Place-Making For People of Small Means

Placemaking (or place-making) can be defined as, “the process of creating squares, plazas, parks, streets and waterfronts that will attract people because they are pleasurable or interesting...Being in places involves social encounters, immersion in the sights, sounds, sun, wind and atmosphere of a locale, and curiosity about the traces of thought, imagination and investment that have guided their construction and use over time. ” (Wikipedia, Placemaking.)

Another definition is, “An integrated and transformative process that connects creative and cultural resources to build authentic, dynamic and resilient communities or place.” (Toronto Artscape, Glossary.) I like this definition much better.

One of the challenges of this present time of economic contraction is figuring out how to make the places where we live into places that sustain us on a number of levels. This involves not only trying to create places that provide some or all of the essentials we need, but also creating places that encourage and promote a sense of community.

Some writers and thinkers have addressed this challenge, notably architects and urban planners from the “New Urbanist” movement. Their assumption has been that placemaking is primarily an activity reserved for governments, developers and other large entities with lots of resources to create well-designed, resilient communities from the ground up, or to re-fashion defunct, poorly designed communities into the sorts of communities that could be called good places to live. Things like redevelopment, transit-oriented development and gentrification come to mind when discussing the re-fashioning process.

The problem is that the money and resources for such a refashioning have already been largely blown in the United States. It's as if the nation collectively went to a store with $5 in its pocket, and blew the money on candy and soda instead of beans, rice and vegetables. Some key writers and economic analysts believe that the industrialized world in general, and the United States in particular, are in the early stages of a massive deflationary depression which will destroy the ability of large-scale entities like governments to do anything on a large scale.

It will therefore be up to ordinary citizens to make good places out of the places where they live. But there's another challenge, namely, that not that many of us own our own living places outright, and even now, not many can afford to pay for a place in cash. A deflationary depression will cause a drop in prices of assets like real estate, yet it will depress wages even faster. Such a drop in wages will make it hard for people who own “on margin” (that is, who owe money on the houses they “own”) to continue making payments on their debt, and it will turn many other people into sojourners without definite roots, as many young people in college and recent college graduates are now.

How can these renters - young people in college or recently graduated, and working poor people - make sustainable places for themselves in the places they rent? How can they make their neighborhoods into sustainable places? How can they engage in good placemaking?

In an attempt to answer that question, I interviewed Neil and Naomi Montacre, proprietors of Naomi's Organic Farm Supply in inner southeast Portland, Oregon. I first met Neil and Naomi during a tour of homes with backyard chicken coops in 2008. Their house impressed me, with its large chicken coop, its varied gardens, its “Hens for Obama” sign and a poster with pictures giving a guided tour of the place and their efforts. I asked them several questions about their place, the plans and steps they had taken in altering the place, and its impact on the neighborhood. In 2009, they added a greenhouse and more garden plantings. This year, they moved to a leased property of about an acre where they set up their store, and they continued with the activities and philosophy they had developed while living in their former house. In all these things, they took bold steps with property they were renting, to make that property a place that could at least partially sustain them.

In this week's interview, Neil talks in more detail about their activities with rental properties, and his philosophy regarding making good places out of the places where people live. The interview can be found at the Internet Archive, under the title, “Place-making For People Of Small Means.” There's also a video on Vimeo which shows a partial tour of Naomi and Neil's new location, as well as an interview with another renter in inner southeast Portland. The video can be found at Place-Making for People of Small Means, or you can watch it by clicking on the link below. Note how prominently urban agriculture figures in both examples of placemaking.

Place-Making for People of Small Means from TH in SoC on Vimeo.

Meretrix Activists

I want to know what became of the changes

we waited for love to bring.

Were they only the fitful dreams

of some greater awakening?

I've been aware of the time going by,

They say in the end it's the wink of an eye

And when the morning light comes streaming in

You'll get up and do it again,

Amen.

– Jackson Browne, The Pretender

I was thinking recently of some of the geeky things I did as a kid. Some of those things were expressions of nascent idealism and activism. My family was living in Southern California and I had become convinced that the place had to have a decent, modern mass transit system. So I ripped some blank pages from a class notebook and penciled a paragraph at the top of one of the sheets stating that I was collecting signatures to make the Government give us all a slick, technically advanced monorail system. (Those weren't the exact words I used – hey, I was only twelve years old at the time.)

I took my “petition” around to a couple of supermarkets and a nearby Thrifty Drug store, and asked the store managers if I could ask people to sign up for a modern mass transit system. I don't know what impression I made on them, but they all said “No.” So I knocked on people's doors and asked for signatures. I even managed to get a few. But to this day I can't remember what finally happened to my “petition.”

That experience formed a picture in my mind of participatory democracy as an expression of the energies and choices of motivated, idealistic people freely volunteering their time for causes they believe in, and manifesting their belief in the championing of both candidates and the citizen-sponsored initiatives that are supposed to be the backbone of direct democracy. But lately that picture has fallen apart. It's not as if someone threw a rock suddenly at the picture frame, but rather that the entire picture has been left out in the rain for a while.

I'm thinking of the last several months, and how my old employer was slow and very light on work, and then there was a period where we were so light on work that I stayed home for about five or six weeks. And I was diligently scouring Monster.com and Craigslist and other venues for employment offers. I am an engineer by schooling, but I have to confess that I looked at some of the other headings under “Jobs” on Craigslist. One such heading was titled, “Nonprofit Sector.” From January until just a few weeks ago, this heading was chock full of announcements that ran something like this: “ACTIVISTS NEEDED! $9-$14/hour,” or, “Fight for Change and Make $$$!”

To be sure, such ads generate a response. I got to meet several of the people who responded to these ads over the course of the late winter and spring. They tended to congregate on MAX trains, collecting petition signatures from a captive audience as we all whisked from station to station. Or a person could run into them at a New Seasons or Whole Foods market or at Trader Joe's, or in front of a post office, or at the Lloyd Center mall. Some of them seemed to be representatives of genuinely counter-cultural, grassroots organizations. And some of them actually seemed to believe in what they were doing. I am thinking especially of several petitioners I met who were collecting signatures for some medical marijuana initiative. (Now that's “grassroots”! But I didn't sign their petition, sorry to say.) I was also glad to meet people from the Bus Project.

There were also signature gatherers whose masters had a more troubling agenda. For instance, there was a group gathering signatures for a new casino east of Portland under the premise (and promise) that this casino would benefit schools, police departments, parks, and other public agencies. However, the backers of the casino initiative are in Toronto, Canada, and they have spent over $800,000 to insure that their measure is on the November ballot. I met a lot of signature gatherers working for this initiative, including one group a few weeks ago consisting of newly-hired canvassers on a side street who were being given an open-air training talk in the art of “selling” their petition to potential signers. (I have to tell you, they reminded me of a flock of pigeons converging on a loaf of bread.) I asked a couple of them how they found out about this job, and whether they knew anything about the petition for which they were about to collect signatures. Craigslist works wonders, doesn't it?

