Global Warming for Evangelicals

On one of my final posts on my blog, TH in SoC, I promised to write a post on global warming. This subject is one which I am somewhat reluctant and ashamed to tackle. You see, when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior many years ago, He never forced me to have a prefrontal lobotomy or give up the use of my critical thinking skills as part of the bargain. This meant that I was free as a Christian to notice the events, trends and phenomena in the world around me, and to draw reasonable conclusions from them.

However, I noticed many years later the hijacking of the Faith to serve the ends of earthly economic and political power elites. One major way they accomplished this hijacking was by distorting Biblical Christianity so that it was turned into a justification for the actions of the elites. Thus there were such things as “Christian patriotism” as manifested in both England and the United States; the idea that certain nations were “Christian nations” because of their laws or constitutions; the notion that it was the right or duty of these so-called “Christian nations” to conquer and exploit all other nations and peoples on earth; the idea that God's only chosen economic system is laissez-faire capitalism and that all other economic arrangements are from the Devil; and the idea that it was the duty of Christians everywhere to support the elites (governments and corporations) in their actions and their wars, since it was by this that the world was becoming “safe for democracy and prosperity,” and the elites were ridding the world of people who “hate our freedoms and our faith!”

Those who teach such things say that it is the duty of Christians to unquestioningly believe all of these things, and to unquestioningly reject all other points of view, regardless of the evidence. Any notion or idea or teaching or observation which indicts the practices of Western elites is also to be dutifully rejected as well. Thus there are many parts of the Bible which are de-emphasized or glossed over or explained away by teachers of this point of view, people who are well-known as leaders in the American Religious Right. But the Bible has many things to say about the actions of the members of the Western elite class, and much of what it says is not good news for them. (In fact, they may want to take out fire insurance against the day of judgment.)

There is also strong evidence of the harm caused by the practices of these elites – evidence which proves the rightness of the Biblical condemnation of these elites. And just as the spokesmen for these elites have sought to gloss over the Biblical condemnation of their practices, they have sought to gloss over the evidence of the harm caused by their practices. Some of them, such as James Dobson and Tony Perkins, have gone to the extreme of saying that it is our Christian duty not to believe that harm is being done by these elites. The events of my personal life over the last several years have caused my eyes to be opened to the games being played in our society by economic, political and religious elites, and therefore I can see quite clearly the fallacies of those who have hijacked my faith. But I have noticed over the last several months that there are people who call themselves evangelicals and Christians who are still unquestioningly accepting the teaching which I have described above.

One example is a high school kid on my street who asked me if I believe in global warming (it was during an unusually hot day in the Pacific Northwest). When I asked him what he thought about it, he said, “Well, I'm religious – and that's why I don't believe in global warming. My pastor told us that man can't destroy the earth – only God can...” While I was outwardly polite and patient in listening to this kid, inwardly I was very angry. Why? Because it is the unquestioning promotion and acceptance of teachings such as this in the face of overwhelmingly contradictory evidence that makes Christianity look like the faith of village idiots. This is not the Christianity of the Bible, nor is it the Faith of such intelligent men as Dr. Paul Brand, C.S. Lewis, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Therefore I write now to set the record straight on at least one subject – global warming, also known as climate change – even though it is a shame to have to do so. (By the way, I like the kid I was talking to. I think he's a good kid, and bright. He's just a bit misinformed.)

Theological Arguments against Global Warming (and a Biblical rebuttal)

First, let's tackle the theological arguments against global warming. This section will be relatively short, because the job will be easy. (For those of you readers who are not Christians, I say welcome to my blog. I appreciate your readership. You may find this part to be informative, but if not, feel free to skip ahead to the scientific case for global warming.)

Spokespersons for the Religious Right use theological arguments to try to debunk global warming. Their arguments usually run thus: “People who believe in global warming say that it will cause polar ice caps to melt and flood the earth. But that can't happen, because God promised in Genesis 8:22 that He will never destroy the world by a flood again.” Or, as my teen-aged acquaintance said and as agencies like the Institute for Creation Research say, “Man can't destroy the earth; only God can.” Or if one wants to go to extremes, there is the late Jerry Falwell's statement that global warming is “Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus from evangelism to environmentalism,” and that “the Bible teaches that God will maintain the earth until Christ's second coming.” (Source: “Falwell to Arms: Christians Being Duped By Global Warming,” Treehugger, 27 February 2007, http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/falwell_to_arms.php)

But the issue with anthropogenic global warming is that it is not about what God is doing to the earth. It's about what man is doing to the earth. Thus the first argument against global warming is a logical fallacy. It makes as much sense as saying that “God has promised in Psalm 121 to keep me from all evil. Therefore I can't be hurt if I play on the freeway!” The fact is that there is nowhere in the Bible that says that humankind cannot make a mess – even a mess of Biblical proportions. The Bible repeatedly states how the moral defilement of a people can pollute a land, and it also prohibits physical practices that can ruin a land. For instance, see what the Bible had to say about letting land lie fallow during sabbath years, and how Israelites were not to destroy all the trees of a land in which was a city being besieged by Israel. (It's in Deuteronomy.) Actually, the Old Testament has a fair amount to say about environmental stewardship.

