12/17/2009

Stockholm Syndrome in Copenhagen

It’s cold in Vermont. Our long autumn has given way to the winter weather that always beats the calendar winter by a few weeks here. Frank Capra snowflakes fall past my window as I type.

On Saturday evening, in the company of a 14-year-old girl, I walked to a park in the south end of town, where we met fellow citizens. We all had candles. The idea was to spell out the digits 3-5-0 in light, as a message to the negotiators in Stockholm, to tell them to take action to bring the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere down to below 350 parts per million.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is currently around 385-390 ppm and rising. If we stop producing greenhouse gases right now, levels of CO2 will keep rising for several decades. Neither the 14-year-old nor I will see CO2 drop below 350 ppm in our lives, but perhaps – if we act decisively and swiftly – her children may see it.

Even that is doubtful. The talks, which have less than 24 hours to go, look hopelessly stalemated. The biggest news seems to be a call to move the date of the next meeting – in Mexico City – forward from December to June 2010. Which means we’re kicking the can down the road, just not as far. Progress, they call it.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Global Warming | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
12/10/2009

The Audacity

The need to address the co-option of Newsweek and the Washington Post was so strong last week that I left hanging President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize today, Mr. Obama spent a good portion of his speech addressing war in general and the Afghan war specifically.

So, let’s get back to that. What a stupid idea. Just because Gen. William Westmoreland Stanley McChrystal asks for 30,000 troops, doesn’t mean that Mr. Obama, as commander-in-chief, has to give them to him.

I’m not a general or politician, but even after the president’s speeches, I have unanswered questions:

– What are these troops supposed to do? If we’re going to run a classic counter-insurgency campaign, along the lines laid down by Gen. David Petraeus (Gen. McChrystal’s boss), we’ll need between 500,000-600,000 troops in Afghanistan, instead of the 100,000 we’ll have there at the height of the surge and we can’t plan on starting to pull them out in mid-2011.

– What’s with the whole “in and out” strategy anyhow? In the old neighborhood, we used to say, “Go big or stay home.” Mr. Obama does neither. If we start ramping up in January 2010 and ramping down in July 2011, what’s the point, other than to put on a political show to defend Mr. Obama from charges of being “soft on foreign policy”? Memo to the White House: you’re gonna get accused of that anyhow and waste lives, time and money in the process.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Iraq Invasion | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
12/03/2009

The Wrong Direction

I’m back in Washington, DC this week; Tuesday evening I flipped on the radio to listen to President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan. Clearly, there are no good options available, but the choice Mr. Obama’s made seems worse than it needs to be.

The Afghan war is an oil war. The connection is not as clear as it is in Iraq, but if oil is removed from the equation, the US would have little interest in the Muslim world and vice versa. Absent that mutual interest, Islamic militants wouldn’t be attacking the US.

Earlier Tuesday, in the Mike Mansfield Room of the US Senate, Newsweek magazine presented an “executive forum” called “Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?” The forum was “co-presented” by the American Petroleum Institute, a/k/a API, a/k/a the Oil Lobby.

Newsweek, it should be noted, is owned by the same company as the Washington Post and yes, these are hard times for the news business. They respond by selling themselves to the highest bidder and no one should be surprised that oil companies bid highest. (How much did API pay? Newsweek won’t say, but if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it.)
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy, Energy, Global Warming | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)
11/26/2009

Home for the Holiday

For some reason, all the bills came due this week. There were the usual end-of-the-month debts. Then there was the cost of the new heater, which is supposed to save money and give us a smaller carbon footprint in the long run, but has to be paid for up front. A day later, six month’s worth of car insurance came due. After that, a full year’s worth of homeowner’s insurance. Does this happen every year and I manage to block it all out? This year, I’m writing it down. Maybe someday I’ll go back and read it.

But this is Thanksgiving and I’m grateful – yes, grateful – I have bills to pay and better, the means to pay them. Grateful to have a house and car to insure and heat.