Then there was the usual suspects from Vote Oregon out collecting signatures for initiatives sponsored by Kevin Mannix, Bill Sizemore and Loren Parks. One such initiative, Petition 13, would impose mandatory minimum jail/prison sentences for certain felony sex crimes and driving under the influence convictions. I saw some of the “Vote Oregon” operatives at work selling this initiative, and they were slick - “Would you like to sign a petition to keep sex predators off the streets?” Who wouldn't say “Yes!”? There are only three problems, however. First, they don't tell you what laws exist at present to provide the very protection they claim their initiative will accomplish. In other words, maybe we don't really need this initiative. Second, the fine print of their initiative targets things other than sexual predation. And that leads to the third point, namely, that Mannix, Sizemore and Parks have long wanted to create a prison-industrial complex in Oregon just like that which exists in California, because they see prisons as a lucrative growth opportunity for themselves.

The thing about almost all of the signature gatherers is that they were all paid. The money came from somewhere. It was a lot of money. It would be nice to think that all that money came from altruistic souls giving their bounty of spare change to altruistic, civic-minded nonprofits concerned only for the common good. But the reality is that in too many cases, the money came from “point sources” – individuals or small groups of individuals with a lot of wealth and a vested interest in using the political system to generate a little more wealth for themselves. Anymore, it takes a lot to get an initiative qualified for a state ballot. And states are populous, big places. And getting people to notice your petition takes a lot of expensive advertising. My run-ins with signature gatherers were yet another reminder that the political system in the United States is almost wholly owned and run by wealthy people, whose sole aim is to engineer the system for the maximization of their own personal profit. Almost gone are the days of true grassroots activism of the kind that makes kids draft petitions and knock on doors just for the fun of it.

I won't even get into the funding that goes into candidacy, except to say that over the last month I have become rather frightened by everyone who is running for political office, both locally and at the Federal level. I recently rode past a big sign saying “We Need So-And-So for Governor!” and asking myself, “Just why do we need So-and-So? Who's paying that so-and-so to run for office?” Here's what would be very nice to have – political candidates who told us all the straight truth, who said, “I make no promises to 'fix' the economy and bring prosperity back again. Those days are over. American society in general and our locality in particular face an unavoidable contraction of the official, formal economy, due to resource depletion, environmental degradation, and the resulting collapse of our debt-based financial arrangements. All I can offer is to tell you the truth, and to arrange our government in such a way as to facilitate your adaptation to our new reality.” It goes without saying that there are no candidates willing to say such things, and few voters willing to hear such things. It's the people who promise the moon right now – and the people dumb enough to vote for them – who scare me.

Some bloggers have proposed a boycott of the next elections, and a few of them have gone so far as to say that such a boycott might withdraw enough support from our corrupt political system that it crashes. It would certainly be nice to have a government that had been rendered incapable of ruining our lives. But if you want to crash the system, a voting boycott is not enough. Some systems react strangely when lightly loaded. If there were a massive voting boycott in this country, who knows what kooks might make their way into office? It would be easy for the wealthy to find a few people who were willing to vote a certain way in exchange for a few bucks, thus buying an election and guaranteeing that our government continued to be a government by the rich, for the rich.

If one really wanted to withdraw his support from our present government, he would have to go farther than choosing not to vote. He would have to take away the power the government has to accomplish things and to funnel wealth to the wealthy. The removal of this power could be done legally, but it would be painful. For it would require that people chose to live very frugally – thus reducing the money that flowed to large businesses via the mass participation of consumers in a consumer economy. Secondly, once people drastically reduced their expenditures, they would have to drastically and voluntarily reduce their income. This would reduce the revenue available to the Government via taxes. Not many people are willing to take the first step. Even fewer are willing to take the second.

Tea And Xenophobia

Somehow or other, this past week I ran across a short essay by James Howard Kunstler, a social critic whom I have mentioned a couple of times on this blog. He is the author of the Long Emergency, a book I read in 2007 concerning Peak Oil and its likely societal impacts. Anyway, the title of the essay I read this past week was, “My Tea Party.”

The essay made a few good points, but it also contained two errors, one quite serious. The first error is a technical, factual error. Kunstler takes great pains to badmouth radical Christian fundamentalism, and I am sure he would hold up examples such as Sarah Palin and Pat Robertson. However, this is not quite accurate. Genuine, orthodox, by-the-Good-Book Christianity bears very little resemblance to the materialistic, jingoistic, greedy, violent, hyper-patriotic religion that is American evangelicalism. There are many Scriptures I could quote to prove this point, especially from the New Testament, but I won't take the time in this post. (Feel free to check out some of my other writings.)

I have to say, however, that this error of Kunstler's doesn't bother me all that much. For too long, too many of us who have called ourselves Christian have tolerated a freak show, to put it bluntly. We should have all risen up long ago and excommunicated the Republican Party, the moneychangers who have infiltrated our worship, and a number of key figures in the American Religious Right. Maybe it's not too late for that...

His other error bothers me much more, for it is a moral error with serious societal consequences. Kunstler writes, “My tea party would reduce legal immigration to a tiny trickle and get serious about enforcing sanctions against people who are here without permission...The truth is that neither party really wants to do anything about the extraordinary influx of Mexican nationals because they want to pander to a growing segment of Hispanic voters (or secondarily want to maintain the pool of cheap labor for US businesses). My party does not believe in unbounded multi-culturalism.” And, “My party views the global population overshoot problem as a condition that requires a more rigorous defense of US territory, sovereign resources, and even whatever remains of American common culture.”

There are several problems with that line of thinking. First, it undermines the whole concept of the American society as a society of immigrants who have chosen a common new identity that transcends the original cultures from which we came. That concept is what was taught to me in countless hours of grade-school civics classes, and it is the concept embodied in the present form of the Constitution. If being American is no longer defined as the acceptance of this new common identity, then who gets to define what an “American” is? Whose culture shall we all adopt? And shall we then eradicate all other cultures and expressions of other cultures in this nation?

The problem is that over the last ten years, one dominant group has tried to force its own culture and the culture of its ancestors on every other group in American society (not to mention the world), while doing its best to stamp out any expressions of genuinely different cultures. These other cultures have a lot to offer, and we can learn a lot from them. People from other cultures, especially those found in lower-income countries, have a lot to teach us native-born “Americans” concerning how to be happy and not neurotic when confronted with having to live on less.