The fact that humans can certainly make big messes is stated in Revelation 11:16-18, speaking of the Lord's final judgments at the end of this age. The passage reads, “The twenty-four elders, who sit on their thrones before God's throne, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: 'We give You thanks, Lord God, the Almighty, the One who is and who was, because You have taken Your great power and reigned. The nations were angry, and Your wrath came, as did the time for the dead to be judged, and to give Your bondservants the prophets their reward, as well as to the saints, and those who fear your name, to the small and the great; and to destroy those who destroy the earth.'” (Emphasis added.) Here we see the clear Biblical acknowledgment of the harm mankind can do to the earth, as well as the promise of God's judgment on those who deliberately do that harm.

When faced with such a rebuttal, the only thing the Religious Right can do is to somehow argue that modern industrial society – especially modern Western industrial society – is not destroying the earth. Their spokesmen claim that the anthropogenic nature of global warming is just a theory, and that no one can prove that industrially-produced CO2 emissions have anything to do with recent weather and climate shifts. I shall therefore talk about the scientific case for global warming. (By the way, regarding Jerry Falwell's statement, I can only say that he has made many such statements over the years. It's a funny coincidence how any position of conscience which threatens the richest members of our society must be “from Satan.” I wonder what Falwell thought of James 5:1-6, or what he thinks of it now.)

Global Warming – The Scientific Evidence (A very simple explanation)

The warming of objects – whether food, houses or planetary atmospheres – involves the transfer of energy. Heat energy is transmitted from one object to another by one of three processes: radiation, convection or conduction. When those objects are separated from one another by a large distance and both objects are in a vacuum, the only means of heat transfer is by radiation. Consider two such objects: the Sun and the earth.

The Sun is a yellow dwarf star (spectral class G2 V). The earth's surface receives most of its energy from the Sun in the form of visible light. Most of that energy is not absorbed by the atmosphere, since it is transparent to visible light, although clouds do reflect light back into space. (Other spectral components such as ultraviolet light are absorbed by ozone high in the stratosphere.) Once visible light strikes the earth's surface, it is absorbed to varying degrees by the earth's surface, causing the surface to heat and emit infrared radiation.

The major components of the earth's atmosphere are transparent to infrared radiation. But certain gases absorb infrared light. These are gases such as methane, water vapor and carbon dioxide. As these gases absorb infrared light, they become hot (increased molecular energy) and re-radiate that infrared light in all directions, in addition to transferring heat to the rest of the atmosphere by conduction and convection. This raises the temperature of the earth's surface and of the surrounding atmosphere. If there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the average surface temperature of the earth would be -0.4 degrees F (or -18 degrees C).

The earth's temperature is maintained by a balance between the energy absorbed by the earth-atmosphere system and the infrared energy re-radiated by the atmosphere into outer space. As the atmosphere is heated by greenhouse gases, its upper layers are heated by convection, and it is these layers which radiate infrared light back into space. As the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases, the zone of re-radiation moves higher in the atmosphere, because more heat is trapped and absorbed by the lower layers of the atmosphere. In addition, the earth's surface temperature increases, until an equilibrium state is once again reached where the heat gain from incoming solar radiation is balanced by the heat loss through re-radiation.

For the last 800,000 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have varied from 180 parts per million (ppm) to 270 ppm just prior to the Industrial Revolution. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, activities such as the burning of wood, coal and oil, the deforestation of land and the making of cement resulted in the liberation of large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Much of this CO2 was absorbed by the oceans, and much of it was turned into plant matter by photosynthesis, liberating oxygen in the process. However, as the Industrial Revolution quickened its pace and the burning of fossil fuels increased exponentially, the increase in atmospheric CO2 began to outpace the rate at which natural ecosystems could dispose of it. Thus atmospheric CO2 levels increased from about 313 ppm in 1960 to over 385 ppm today.

The effect of varying the amount of greenhouse gases in a planetary atmosphere can be modeled crudely by multivariable calculations involving multiple integrations and spherical coordinates. The math is relatively simple for those who know calculus, though it is somewhat involved. The effect of human-produced greenhouse gas emissions was first postulated by Svante August Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist, in 1896. Though his calculations were shown later to require refinement in order to match observed phenomena, his original conclusions were remarkably close to what is now being observed by climate scientists. The observed average temperature of the earth rose by 0.75 degrees C between 1860 and 1900, and temperatures in the lower atmosphere have increased by between 0.12 and 0.22 degrees C per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. 1998 and 2005 were two of the warmest years on record, worldwide, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. According to the NASA GISS, the 14 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1990.

Effects of Global Warming

This is a complex subject; however, the effects of global warming are real and are already being felt, from the increasing size and severity of wildfires in the forested regions of the United States and other countries, to the increasing length and severity of heat waves experienced in populated areas. Other effects include increases in severity and number of storms, shifts in migratory patterns of birds and other animals, loss of plant and animal habitats, shifts in crop growing seasons and growing conditions leading to loss of harvests (such as in Australia), and melting of glaciers.

One particularly dangerous effect is the beginning of the thawing of Arctic permafrost. This permafrost contains billions of tons of trapped methane, and methane is a greenhouse gas several times more powerful than carbon dioxide. If thawing were to release large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect would be greatly amplified, leading to very destructive and chaotic changes in global climate. Evidence exists that in 2008, large releases of methane from the Siberian tundra had begun to occur.