Out in the yard, I see beneath a cloudy sky that I have not completed my autumn yard chores. There seems to be no hurry this year, as if I’ll still have several weeks to put everything in order before the snow comes. That should not be the case. White Thanksgivings are common in Vermont and weather lore holds that “snow on the mountain means snow in the valley six weeks later.” I saw snow on the mountains eight weeks ago and still none in the valley. I’m not even sure it’s on the mountain anymore. The newspaper says the skis areas will be closed on Thanksgiving, usually the first big day of the season. The days drowse along in the 40s and 50s, as if autumn has become static, rather than a dynamic season.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Comments (0)
11/19/2009

On New Hampshire

I’m in Washington, DC this week. It’s warmer here than in Vermont, I feel overdressed. It’s autumnal, but in a mid-Atlantic kind of way.

Monday evening I walked northwest on New Hampshire Avenue. The evening was balmy; the leaves were piled thick and dry along the gutters and across the sidewalks. The air was rich with the aroma of vegetal decay.

One stretch of New Hampshire is crowded with embassies and consulates. The Argentine embassy was embraced by scaffolds. It looks like they’re having their masonry repointed. The art of diplomacy goes on, however, and a number of men in expensive suits stood before the plywood marquee around the entrance, conversing in Spanish. It seemed the evening’s affair had ended and the last pleasantries of the evening were being exchanged.

A few blocks further on, townhouses dominate the block. At one stretch, three in a row had “for sale” signs posted in the small plots of grass that pass for front yards in this part of town. That’s an unusual sight in DC, regardless of how soft the real estate market may be in the rest of the country. A local adage holds that when times are good, DC prospers, as players around the country try for a bigger piece of the action; when times are bad, DC prospers, as players try to hold on to whatever action they’ve got.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Economy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
11/12/2009

The Edge of History

I hate anniversary journalism, but the remembrances of the fall of the Berlin Wall this week got me thinking. I was in Chicago that week in 1989, watching the news in a hotel room as I rested my feet, which ached from walking all over town in new shoes. Never visit Chicago if you’re wearing new shoes.

The reason anniversary journalism is popular is because of those compelling images of people on top of the wall after so many years, the heavy construction equipment pulling down sections and the East Germans pouring through, looking dazed and happy.

Moments like that are the edges of history, when one era changes into another. In the natural world, biologists find life is most abundant at the edges – where the field turns to woods, where the ocean meets the shore, at dawn and dusk. So it is we remember the good times – the fall of the Berlin Wall – and the bad – September 11th.

I spent a good deal of my time in Chicago thinking about the sudden collapse of the wall, for it did seem sudden at the time. We’d seen news analysis pieces about how the Soviet system was rotting from within, but the Cold War and its propaganda had been with me my whole life. (I was three months old when the Berlin Wall went up.) Who knew what was real and what was CIA?
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Economy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
11/05/2009

Money Can Buy

I know you’re sick of all the election analysis. Me, too. It was the off-est of off years and yet we beat it to death with talking and I don’t want to add to that.

Except. I read New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent at least $90 million getting elected to his third term in office. By the time the final numbers are in, it’s likely to be around $140 million. (Democrat Bill Thompson, his vastly outspent opponent, squandered $7 million, which is nothing to scoff at.)

There are 4.2 million registered voters in the five boroughs and the news reports that turnout was low. So, Mayor Mike perhaps spent around $140 per vote? And they say you can’t buy an election?

Well, you can’t. Ross Perot couldn’t back in 1992; Steve Forbes couldn’t buy the Republican nomination in several attempts. (Words I never imagined myself typing – “couldn’t buy the Republican nomination.”) In Vermont, a millionaire was beaten in the 1998 Republican primary by a farmer who spent $16 on his campaign and upon winning the primary, endorsed the Democratic incumbent, Pat Leahy. In 2006, another millionaire tried to buy a Senate seat, spent $7 million of his own money and lost to a socialist -!?! – Bernie Sanders. Take that, mill/billionaires.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)