We might also ask why Mexicans are coming to the United States. It's not like they're coming here to steal jobs from architects, engineers, investment bankers, brain surgeons or college professors. No, rather, they are taking some of the dirtiest (in some cases, most dangerous) and least respected jobs in the United States – from meat packers to day laborers to gardening/landscaping workers to nannies to house cleaners. (In fact, I recently got a flyer in the mail from an outfit called the “Cleaning Authority.” The front of the flyer shows a picture of a blond, blue-eyed dad reading a bedtime story to a blond, blue-eyed child, with a caption that says “Life's too short to clean your own house.” On another page is a picture of a Hispanic woman dressed in a Cleaning Authority uniform, and holding a vacuum cleaner.)

As has been true in the past, it is still true today that many Mexicans and other Hispanic people are coming here to take jobs that no American wants, jobs that pay so poorly that often two or more families are forced to share a cheap apartment or small house. Why do they do it? Could it be that what they have in their home country – what they have left behind – is far worse? The honest answer in many cases is “Yes!” And why is this? Could it be because of predatory “free market” capitalism as practiced and pushed by the wealthy citizens of the United States and other First World nations, the policies that destabilize and rob ordinary citizens of Third World nations while trashing their homeland?

Certainly we see this in Europe and the African continent. European nations have instituted Draconian crackdowns on illegal immigration from Africa – even as these nations continue to plunder Africa while polluting it. Think of things like European factory fishing vessels despoiling African coast fisheries, or the many oil spills caused by the activities of Royal Dutch Shell in the Niger Delta. When we look at Mexico (and much of the Caribbean and South America), we can see the same things being done to the citizens of those lands by the United States. What, for instance, has the Deepwater Horizon blowout done to Mexican coastal cities and villages? You probably won't hear many people in U.S. mainstream media asking this question. And where do the Mexican drug cartels get their money from? And who gets to keep most of the wealth now being generated by American-owned or multinational factories and assembly plants now operating in Mexico?

It goes back to this: The United States – five percent of the world's population – gets to consume 40 percent of the world's oil, and a huge fraction of the rest of the world's resources. We've got an excess of prima donnas, muscle trucks and cars, gigantic houses, fat people, lame pursuits and stuff – “mountains, oh, mountains of things” – and so few people in this country ask how things got to be this way. Too many Americans seem genuinely surprised and distressed at the thought that maybe disadvantaged people from disadvantaged lands might want a few crumbs of our bounty. The Mexicans have no trouble grasping climate change – anthropogenic climate change caused largely by the refusal of the First World to give up its conspicuous consumption. See, for instance, “Bad News Blues (the Writing on the Wall)” from Aimee's blog, New To Farm Life, or “Hispanic Health” from Baylor University. What do you think they will do as we continue to make their land unlivable? What would you do?

“Population overshoot” is a convenient code phrase used by some to communicate the idea that our societal problems are the result of too many people on the earth – especially the “ignorant people from other cultures who don't look like us,” rather than the result of excessive consumption on our part. But if many who are now afraid of immigrants want to reduce immigration to this country, they should start by consuming a lot less. That will remove the profit motive from those who are now making a killing by robbing other countries to enrich the United States.

In the meantime, I think it's wise for people who want to build resilient neighborhoods to realize that multiculturalism is here to stay, in one form or another. Forward-thinking people who live in mixed ethnic neighborhoods would do well to learn something of the languages and cultures of their fellow residents, and to begin to make friends and build bridges among them. Go with the flow - learn to be flexible and open to others. Or, as the Good Book says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Post-Peak Finance for Vulnerable Neighborhoods

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I am pleased to present another interview this week. The themes of today's interview are banking and local neighborhoods during a time of economic contraction. This week's guests are Scott Bossom, Vice President/Credit Administrator for Albina Bank (Martin Luther King branch) and Teri L. Karren-Keith, Vice President/Branch Manager, Albina Bank (Martin Luther King branch). They both graciously gave me an hour of their time for today's talk. Albina Community Bank is a locally-owned bank in Portland with a reputation for strongly supporting the local community, and especially minority neighborhoods.

In arranging for this interview, I sent Mr. Bossom a note in which I outlined my questions thus:

“I have three general areas of interest. First, there's the subject of the general future of finance in an age of economic contraction caused by the depletion of natural resources. Others have written on this topic (for instance, there's Gail Tverberg's work at http://www.ourfiniteworld.com/finite_world_issues.html and http://gailtheactuary.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/our-world-is-finite-is-this-a-problem/), but I'd like to know how banks view this issue.

“Second, there's the subject of how economic contraction affects local communities. Specifically, what barriers are now appearing in front of people who want to finance projects? Especially, what existing hindrances faced by vulnerable communities are now being amplified by economic situation? How have big banks contributed to making vulnerable communities even more vulnerable?

“Third, what can local communities – especially working-class and poor communities – do now to finance necessary projects? How is Albina Bank helping these communities? And have locally-owned banks experimented with emerging approaches like establishing local currencies and microloans for small-scale businesses?”

These questions laid the groundwork for our discussion. During the interview, we talked about the current local economic picture, and whether that picture actually lines up with government and mainstream media reports of economic “recovery.” Scott and Teri told me of the weaknesses in the commercial real estate market, and the impact of resource shortages on the decisions of local banks. Terry voiced the opinion that our present crisis will not suddenly go away.

I asked point-blank, “What have big banks done to destabilize local neighborhoods?”, and we talked about the impact of predatory and discriminatory lending practices by big banks such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo. (For more on this subject, and on discriminatory pushing of subprime mortgages on minorities, see “Wells Fargo, Ghetto Loans, and 'Mud People',” “Race Discrimination Lawsuit Filed Against Bank of America, N.A.,” “Countrywide Sued For Discriminating Against Black And Latino Mortgage Buyers” and “Study Finds Disparities in Mortgages by Race”.) And we discussed the Fox News reports from several months ago, which blamed minorities and Federal anti-discrimination laws for the subprime crisis of 2008. Scott and Teri were genuinely surprised by this sort of reporting (both stated that they do not watch Fox), and wondered how Fox managed to create such a story.

(On a completely unrelated subject, it seems that Fox and spokespeople like Sarah Palin are now blaming the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Gulf oil spill on environmentalists and left-leaning members of the Federal government. In both the subprime case and the case of offshore oil drilling, the right-wing message is the same: “Oh, here, look at this mess that we've made. Only, it's not our fault! The mess has actually been caused by people trying to pass some semblance of laws designed to keep us from making a mess!” If lying made people rich...but then again, these people are rich.)

