will change the playing field for virtually everyone alive today.

Kunstler is seen by some as too negative and cynical; I find his tone and analysis to be simpatico with my own point of view, but McKibben's new book puts things in a more hopeful perspective, and it is to be profoundly hoped that Kunstler's worst predictions can be avoided (not that much is being done so far to achieve that laudable goal). McKibben looks to communities to weather the coming storm, and believes that by relying on our families and neighbours, by re-connecting with our local environments through social and commercial undertakings, we can better withstand the worst of what is almost certain to be coming in all our lifetimes. McKibben is a good deal more optimistic and hopeful than Kunstler, but I think both of them have very valuable things to say about where we are now, where we're going, and most importantly, where we can be if we take responsibility for ourselves and our communities. I can't recommend enough both The Long Emergency by Kunstler and Deep Economy by McKibben for background and insight on the issues that we all face.

If you can't afford to buy them, you should visit your local library and check them out. Given the way most of us have abandoned our own communities, it's probably a good idea to visit your local library anyway. And bring the kids. If we're going to make a better, more sustainable world, introducing your children to one of the most important parts of their local community would be a great place to start.

If I Ran for President

One man's stand on the issues. Bring your torches and pitchforks and meet us at his house tomorrow at dawn.

Another Presidential election is pending in the United States, and I am forced to wonder if it's even possible that this one, unlike those in 2000 and 2004, might possibly be allowed to reflect the will of the people without the fraud and conspiracies that have tainted and corrupted the U.S. government for nearly a decade now.

I saw a list of these issues on a website recently. I guess they are the issues that the site feels defines the coming election. I wondered, as I looked at it, where I would stand on the issues if I were running for President?

* Abortion Rights -- While I want every woman to have the power to decide for herself, in every instance, whether she should or should not remain pregnant, I believe the issue would be far less troublesome if every citizen of the United States were educated about reproduction and human sexuality beginning at a very early age. And even before that, parents should be frank and honest with their children about these issues, so that by the time they learn the facts in school, they already have a solid grounding in reproductive ethics and realities. This is one issue on which the entire structure of the country is utterly broken, and we've been paying for it forever.

* Death Penalty -- I used to favour the death penalty in cases of extremely aberrant criminal behaviour in which there is no doubt whatsoever that the perpetrator is guilty. Not for revenge, not as a deterrent, but just to remove the most dangerous people in society from society. But as I have gotten older I have come to realize that no one ultimately has the right to end the life of another person unless that person presents a direct and immediate threat to their own life or the lives of others. So I am opposed to the death penalty.

* Education (No Child Left Behind) -- "No child left behind" is one of the many programs the current, illegal government created as smoke and mirrors to mask its true intentions. It has done nothing to improve the education of the nation's children, and it has allowed the military unwelcome access to private information about children for the purposes of coercing them into military service. It's a fraud and a disgrace.

* Embryonic Stem Cells -- I favour any and all ethically sound medical research that does not involve involuntary, uninformed harm to a living human being.

* Energy & Oil (ANWR Drilling) -- This is another issue on which the majority of citizens is hopelessly undereducated. We're at or past the point of peak oil right now, and there's every reason to believe that a catastrophic reorganizing of human society will be forced upon us within most of our lifetimes. No alternative energy or conservation effort can hope to change the one inarguable fact, which is that the lifestyle of the vast majority of United States citizens will change in ways few will enjoy. The solution is a return to more local economies operating at a human scale, and the fact is that this will happen eventually no matter what anyone says or does; it simply has to, there are no other possible outcomes. The only question is whether people wake up to the realities in time and manage to adjust to the difficulties that lie ahead. If not, the world is in for horror unprecedented in human history. Unfortunately, I expect the latter outcome, and I expect it within the next 10 to 20 years.

* Energy & Oil (Kyoto) -- See above, with the added comment that the U.S. flouting of the Kyoto Accords is another example of how the rogue government of the country has disgraced the entire nation before the eyes of the world.

* Guns (Assault Weapons Ban) -- No human being should be allowed to possess these weapons, and the companies that produce them are guilty of crimes against humanity.

* Guns (Background Checks) -- I am opposed to private ownership of guns of any kind, but if gun ownership remains legal in the United States, there should be a one-year waiting period during which the applicant undergoes extensive psychological testing, gun safety training, and pledges to never allow their weapon within a mile of anyone under the age of 18.