Is global warming then a sign of the coming end of the world? I don't know. Nobody knows. After all, the Good Book says of that question, “But no one knows of that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” – Matthew 24:36. It may be the end, or it may simply be the beginning of a really big mess that we will all have to live with for a very long time. (How many of you have ever read A Canticle for Leibowitz?) One thing I do know, however. Global warming is a sign that mankind is making a mess of this world. The perpetrators and perpetuators of this mess are the rich elites of the First World. Living responsibly and lightly upon the earth is required of those who would be good stewards of God's creation, yet this sort of life is an affront to the rich masters of our present system, because it endangers their bottom line.

These rich masters have done all they can to persuade most of us to continue our present lifestyle of dependence on the breaking system known as the “official” economy, and have even attempted to use religion to legitimize that dependence, by telling us that it is our God-given right and duty to live this way, and that “Christians must not believe in global warming!” Such propaganda may well serve to help people justify lifestyles of excessive and increasing consumption by persuading them that there are no earthly consequences to such a lifestyle. Yet believers in such propaganda may well find themselves one day being held accountable for helping to destroy the earth.

Sources:

• World English Bible, http://ebible.org/web/, a public domain translation, from which all Scriptures quoted herein have been taken, for which no royalties are owed, and which may be freely quoted in all settings, public and private.

• PhysicalGeography.net, a Fundamentals eBook, http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7h.html

• “Scientists warn thawing Siberia may trigger global meltdown,” Wikinews, http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Scientists_warn_thawing_Siberia_may_trigger_global_meltdown

• “Effects of Global Warming,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming

• “2007 Was Tied As Earth's Second Warmest Year,” Science Daily, 17 January 2008, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080116114150.htm

• “NOAA: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, Methane Rise Sharply in 2007,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 23 April 2008, http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080423_methane.html

For further information, read the publications of Dr. James E. Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Dr. Pushker A. Kharecha, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Their contact information is on the NASA GISS website. Also, feel free to visit the website of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And for more simple, understandable explanations, there is always Dr. Jason Bradford of Global Public Media at http://postcarbon.org/about/fellows.

The Libertarian Lifeboat

I'd like to take a break from considering alternatives to our present breaking corporatist economic and societal systems, in order to tell a couple of stories that need to be told. Also, I have taken a number of pictures of people over the last several weeks, promising those whom I photographed that I would post their pictures on future installments of The Well Run Dry. So, God willing, the next two posts will tell needful stories, and the following post will have pictures relating to bicycle transportation.

The story I am about to tell you is one I heard a few years ago. It is a very strange illustration of the potential for bizarre human behavior. It took place several years back, aboard a double-bottomed, Handy-sized sea-going bulk cargo ship whose name escapes me at the moment. The ship was old, and had seen many voyages, some through very severe weather, both in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Its crew was a volatile mix of quirky, memorable types and experienced, wise, level-headed men. One of the strangest and most quirky characters was the boatswain (or bos'un for the nautical initiates), a big-boned, burly, sandy-haired, square-jawed man of indeterminate age.

The bo'sun was a fearsome sight to the deck crew whom he supervised as he directed sharp glances all around, swiveling his large head on his bull neck while barking commands, muscular biceps flexed as he rested his large hands on his hips. Those who crossed him usually did it only once, as the punishment he dealt was swift and severe. Aside from giving orders, he almost never talked to any other shipmates. This was unusual, since the three licensed officers on board were quite friendly with all the crew, figuring that pleasant voyages contributed to crew effectiveness.

The bo'sun tended to keep to himself when not on duty or at meals, preferring to remain in his quarters rather than mix with the crew. Almost no one ever saw the inside of his quarters, but the one or two crewmen who were able to get a glimpse said that on one wall was a Confederate Rebel flag, and that there was a bookcase underneath containing books such as The Politician by Robert W. Welch; The Way Things Ought To Be and See, I Told You So, by Rush Limbaugh; and Robert Lewis Dabney: The Prophet Speaks by Doug Phillips, along with several copies of The New American, a magazine published by the John Birch Society. He also had a life-sized poster of Rush next to an old VCR with which he frequently played a battered copy of Birth of a Nation. (At times while on watch, other crew members could hear him muttering scenes of the movie from memory.) Somehow amid all the clutter, he had also managed to stash 250 pounds of cast iron free weights, a couple of dumbbell bars and a barbell bar, all of which he used religiously.

His physical training served him well on the particular voyage we are now considering – a voyage that took the ship from the tropics up into the North Pacific during the height of typhoon season. The ship was carrying a load of some grain – rice, I think – and its course carried it right into the path of a tropical depression that was also moving north. The loading of the rice had been supervised by a junior officer without much experience, and as a result, the cargo settled, then began to shift as the ship ran into increasingly rough weather. The depression strengthened into a storm that grew into a typhoon, and began to produce dangerous rogue waves. Most of the crew had experienced typhoons before, and they were therefore not terribly worried, until two rogue waves hit the ship within five minutes of each other and caused her to heel hard to port. This caused the cargo to shift dangerously, making the vessel list. Then a third rogue wave hit and downflooded the engine room, causing the ship to go dead in the water.