Regarding subprime loans, we discussed the fact that lenders deliberately presented a picture to potential borrowers that was not clear or full. Scott tied this in to credit card policies that are also deliberately made unclear, in order to insure that borrowers are liable to be penalized.

We talked about what vulnerable communities can do to become resilient and self-sufficient. Teri stressed the value of localism and supporting local businesses. Scott mentioned microloans and organizations such as Mercy Corps who provide guidance to small businesses. Both Scott and Teri agreed that there is a swell of interest in entrepreneurship and starting one's own business among people in the Portland metro area. I mentioned the rise of local currencies, which seems to be a new concept to those who are involved in traditional banking.

Lastly, we tried peering into the future of banking in an age of general economic contraction and collapse, and Scott and Teri shared their perspectives of what such a future might look like. Teri returned to a simple prescription for the survival of local banks in such a time: to focus on community relationships and actions that build trust.

A podcast of the interview can be downloaded from the Internet Archive at this address: Post-Peak Finance For Vulnerable Neighborhoods.

Repost - "Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods"

I've got another interview coming up this weekend, God willing. In preparation for that interview, I thought it would be good to mention “Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods”, a post I wrote several months ago. That post talks about the challenges facing neighborhoods in the United States in this time of economic collapse, challenges made worse in many cases by institutional policies of economic persecution directed against minority communities. It is a good preparation for this next interview which will explore of some of these policies further, as well as general financial issues confronting urban neighborhoods. It's a bit late in the day to be talking about some of these issues – I don't know how much can be done at this stage of the game. Nevertheless, it can't hurt to talk about these things.

The Asymptote of Truth

I won't have very much time on the weekends for deep, analytical posts for a while. The summer school session has just started and I am teaching a sophomore level engineering class two days a week as an adjunct. This is on top of my day job. (I'm glad I arranged to work part-time!)

But a couple of things have been on my mind lately. First, the continued oil spill (or leak, or gusher, or whatever you want to call it) at the Macondo field in the Gulf of Mexico. People who are paying attention should know that originally BP claimed that the spill was “very minor,” and that it was only grudgingly that they revised their daily leakage numbers upward to 5000 barrels per day. This figure they (and the U.S. Coast Guard) steadfastly maintained to be the truth, even though available evidence suggested that the spill was far worse. Recently, the evidence has become so overwhelming that the “official” leakage figures have steadily crept toward agreement with estimates made by independent observers. This source states a figure of 60,000 barrels per day. Even that figure pales in comparison with BP's own worst-case estimate of 100,000 barrels per day. The truth is coming out, but grudgingly.

The story of this oil spill and of the “official” story of this oil spill is but a subset of the story of our present societal predicament and of the “official” story of that predicament. This is especially true regarding Peak Oil. The official story started with denial. But as the evidence of our true situation has grown worse and more overwhelming, the official stories have begun to line up with the accounts of independent observers. After years of denial, even the U.S. Energy Information Administration now admitting that Peak Oil is real, and that it is here.

What makes people in power lie through their teeth? The answer to that question, while rather simple, would take a lot of time to write, and I have to be out of the house early tomorrow. But I am thinking of one possible outcome to our societal predicament, an outcome I first heard suggested in a podcast I heard of someone interviewing Dmitri Orlov. I think what may happen in a lot of cases is that people in power will lie to us just as long as the lie holds some hope of being profitable to them. As the available evidence mounts to disprove their lies, they will change their story to bring it closer to the truth – yet they will never quite reach truthfulness. Once the available evidence becomes overwhelming, Orlov suggests that some of these people will simply walk off their jobs and disappear, because there's no further reward to be had by staying. I wonder.

A Fight In The Outhouse

I've said many things over the many posts of my blog. Some of them have been things that I knew right at the outset to be inflammatory. I didn't think a post on recycling human waste for agriculture would raise a stink, but I guess I was wrong. Some of the responses to my last post have been surprising.

There's one blogger whom I suspect of thinking that I've turned into some sort of techno-optimist who believes that technology can solve all our problems. To him I would say "no worries" – I haven't turned into a collapse “heretic.” Rather, I hold the premise that our current method of farming is unsustainable, and that one big reason for this is our way of disposing of human waste. Therefore we have to begin “closing the loop” by finding ways of recycling human waste so that it can be returned to the soil. My interview last week was an attempt to see how many people in the local government of the city in which I live realize this, and how deeply they realize this. I personally think that Portland could go much farther in recycling human waste, and that all cities in the U.S. will have to do things differently fairly soon. But when I interview people, I generally don't try to beat them up – it's considered to be in poor taste. (I might make an exception for certain rich people and media figures – so Rupert Murdoch or Glenn Beck might want to avoid having me interview them.)

What's been more interesting are the comments a couple of people sent me, warning me that sewage sludge and biosolids are the same thing, and that sewage sludge is a dangerous pollutant that should never be applied to agricultural land. One of these commenters writes that “biosolids” is a term coined by the sewage “industry” in order to market a toxic product which has endangered many people. Another commenter states that “according to the Federal Clean Water Act, biosolids/sewage sludge is a pollutant.” Reading through these comments, however, gives me an impression of people who are impassioned in their opposition to use of biosolids, yet who have not carefully read my post or the references I cited at the end, nor listened to the podcast to which I linked.

Now I just want to say that I try to keep an open mind about many things. But I try not to post allegations about things or people unless I have very good corroborating sources to back the allegations. To do otherwise in this case would not be fair to the people I interviewed. I am happy to post further comments on the subject of recycling human waste. But let's lay down a few conditions first.

If anyone wants to comment on my post, “Sewage Recycling - A Loop Almost Closed”, please read it first – the whole thing. Then read the supporting references and listen to the podcast. If after that you still believe that biosolids are unsafe for agriculture, please provide information which refutes each point made in the post and in the accompanying references. If you don't have time for all of that, at least read some of the EPA references I cited, along with Greg Charr's PowerPoint presentation, and provide documented information that refutes at least two of the statements contained in those references.

Lastly, if you believe that biosolids should not be used for agriculture, please present your own solution to the problem of soil depletion caused by modern industrial agriculture and modern sewage removal systems. That, after all, is the whole point of this discussion. Flushing humanure down toilets and into our oceans is depleting our soils, and this will lead sooner or later to agricultural collapse. What do you think we should do about it?

If you will answer these questions, that will let me know that you have read all of what I said in my post. And if you will especially answer the last question, that will let me know where you're coming from. If you will do this for me, I will post your comments – even if I don't agree with them. If you don't do these things, I will not post your comments.

Sewage Recycling - A Loop Almost Closed

I am pleased to present another interview this week. The subject of the interview (and of today's post) is humanure recycling for agriculture. But first, a bit of backstory.