* Homeland Security (Patriot Act) -- This should be repealed immediately and anyone who voted in favour of it should be removed from office and put on trial for treason.

* Homeland Security (Guantanamo) -- This surreal nightmare should be closed immediately, and a full, U.N.-led investigation should occur in the run-up to war crimes trials for all involved.

* Homeland Security (Torture) -- Anyone who has tortured another human being for any reason should be put on trial in the World Court. If found guilty, they should be imprisoned for life with no chance for release.

* Homeland Security (Wiretapping) -- I'll profess ignorance of the details of this issue, except to say that wiretapping was always legal in the United States as long as a warrant was secured from a judge, and I don't see why that should not continue to be so, as long as the police agencies involved provide genuine probable cause that the wiretap is needed to prosecute actual criminals.

* Immigration (Citizenship Path for Illegals) -- If someone is living in the United States with a family and ties to their community, they should be allowed to become citizens, period. Ignorance and racism are at the heart of the anti-immigration movement, and it needs to stop.

* Immigration (Border Fence) -- Once a fair and workable immigration system is in place, this racist pipe dream should no longer be a viable idea. But solving the problem starts with educating those who are in favour of it.

* Internet Neutrality -- No one should have any say whatsoever in what legally happens on the internet, unless it is on their own website(s). There is no greater place to test the ideas of a free market and freedom of speech than on the world wide web.

* Iran (Sanctions) -- It's time to say no to this bullshit.

* Iran (Military Action as Option) -- It's time to say no to this bullshit.

* Iraq (War Support) -- It's time to say no to this bullshit.

* Iraq (War Troop Surge) -- It's time to say no to this bullshit.

* Iraq (War Withdrawal) -- Immediately and with all perpetrators within the government to stand trial in the World Court. If found guilty, they should be imprisoned for life with no chance for release.

* Minimum Wage Increase -- The entire minimum wage system needs to re-evaluated with an eye to determining what a true, living wage is -- allowing for all necessary expenses and basic human rights. The minimum wage should reflect this, and perhaps it's time to institute a maximum wage as well.

* Same-Sex Marriage -- The right to marry is a basic human right all consenting adults must be free to exercise.

* Same-Sex Civil Union -- The right to marry is a basic human right all consenting adults must be free to exercise.

* Same-Sex Constitutional Ban -- It's time to put an end to this ignorant bullshit.

* Universal Health Care -- Free, available health care is a basic human right every person is entitled to. It should be one of the primary purposes to which our tax dollars are spent. If this country cannot afford to look after the health of its citizens, it certainly cannot afford to wage war against other nations or provide obscene salaries and tax breaks to the country's wealthiest citizens.

In short, and as evidenced by many of my responses, I believe the resources of the United States have been criminally diverted away from carrying out the basic tenets under which this country was founded. It's time for the United States to actually allow its citizens to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I fear that a complacent and uninformed populace will not seize those rights for themselves until blood is running in the streets, if we continue on as we have. The coming end of the cheap-oil era means we'll see the ideals of America put to the test sooner, rather than later. I'd like to believe there's hope. I wish there was someone with a plan that suggests there might be.

Justice, Sacrifice and Amadou Diallo

Remembering an innocent man and the incompetent police that took his life.

One of the reasons our society here in the United States of America so honours its veterans, and to a lesser extent its police officers and firefighters, is because they give up so much for the greater good of society.

They give up their time, their safety, and often their lives so that the majority of Americans can live lives relatively free from harm, crime, pain and tragedy. It is the sacrifice of these heroes that allows us the freedom to have whatever kind of life we choose to have.

One of the things these heroes sacrifice is their right to be judged by the same standard as normal people. In the military, the laws of the United States don't even apply; military personnel are subject to the Military Code of Justice, which in some cases differs greatly from the laws the rest of us are bound by.

It is a noble thing, to give up so much to protect others.

I am thinking of the case of four police officers who allegedly shot and killed Amadou Diallo February 4th, 1999 in the Bronx.

It is a tragic thing, claimed defense attorneys for the four cops, but it was not intentional. The question, then, is whether these police officers should be punished for their actions.

The officers were searching for a rape suspect. In the course of their manhunt, they spotted Diallo, a black male, and told him to freeze. Diallo, a West African immigrant, didn't understand what they were saying but knew he was in trouble because the police were shouting at him. He reached for his wallet, perhaps to identify himself, perhaps because he thought the plain-clothes cops were robbing him. The police say they thought he was reaching for a gun, and shot him.