The vessel's situation was now serious. Yet even at this point she might have been saved if the engineer had been able to restore power quickly. But by this time the ship, which was old as has been mentioned before, began to suffer the effects of corrosion and metal fatigue as the pounding of the storm proved to be too much for her. Within thirty minutes of losing power the front hold began to flood, and the flooding quickly spread to hold number two. By the time the crew realized their peril it was too late for many to escape. Only one lifeboat could be launched in the minutes before the ship sank, and those who were lucky enough to be nearby piled into it in whatever condition they found themselves, with whatever possessions they happened to be carrying. It was night when she sank.

The dawn revealed that seven men had survived out of a crew of twenty-four. Amid somewhat calmer weather, they looked at each other with mostly frightened eyes. There were two able seamen, the second officer, an oiler, the steward's assistant, an ordinary seaman, and the bo'sun. The steward's assistant shivered in the wind and rain, as he hadn't had time even to put his clothes on before the sinking. One of the able seamen had been able to don a survival suit, as had the bo'sun. The second officer had a fractured leg. The ordinary seaman had suffered a concussion. All were badly shaken – except for the bo'sun.

He had managed to grab several items before getting into the lifeboat. His stash consisted of a number of blankets, some tins of meat, water and hardtack, several Army-style can openers, a solar still, an emergency fishing rod, a knife and a first aid kit. In all he must have carried over a hundred pounds of supplies with him into that boat. Of course, this was in addition to the supplies with which the lifeboat was normally stocked. The other survivors cheered up greatly when they saw the bo'sun's stash in addition to the lifeboat's regular supplies. But their cheer was short-lived.

The steward's assistant spoke first. “Hey there, bo'sun,” he said, “could you pass me one of those blankets? I was in bed when the ship started to sink.” One of the able seamen said, “Say, bo'sun, the second officer's in bad shape. Is there any Advil we could give him?” The oiler chimed in and said, “Oh, no! The launch of the lifeboat caused us to lose all of the can openers in the boat's survival kit. Hey, bo'sun, could you spare an extra?”

Their requests died away into silence as the bo'sun merely stared at them for several seconds. Then he spoke. “You're not expecting a handout, are you? That's socialism!” He spat derisively over the side of the boat. “I earned what I have by my own effort,” he continued. “I won't give handouts, but I will let you earn the privelege to use what I have. That's what our Founding Fathers believed in.”

Now the rest of the survivors were silent in their turn, staring with shocked faces at the bo'sun. Finally, the able seaman who had asked about the Advil spoke again. “But that's totally wacked out, bo'sun!” he shouted. “Look at the second officer! He's in no shape to earn anything! Why are you being a jerk?” An instant later, the bo'sun's fist crashed into his jaw and he crumpled to the bottom of the lifeboat.

“Now hear this,” said the bo'sun in a low, dangerous voice. “I don't give free rides to anybody. If you don't pull your own weight, you get nothing from me. Why, next you'll want me to socialize medical care! Ain't gonna happen. If the second officer is motivated enough, he'll do what it takes to get medicine. You who want the extra blanket!” he shouted, pointing at the steward's assistant. “If you want a blanket, get over here and grab this fishing rod. You gotta catch thirty pounds of fish. That's my price.”

Thus began the miserable journey of the survivors as ocean currents pushed them slowly northward. Needless to say, the second officer died within three days, and the others dumped his body overboard on the bo'sun's orders. The only epitaph the bo'sun spoke was to mutter about “freeloaders on society getting what they deserved.” He also muttered frequently that it was his manifest destiny to be the boss of that lifeboat.

Afterward, all the survivors were kept busy from sunup to sundown catching fish, cleaning fish, sun-drying fish and operating the solar still. In return for their labors they were allowed to eat just enough to stay alive. But the bo'sun ate his fill every day, and his stocky build began to grow chubby. By this time almost everyone in the boat was shirtless, since the weather had entirely cleared and had grown quite warm as the boat drifted out of the tropic zone into Northern Hemisphere summer conditions. The other survivors took notice of two large tattoos across the bo'sun's chest, one of which was an artist's rendition of Ayn Rand's face, and another which was a picture of a gnarled hand with the name “ADAM SMITH” written below.

The bo'sun himself noticed his increasing chubbiness, and began a two-hour regimen of calisthenics and body-weight strength-building exercises every day (although he never used his strength to do any actual work). Meanwhile the other survivors grew weaker and weaker, and one more man died. By now it was late July or early August, and though the boat had drifted north of the 35^th parallel of latitude, it was still quite hot. The bo'sun was bothered by the heat, especially because it made him sweat a lot and grow thirsty during his workouts. But the solar still was slow in producing fresh water and the canned water was by now used up.

One day the bo'sun had a brilliant idea. “We're gonna do things a little different,” he said to the others. “We're all each gonna get his own space on this boat. However much space you get depends on how much you can fight for, and since I'm the strongest guy on this boat, I get the biggest space. Stay outta my space,” he said. Later that morning, he took most of the remaining blankets and made a shade covering over his newly created “space.” But still, he felt hot. Frustrated, he racked his brain for a solution. Then he smiled broadly as a new idea occurred to him. He found a hand drill and some large wood drill bits from the stash he had brought on board, and began to drill a hole in the bottom of the boat under his “space.”