Many writers on the subject of Peak Oil and collapse have discussed the challenges facing large-scale agriculture in a post-Peak world. A particular focus of their writing has been the steady depletion of soil nutrients and minerals resulting from our First World arrangements for growing, distributing and eating food, and disposing of the resulting waste. The whole system is unsustainable in the long run, since food that turns into human waste is now flushed down toilets and eventually into our oceans, taking vital soil minerals such as phosphorus with it. This requires the mining of inorganic phosphorus and combining it with other man-made components into artificial fertilizer in order to replenish depleted soils. But we are running out of the resources to continue this form of soil replenishment. Already there's talk of “Peak Phosphorus,” to name just one depleting resources.

Those who write about post-Peak agriculture have therefore said a lot about the need for individuals and communities not only to start growing their own food, but also to start recycling their own humanure. Many of these writers cite The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins (an excellent book by the way; I have a copy on my bookshelf). Jenkins outlines many steps that go into safe humanure composting for agricultural use, as well as outlining the dangers and environmental hazards that occur because of the improper disposal of human waste. However, his is an individual approach, and his composting methods are designed to be applied by individuals and households. This poses no problems as long as individuals and households are educated in proper methods and don't deviate from those methods. But people will be people, and in this fallen world, that means that some people are bound to mess a thing up, even if that thing is simple. I've met a few humanure composters, and at least one of them is doing it flat-out wrong. This can lead to ground water pollution and the danger of disease if carried far enough.

The other issue I have with the individual approach is that it assumes that any existing societal unit larger than the individual or small household is likely to be clueless about Peak Oil, peak pesources, adapting to a post-Peak world, or living with the reality of “the well run dry.” “Therefore it's up to us to start from scratch in preparing and adapting,” many writers would say. There's a lot of evidence for that opinion, especially when one looks at the Federal government and at many State governments. Lately, however, I've come to think that it's not entirely true that the members and leaders of larger societal units are utterly clueless about the issues of post-Peak adaptation. Sometimes within existing local structures it's possible to find people who are aware of resource depletion and who are already creating alternative means for people to get their needs met in a post-Peak world. I wanted to see if there were people within the Portland city government who understood the issues regarding humanure, sewage treatment infrastructure and budget constraints, and the problem of recycling nutrients back into agriculture.

So it was that I recently found myself at the Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant for an interview with Greg Charr, the Biosolids, Residuals and Reuse Program Manager. Before our actual interview, I met Mike, one of the senior plant operators, who took me on a tour of the plant. We spent a lot of time underground, beneath massive concrete roofs that comprised the undersides of huge tanks holding thousands upon thousands of gallons of water. I shot some video, which may or may not get posted one of these days. Mike explained how most municipal wastewater treatment plants worldwide have three stages of treatment: primary, secondary and tertiary. He then explained how the Columbia plant differed from some other plants in that its processes have been optimized to produce biosolids as a final product.

The interesting thing about these biosolids is that they are not the same as sewage sludge. Rather, they have been treated to such an extent that they are certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as safe for use in large-scale agriculture. Mike also pointed out the composter at the Columbia plant, and mentioned that it had been in use for many years before being shut down due to budgetary reasons. And Mike explained the working of the digesters at the Columbia plant and the challenges of maintaining digester chemistry and biology. The digesters at the Columbia plant produce enough methane gas to generate 1.7 megawatts of power at the plant (the plant uses a bit over 4 megawatts), and they also sell gas to local industries.

Greg Charr explained the EPA restrictions and certifications required for labeling the output of a sewage plant as a “biosolid” suitable for use in agriculture. The EPA has three categories of biosolids: Class B, Class A and Exceptional Quality (EQ). Greg discussed Class B and Class A biosolids, and talked about how biosolids quality has increased over the last 20 years. At present, the biosolids produced by the City of Portland are not significantly contaminated by heavy metals. As far as residual pharmaceutical chemicals, Greg mentioned studies done by several universities that showed no significant danger from residual pharmaceutical chemicals in biosolids, due to the degradation of these chemicals by sunlight as well as absorption by soil particles.

The City's wastewater treatment plants only produce Class B biosolids at present. This is a problem, as the EPA allowable uses for Class B solids are limited. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) also has restrictions on the use of Class B solids. Therefore these are not a practical fertilizer for home gardeners and small-scale urban farmers. Greg further explained the budget constraints that resulted in shutting down the composter at the Columbia plant. Composted humanure qualifies as a Class A biosolid, suitable for direct use in gardening and urban farming. But the City was not able to produce compost in a way that covered operating costs of their composter. The Class B biosolids produced by the Portland treatment plants must be trucked to eastern Oregon for use in dryland farming. Eastern Oregon's semiarid climate helps the biosolids to break down without contributing to pollution of stormwater runoff into rivers.

At the end of the interview, I asked several further questions related to composting. It turns out that there are several companies in the U.S. who are already doing sewage composting on a large scale. (One of those companies, Synagro, has been in the news lately due to a corruption scandal involving the City of Detroit's sewage treatment.) I have a hunch (although I haven't researched it) that it may be hard for large companies to make a large profit from sewage composting, and that this is something that might be better suited to smaller outfits using low-tech methods. At present, it is possible to buy commercially produced sewage compost in the U.S., although it's likely to be a bit expensive.

I mentioned the City's combination of both high tech (Big Pipe) and low tech (eco-roofs) approach to managing stormwater, and asked whether the City was looking into low-tech methods of dealing with human waste, such as teaching people home-scale composting. Greg stated that this is not currently being considered by the City – but I hope my question will provoke some thought! The organized deployment of low-tech approaches will be increasingly important in the years ahead, as cities and counties continue to face shrinking budgets and as it becomes harder to maintain wastewater infrastructure during a time of economic decline.

A podcast of the interview can be found at the Internet Archive at this address: Sewage Recycling – A Loop Almost Closed. Also attached is a PowerPoint presentation which Greg provided, covering the main points of his talk, as well as links to some supplementary reading material, as listed below:

• “Photodegradation of the Endocrine-Disrupting Chemical 4-Nonylphenol in Biosolids Applied to Soil”, Kang Xiaa and Chang Yoon Jeong, Universities of Georgia and Louisiana, September 2003.

• “Frequently Asked Questions | Biosolids | Wastewater Management”, United States Environmental Protection Agency.

• “Class 'A' - Exceptional Quality Biosolids”, Portage County Water Resources, Portage County, Ohio.

• “Biosolids Technology Fact Sheet”, United States Environmental Protection Agency.

• “SCHWING Bioset - Products - Bioset Process - Class A Biosolids”, Schwing Bioset Incorporated. (I include this link as an example of a relatively high-tech process that may not be readily available very far into the future.)