Not just once.

Dozens of shots were fired, 19 of them hitting Diallo, fatally wounding him. Supposedly, just prior to this hail of gunfire, one of the cops may have shouted "gun!" indicating to his fellow officers that Diallo was armed and about to shoot them.

Diallo was not armed. He was reaching for his wallet.
No one could have seen a gun, because he did not have one.

When you prosecute a citizen for a crime, you have to prove three things: Motive, intent, and opportunity. Of the three, the cops apparently only had the opportunity to kill Diallo. They had neither the motive nor intent, so far as we know.

Does that excuse their actions?

I don't believe that it does.

From everything I understand about hunting, admittedly little, hunters are taught not to shoot their guns until they are 100 percent certain what it is they are shooting at. Only then, when they are sure they have the deer, or bear, or whatever in their sights, are they supposed to fire.

These cops did not have a criminal with a gun in their sights. They had an unarmed man who did not understand the words being shouted at him. "Freeze?" At what point, even if you were learning English, would you come to understand what that meant?

Would it not have been better to shout "stop!" at him?

But Diallo's lack of language skills is not the question. He was in this country legally. There is no law requiring immigrants to learn English, so far as I know, and I would oppose one if there was; assimilation should be dictated by the worthiness of the culture one is joining, not by legislative fiat. Certainly, there is no law requiring immigrants to learn the lingo shouted out by gun-slinging plain-clothes police officers. Amadou Diallo broke no law that I am aware of. I am sure if he had, the defense would have brought that up in the trial of the four killers.

The officers that shot and killed Amadou Diallo did so mistakenly. But it was a mistake that cried out for justice. It was the job of those cops to protect the innocent, not murder them.

And what they did is a kind of murder, because they failed to uphold their own standards, to know beyond a shadow of a doubt who they were shooting at and why; anything less puts the lives of every innocent man, woman and child at risk. While those killer cops had neither motive nor intent, apparently, I submit that they should not be held to the same standard as the average citizen. They should be held to a higher standard. It is the job of the police to protect the innocent, not murder them. Their incompetence was criminally catastrophic, and should have required a punishment that met the magnitude of their error.

The officers did not adequately perform their jobs. In fact, they took their role as protectors of society, and perverted it beyond recognition. The death of Amadou Diallo remains, all these years later, one of the most heinous, unjust and horrific crimes ever committed. It is tragic, yes, but it's a tragedy that could have been prevented, with training, with testing, with standards of excellence and an understanding that the lives of innocent people come before the lives of police officers. Perhaps if that standard were enforced, fewer would want to be police officers, but the ones that did would be better cops. They would understand that they are here to protect people, not to defend themselves against possible harm from an unknown man who may very well be, and in the case of Diallo was, innocent.

If those cops had held been held to that standard, Amadou Diallo would still be alive today; alive, innocent and free to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Remember, it is the job of the police to protect the innocent, not murder them. The price of that protection will sometimes be police officers getting killed, in order to protect the greater good. Had Diallo been the suspect they were hunting, had he been in possession of a gun, and had he started shooting, it would have been preferable, by far, that one of those officers die in the line of duty, their chosen duty, remember, than that an innocent man die, as Amadou Diallo did that day.

It's why we honour our heroes. Their sacrifice, remember? The four killers of Amadou Diallo sacrificed nothing, except the life of an innocent man.

Note: The officers -- Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll , Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy -- were charged with second-degree murder, but the jury was allowed to consider lesser charges. The officers pleaded innocent and were eventually acquitted of all charges by a jury in Albany, New York.

The View from One Year

What happened here? As the New York sunset disappeared...

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. I remember vividly, as I am sure you do, where I was and what I was doing one year ago today.

The week previous, I had just started a new job at a radio station in Albany, New York. I was nearing the end of my morning shift, when I noticed increased activity in the newsroom. Come to find out, a plane had slammed into the World Trade Center in New York City. Some were saying this was a possible terrorist attack. I didn't believe that. In retrospect, more likely, I didn't want to believe that.

Despite the clear skies that morning, in the high tech 21st Century, I honestly believed that the cause of the crash was probably a breakdown in the air traffic control system. One bad instruction and one distracted pilot could, I thought, have combined to create this catastrophic circumstance. Even when the second plane hit, I wanted to believe that this was the case, but the terrorism theory had firmly implanted itself by then, and it was more hoping against hope than actual belief, by then, that this was merely an horrific accident.