The other survivors looked at him aghast. “Hey man, what are you doing??!” they all shouted at once. “I'm making a little fountain for my space, to cool my feet,” the bo'sun replied. “What's wrong, are you jealous?” “Dude,” they all shouted back, “you'll sink this boat and kill us all!” “What I do isn't gonna kill us or ruin this boat,” he growled, “and besides, what I do in my space is my business, so lay off!”

At this, the man telling the story broke off, overcome by emotion. “That dirty, selfish...” he finally said, then began coughing uncontrollably. The cough turned into a gag as our chief steward turned the man's body to the side and held a bucket up to his mouth. He retched up a last bit of swallowed seawater, then lay back on the steward's bunk, sighing deeply. The steward noticed that the man was still shivering, ten hours after being pulled from the sea. Had we not spotted him at just the right moment, things would have turned out much worse. The ship's doctor gave the man an injection, told the cook to bring more hot water bottles, and told the rest of us to let the man have some rest.

P.S.: The story I have just told is entirely false. Anyone who has actually worked on a ship can probably tell that I haven't. But I told this story in order to prevent it from coming true, if you get my drift. As a very influential Man once said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

P.P.S.: The Bo'sun in this story is a caricature of a particular ideology. Yet there are many ideologies of selfishness in the world today, and they must all be guarded against if our society is to successfully navigate the downside of Hubbert's Peak.

A Safety Net Of Alternative Systems - Citizen Media

(Warning: this will be a long post. I am writing this post in a very different frame of mind than the cautiously optimistic frame I held at the end of last week, when the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the first attempt to pass President Bush's $700 billion Wall Street bailout package. That House vote had led me to believe that I still had something of a voice – that the vast majority of Americans still had a voice – in deciding the direction of our country, that our system of participatory democracy still worked, even if only somewhat.

But now the bailout package has passed both houses of Congress and has been signed into law, though some polls and surveys indicate that a majority of Americans still oppose the bailout, and a larger majority believe that it will not solve America's economic crisis. It may be that participatory democracy is essentially dead in the U.S., and that the real rulers of this country are the rich and those connected to the rich. Still, I feel the need to consider this next aspect of safety nets for the small and the poor. Who knows, it may do some good.)

The times now upon us will be very disruptive, due to such things as infrastructure breakdowns and resource shortages, the effects of natural disasters, and efforts by certain interests to capitalize on the opportunities created within society by systemic disruptions. In such times it is vital for small, regular private citizens to have access to good information and high-quality journalism, in order that they may make intelligent decisions in response to the events taking place around them. Yet over the last few decades, standard American media outlets have increasingly become unreliable as sources for useful, informative news. This is seen in recent reports of media bias, inaccurate reporting and fabricated stories. (Sources: http://gaia.world-television.com/wef/worldeconomicforum_annualmeeting2007/default.aspx?sn=19572; http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/index.php?p=341; http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/feb/17/mondaymediasection.iraq) It is therefore critical for small, regular private citizens to develop their own networks for obtaining news relating to the present economic, ecological and resource-based difficulties – and not just personal stories, but big-picture analysis as well.

Why You Can't Get The Straight Story Anymore

When I was growing up I used to hear that there are always two sides to every story, but the newspapers, radio and television stations available at the time carried many more sides than just two. Nowadays there is what is known as the “mainstream media,” which carries just one side to any story. Most of the outlets of the media “industry” are now owned by a handful of very rich and powerful companies. This wasn't always the case; between 1941 and 1975, the Federal Communications Commission issued a number of rules designed to insure a large number of diverse media voices by preventing the consolidation of media ownership in the hands of a few large corporations. One such rule prevented a corporation from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same market. This large number of diverse voices served to raise the quality of journalism and hindered any one news outlet from easily spreading false news.

But in the 1980's, President Reagan and the Congress initiated a program of business “deregulation” that reversed the protections of the previous FCC rules. Limits on media consolidation were lifted, as were requirements for a minimum amount of “non-entertainment programming,” One particular rule that was eliminated was the “Fairness Doctrine” which required that any television or radio station that broadcast one point of view had to allow time for spokespersons for an opposing point of view to make their case.

That deregulation really accelerated during the Clinton presidency, with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Prior to this law, a radio network could own no more than 40 stations; afterward, gargantuan networks were created, such as Clear Channel which owns over 1200 stations in all 50 states. The current President Bush has accelerated media deregulation even further, leading to the following result:

• Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, News Corporation, Bertelsmann AG, and General Electric together own more than 90 percent of the media holdings in the United States, according to one source. (Independent verification of this statement is not possible, because information on media ownership is not in the public domain.)

• CBS Corporation owns CBS, CBS Radio, Simon & Schuster (a book publisher) and other media assets.

• Time Warner owns CNN, Time Magazine, AOL and other assets.

• Rupert Murdoch owns at least two dozen newspapers, as well as Fox Networks, MySpace, Sky Television and DirecTV, among other assets.

(Sources: “Concentration of Media Ownership,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership; “Media Regulation Timeline,” NOW With Bill Moyers, http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/mediatimeline.html; “Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership,” Global Issues, 29 April 2007, http://www.globalissues.org/article/159/media-conglomerates-mergers-concentration-of-ownership#Concentrationofownershipiswheretheproblemlargelylies)

Some might say that media concentration in the hands of a few corporations is not a bad thing, and that reliable news is still reaching the American public. But history is full of countries whose citizens were deprived of all sorts of news and perspectives due to concentration of media power in the hands of a small elite. One case in point is Italy under former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon who forced Italian media to broadcast news and propaganda supporting his government. (For a source on this, see the Global Issues article cited above.)