My visit to the Columbia plant was profitable, and I appreciated the opportunity to talk with knowledgeable people about these issues.

City of Portland Biosolids Presentation

View more presentations from THinSoC.

No Wings, But A Prayer

I guess I have an odd, quirky sense of humor. It comes out on occasion during dark and stressful times (like visits to the dentist), or sometimes while writing posts for this blog. Yet we have terrible things to talk about. These days are dark and stressful times for anyone who's paying attention and who cares about the direction our world and our nation are taking. There's a lot of bad news out there.

I am at a crossroads regarding my emotional response to it all (as well as my objective response). Many of the posts I have written deal with adapting to a post-Peak world, an industrial society that is in decline due to the depletion of its resource base. It's easy to be cheered by thinking about various adaptation strategies, to think that while the next several years or decades may be a bit rough, we might come out better off in the end.

Then something like the Deepwater Horizon spill occurs, and we ordinary common folk get to see how incompetent and feckless our leaders in government are in dealing with things like this, and how they seem so unwilling to inconvenience the holders of concentrated wealth and power who make messes like this. The rich seem bent on making as many messes as they can get away with in their pursuit of ever more wealth. There seems to be very little the rest of us can do to stop them. And when I look around, I see too many of my working-class fellows who are sympathetic to the rich. After all, they themselves hope to be rich some day.

Things fall apart. Sometimes it happens all by itself, as systems self-simplify to a more stable configuration. If you're a part of such a system, you can have a hope that the final configuration will leave you in a good place, or at least a decent, survivable place. But what if you're a part of a system whose masters are working as hard as they can to ruin it? A fellow blogger recently wrote a very angry post regarding the things now being ruined in our world – things like the livelihoods, health and ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico. I have to say that I agree with her anger. What's especially galling is that there are unrepentant Republican politicians pushing for even more oil drilling off the coasts of the United States. In general, it seems that every Republican (or Fox News or Tea-bagger) position can be summed up in demanding the so-called “right” of the rich to maximize their short-term gains by destroying their fellow human beings.

But the Democrats are no better. 2008 was their chance to prove otherwise, and instead of doing so, they gave us Obama. He's a nice guy, genial, relatively young and well-spoken. He is also a Pavlovian symbol designed to fool people concerned about environmental, economic and social justice into believing that they've gotten a real change. The real mission of the Democrats seems to be to pretend to be concerned about the suffering of ordinary people and of the Earth because of the depredations of the rich, while doing absolutely nothing to stop these depredations. So as livelihoods, communities, waters and coastlines are destroyed by the ongoing Gulf oil spill, Obama will jet off to Gulf Coast communities so that TV cameras can capture images of the President stooping down on an oil-stained beach with a look of deep concern on his face. That's about as good as it gets. Here's another wager: I'll bet you that Obama does absolutely nothing about the stupid Arizona “immigration” law. Obama and the Democrats seem to find it more convenient to their cause to climb into the ring and pretend to be knocked out.

In this nation, narcissistic, greedy sociopathy has come out of the closet. This event was not announced as such, but the period from the start of George W. Bush's presidency until now has been one big coming-out party. While sociopaths can be found at every social stratum, I'd wager that they are most heavily concentrated among the very wealthy. Because they now control most of the mainstream media in this country, they have created a mass culture that almost perfectly reflects their values, and they seek to marinate all the rest of us in that culture until we all taste like them. “Greed is good!” “Helping poor people is socialism!” “Me first – regardless of the consequences to anyone else!” “I have a right to be racist!”

Against this backdrop, it gets a bit harder to write about strategies of adaptation to collapse. This week I lost my sense of humor. I hope it comes back. I'm trying to hang on to my optimism, but it's slippery and my hands are sweaty. We may all be as hapless as the passengers and crew of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, which crash-landed in the ocean in 1996 after hijackers forced the plane to fly until it ran out of fuel. Nevertheless, some of those people lived to find out that the flight attendants were telling the truth when they said that seat cushions could be used as flotation devices. Maybe some of us will be so lucky. Therefore I will keep interviewing people who have something to say about our situation and how we can adapt to it. And I will continue to work on my own steps of adaptation as well.

Speaking of which, I wrote several weeks ago that I got another job. I have mixed feelings about this. For one thing, I actually have to do a fair amount of driving on this job, and I don't like it. The Deepwater Horizon accident makes driving feel like such a violation of everything I stand for. But I sometimes wonder about the whole idea of trying to hang on to a “job” in these times. For the most part, hunting for or hanging on to a “job” means clinging desperately to the official economy – even as that economy continues to disintegrate. For those who have “jobs”, times may be good right now – if the jobs pay reasonably well, it is possible to enjoy the present season of relatively low prices for many things and to forget about the root causes of those relatively low prices and the prospect that those root causes might vanish very soon. There are a lot of people who are hurting, to be sure, but there are still a lot of people who have “jobs” and who are driving large, shiny, new SUV's to and from large, shiny, new suburban homes – people who have been lured into huge debts by temporarily favorable conditions. To such people it is inconceivable that they might soon need to start extricating themselves from the official economy.

For me, it is not inconceivable. I can clearly see the writing on the wall, and I've already taken several steps in that direction. But fear keeps me from going further – fear of the unknown, fear that I might look like an idiot before my acquaintances and neighbors, the fear that comes from not exactly knowing what the next steps are or the shape of the thing that will replace the present official economy. “Promise or a dare? I would jump if I knew you'd catch me,” as one songwriter said. Or, as Captain Mancuso said in the Hunt for Red October, “The hard part of playing chicken is knowing when to flinch.”

A (Short!) Summer Break

This is a quick note to let you all know that I'm buried in things to do just now. First, there's the summer class I will be teaching as part of a renewable energy curriculum. (My part is not cutting-edge; it's just a sophomore level engineering class.) Then there's the chicken coop I'm trying to finish (I started last year, believe it or not), and the summer vegetables I'm trying to get started at long last, and the winter vegetables and perennial vegetable seeds I have to order and ...

But I do have two valuable interviews coming up, one of which will be posted next week, God willing. The interviews are part of my continuing effort to engage my community in a conversation about post-Peak living and adapting to a time of collapse. Stay tuned...

Post-Peak Education - A Grassroots Teaching Model

I am pleased to present another interview for this week's post. This past Friday, I had another opportunity to visit Holly Scholles, founder of Birthingway College of Midwifery in Portland, Oregon. We continued our discussion of what post-Peak health care might look like, and then we moved on to this week's main subject – a discussion of post-Peak education. Holly is uniquely qualified to discuss post-Peak education, due to her experiences in founding a college, and as a homeschooling parent.