As a radio newscaster, the 48 hours or so that followed were the most intense and horrible I've experienced in my 17 years on the air. I did nothing but read news for those two days -- most everything else was suspended in the interest of getting as much hard news as possible about this situation on the air. At home, I couldn't stop watching television, and all that was on was images of the crashes, again and again.

It was hypnotic and horrible. Worst of all were the images of the doomed inhabitants of the giant buildings willingly leaping to their deaths rather than burn alive. It would be a recounting on the radio of the story of two of those people, who held hands as they jumped from the inferno to certain death below that would bring me to tears on a car drive home a few days later. How horrible. How uplifting. A paradox. How human.

On September 12th, I posted an editorial to Comic Book Galaxy, leading off with some words reprinted with permission from a personal e-mail from my friend Barry Windsor-Smith. A former New York City resident who now lives about an hour upriver in New York's Hudson Valley, he was deeply affected by the events of September 11th -- but then, I guess we all were.

A year later, there's much I want to say about that day and the year that followed it. I began writing a column about it a couple of weeks ago, but honestly, what I have put down in words so far is so extreme that I fear putting it up for public consumption. I mean every word that I've written, but my righteous rage at the opportunists that have used September 11th to further their own hidden agenda will do no good. You either realize how vile the people running this country are, or you do not. It's not as if any real effort to disguise their base thuggery is even being attempted. As long as you wrap yourself in the flag, and nude statues in blankets, it seems anything goes, and most of it is being done quite obviously, with a snide contempt for a depressingly compliant populace.

It's not that I don't recognize and condemn the terrorists who ordered the attacks -- if they had survived, I would gladly kill each and every one of them with my bare hands and live the rest of my life guilt-free and secure in the knowledge that I had made the world a better place. But when three-quarters of the killers were Saudi Arabian and the guy who supposedly master-minded the entire thing was also Saudi Arabian, and we spend a year supposedly prosecuting a war on terrorism without ever catching Osama bin Laden -- whose family are former business partners of President-Select Bush -- well, let's just say that I believe the true work we needed to do after September 11th has been completely ignored, while the business interests of Bush and his family's oil-industry buddies have been well-served by a military action that has given the U.S. new access to Afghanistan.

See, there, I'm drifting into the territory covered in the column-I-am-not-showing-you. So let me wrap this up: I love the U.S. and I realize that it's one of the best, most free nations on Earth. But I am deeply ashamed that its citizens have tolerated an illegitimate, greed-driven junta that has used the awful events of September 11th as justification for suspending the civil rights of U.S. citizens and lining the pockets of the military-industrial complex. I just hope that people will take the time to learn the facts and recognize what Bush and his enablers are up to for what it is, and remember the most important lesson that came out of September 11th, 2001: That religious zealotry is the purest, most destructive form of evil on the planet. Because the event that took the lives of 3000 people that day was the textbook definition of a Faith-Based Initiative. The murderers were driven by their twisted interpretation of their religious beliefs, they had faith that their God would guide their way and lead them to victory, and sickeningly, horribly, from the perspective of however many fundamentalist Islamists are still out there hating the U.S. -- that's exactly what happened.

The hatred that fueled the terrorists was a potent mix of ignorance, religious bigotry and closed-minded fundamentalism. The very same elements that Bush and those like him are informed by and celebrate. From the attempts to funnel government money to churches through Bush's transparent "Faith-Based Initiative" scheme to the sickening, cowardly response of both Republicans and Democrats when a judge rightly, bravely followed the Constitution and ordered the words "Under God," stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance, the people who are running the U.S. continue to try to use religious ignorance to control the populace's wealth and reproductive functions. This, I contend, is the primary goal of organized religion -- but most especially fundamentalist groups like the Taliban and Southern Baptists.

So a year later, in my opinion, the evil is stronger than ever, and it's right here at home. If it makes me unpatriotic or unsympathetic or uncaring to point it out on this of all days, there it is. On this of all days, when we remember nearly 3000 people who died because of fundamentalist opportunists like bin Laden and Bush, who seek power not through logic and reason but through the cynical manipulation of the ignorant and oppressed, the best way we can celebrate their memory and respect their sacrifice is to begin to work to remove the power from those who would commit violence in the name of their alleged God in the first place.

Written September 11th, 2002.