The Story You're Not Getting

The result of this consolidation of media ownership is that most Americans are not getting the whole story on a variety of serious issues, and that when events force major media outlets to cover issues of national importance, most Americans are getting a strongly biased version of the issues. This applies to “crises” manufactured by powerful people, such as the case made for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, later events proved that the foundations of that case were largely false.

But it also applies to crises that result from accidents or acts of God. For instance, American petroleum product stocks had begun to drop even before Hurricane Gustav. But the combined effects of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike was to remove over a million barrels per day from American crude oil extraction, and to take several refineries out of service for an extended period. Gasoline shortages resulted throughout the Southeast, extending even to areas in the Midwest. There were no reports from American media for several days after shortages began to develop, and when reports finally came, many initial reports contained statements from state government officials denying that there was any problem. To this day, no one in the media has presented a clear picture of the extent of the problem, and most information presented is merely anecdotal.

This sort of coverage is as bad as media coverage of an accident in Minot, North Dakota in 2002 in which a train filled with anhydrous ammonia derailed. When authorities tried to use local radio stations to issue an alert to nearby citizens, none of the radio stations carried news of the accident. All the stations were owned by Clear Channel. The accident injured 1600 people and killed one person.

This failure of coverage extends to misdeeds committed by corporations or government agencies. In 1997, a Fox Broadcasting Company office fired two reporters for drafting a story about Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone. During Super Bowl XXXVIII, CBS refused to air an ad criticizing the federal budget deficit, but aired another ad from a Federal drug control agency.

There is still a strong media bias in describing the struggles and achievements of members of ethnic minorities. This is seen in how blacks are portrayed in news stories, as well as media support for targeted enforcement zones in minority neighborhoods, and the continuing belief promoted by the media that drug abuse is rampant in minority communities and much less prevalent everywhere else. (Sources: “Media and Its Portrayal of Black Americans,” The Black Image in the White Mind, http://racerelations.about.com/od/stereotypesmentalmodels/a/blackimage.htm; “Sirens Vs. Sirens: The Battle for 82^nd, The Oregonian newspaper, 14 September 2008; “The Media's Bias Against Black Men In America,” Newsmax, http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/3/30/140755.shtml; “Drug Enforcement Racist?”, The Badger Herald, 8 May 2008, http://badgerherald.com/oped/2008/05/08/drug_enforcement_rac.php) This bias, combined with the “targeted enforcement” tactics of the national “war on drugs” is creating a permanent class of disenfranchised, exploited slave labor and human capital to be exploited by the prison labor and private prison industry.

American media is doing a bad job covering the breakdowns of our present market-driven economic system and the risks posed to that system by climate change and peak oil. And since most local media outlets in America are owned by national or multinational corporations, the quality of coverage by local broadcasters and papers has deteriorated. But just as foreign news outlets often presented a clearer and more informative picture of the crises caused by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, foreign media is also doing a better job of covering the slower breakdowns in American society caused by the credit and finance crunch. The British newspaper The Guardian has done a particularly good job of describing the blight in Elk Grove, California caused by the mortgage crash, and the continuing blight of Detroit, and has openly discussed these as signs of the fading of American prominence.

These things and many others are a sign that American mainstream media are an unreliable source of news. People in the 1950's and 1960's could get the necessary information for informed decisions by reading the Los Angeles Times or Herald Examiner, or by watching Huntley and Brinkley or Walter Cronkite on television. But nowadays it is not enough to watch TV news or read most major American papers, and those who rely solely on these as sources of information haven't exercised “due diligence” in their decision-making process. Those who rely on mainstream media are being programmed to continue to rely on our breaking American system while fed a constant stream of reassurances that the system continues to work, and are being dissuaded from preparing alternatives for themselves. While this sort of programming benefits the rich masters of the system, it doesn't help people to adjust to sudden breakdowns such as those that occurred with gasoline after the recent hurricanes.

The Solution: Making Your Own Media

Thomas Jefferson once said, “The only security of all is in a free press.” Yet the agencies which we call “the press” in the U.S. are no longer free. This creates a crisis of legitimacy for the official mainstream media when people see things happening with their own eyes, yet find that their stories go distorted or unreported by the mainstream media. The rise of citizen media addresses this crisis of legitimacy.

Motivated citizen journalists can establish themselves as reliable sources of news, as long as they're willing to put some effort into their work and to produce an excellent product. In fact, by good work and excellence they may even establish themselves as a more reliable source of news than the mainstream media. Citizen journalists have a variety of new tools at their disposal. The blog is the easiest to implement, followed by the podcast, the video log, and the community newspaper. Blogs can be started for free. (Google's Blogger site has tools which can produce a very attractive blog that is easy to maintain and free of charge.) The other methods will of course cost more. The means used by any one citizen or group of citizens will depend on the amount of money, equipment and time at their disposal. But whatever the means used, it must be implemented with excellence.