We discussed both K-12 and post-secondary education and how traditional educational avenues, both public and private, are being imperiled by the shrinkage of revenues due to our ongoing economic collapse. A surprising fact surfaced, namely that Oregon public higher education tuition fees are now nearly equal to fees charged by some of the private colleges in Oregon. (For more on rising tuition fees, see FinAid | Saving for College | Tuition Inflation and College Tuition: Inflation or Hyperinflation?, for instance.) Why are college and university fees rising at such a rapid rate? Where is all that money going?

We didn't answer those questions in this interview, but we did discuss an alternative model: education that is relationship-based, small-scale, with reasonable fees charged by people who understand the concept of “enough.” Holly described an education system comprised of only four elements: motivated learners, able teachers (or coaches or facilitators), a good library and an environment conducive to learning. She stated that all these elements can be provided inexpensively.

She also described the organic process by which Birthingway started and by which it grew, and described how that process might happen for people in working-class neighborhoods who want to create local neighborhood classes and other learning opportunities for themselves and their children. We discussed a hypothetical example of a neighborhood whose members decide to start an urban farming class, and the process by which that class would grow – from gathering a library to attracting learners and other facilitators. From there we talked about the need for a revival of teaching of practical skills of the sort that have been lost due to reliance on technology and globalism.

We discussed many other things related to education, but these are the highlights. A recording of the interview can be downloaded from the Internet Archive at “Post-peak Education – A Grassroots Teaching Model.” As time permits, I hope to be able to post a transcript as well. (And I still owe you all a transcript of my last interview with Holly.) From the interview, it will be very obvious that a system that actually educates people is very different from what we have now, by and large, in the United States - a system whose purpose is mainly to institutionalize instead of educating.

I've got another interview coming up in the next few weeks. I can't say what it's about yet, but I think many of you will be very interested. Stay tuned...

To The Left Of...The Oil Drum

On Memorial Day I posted a rather provocative question to the Oil Drum website regarding the efforts of British Petroleum to stop the Deepwater Horizon oil leak. I got a lot of provocative answers. In fact, I felt a bit like a private detective character in a crime noir film who walks into the midst of a street brawl unawares. I took a few lumps. But here's giving a few lumps back again (as private detective characters usually do).

My question was as follows:

I have been following the Deepwater Horizon story from a bit of a distance. I am not an oil man or oil industry expert by any means. But seeing the multiple failed efforts to plug the leak, along with the continued low-balling of estimates of the magnitude of the leak on the part of BP and the U.S. Federal government, I can't help but be a bit skeptical about a few things. To me it seems that BP's efforts are constrained by its desire to protect its profits from damage at all costs. I think they're just dinking around. I wonder - not that I think this would ever happen in our country at present - but what if money was no object; how quickly could this leak be stopped?

By "stopped" I mean stopped - without any regard for whether BP could use this well afterward. How could it be that "money was no object" in stopping the leak? One of two ways - either assume that BP has unlimited resources, or assume that a government (such as the U.S. government) had the guts and the strong moral sense to seize BP's assets and liquidate the company entirely in order to pay for the quickest and most effective means of stopping the leak. In other words, someone with a backbone and means of enforcement would have to make BP an "offer they couldn't refuse." What sort of engineering solutions would be available then? And how quickly could they be implemented?

It's an academic question to be sure, since it's not going to happen. But considering such a question would at least provide us with a "delta" between what could happen if those in charge really wanted to stop this mess versus what's happening now.

You can read both my question and some of the answers here. Now here's the thing. Most of those who answered my comment attacked my lack of expertise and the obvious “silliness” of my question and assumptions. I'll have to give them a bit of credit; as I said, I am not an oil man or oil industry expert. These same people were very sympathetic to BP, stating that BP was doing the best job it could under the circumstances, a “first class effort” undertaken by the “best minds on the task.” One poster commented that “...we should all wish them luck, and after all, they really are working for the collective 'us'.” Another wrote that “the idea that BP is withholding some efforts on the basis of costs is pure nonsense. Your analysis is just not credible...” Yet another said that “right from the start BP volunteered to pay for everything although they could have hidden behind a $75 million cap for the clean-up...”

Farther down the comment thread are posts unconnected to my question, written by posters who gush (pardon the pun) about the “breathtaking skill of the engineers and technicians” now working to stop the leak. One poster writes that “we are seeing stuff akin to what NASA does.” He also writes, “We are witnessing the destruction of wealth and assets and reputation and we may never be certain if anyone really screwed up...KUDOS to the people in the petroleum industry. You all rock!” There's more obsequious frothing at the mouth in praise of the petroleum industry, but I'll let you all read it for yourself if you're interested.

Once again, I admit that I'm certainly no oil production expert. But I also have experience in witnessing the mismanagement of problems in engineered systems, along with the inevitable lying and cover-ups that occur afterward. In fairness to the many fine experts at the Oil Drum, I promise to read up on the tech talks that have been written about the efforts to stop this leak. I am sure they are all fascinating. However, I think the following points are still worthy of mention:

• BP's low-balling of the magnitude of the leak, from the very first days after the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon until now;

• The attempts to cover up the extent of the environmental damage and of the spread of the oil, as I documented in my last posts on this subject;

• The use of a toxic dispersant chemical (Corexit) by BP in an attempt to break up some of the oil slicks, instead of more expensive, yet more effective and environmentally-benign chemicals used by other companies;

• And lastly, the lies that were published in the mainstream media (such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corp outlets) about the “progress” being made by BP in bringing the spill under control (such as the ship that was supposedly sucking 5,000 barrels of oil per day from the leak).

These things all make me question (and frankly gag over) the party line that BP is a wonderful company that just happened to be the victim of an accident that's nobody's fault and that nobody caused, and now BP is exerting superhuman efforts to try to clean up the resulting mess. It is still a valid question to ask whether the most effective engineering solutions are being employed here.

I'm also wondering a bit about the Oil Drum. When I first started visiting that site, I was drawn into participating in some of the online discussions, driven by a fascination with the Peak Oil story and wondering how it would all play out. I made the “mistake” of announcing that I was a Christian once when I ran across an online discussion that was critical of Christians, in which most of the posters assumed that we were all like Sarah Palin or Pat Robertson. Because of my admission, I was treated to another round of “private-detective-gets-jumped.” Nowadays it's ironic that I, the moralist, the believer in an absolute standard of right and wrong, should suddenly find myself to the left of ... the Oil Drum! For not only am I lately finding a curious reluctance to discuss anthropogenic climate change over there, but I am also finding posters who are horrified at the thought that the Federal Government might ever force BP to make full restitution for the mess they have caused.