For instance, someone may want to start a community blog. Such a person should establish the geographical boundaries which he or she can reasonably expect to cover during the time they can afford for gathering news. Next, when writing stories, the blogger must make sure that every detail is factually accurate. This cannot be stressed enough. No one will take you seriously if you don't get your facts straight. Grammar, punctuation and spelling are also very, very important. “If you cant spel rite, youl loose readerz!” (And just in case nobody caught it, “loose” should be spelled as “lose” in the previous sentence.) Your aim is to employ as many means as possible to get readers to take you seriously, to establish yourself as someone who knows what he or she is talking about.

If you have a digital camera, use it. When covering issues of concern in your community, be sure to take pictures and post them on your blog. Pictures and quotes humanize the subjects of your blog in the minds of your readers, and reinforce your message. And when you get permission to interview someone or take their picture, tell them the Web address of your blog and that they should expect to see themselves online shortly. It will boost your readership!

Podcasts and video logs (such as amateur YouTube clips) are also useful tools, but they require special equipment and time devoted to learning how to use that equipment. There are good books on these media forms, such as Digital Filmmaking 101 by Dale Newton and John Gaspard, Filmmaking for Teens by Troy Lanier and Clay Nichols, and Podcasting Now! by Andrew J. Dagys with John Hedtke. These are good references for those with the necessary time and equipment, although I realize that money for such equipment is probably tight for most people right now.

A group of citizen journalists can found a community newspaper. Publishing a hard-copy paper requires computers, software and an inexpensive printing house, as well as postage and staffers to mail papers, so this is not for the faint of heart. One good example of a community newspaper is the Fullerton Observer (http://www.fullertonobserver.com), a paper founded by Ralph Kennedy in 1978. Sharon Kennedy is the current editor. Her newspaper has published stories relating not only to Fullerton, California, but also to global warming, peak oil, the Iraq war, and the development of advanced crowd control technologies by the Federal government. She relies on a loose cadre of volunteer writers and columnists for many of the articles published each month. (She doesn't know this yet, but I may ask her one day if I can interview her further about the details of running a community newspaper.)

Lastly, there is the combination of two or more forms of electronic media into a multimedia presentation designed to highlight an issue that needs attention. This was done in 2007 by a team of “alternate reality game writers” who created the World Without Oil “game” website (http://worldwithoutoil.org/start.aspx) with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. World Without Oil is described as an alternate reality game, but I tend to think of it as much more of a collaboratively written story than a game. It powerfully illustrates some of the societal breakdowns that could occur from a sudden shortfall in world crude oil availability (those living in the Southeast might want to check out the WWO website and compare its projections and stories to their own experiences in the aftermath of this year's hurricanes). WWO was a major influence on the decisions I made early in 2007 in my preparations for a post-Peak future. Collaborative multimedia presentations such as WWO can be an influential tool in raising public awareness of community and societal issues.

Concerned small private citizens can thus provide themselves with a voice and a means to tell the necessary stories that are swept under the rug by our mainstream media. But there is an urgency to this; citizen journalists must act quickly to start making their voices heard. You – be the teller of the story that must be told.

We're Not In A Democracy Anymore, Toto

...Or are we?

Tonight, the United States Senate voted 74-25 to authorize the $700 billion Wall Street bailout requested by President Bush. In the time leading up to the vote, at least one senator was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying that after the Dow's 700-point drop in response to the House rejection of the bill, this senator's office started receiving hundreds of calls in support of the Bush administration's bailout request.

That seems odd, given that most online polls still show that a solid majority of Americans opposes this bailout. Most of the people I know still oppose this bailout. I still oppose this bailout. It appears that perhaps the quoted senator (and Bloomberg News) was stretching the truth. At any rate, it should be abundantly clear that the opinions of the majority of Americans no longer matters to the cronies and kleptocrats now running our country. (By the way, for those who read my post titled, "Pavlov's Politics," I want you to know that both Obama and McCain voted for the bailout, as well as Joe Biden.)

These people are set to try to ram the bailout package through the House, perhaps as early as this Friday. The urgency of this legislative push is what strikes me. It's a play right out of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. Only the House of Representatives stands between the American people and the greedy mouths of the rich. Do what you can to oppose this bailout, including e-mails and phone calls, not only to your congressional representatives, but to local media as well. But make backup plans to deal with life in a country whose leaders have become poison.

The Dry Hole of American Finance

Got a call from an old friend, we used to be real close

Said he couldn't go on the American way

Closed the shop, sold the house, bought a ticket to the West Coast

Now he gives them a stand-up routine in L.A.

– Billy Joel, My Life

I fully intended this week to continue what has become a mini-series on the aspects of a safety net of alternative systems for ordinary people to build in preparing for the effects of Peak Oil and climate change. But my plans were “overcome by events,” as they say in the military. The big events over the last two weeks have been the failure of at least two more large investment houses and the Federal “bailout plan” being proposed by President Bush and his economic advisors as a means to stabilize the markets. One major aspect of the impacts of Peak Oil and resource scarcity is the financial aspect, and the present responses of our society to the financial instabilities occurring now will in turn generate their own financial effects, which may hinder the ability of common people to prepare for a post-Peak world.

I will begin with a caveat. First, while there are many things about engineering that I understand, there are many things about finance as it is played at present in the U.S. that I don't understand, since American finance is a shady Las Vegas-style game in which the major players keep changing the rules to keep the rest of us off balance. Secondly, I am a bit late in addressing the financial situation, and other voices have already provided words of great insight and wisdom in explaining what is going on now. (See http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2008/09/adieu-stage-1-collapse.html; http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/09/rx-depression.html; and http://sharonastyk.com/2008/09/25/peeling-the-onion-whats-behind-the-financial-mess/ for examples. Warning: some of these posts contain some strong language.)

For the last few decades it seems that the American way has been to pump crony capitalism as much as possible by keeping wages stagnant, deregulating financial markets, outsourcing the manufacture of essential goods to low-wage countries, stimulating economic activity by easy credit, and lowering taxes while borrowing to finance national boondoggles such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now many Americans have no savings or are upside down on the loans they have taken out to purchase their “stuff” - houses and cars now worth less than what is owed. And the National debt – the amount of money which the Federal Government has borrowed and which it owes to its creditors – is approximately nine trillion, eight hundred sixty billion dollars (Source: U.S. National Debt Clock, http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/).

To put this into perspective, the total U.S. population is 303,824,640 as of July 2008. (Source: CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html) 67 percent of this population is between the ages of 15 and 64 years old. Assuming that this is the age of employable people, that means that there are 203,562,509 potential members of the workforce. If we further assume that ten percent of these are too poor to be taxed heavily and that another ten percent are so rich that they can escape taxes through legal maneuvering, the total taxable workforce is now 162,850,007. Assume further that 6.5 percent of them are out of work at present due to the present economic crisis and we have a taxable workforce of 152,365,757 people. If we divide the national debt by this number of working people, each wage-earner owes $64,700 on the National debt.

That debt grows every day, thanks to President Bush's war boondoggles and refusal to bring Government spending in line with tax receipts. But over the last eight or nine months a new source of debt has emerged, namely the Government's repeated moves to bail out large, high-flying investment banks who are unable to pay their debts and whose assets are now becoming worthless because of the subprime mortgage crisis. Every bailout has been accompanied by pronouncements from the Republicans that “this bailout is necessary in order to prevent the economy from crashing,” yet after every bailout, the crash has progressed a little more.

What is being protected by these bailouts is the notional “assets” of a number of rich investment bankers. These assets were based on the notional value of I.O.U.'s such as mortgages, which were used as collateral by investment houses to borrow money equal to many times the value of the original I.O.U.'s. Thus the investment banks, whose assets consisted of I.O.U.'s, used these “assets” to write much bigger I.O.U.'s. Now it is being seen that the original assets are rapidly becoming worthless, because the little people whose mortgage I.O.U.'s were counted as certificates of worth are unable to pay their debts. The whole debt structure is therefore in danger of falling apart.

A crash of financial markets is therefore a real possibility, and would be a painful thing to experience, since our society is largely credit-driven, and since most Americans don't produce tangible goods of real value anymore. Such a crash would force us to face the fact that the American economy is worth much less than its worth on paper, and would drive down our standard of living, as well as knocking a few rich people off their pedestals. But things get much worse if the Government becomes the guarantor of this structure of private I.O.U.'s. The Federal government already owes $9.86 trillion.

The significance of that fact becomes apparent when one realizes that that money is owed to someone. Who holds American debt? Right now, at least 25 percent of that debt is held by foreign governments. At the end of 2006, foreigners held 44 percent of federal debt held by the public. China in particular holds over $1 trillion in dollar-denominated assets. (Source: “United States Public Debt,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Foreign_ownership)

That debt exerts pressure on all of us, even though this nation has delayed facing the prospect of paying off the debt. And because this nation is past its peak in the production of many natural resources, and has largely outsourced its manufacturing base to other countries, we have increasingly less collateral with which to obtain new credit for the Federal government. To choose at this time to add to the National debt by nationalizing the results of the bad choices of the rich is an incredibly stupid move.

And such a move might soon lead to a time when all Americans - including those who are not in debt and who own their own property - may be required to forfeit all their possessions to service the national debt. This could be via a number of foreign governments demanding repayment of debt certificates issued by the U.S. government, to which the Feds might respond by raising the tax rate on anyone with assessable hard assets (including real estate) to such an extent that no one would be able to afford the tax. Then the Government could foreclose on the personal properties of people who could not afford the tax, and turn those properties over to foreign creditors in an attempt to repay some of the national debt. Is this a farfetched scenario? I'd like to think so, because the present governmental shenanigans are rather spooky.

But there are people who have seen the societal trends now building in the United States and who have tried to act wisely in disconnecting themselves from the present breaking system. Now the preparations of these people may be imperiled – especially if those preparations involved saving money or buying land or reducing debt – due to the real threat of having a crushing tax burden imposed on them, just so that irresponsible rich bankers might continue their high-flying financial games. What then happens to the safety net of the wise?

I will close by mentioning a post by Stormchild on the blog, Gale Warnings, titled “Responsibility and Authority.” According to that post, one characteristic of an abusive leader or abusive organization is the desire for absolute authority coupled with the total evasion of responsibility. This seems to be a characteristic of President Bush, his “bailout plan” and the rich investment houses he is trying to help with his plan. He and the Congress are determined to enact this plan even though a solid majority of Americans opposes it, seeing it for the shock doctrine tactic that it actually is.