But true restitution is a sign of true repentance (Luke 19:8). Not only does BP not seem repentant, but the entire oil industry seems reprobate – what with Shell Oil winning leases for offshore drilling near Alaska and Canada issuing permits for drilling off its coasts – all in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon leak. Morality won't stop these people from continuing to make a mess. Our only hope for oceans that retain even some semblance of life is for another sweeping credit crunch that destroys the ability of oil companies to finance deepwater projects.

As to credit crunches, a curious thing has been happening. In 2008, as oil prices spiked to nearly $150 a barrel, credit markets crashed. Some argue to this day over whether or not the two phenomena were related. As a result of the crash, oil prices fell to nearly $30 a barrel. Now they are back over $70 a barrel. But we recently saw another credit crunch, this time involving not just banks, but the countries of the Eurozone. Oil had been trending above $83 a barrel just before that crisis. Now the price of oil has fallen to the low $70's (and is starting to rise again). But notice that this credit crunch did not deflate prices to nearly the same extent as the 2008 credit crisis.

To me this is a validation of Oil Drum analyst Tony Erickson's earlier prediction that there would be a significant decline in global oil production throughout 2010 – for oil prices are remaining stubbornly high even as deflationary events continue to happen throughout the world. (Tony Erickson is one of the good guys in my opinion, by the way.) But that's just my guess. As I am not an expert on oil, I don't pretend to be an expert on money matters either. ;)

Good Water From Other Wells

I've been reading some great blog posts lately from some of my fellow writers, thinkers and doers. I thought I'd share them with you all.

First, Stormchild, author of the blog Gale Warnings, has written a good post titled, “Complexity vs. Complication.” It is a look at the dynamics of human systems, where complexity is the result of the connections between various parts of human systems and complication is the result of human “cussedness” or contrariness or indwelling sin. Complex systems can be fixed when they go wrong. Complicated systems can't, because there are people in those systems who don't want a fix. That insight can be applied to many of the large scale societal systems under which we suffer just now.

Jerry, author of SoapBoxTech, has a number of good posts. “SoapBox Thoughts on Arizona” presents intelligent commentary on the recent Arizona immigration law, while “Salvation, For Now” discusses the need for some locales to shift to dryland farming techniques as part of adapting to climate change. As to the viability of modern industrial agriculture, “How Technology Almost Killed Mixed Farming” is a good read. And “Transgenic GMO's Causing Bee Crisis?” discusses how genetically modified crops may be contributing to colony collapse disorder among honeybees.

Speaking of bees, Aimee of New To Farm Life has been writing about her experiences in learning to keep bees. Her latest bee post is “The Bee-Man Speaks”. Aimee and her husband are impressive in that while I might write about doing a thing, she and her husband both do it and find time to write about it. In addition to bees, they also keep goats and chickens (and who knows what else ;) ).

And for those trying out urban homesteading, I want to welcome a new follower of my blog, namely Heidi, author of The Itty Bitty Farm in the City. It's nice to meet another person who is learning to practice preparedness and sustainable living in an urban environment.

Davy Jones Disturbed - One Month Later

This will be a short post – my schedule has suddenly become much busier. I will say, though, that I have some good interviews lined up, and hopefully you will be seeing them over the next two months. I also owe you all a transcript of my “post-Peak health care” interview with Holly Scholles of Birthingway College of Midwifery.

Today let's talk about the ongoing oil leak caused by the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. I want to list the lies that have been told so far by British Petroleum (BP) and its allies in the mainstream media:

• Residents of Texas who discovered dead sea turtles washing up on their beaches soon after the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon and the resulting oil spill were told that there was no connection between the oil spill and the dead sea turtles on Texas shores. This assertion was heavily implied in coverage of the event by Fox News. However, the truth is that the numbers of dead sea turtles are triple the normal amount for this time of year. A more accurate picture of the environmental damage can be found at the Sea Turtle Restoration Project and similar sites.

• Tar balls are now washing up on the beaches of Florida. The U.S. Coast Guard recently asserted that “lab tests show conclusively that the the Florida Keys tar balls are not linked to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.” The funny thing is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration requires that all water, tar or oil samples collected in the area affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill must be sent to TDI-Brooks International's B&B Laboratories, located in Texas. TDI-Brooks' biggest clients are multinational oil companies such as British Petroleum, owner of the Deepwater Horizon. Clearly, there is a conflict of interest here.

• The “official” size of the leak has never lined up with reality. The official figure being bandied about is 5000 barrels per day. In the early aftermath of the disaster, that figure was far lower, as the official estimates of the severity of the leak were being published by...BP, of course! Estimates were revised upward from a mere 1000 barrels per day to the current 5000 as it became quickly obvious that BP's figures were unrealistic. Now some very respectable sources are saying that the 5000-barrel-per-day figure is also wildly optimistic. According to these sources, the figure should be closer to 70,000 barrels per day. (See “Daily Kos: Deepwater Horizon: The first 30 days” and “Gulf Oil Spill May Far Exceed Government, BP Estimates : NPR” for instance.) According to one estimate, the resulting oil slick now covers more area than the state of West Virginia.

• Descriptions of BP's effectiveness in stopping, stemming or containing the leak have proven time and time again to be very exaggerated. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp outlets, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, have regularly and uncritically published BP's pronouncements that progress is being made in stemming the leak (see “FOXNews.com - British Petroleum Caps One of Three Gulf Oil Leaks”, and “Spill Fight Shows Progress - WSJ.com” for instance). Yet these statements are being regularly disproved. BP's recent statement that they were siphoning off 5000 barrels per day from the leak via a specially-equipped ship had to be revised downward, as reported here.

The situation is improving for people who want to get at the truth of the seriousness of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. There is now a live camera feed showing the leak in real time, via both satellite imagery and underwater cameras at the leak site. This live feed has been overloaded, showing just how many people are interested in learning the truth. There are also independent experts who are not friends of the oil industry, who can also provide insight into the magnitude of the disaster.

The truth that emerges is not a pretty picture. What is being seen is that BP who were incompetent in managing offshore oil drilling, are just as incompetent in managing the cleanup from an offshore well blowout. Either that, or they are unwilling to mount the sort of effort needed to stop the Gulf oil leak in a timely manner due to fear of reducing their profit margin. It is high time to bring in more competent agencies, even if this means we have to ask for help from foreign governments. This will of course tarnish the myth of American exceptionalism, as well as exposing BP to increased civil and criminal liability (for many more people will see the evidence of the magnitude of the mess BP have created). That's just too bad. Time is of the essence here. Otherwise, we face the prospect of 70,000 barrels of oil per day polluting our oceans for months on end, while BP dithers about and expends most of their energy protecting their stock value instead of taking responsibility for their mess.